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This past week
was a scary time for gold bugs. But do not be afraid. I am going
to look into the future and tell you what is next in the gold market. Last
week we studied the art of speculation and concluded that speculation was a
zero-sum game. For every dollar gained, there is a dollar lost.
It is like the neighborhood poker game. At the end of the evening, the
players as a group have the exact same amount of money they had at the
beginning. However, this is not true of each individual player.
The smarter players, who can foresee the future, will win. The other players
will lose.
Furthermore,
virtually all of us in the markets today are speculators, even though a
motley assortment of brokers, salesmen and advisors tells us that we are
investors. They tell us this thinking that they are flattering
us. You see, their real motive is to get our money. No, a
speculator is someone who enters the markets intending to profit by buying
low and selling high. An investor wants to put his money to work.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries (1885-1933)
when the United States was a free economy under a gold standard, people would
invest in stocks for an average yield of 8%. If they were more
conservative, they would invest in the savings bank for 5% (at very low
risk). Very few people played the stock and commodity markets because
these did not go up, not over the long pull. In 1896, the Dow Jones
Industrials were at 40. From 1885 to 1896, there was no Dow Jones
Industrials, but Charles Dow kept some railroad indexes starting in 1885, and
these railroad indexes show a flat trend for the eleven year period.
Moving forward, the Dow Jones Industrials were back to 40 in 1932. That
is, for 47 years, stocks in America were flat. So the average person
did not buy stocks to make a profit. He did not speculate. He
invested. He either bought stocks for the earnings, or he put his money
in the bank (or corporate bonds).
But Americans
today do not invest for the simple reason that real interest rates have been
zero since 1933. The Fed has been creating money for the past 77 years
and using that money to keep interest rates below their free market level.
The average interest rate over this period minus the rate at which prices
have been rising is zero. The result is that savings have dropped
almost to zero. Nowadays people try to accumulate money for their
retirement by speculating in the stock market or real estate.
They
will succeed in accumulating money, but what they do not understand is that
our money is continually losing value. So although they have more money
at the end of the day, they have fewer goods (or worse quality goods) to buy.
Unlike the free American of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries they cannot save and receive (real) interest. They can only
try to make their retirement by speculating, and speculation is a zero sum
game.
But
as noted, a small number of speculators can take money out of the game by
being smarter than the other guy. Today I am going to show you an
important principle of intelligent speculation which teaches you how to know
what the other fellow is going to do.
The
human being is the most successful creature on earth. We stumble many
times, but in the end we have the potential to create great things. We
have conquered space and time. We have landed on the moon. The
reason is that we are the creature who perceives the universe by means of
abstractions. Other intelligent animals, such as your dog or cat, go
out into the forest. They see the tree. They see the
waterfall. They see the other animals. But they see these as
specific things. Only man asks, what is the essence of
treeness? What are the qualities which all trees have in common and
which makes a tree a tree? Animals perceive trees as individual,
concrete things. Only man can have the concept of treeness and thus
discover facts true about all trees.
But
reasoning by abstractions is very difficult. This is why the great
majority of human beings are infernally stupid. If we look back in
history at the incredibly dumb things that mankind has believed over its
history, it is both sad and funny: One can make the crop grow high by leaping
high. One can make impossible things happen by employing magic
words. For this reason, the great advances of the human species have
come from a very few. The great majority shun the effort of thinking on
an abstract level, and therefore they get their opinions by following others.
Most
people in our society will get their opinions from their local papers.
But even the local papers do not originate ideas. This is too much
effort for them. So the newspapers and other media sources of the
country have agreed upon a system which saves them a great deal of
effort. They all follow the New York Times. Then the TV
news and the weekly news magazines join the system and follow the New York
Times as well. The result is that Mr. Average Joe reads the opinion
in his local paper. Then he hears the same opinion on the TV news and
does not know that it also comes from the Times. Finally, he
reads it in the weekly new magazine and then hears the same opinion from his
friend across town at a social gathering.
All
around him there is just one opinion. He never hears the contrary
view. He does not know that there is a contrary view. Soon the
vast majority of the country is of this one opinion.
Now
if this opinion were correct, then we could not make money on it. But
the Times of today is repeatedly and embarrassingly wrong. The
old Times of 1896 was a top newspaper which published the news
“without fear or favor.” Adolph Ochs was a gold bug in that
year and supported the gold standard and McKinley in the presidential
election. His high standard of reporting gave the Times a great
reputation. But his descendents took the great paper he made and turned
it into trash. Given enough time the reputation will turn into trash as
well, but for now it is easy to predict what will happen.
On
Wednesday last, the Times published an article “Pulling Back,
Amid Echoes Of the 1930s,” by David Leonhardt. This article, even
now, is going all over the country in the manner described above.
People are reading it and being taken in by it in large numbers. Soon
they will apply their opinions in the financial markets. Since we know
what they are going to do, it is not difficult to take their money.
