Two things...Own gold, and a big gun
Richard Daughty
The Mogambo Guru
The Daily Reckoning
Oct 3, 2003Big, ugly things are on the horizon
Comstock Partners has concluded that real estate is almost certainly the place where the big popping of the bubble will begin, and for many important reasons, even though they hedge their bet a little, and allow that perhaps a collapse of the dollar may be the culprit, or maybe some big bankruptcy, or something. But probably real estate.But continuing with the real estate angle, they quoted the Richebächer Letter, and said "Since 1997, total housing values have soared from 8.8 trillion to about 14 trillion presently." Even though they left the dollar sign off, you still get the idea; real estate is in the midst, or at the end of, a big freaking bubble. Then they referred to the Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR), who wrote that "The national rate of home price growth surpassed the overall inflation rate by more than 30% since 1995." Eight years of this bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, in the real estate market.
They then take these statistics and concluded that, "This relationship shows clearly that existing homes are less affordable now to U.S. households than they have been for the past 50 years." Fifty years! Fifty! Wow! But I am not ready to conclude that the rest of written history will conclude that housing is always less and less affordable until that day when nobody can afford to buy a house.
I can hear you say, "Big deal." But it IS a big deal. And to illustrate why, they quote the International Strategy & Investment's (ISI) data that shows that "Every time existing home prices exceed 3 times the median income, housing prices shortly decline." "So?" you ask in that darling way you have that melts my heart, "are housing prices now in excess of three times the median income?" The long answer is "Yes" and the short answer is "Yo." To quote ISI, "The median existing home price is presently $182,000 and the median income nationwide is $60,000." Their inescapable conclusion? "Housing prices are due to decline." And why are they about to decline? Because, if you take the time to re-read this paragraph, you will note the precise phrase, "Every time existing home prices exceed 3 times the median income, housing prices shortly decline." The operant phrase is "every time." And there are few things in this world as certain as "every time," as in "every time I smack my thumb with a hammer it hurts."
And, worse, because people were rushing to take out equity in their houses to spend on gaudy baubles and having a wonderful time, "Homeowner's equity fell to a record low of 54.3% of home values." So, houses are less affordable than at anytime in your life, are overdue to decline, and the owners are carrying more debt on these record-setting houses, so that if values decline by 46%, they will end up with no equity at all? Wow! If anything, you gotta give us Americans bonus points for optimism!
And before you get the idea that this is just business as usual, and that the Fed can lower interest rates and foster enough inflation to bail everybody out like they always do, they note that "The rush to refinance over the past few years is without precedent." The reason that this is without precedent is that never before in history have we had a nation of greedy imbeciles who pledged their houses for a little spending money, we have never had moronic-yet-gigantic GSE's like Fannie Mae lending money willy-nilly to any un-creditworthy nincompoop that walks in the door, nor have we had a Federal Reserve chairman who is so profligate that he would consciously finance the whole mess.
Caroline Baum of the Bloomberg site had an interesting column apparently entitled "Some gaps get all the attention. This one should," even though that sounds more like a curiosity-piquing blurb than a title. She writes that "One gap that gets almost no attention and has major implications for interest rates is the one between the overnight federal funds rate and nominal output. This gap is wide and getting wider. History suggests a gap this wide for an extended period of time results in a rising interest-rate cycle that is both long in duration and large in magnitude, according to Joe Carson, director of global economic research at Alliance Capital Management."
Intrigued, we read on, since we, and here I am speaking in the editorial "we" since I am sure that you, the genius that you are, are already hip to this stuff. But I have a very hard time even keeping awake when somebody is telling me about nominal output, because these kinds of statistics come from governments, and if there is one source of statistics that are notoriously untrustworthy, to the point where you can almost bet it is a bald-faced lie, it is government statistics.
She writes, "Carson looked at all the rising rate cycles (defined by a cumulative rise of more than 100 basis points in the 10-year Treasury note) during the past 40 years and found they subdivided into short and shallow (1980-2000), and long and large (1960- 1980). On average, long and large cycles 'lasted a little more than three years with a cumulative increase in interest rates of 400 basis points,' Carson says. Short and shallow averaged 13 months and produced a 200 basis-point yield rise."
Right now the gap is, and I will quote from Ms. Baum in her introductory paragraph, "It is wide and getting wider." Mr. Carson wryly notes that " It will take years to close it. The longer the Fed stays accommodative, the greater the possibility that the next up-cycle turns out to be large and prolonged.''
