600 leads to recession

I am back. This is post number 601 for those keeping score. By the way, if you are keeping score, then I would look in the dictionary if I were you. You picture will be filed under "loser". Of course, that is me. Even I did notice that my Saturday post was the big number 600.

600 only has some "special" meaning because we live in a base 10 world. It would have meaning in a base 12 world, it would have meaning, too. Other than that, it really is an arbitrary number. That is all that I have to say about that.

Anybody watching the stock market? Man, that is some carnage. I am itching to return. I can smell bargains. If it is good enough for Warren Buffet, it is good enough for me. General Electric....looking cheap. Goldman Sachs, too. I still think things will go down some more from here, but there are a lot of people who have never seen a bear market, let alone a "real" recession. Most of the people working Wall Street were not working the street during the Crash of '87. That was brutal.

Then again, things climbed from there until the Savings and Loan Crisis and a relatively mild recession. What you see now is the result of government intervention, read the Federal Reserve allowing easy money, to avoid a recession. It is the old story of not being able to see the cycle for what it is. Recessions, though painful, are necessary to clear the excesses of expansions. Trees do not grow straight to the sky and neither do economies (GDP) and stock prices. They grow, consolidate, grow, shrink a bit, grow some more. The law of unintended consequences is a bitch. That is what must live through, now, all because, it was thought that the Nanny State would protect us.

That is correct. You put your faith in the same entity that could not deliver the mail...and your address was on it (thank you, PJ O'Rourke for that wonderful line....read "Parliament of Whores" you will thank me). This is very funny as I just opened an email from my uncle which quotes many on the evils of government. This whole situation is another.

I mean, how the fuck to do you go to war and not have your citizens sacrifice for it, read pay for it through higher taxes? I do not get it. They, my American friends, go to war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, too) but buy the bullshit about not having to sacrifice, read higher taxes. They blow a hole in their budget, then look for somebody, other than themselves, to blame. Folks, you got yourself into this mess by sticking your heads in the sand and not asking the hard and tough questions, such as what is the cost? who will pay? when will it be paid?

Now, it is bail out nation. How sad? Any moral suasion that they had is shot to shit. All that there is now just a big military machine, but no way to pay the bills, save for printing more money, which makes it all worth less (we call that inflation and it is a monetary phenomenon). Gold is where it is at. With a fiat currency, all roads lead to inflation (thank you, William Fleckenstein for that gem). That is where we and they are at.

It is now time to take some awful medicine. The medicine would have been bad earlier, but is much worse now. Too many people will be hurt and some are deserving and some are rather innocent. That is life.

Well, I have no where to go right now and to think all of this started with me musing about 600. Ciao!