The
Leonhardt article is a typical Keynesian piece arguing that what makes an
economy go up is demand rather than supply. It is a perfect example of
our human foibles. Take a false abstraction; logically deduce any
conclusion you want from it; and people will believe it, no matter how absurd
it is. Demand for the product of one particular business may be good
for that one business. But the businessman can only satisfy the demand
by shifting supply from some other business to his. If he
runs a restaurant and customers like his food, then in order to expand, he
must buy more food, hire more waitresses, etc. This means that there is
less left for the competing businesses. If people increase their demand
for restaurant meals in general, then they are likely to shift from other
luxury items, and ski trips, summer beach houses and trips to Europe will
have to decline.
In
general, the limiting factor in the economy is how much wealth is produced
NOT HOW MUCH IS DEMANDED. Look at a baby. It is full of
demand. It opens its mouth and howls for food. And yet this does
not create the supply to satisfy it. Imagine a village of babies with
no parents. They can howl and howl and howl. A Keynesian analyst
could come along and tell these babies that they are rich (because they have
so much demand). But they would still continue to howl. So it is
in Afghanistan, North Korea, Albania and Cuba: much demand, little
supply. Mankind has had a word for that since time immemorial.
The word is poor.
Actually
the Keynesians have another arrow to their quiver. Money is used to
demand goods. So the excuse that there is a shortage of demand can be
used to rationalize the printing of money. Does this work? Does a
country get richer by printing money?
In
the African country of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) prices rose by a factor
of 853 followed by 21 zeros over the course of 2007-08. At its worst,
prices were doubling every day. Over the past 10 years, average life
expectancy dropped from 60 years to 44 years. Pictures of starving
people composed of skin and bones circulated on the internet. I would
call these people poor, but David Leonhardt would call this economic stimulus
(his gobble-de-gook for calling them rich). The most famous case of
this in economic history occurred in Germany from 1914 to 1923. Over
that period, prices multiplied by a trillion times and, at their worst,
doubled every 3.7 days. The entire German middle class was wiped
out. There has never been a case of an “economic stimulus”
(meaning large issues of money) making a country wealthy.
On
the other hand, we had an exact opposite case here in America from
1866-1896. Over this period, prices declined by over 2/3. (A
$3.00 item declined to $1.00, CPI.) During this time, the real wages of
the average American increased by 90% (PPI). A host of great inventors
emerged who created wonderful new products (the telephone, the radio, the
automobile, etc.) which in turn were made available to almost the entire
society. And a mass of foreigners immigrated to our shores to get the
higher wages for which Americans had become famous. This was the time
when the U.S. became the top economy in the world (surpassing Britain).
(Note to our southern friends, this is the period when the South caught up
with the North economically. The real reason we fought the Civil War
was to make you guys as rich as we were.) In more than one sense, our
streets were paved with gold.
Our
economic establishment tells us that this period (1866-1896) saw a series of
depressions. The media of the country repeatedly tell us that they are
against the rich and on the side of the poor. This is a repugnant and
deliberate lie. 1866-96 was a period of several money and credit
contractions, but a money/credit contraction is not a depression. It is
a period when wealth is transferred from the rich to the poor. The
overwhelming majority of the people benefited in two ways during this period:
a) from the general increase in wealth of the time and b) from the money
being lost by the rich. The “depressions” of this period
were depressions for the rich, and the media of the country (which is always
on the side of the rich) reported them as depressions for the whole society.
This
is an extremely important lesson for you to carry through life. The
people in our society to whom you look for leadership and truth have betrayed
you. Nearly everything you have been taught is a lie, and the people in
our society who hold the highest positions of respect and trust are human
scum. They have betrayed you, and they have betrayed America.
One
simple and convenient piece of data which illustrates this is per capita
butter consumption for the U.S. (Historical Statistics of the United
States, Colonial Times to 1970, published by the Commerce Department,
series G-888, G-889, pp. 329-330). In the money and credit contraction
of 1873-79, butter consumption per person rose from about 13 lbs to 16
lbs. In the contraction of 1896, butter consumption per person got up
to 22 lbs, the highest in American history. This compares with combined
butter plus margarine consumption of about 16 lbs per person in the period
after WWII.
In
the early 1930s (which the above human scum call the Great Depression) butter
consumption increased, and margarine consumption decreased, meat consumption
rose (from 129 lbs per person in 1930 to 144 lbs. per person in 1934) and
giving to charity rose sharply. By the way, those reports that rich
people were jumping out of windows after the stock market crash of 1929 were
a complete fabrication (one which demonstrates the media bias in favor of the
rich). I have researched suicides both in New York State and in the
nation as a whole for the period immediately after the crash, and they are
completely normal. All those quasi-socialists who go around saying
“I am for the poor” are thinking “If I can kiss the
hindquarters of the rich, they will throw some money my way.”