So, there is another tasty bit of evidence that big, ugly things are on the horizon, as far as rising interest rates are concerned. And if there is one thing that the Fed is preoccupied with, it is interest rates. You can only wonder how Greenspan is taking the news that there is going to be a long and large cycle of constantly rising interest rates ahead of us.
Joseph Stiglitz, who eventually identifies himself as one of the "we in the Clinton administration," wrote a piece for The Guardian about the bubbles fostered during the 90's, part educational, part anti-educational, part nonsensical, part historical, and mostly self-exculpatory. "No one - not the president, the secretary of the treasury, or the chairman of the Federal Reserve - can be blamed for this irrational exuberance; but they can be blamed for not dealing with the consequences, and in some cases, for feeding the frenzy. After a faint effort to let the air out of the bubble, the Fed simply added to the hype." Earth to Mr. Stiglitz! Yes, they CAN be blamed, and I, the Mighty Mogambo, blame them with every fiber of my being, and with every decibel of my loud and irritating voice, and I point my long and bony finger at them and say "Shame! Shame!" Their every action was in reckless pursuit of expanding and exploiting the bubble economy via growing government meddling.
And also highly blameworthy, of course, is Joseph Stiglitz himself, who, armed with his precious Nobel Prize in economics, supposedly knew better and should have said something and done something, but chose to go along to get along. And now, I note with disdain, even though it looks like I am having some horrible gastric distress, but I am not, and that is just the way that my look of disdain appears to the casual observer, that he is defending his lack of responsibility.
Don't believe me? Well, just listen to this load of crap, and you instantly know that when the Mogambo uses a phrase like "get a load of this crap" that I am really going to lay into this Stiglitz character in a another pointlessly vicious and senseless personal attack of some sort; "We made some good long-run investments - both in the private sector and in the public, but too much of our investment went into wasteful private expenditures. By contrast, too little of our investment went to address vital public needs, in education, in infrastructure, in basic research." Get that part of about how private investments are wasteful, and how vital things, vital NEEDS he says, stem from government? Do you suddenly have, as I do, that foul taste of bile in your mouth?
He goes on to explain how he and his fellow-traveler commie buddies were so wonderful, "We had principles. As the administration came into office, most of us knew what we were against. We were against Reagan conservatism, we knew there needed to be a larger and different role for government, that we needed to be more concerned for the poor and for providing education and social protection for all, and we needed to protect the environment."
Once again, we have another loathsome Democrat bleating about how only he and his precious leftist political buddies are concerned with the poor, and how things need protecting, and how they are so nurturing and wonderful and all, and thus intimating that all others, meaning you and me, are horrid ogres who delight in being evil. As if we are supposed to clasp our hands together, gaze adoringly up at their shining faces and gleefully exclaim "How wonderful! Our heroes! Our saviors! Knights in shining armor!" But you would think that a guy with a Nobel Prize in economics would know that the government intervening in the economy always HURTS the poor, mostly by making prices rise! Ergo, Mr. Stiglitz and his loathsome friends are, their laughable and shrill protestations to the contrary, the embodiment of evil, as concerns increasing the pitiful travails of the poor.
The poor are considered poor because they haven't got enough money to afford to buy the things they need, and then here comes this Stiglitz and his buddies propounding expansionist credit-fueled policies to make sure that prices rise even farther out of range, making the poor even worse off! Jeez! I'm glad I didn't get a Nobel Prize, because then I would be ashamed that I won the prize because of the lackluster quality of previous winners as exemplified by the Stiglitz fella, and I already have plenty of things to be ashamed about without adding to my own misery.
But note carefully how he wants a larger and different role for government! But, and I extrapolate, just larger and different? No! Larger and different and better! No! Larger and different and better and more expensive! No! Larger and different and better and more expensive and much more powerful! No! Larger and different and better and more expensive and much more powerful so that it can crush anybody who dares to stand in the way of its providing for the poor, providing education, providing social protection for all, and protecting the environment through, ummm, providing! "We are the government, you pay, and we provide!" If you don't think that this is a fair characterization, then get another load of some more of this Stiglitz crap, "The central lesson that emerges from this story of boom and bust - that there needs to be a balance between the role of government and the markets. When countries got that balance wrong, veering either toward too much or too little government, disaster awaited."
