Political Polling: Women Making Money

Adrian Ash of BullionVault.com writes that “the International Monetary Fund said it has completed the gold bullion sales program begun in October 2009,” and now 403 tonnes of gold have been sold.

I bring this up all the time because the whole thing pisses me off because we gave those IMF bastards the gold to provide gold-standard legitimacy for their stupid fiat currency, the Special Drawing Right (SDR). And yet here they are selling the gold we loaned them! Gaaahhh!

Mr. Ash is apparently not particularly interested in how I have such a low opinion of the IMF and its little empires of crooks and liars, probably because, at the root, they are just more corrupt bankers, and it is always bankers who are the source of all economic problems, as they are the ones who can create money out of thin air just by making an accounting notation.

Oddly enough, early in my career, I tried this “accounting notation” approach with my boss as a way to “fix” the problem of my poor work performance and dismal results, instead of firing me on the spot, which was her original plan.

The way I explained it was that my Brilliant Mogambo Plan (BMP) was inspired by the fact that We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD) because the foul Federal Reserve is creating so much money. Thus inspired, I suggested that we likewise bring sales forward by creating them out of that selfsame thin air, we book the sales as a profit, thus showing that I am highly profitable, and not incompetent as implied in those lying Quarterly Employee Performance Evaluations.

When she asked, with this stupid look of confusion on her face, “Huh? What? How did you get into my office?” I allayed her natural suspicions by telling her that I figured that this would be offset by subsequent cancellations of those sales, along with our “paying” penalties for breaking the contracts, meaning that, in effect, we would deduct these additional phantom expenses from income to shelter real income from taxation, turning a loss into a profit, everybody’s happy, and we would both get all kinds of terrific bonuses and awards and promotions, and make a lot more money, too!

I remember leaning in towards her and whispering, “All it would take is for the accounting department to ‘play ball’ with us to somehow create money out of thin air, and it is your job to get their compliance and complicity, like Wall Street lobbyists extort compliance from Congress!”

The rest of the story is too ugly to talk about, and suffice it to say that it did not turn out well for me, the moral of which seems to be that creating things out of thin air, like money or sales, is a Very Bad Idea (VBI).

I could tell by the look of puzzlement on Mr. Ash’s face that he probably wonders what in the hell some stupid story, by some stupid guy, about some stupid tax fraud proposed a long time ago, and that probably never happened at all, has to do with gold, or the IMF, or anything that anyone cares about.

Suddenly, I realized he was right! So I sat down and shut up, and was pretty embarrassed until he said, “Some 57% of the 403-tonne total was bought directly by central banks, led by India.”

Inquisitive and suspicious, I wondered, “How much gold is that in terms of ounces?” Quickly, my Agile Mogambo Mind (AMM) set to the task of multiplying 32,150 ounces per tonne times 403 tonnes, only to realize I have no idea what I am doing, and sure to be wrong, as I have been so, so wrong so, so many times about so, so many things, including, and especially, math, ranking, as it does, second on the list of Things That Confuse The Mogambo (TTCTM), losing the top spot to, “What women want and why they just don’t shut up when I tell them to shut up about my not knowing what they want like I am some kind of stupid mind-reader or something.”

That is why I am happy to report that, thanks to some help, we know that 32,150 ounces times 403 tonnes is just under 13 million ounces, which actually ain’t much at $1,400 an ounce, amounting to a lousy $18 billion, which is so little money in an age when the word “trillion” and “trillions” appears so many times in the literature, including that magazine reader who wrote in to say that he liked the beautiful Miss February so much that he could stare at her for a trillion years and never get tired of it.

The point is not that I am rambling and apparently have forgotten to take my pills this morning, but that central banks, Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMRs) and everybody else is buying gold, gold, gold, which should indicate to you that you should, too.

And if you don’t, you will learn that life can be hard, instead of easy, and which is so easy to achieve because merely buying gold and silver is enough, making it so, so easy that you giggle as you say, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”

The Mogambo Guru

for The Daily Reckoning

The Last Angry Man’s Problem With IMF Gold Sales originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."

“However, to blame progressive cosmopolitanism for the recession makes little sense; progressives did not support financial deregulation and do not oppose Keynesian.”

I wouldn’t blame the left for the Great Recession. However, you will note that MattY places enormous importance on “economic freedom”. Let me quote from

“Life in 1960″

‘Private ownership of telephones was also illegal, a regulatory agency set airfares, the Pentagon was 9.3 percent of GDP, and a bank couldn’t have branches in more than one state.

Since that time, we’ve had a huge increase in personal freedom, a dramatic expansion of the welfare state, and yet a huge increase economic freedom.’

Did branch banking trigger the Great Recession? No. Did bank deregulation (of which branch banking was part) play a material role in the Great Recession? That would appear obvious (at least to me).

Virtually everyone (even including Greenspan) recognizes that the Great Recession was a consequence of economic liberalism run amuk. Economic liberalism was never a project of the traditional left (with a few notable exceptions). However, it was very much a goal of MattY and friends.

“Labor force participation for males dropped as females entered the labor force for obvious reasons. It’s not clear that this was a bad thing for males, but if it was, it’s an example of “progressive cosmopolitanism” helping females over males, not of hurting the working class generally.”

Policies have consequences. Note my quote from Robert Reich about how important it was/is that the stimulus not benefit “white male construction workers”. Aside from the absurdity of construction as a “whites only” trade, the actual stimulus was clearly structured to benefit the “feminized” sectors of the economy in spite of the Great Recession disproportionately impacting men. Note that only 1 dollar in 7 was spent on infrastructure.

More broadly, “free” trade was been a core component of the PC agenda. In practice, this has lead to massive (unheard of in world history) trade deficits to the obvious detriment of the tradeable goods sector. Of course, tradeable goods production disproportionately employs men.

I say the same about the broad shifts in government outlays over time. They have moved away from infrastructure (and defense) towards social programs that are less likely to employ men. Clearly this historic trend has been actively supported by the PC community.

“The recent decline in labor force participation is general, and again, explained by the recession.”

LFP has crashed recently because of the Great Recession. However, many of the male (and in some cases female) trends are of long standing. See the BLS data for details.

“As for Hispanics, that data is complicated by immigration. It is possible for the median income of Hispanics to drop even if most Hispanics make more than their parents.”

Incomes do rise from the first generation to the second. However, what is notable is that the “like for like” comparisons show amazing deterioration over time. See Los Angeles and its Immigrants – Metropolis Web Site (http://www.international.metropolis.net/research-policy/losang/chapt3_e.html). I quote

“Consequently, the terms of compensation at the bottom of L.A.’s economy got worse over the past two decades: between 1970 and 1990, real earnings in the Mexican immigrant industrial niches declined by over $6,000. The downturn is not simply a matter of exchanging bad jobs for worse: real earnings also declined in all of the industries that served as Mexican niches in 1970, before the massive immigration truly began.”

“Ten years after their arrival in the United States, the immigrants of the 1970s are doing worse than were the immigrants of the 1960s at the same point in time. And all cohorts have seen the gap separating them from natives grow — a statement that remains true both before and after adjusting for differences in background characteristics.”

“

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Women Making Money

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