In
his book 1984, George Orwell imagined a fictional dictatorship of the
future in which the government (Big Brother) lied to the people by falsifying
the contents of libraries to conform to the latest twist of the party
line. But Orwell, as perceptive as he was, still did not quite get it
right. Today the Government lies to us via the newspapers and news
magazines while the official statistics, which tell the truth, remain unread
in libraries across the nation. As much as he intended to shock us,
Orwell was yet too naïve.
Although
it is not 100% true, I find it most useful to keep in my mind the operating
premise everything I have been taught is a lie. This is not true
of all history. The Founders of this country were great men, and they
accomplished great things. That is why we have such a great
country. But almost everything which has been done since the “progressive”
period (circa WWI) has been a disaster. One giant lie builds on
another, and we are enmeshed in them like Brer Rabbit was enmeshed in Tar
Baby. FDR was a Wall Streeter in the 1920s. He ran a Vulture Fund
(so called because it swooped down on dying companies and gobbled them
up). The first thing that he did after taking office as President
(March 9, 1933) was to ram through legislation taking the country off the
gold standard and giving the power to counterfeit money to the commercial banks.
He was not a traitor to his class. He did not rob the rich to give to
the poor. Rather, it was the working people who voted for him who were
traitors to their class. When you read about this period, keep firmly
in mind: everything I have been taught is a lie.
Now
these are general remarks, and they apply to many areas of life. So let
us return to the Leonhardt article. Since it appeared on page 1 of the Times,
it will go all over the country. The editor of some small town in the
west, whose citizens do not even know that the Times exists, will pick
up its ideas and tell his readers that, just like the 1930s, a giant wave of
depression is threatening to engulf the country. Since they will also
hear this from the news magazines, from their neighbors and from a great many
sources of information and will never be exposed to the ideas of this
article, they will believe. After all, they are not
intellectuals. They are busy people, and they have to get the work of
the world done. And so it will go across the country.
So
when these people have to make decisions about what to do with their money,
they will have clearly in front of their minds – as though it were a
real thing – the “depression” of the 1930s as the
model. They believe that every so often, out of nowhere, a giant wave
of depression sweeps the country, lowers prices and makes everyone
poorer. So they will rush to protect themselves from this depression,
most likely by buying Treasury bills or bonds and going long the
dollar. (A study of the money and credit contractions of American
history shows that not a single one of them came out of nowhere. They
were all caused by a contraction of the money supply on the part of the
government, which led to a contraction of credit by the commercial banks.)
But when all these people go into the markets and try to protect themselves
from this mysterious “deflation,” they will find that it is
nowhere to be found. Exactly the opposite. They will find a
massive rise in prices because this time the government has been increasing
the money supply (approximately double since mid-2008). They will be
poorer because their paychecks will not cover the increase in their cost of
living ($5 gas, $1 daily paper, $1500 monthly rent). The answer to this
problem is not hard to find. Buy gold.
Exactly
what to do? That is my job. Although it is not possible for
everyone to win by speculating on the markets, it is possible for a small
number who see reality as it is to come out ahead. (The only way that
the majority can avoid being cheated is by voting out the existing paper
money system and restoring the gold standard. The reason they are
losers is that they are trying to get something for nothing.) We now
know that the great majority of the people are going to make the wrong play
in the coming financial period. They are expecting prices to go down,
but prices are going to go up. To give you financial advice so that you
can come out ahead over this period is the job of my newsletter, the One-handed
Economist, a fortnightly commentary on the economy and the financial
markets ($300 per year).
In
economics, as in life, you must see reality as it is if you are to make the
right decisions. Many people have suffered disastrous losses because
they have made the wrong decisions. And yet in this age – as evil
as it is – there are incredible opportunities for profit. Sound
principles of speculation, although they cannot give us 100% success, do
significantly increase our chances of winning. The good people, who are
against something for nothing, will get rich, and the evil people, who seek
something for nothing, will get poor.
Specific
actions in accord with this philosophy are laid out in the One-handed
Economist. You may subscribe by visiting my web site, www.thegoldspeculator.com and
pressing the Pay Pal button ($300/yr), or if you do not like Pay Pal, you may
subscribe via the U.S. mail by writing to The One-handed Economist, 614
Nashua St. #122, Milford, N.H. 03055 and taking advantage of a $10 cash
discount ($290/yr). The One-handed Economist is written every
other Friday and posted on my web site (password protected) on
Saturday/Sunday with special bulletins when the market does something
unusual. (Last issue was June 25.)
Thank
you for your interest.
Howard Katz
The Gold Speculator
Howard S. Katz is
the editor/publisher of the One-handed Economist, a financial letter which
combines fundamental and technical analysis. He was a bug on gold in the
1970s and became a bug on gold again in late 2002.
Subscribe to the Gold
Speculator (the One Handed Economist)
You can subscribe
to Howard Katz’s thoughts on commodities, stocks, bonds and real estate
are available in a letter entitled The One-handed Economist and published
every two weeks giving specific advice on trades in stocks and futures. This
letter is available (both electronic and paper copy) for $300/year with a
3-month trial for $100. Send to: The One-handed Economist, 614 Nashua St.
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