Didja get that last stupid part about how he actually invents history out of thin air, and says it is dangerous to have a government that is too small? Huh? Did you ever, EVER, hear anybody other than a screaming, flaming communist, or socialist, or fascist, or Democrat, ever complain that government was too small? Is there a country right now, anywhere on the face of the planet, that is suffering because their government is too small? Was there EVER a country anywhere on the face of the planet that suffered because their government is too small? And exactly when WAS there a time and place, in all of history, in all of time and space, across the length and breadth of whole galaxies, and this includes those teensy-weensy little planetoids way out there on the edges of the universe where you can't even get a good burrito, who, and I quote, "got that balance wrong" and suffered an economic disaster because their government was too small? When, where, how and who, Mr. Stiglitz?
Since Mr. Stiglitz is not here in person to respond to my rhetorical questions or my ridiculously vicious ad hominem attacks, I will fill in the blanks and announce that the answer is, in nice round numbers, none and never. But every country, in all of time and space, and that includes those nasty little planetoids I already referred to above, that got a government that grew too big ALWAYS suffered eventual economic collapse of said country and planetoid. But nobody ever suffered because their governments were too small and inexpensive. Sometimes because their armies were too small and/or lightly armed, but never because their government was too small.
In my humble opinion as the humble and opinionated Mogambo, I offer as an example of their intellectual insufficiency that the Loathsome Left is always apoplectic about the problem of homelessness. And why are people homeless? They are homeless because they cannot afford a place to live. And yet the LL, which is, if you have been paying attention, merely an acronym for the Loathsome Left, sits there with these dumb, perplexed looks on their faces as the housing bubble prices the cost of housing even MORE outside of the pocketbooks of the poor, which increases homelessness!
How about lack of health insurance, which describes a sixth of Americans? The Congress, Stiglitz' big wonderful fount on goodness and compassion, mandated essentially unlimited free medical care for the old (Medicare), the sick, the poor (Medicaid), their children and whole hosts of others. Then they required that hospitals provide free care to anybody who shows up at the door, including illegal aliens. So government mandated a gigantic demand in health care. So who is left to pay all the costs? The people who buy health insurance. But now the cost is so high, thanks to years and years of prices rising by double-digit rates, that fewer people can buy insurance, and then one day they have to make the choice of either eating or buying health insurance, so they have to join the ranks of the un-insured, but still getting medical care simply by showing up at the hospital, driving up the premium costs by double-digit rates for the still-insured, until, one day, they too have to make the choice between eating and health insurance, and then they drop their coverage and become un-insured, but still needing medical care, which the Congress requires that they get, and thus driving up the premiums by double-digit rates for the few people who still have insurance, until one day those people...
And now these selfsame Congressional weenies are trying to pass a prescription drug benefit, which means MORE costs will be passed on to the people who have health insurance, which drives up the premiums by double-digit rates, which means that more people will be forced to make the choice between buying food or health insurance, and then they will drop their coverage, and then...
But now, I guess, he figures that because he has written some doofus "Me and my big-government buddies are so wonderful" article in a British newspaper, and don't get me started on the laughable idiocies of the British, which is an insular little island and so I guess it was only a matter of time before the inevitable inbreeding started to be made manifest, we are supposed to conveniently forget and forgive the results of the policies that the lying, corrupt Clinton administration pursued with his blessing. And all of the other horrors inflicted on us by other loathsome, leftist governments. It is enough to, as the saying goes, gag a maggot.
John Crudele of the NY Post wrote an interesting article entitle "Fed Stats Miss Half the Recent Price Increase." He does his best to expose the level of grubby lying and corruption that exists in government, especially the Fed, but without actually advocating that we organize into a vicious, blood-thirsty, mindless mob and go after these guys, torches blazing. He calculates that, based on prices, annual inflation was 4.7% in August. Of course, the Fed doesn't use real numbers. They use their hyperactive imaginations and, according to whispered dark secrets that I just made up, lots of mind-altering drugs to invent an alternate, parallel world where inflation is always wonderful and low, so that they don't have to pay Social Security cost-of-living increases, or pay bond buyers higher interest rates as an inducement to take their worthless government paper, so that they can finance the economic mess that they love creating and then wallowing in.
