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Transcript from Goldseek, - Friday, 28 October 2011
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Chris Waltzek: Okay, so glad you’re back with us for another GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget segment. My special guest today, Richard Daughty, aka the Mogambo Guru.
[Bell Ringing]
Well, my next guest is, perhaps, best known for his economic newsletter, The Mogambo Guru. Richard Daughty is general partner and the COO for Smith Consultant Group. Richard, are you basking in the warm Florida sunshine today or bivouacked in The Mogambo bunker of paralyzing fear?
Richard Daughty: Well, I’ll tell you, I actually crept out this morning and it looked the coast was clear. And so, it’s the most beautiful day we’ve had in Florida in I can’t remember when. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I played golf all morning. Do you play golf?
Chris Waltzek: Actually, I gave my golf clubs to my uncle. Since then, I just haven’t swung a club.
Richard Daughty: Another good deed. You’re allowed to be on the senior PGA.
Chris Waltzek: I’d like to begin, if we could, with the European Sovereign Debt issue. Moody’s downgraded Spain’s debt recently, noting that there’s no credible resolution of the current Sovereign Debt Crisis. And they’re also warning they could downgrade France’s debt. They could lose their coveted triple A rating. Do you expect this crisis to continue? And, if so, what is that gonna mean for investors?
Richard Daughty: Well, it can’t be resolved at all. It’s gotta, basically, collapse. The deal is it’s too – so much money is owed and somebody’s gonna have to lose a lot of money that they are owed, and the people who owe the money are gonna not pay. Just, basically, that’s – well, who is gonna get hurt the most? So, that’s what they’re trying to decide now.
[Laughter]
Chris Waltzek: Richard, debt concerns has weakened investor demand for the Euro currency and that, of course, has boosted the U. S. dollar. And over the weekend, officials from the two European super powers, Merkel and Sarkozy, met to resolve the crisis. They’re also meeting again today, Wednesday. The market seems to think they’ve made some progress.
Richard Daughty: There is nothing that can be done. This is nothing new. This is the same ‘ole thing that’s happened for thousands and thousands of years. Government borrow themselves into debt. People borrow themselves into unpayable debt. It goes over and over and over and over, every – all the way through thousands of years, through thousands of different governments and millions of different people. And nothing has ever worked out and they tried everything.
Chris Waltzek: We’ve been chatting now for six years on GoldSeek Radio. I think we have probably come to that conclusion –
[Laughter]
– on practically every show and it still holds, doesn’t it?
Richard Daughty: Yes, it sure does.
Chris Waltzek: At the end of the day, we have all of these folks in their ivory towers pontificating with their lofty notions of just how we can undo this terrible predicament in which we find ourselves.
Richard Daughty: Well, unfortunately, we started down the path of excessive fractional reserve banking and creating lots of money with debt and a lot of federal deficit spending. And so, it is far too late to go back to that now and just collapse everything. People have to spend more and more and more money. That’s the basis of the whole system.
Chris Waltzek: It really is because it is based on false weights and measures. There really isn’t any substance there as soon as they took away that sound money backing. And, you know, Richard, the market has enjoyed 11 consecutive quarters of positive earning surprises. The S & P 500 has rebounded about 15 percent from its October 4 low. About two-thirds of the S & P component stocks now have registered positive earning surprises, those that have announced that is. And analysts now project that third quarter earnings will be about 15 percent of above last year’s. The markets are generally forward looking. Do you think that stocks might be discounting an economic recovery here?
Richard Daughty: Could be. I just don’t see how they can have such fantastic earnings if the earnings come from the United States because we’re not generating that much earnings at all. And so, it’s coming from overseas and a lot of it, I’m sure, is currency translation, maybe derivatives of payoffs and whatnot, whenever you’re looking at earnings. But, it depends on what they define as earnings. For all I know, the Federal Accounting Standards Board have had a new ruling that debt can be counted as earnings.
[Laughter]
I don’t know what these guys are up to. I mean, it’s all just a gigantic, corrupt system, depending on all the other little pieces of the corrupt system that keep on being corrupt.
Chris Waltzek: I think you may be right and, you know, one of the ways in which companies can inflate, if you will, their earnings per share is, of course, corporate buybacks and we’ve seen that trend continuing here. For instance, Coca-Cola recently issued 10 year bonds to purchase about $2 billion of capital stock. And, of course, that boosts the earnings, but they really haven’t created anything other than debt.
You know, next, stocks and commodities, they do have a cyclical component. A very favorable season is approaching. Do you expect investors might be treated to a year end rally?
Richard Daughty: Well, they – everybody knows that they always have one, so it’d be foolish not to want to participate in one, as I’m sure everybody’s looking for one and will leap on the first opportunity of seeing one ‘cause that’s what investors do. They want to make a short-term profit by anticipating a trend. Well, I’m telling you, these guys got it all wrong. The trend is there and for a long time, so just buy on a dollar cost averaging basis and you will make out like a bandit. But, you try trading, they’re gonna eat you alive.
[Laughter]
And take it – this is coming from a guy who’s tried to make a living as a trader.
Chris Waltzek: I’ve read statistics anywhere from 90 to 95 percent, even 98 percent, of folks who take that plunge into the trading arena, well, they tend to regret it by forfeiting most, if not all, their profits. China is an important component of this global economic growth story. Their National Bureau of Statistics announced that GDP is growing and it’s remained high at about 9.1 percent last quarter. Their industrial output also surged about 14 percent versus last year. So, these are clearly far from recessionary numbers. Since China is now the world’s second largest gold consumer, do you agree with the statement that this could be a positive indication for gold demand going forward?
