Beggar America – How I learned to Love Debt

Having survived the last 48 hours of election results and the Weimar Fed announcement this afternoon, I decided to clean the place up and get ready for the hyper-inflation party to follow. All the 2-dimensional food group wrappers [sliced cheese, candy bars, pop-tarts, etc.] have been collected and thrown away.

I got some brand spankin’ new vacuum tubes [natch, before the price rise], got my suit pressed, and after 2 days of reflection from the insanity of looking up at my trading screen, I’m ready to trade anything and everything higher. For posterity, let the world know what a true high-tech trading operation looks like:

 Now, I’m sure some of you decided to trade during the Fed announcement  Being the kind of gambling man that I am, I would lay 5 – 1 that most of you are pretty much in the following mindset:

Don’t make me say “See, I told you to stay away from this” again.

Over the last couple of days, the “whisper number” for QE2 on the street had been going down from $1 Trillion to $500 Billion, and over 6 months instead of 1 year. Almost seems deflationary in comparison.

The open little secret here amongst those of us with a brain is that “Weimar Ben” can never let interest rates go up again, or the gig is up. They will waste the country, and by default print as much as needed to keep rates artificially low. In their collective hubris, they are fighting a battle they cannot win, always determined to win the last war; in the end, they will be unsuccessful in keeping rates low. Everything they don’t buy, nobody else will. That day is approaching faster than anybody in power will admit.

Today’s Weimar announcement is an open invitation for everyone to aggressively sell the U.S. Dollar and bet heavily on commodity prices going higher. Weimar Ben has given it his blessing.

-vegas

We Know That You Know We Know

All the academic pinheads who couldn’t get a job in the real world, and by default ended up at The Federal Reserve, will gather up all their PhD policy papers and meet tomorrow and Wednesday somewhere deep in an underground bunker.

Anybody with a brain knows that what they are planning on doing is insane. We know that printing money is inflationary and destructive. Hell, they know it too!! But what most people don’t realize is that they don’t care if we know.

Reminiscent of “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” comes the brilliantly timed question of the century “How are you going to pay this back?” I, for one, don’t particularly look forward to learning Chinese.

So, we know that you know we know it ain’t ever going to be paid back and probably a lot sooner than anybody realizes inflated out of existence.

Is this our future?

 And when this doesn’t work, then what?

I have long made the case that physically holding gold doesn’t make any sense either. You gotta pay to store it, it earns nothing by sitting there, and most importantly you gotta protect it. You can’t eat it, and for all practical purposes, in your life it is totally useless [I didn’t say worthless; big difference].

And if the proverbial crap sandwich is served up to the world and it takes $10,000 to buy a loaf of bread, what makes you think those gold coins are going to save your bumpkin? After all, when you go to the store and give the clerk a bright shiny 1 oz. gold coin for that bread do you think nobody will notice? If it comes to pass, you’re gonna be the most popular guy on the block – and it won’t be a good thing.

In the final analysis, we know that Fed Chairman Bernanke knows that we know he doesn’t have a clue what to do. When you go around to the primary dealers in government debt about a week before the most important policy meeting in a long time, and ask them what they think you ought to do, you look and act like the chump at a poker table.

Captain Bernanke at the helm and taking charge of the jumbo jet U.S. Economy, flight #2010:

 This isn’t going to end pretty.

-vegas