Plus, or minus, depending on your perspective, Mr. Crudele also reports that real earnings declined. So, the net net net to you and me out here in the real world is that prices are increasing twice as fast as the lying government wonks say they are, and we have less money in our pockets with which to pay the higher prices. Less income and higher prices is NOT the kind of thing that economic health is made of.
And then, after all this, we have to turn around and listen to pompous Fed weenies tell about how they have looked at all of this and decided that the future is so rosy and sunny that it hurts their eyes to even gaze upon it. I refer to a fabulously funny article in last Thursday's WSJ entitled "Productivity Keeps Fed On Guard Against Inflation Falling Too Much." The title itself is priceless, as any Fed of the past would have sued for slander if any paper had printed such a blasphemous thing.
But that was then, and this is now, and in the body of the article we read that Fed Governor Donald Kohn thinks that artificially low, pounded down, jawboning of the debt markets "will be required for a considerable period." . William Poole said that he thought the outlook for the American economy is, and I quote "superb." Jack Guynn says, and again I quote "solid and broad-based growth ahead."
All of this is predicated, of course, on the Fed managing to successfully fan the flames of inflation, which is a nice alliterative turn of phrase if I do say so myself, but it seems so hackneyed that I blush to use it. And if there is anything in this world to be feared, it is inflation. And if you do not believe me, then I suggest that you join a gym, start eating right, get healthy so you can manage to stay alive for a few more years, and then you will live long enough to get a huge, mind-expanding education about that. Or just go and read a history book, and save yourself the suspense.
Being part of the TV generation, we were flipping around and saw a segment on the CNBC about "The Two Income Trap." Oops! So the upshot is that every man-wife family combo now both work, and owes so much money that maybe they ought to be looking to cut expenses and paring back some of that humongous debt, since there is now nobody left at home to send out to get a job. That back-breaking debt, that debt that never seems to go away, but instead seem to get bigger and bigger each day. And if you re-read that sentence with a little back-beat action, it's not too bad, as music goes, as it rhymes and has a certain cadence to it, and it seems to have that added cache that it appears to be a rip-off of Ray Charles singing his hit song, "I'm busted."
But we're not talking about my ludicrous attempt to write a hit song, or even steal one, and stealing one from Ray Charles ought to be easy, since he is blind, but his lawyers are not, and so I am back to square one. No, we're talking about debt. The debt that is being bravely shouldered by us heroic and handsome Americans, ruggedly slugging it out like the feisty little scrappers that we are, going toe to toe, head to head, tooth and nail, hammer and tongs against The Wall. This is the absolute Limit of Endurance, beyond which lies the proverbial "second wind," which allows superhuman powers and powerful, come-from-behind action. In economics, The Wall is that load of debt that is so huge and expensive that it becomes impossible to take on any more debt. In runners, this Wall is the point of exhaustion, and is part of the runner's creed, so I hear, but it seems to me that all the guys who were runners when we were all younger are now the same crowd that is complaining about their latest knee surgeries, or ankle surgeries, or arthritis or something. I never have to listen to, on the other hand, any whining backsliders complaining, "Yep, my doctor says he gotta give me some more endoscopic knee surgery, and I'll have to show you my scars sometime, because of my spending all those years never exercising and always just sitting on my fat butt." Thus, parenthetically, Satchel Page is proved right, when he famously said "Never run when you can walk. Never walk when you can stand. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lay down."
But Mr. Page was wrong when he followed that up with, "And never look back, because something might be gaining on you." Funny and all, but suicidally wrong. I, the Mogambo, say otherwise, and when you repeat this in the future, and you will, it might be better if you say "Mogambo says" first. As in "Mogambo says, ALWAYS look behind you, because something MIGHT be gaining on you, and you will want to take evasive action, you stupid dumb-ass I can't believe you were so dumb as to never even guard your rear, and who in the hell was so stupid as to put YOU in charge around here anyway, for crying out loud, you damn stupid moron!"
And before we leave the fascinating topic of what the Mogambo says, let us leave it with "Mogambo says that if you are playing hearts and you have a chance to drop that queen of spades onto somebody else, then take it, because if you try to be cute, then there is a pretty good chance that you are going to end up eating that sucker and look like a big, fat dope, and maybe even lose the game, and then your partner will kick you in the leg and get all huffy and take the whole tray of canapes away, saying that she has decided that you have had enough, and how you aren't supposed to be eating those in the first place, and now you have to eat salads every day for a whole freaking week to make up for it, and then you will get all upset yourself and say something obscene, which doesn't make any difference because she is back in the house and can't hear you by this time, which is just as well, because it is usually after the heated exchange goes beyond this point that she starts daring you to fall asleep, and you remember how unpleasant THAT is, and, by the way, I hope that you are writing these little nuggets down, because these are priceless jewels of wisdom here."
And if playing Hearts isn't your idea of something witty to say about economics, I note with my usual patented supercilious smug self-satisfaction that makes people want to slap my face, that the same thing applies to not selling overpriced stocks, and bonds, and houses when you had the chance, too.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the two-income trap thing. Anyway, this is the perfect opportunity to bring up the Fallacy of Composition thing, which goes something like this. "It is a good thing when a family spending unit saves more and cuts their spending. But it is NOT likewise a good thing for all the family spending units, or FSU's, in America to stop spending, because without spending there is no production, and without production there are no jobs, and without jobs there is no spending either." So what is good for a family is not always good for the economy as a whole. That is why Greenspan and all the Fed people are trying to get you to spend, spend, spend, and that is why the federal government spends, spends, spends, and why all the little governments spend, spend, spend.
Having an income and using it to reduce debt is painful enough. But having your income reduced is the exact spot where my little FSU usually goes ballistic, and if I may be permitted to render a little anecdotal evidence of my own, this even happens to me, the Mogambo! And worse, it occurs where my personal happiness is concerned! Me! The Mogambo! The exact center of the known universe and whose constant happiness is that sacred duty of all the creatures that fly in the air, move upon the land, or swim in the oceans, and this includes lakes and even those large puddles that seem to stick around so long that things are actually living in there. But suddenly, THIS half of my own little FSU is suddenly having his budget cut, and mostly in that huge "Expensive Thing, Or Things, That I Personally Want, And Probably Something Tasty To Eat" category.
But, as we seem to now suddenly veer off on another ridiculous aside without using any turn signals, I'm now talking about how consumer spending is supposed to be two-thirds of the economy. It is not. Two-thirds of the economy, I mean. Consumer spending is, ultimately, one-hundred percent of the economy.
And so all the family spending units, or FSU's, who are now NOT spending, are now not pulling their economic weight, and the economy is suffering. The audience yells out, "Mogambo! How much suffering?" My reply is the very soul of brevity, "Lots."
And when I say "lots," I obviously mean an exact number. Exactly WHAT number I have no idea, but a number, nonetheless. And I figure it has to something to do with the multiplier that is implied when you take the tangible money supply known as "currency in circulation," and compare it to the market value of everything. This perspective has a certain simplistic charm. If everyone was required by law to pay cash for everything they buy, then the economy would be some limited multiple of the amount of cash in circulation, basically multiplied by the turnover (velocity) of the money.
But we do not have to pay cash for everything. The new American Way is to pay nothing down and just a few bucks a month, and all thanks to the wonderful credit-expansion of the Fed. So how big IS everything as compared to this $700 billion in actual cash, which shows just how much credit is out there?
Well, let's see. Take the GDP of the country, plus the value of all the real estate, and corporate real assets, plus stock markets, and bond markets, and derivative markets, and all the services markets, and all the incomes from everybody and every entity, and all of this, and all of that, and don't forget those snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and for good measure, why don't you throw in whatever is left in the category of, "I'll take 'Etcetera' for a thousand, Alex."
And when you add all of that up, and I hope you do, please get it to my desk as quickly as you can. Because when I tried to add all of that up, and then compared it to the measly $700 billion of actual cash money, my brain goes "Whoaaa there, big fella! This CAN'T be right!"
The end result is that it looks like, according to the figures that I have which are almost certainly all wrong since I have no idea what I am talking about, any family that dares to cut spending by one lousy dollar ends up hurting the economy by, oh, about $300. Not two-thirds of $300. By the whole $300.
This week's Barron's is an interesting read. For example, columnist Jack Willoughby has the temerity to say, as a sub-head, "Low volatility levels mean that market risk is the least it's been in five years." Huh? Volatility has almost nothing to do with risk. For example, if the shares of XYZ lost exactly a dollar a day until it reached zero, then volatility would be zero, which is, as you will admit, very low, although I am sure that the holders of XYZ stock who watched their slide to wipeout would disagree that their risk was low. Similarly, if the shares of ZYX stock alternately doubled one day and fell by half the next day, over the long term the gains would be astronomic. So, to reiterate, volatility has very little to do with risk, if anything.
Another interesting article was Eric Savitz's "Bad to worse," which asks that perceptive question, which I re-phrase in Mogambo-ese, "Who in the hell would want to be the governor of California, and why?"
The bottom line is that California's problems will be problems for years and years, and there is a general disconnect as to why there is a problem in the first place. A guy named Donald Straszhiem opines that "California's budget problems are made in Sacramento." Half wrong. The Fed created the excessive money and credit, which got borrowed and spent, which caused things to boom, which funneled excessive revenue into the tax coffers of California, which the government bozos there decided to treat as some kind of permanent entitlement. But the original problem came from the damned Fed, and the Sacramento chumps, like the low-life opportunists that they are, just piled onto the spending and government-growing bandwagon, like every other brain-dead state did. So, the chumps in Sacramento would not have had the chance to act like childish morons if the Fed did not act like morons in the first place. Sacramento, for their part, just made the problems permanent.
Doug Noland reports that, "Dealogic reported yesterday that nine-month global capital market debt issuance surged 22% to $3.72 Trillion." And where in the hell did investors get the money to buy 22% more debt in one year? Ultimately, from the Fed and the other central banks who are parties to this big swindle. And, since there is so much money and credit being created, it has driven up the prices of that debt, and thus driven down the yield on that debt, creating another bubble, which will burst, with the attendant destruction and misery that popping bubbles create, just like it has with every other bubble that the Fed has financed for the last few decades, which are all popped, are popping, or will pop.
Martin Hutchinson, who is the UPI business and economics editor, and apparently got that position because he is a real smart fella and not because he knew somebody, wrote a nifty little article entitled "The Bear's Lair: Escaping from Depression." He writes pretty convincingly what must be done to save the USA, and when I say "pretty convincingly" I mean "he says the same things I, the Mighty Mogambo, has been saying." But getting back to Mr. Hutchinson, he says, "The U.S. dollar must be allowed to decline (like sterling in 1931) to a level at which the trade deficit significantly diminishes - perhaps $1.50 to the euro at some point in the next 12-18 months - after which a tight money policy must be instituted, to increase the rewards of saving and restore confidence in the U.S. economic system. Public spending must be put on the tightest of leashes, so that it declines as a percentage of GDP and the budget is brought back towards balance by spending cuts, shrinking rather than increasing government's share in the economy. Taxes must on no account be increased; to do so would only repeat the disastrous mistake Herbert Hoover made in 1932, sucking resources out of the productive sectors of the economy. Most important, in order to avoid a 1930s style collapse of world trade, protectionist actions, such as 2002's steel anti-dumping duties and increase in farm subsidies, must be avoided completely, and every effort must be made to restart the process of the Doha round of trade talks, and thereby kick-start the engine of world trade.
"Such a policy will sharply reduce the excessive consumption that the U.S. people have enjoyed since the middle 1990s, and will increase U.S. savings rates back towards a sustainable level - much higher savings will be needed to restore savers' personal balance sheets after the stock market drop and probably a house price decline. By reducing the consumption patterns of the U.S. population to a level at which they can be supported from the country's production, the competitiveness of the U.S. economy will be restored, and its economic growth will be enabled to restart on a sound basis. Only by such a reduction, in a deflationary environment worldwide, will the U.S. be able to avoid very high unemployment and the misery that brings."
But, at least Mr. Hutchinson is a realist, as he then sums up with "Unfortunately, neither the President nor any of his Democrat challengers are offering anything like such a program. The period from 2005-15 is thus likely to be a long, cold decade." And to which I add, "And a mere decade of misery is a very, very optimistic estimate." Ugh.
---Mogambo Sez: History is very explicit as to the course of action you should take. You only need two things to save yourself. One seems to be to own gold, and the other is a big gun to dissuade other people from taking it away from you. And if you think that a supernatural deity is going to save you, or us, raw history is also very explicit about that, too; God seems to always favor the guys who are more heavily armed.
Richard Daughty
Oct 1, 2003The Mogambo Guru Lives!
Richard Daughty is general partner and C.O.O. for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise the better to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning, and other fine publications.