Richard Daughty: Of course, I will agree that it could be. Is it perfectly clear that this is a gigantic opportunity? Yes. I will even go that far. They have a long association with gold for long – they’ve even had – they’ve experimented with a fiat currency way back many centuries ago and it just ended disastrously like they all do.
[Laughter]
And it makes perfect sense to me for China to encourage the importation of gold into their country so they can establish, once they have a lot of gold, a gold standard ___, make their currency instantly acceptable around the world. It can be traded in for gold. It’s gonna be based on gold and so, it’ll be very secure. It’ll be stable. Inflation will drop to zero. But, getting back to the trading in gold too, it’s mathematically imperative that the majority of people lose money so that a minority of people can make some money. And all the market insiders and the government and all that kind of stuff definitely will make a lot of money. So, the majority of people that tried this stuff have got to be wrong. That’s one of the things so comforting about buying silver and gold. Everybody’s still kind of against it. They’re the majority. They’re wrong.
Chris Waltzek: From a contrarian perspective, I guess that’s a positive for most of our listeners. Domestic unemployment remains a big concern. The Labor Department announced that new claims in the last week or so, they did decline, but it still remains stubbornly over 400,000. And that’s generally viewed as a sign of stagnation. Is the economic typhoon passing or do you view this merely as the eye of the storm?
Richard Daughty: I really would think it’s the eye of the storm. I agree that that news is only good in comparison to its being much worse. That is not good news. If unemployment is figured according to the new government metrics as being some benign figure, less than 10 percent, but I’ll tell you, you take a look at, like, John Williams at shadowstats.com, who figures unemployment and inflation the old fashioned way, staggering under 11, 12, 15 percent unemployment right now. The thing is that half of the American people who work, half the American workers, work for a government, federal, state or local, a school system, another government sponsored enterprise, or a non-profit agency. That’s half of the workers that America work for something that not only make no profit, but actually consume money.
Chris Waltzek: Exactly. We’re talking close to half of American workers. It’s right in the 49, 48, 49 percent. Roughly half of Americans depend on government subsidies.
Richard Daughty: There are only 130 million people in this country that have jobs and only half of those make money. So, 65 million people are supporting 230 million, a gigantic government, lost of overseas aid, a huge military.
Chris Waltzek: And the point here is not to pass judgment on government workers. The problem is when there’s such reliance on government employment, then one wonders how long before the economy can no longer support, you know, the private sector, can support the gargantuan Atlas-like weight upon its shoulders.
Richard Daughty: It’s like one of the candidates, Republican candidates, has said one of the things he’d like to get rid of is the EPA and he came under a lot of fire for that. Well, let me tell you right now, the problems that EPA was formed to combat disappeared long ago. This country is cleaner than it’s ever been. There are more trees in this country than when Columbus discovered the place. We don’t need a gigantic EPA anymore. A couple of dozen guys should be enough. But, no, every one of these guys wants to come up with something new to justify their phony baloney jobs. “Oh, let’s take a look at carbon dioxide.” “Oh, let’s take a look at arsenic left over from 500 years ago with the Native Americans and their rough hewn methods.” Just cut it way back. We don’t need these guys. Some of ‘em, yes; all of ‘em, no.
Chris Waltzek: Well, you know, lastly here, the feds latest Beige Book noted that the U. S. economy continues to expand in all 12 of the fed districts. It looks like Operation Twist, QE2 and a half, might be having an effect on the economy. Do you agree that this could lead to upbeat holiday shopping? Perhaps that might increase domestic demand.
Richard Daughty: You know, I don’t think the economy’s expanding. The government measures GDP by adding up all of the sales. Prices are going up at 11 and 12 percent. Inflation is raging, and yet, the government only discounts prices to get the real adjusted GDP number by like 3.9 percent tops; 2.3 percent GDP’s a ____. You can look it up. It’s a very low number. It’s less than three percent, I think. Oh, maybe around three percent. The government itself deflates the increase in GDP due to price rises only. Three percent when prices are rising nine percent. Oh, there’s a six percent growth of GDP right there. Even though prices are rising and your sales are going down, you can get a GDP _____ underestimating how much prices are rising.
[Laughter]
Chris Waltzek: So, in layman’s terms, when you are discounting the true inflation rate, it inflates the national output figures, I think what you’re hitting at.
Richard Daughty: Sure. If I used to sell 20 widgets at a buck a piece, but now I’m only selling 3 widgets at $10.00 a piece, it looks like GDP went up, but I only produced three widgets, right? So, like 20 – I laid everybody off. It’s all due to price increases. If I say no, the price of widgets only went up one percent, then you can take a look at GDP going through the roof.
Chris Waltzek: Anything else on your radar screen you’d like to share before this discussion comes to a close?
Richard Daughty: Just to pass on my timeless advice to buy gold and silver, but particularly silver. Silver is so grossly underpriced, it’s laughable. It is the biggest bargain of the century. It’s selling at like 30 bucks an ounce. Gold is $1,700.00. It’s – the silver should be selling at least $120.00, $130.00 right now. So, it’s gotta go up 400 percent just to achieve its historical 1 to 15 ratio to gold. What do you want out of an investment? It’s been 1/15th, 1/16th the price of gold for thousands of years and, suddenly, it’s not; and it’s gotta increase fourfold just to get back to its historical norm?
Chris Waltzek: And there’s even less of it above ground than there was in 1980.
Richard Daughty: Yeah. The fundamental case for silver just goes on and on and then this, yeah, these are just two of things.
[Laughter]
We could go on for another hour. Buy silver.
Chris Waltzek: Richard, it’s always fun hearing your thoughts and we very much appreciate your time today, sir.
Richard Daughty: Well, it’s certainly a pleasure being here with you. Thank you very much.
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Ocampo, who has been accused of rape.
Ocampo is unlikely to put the leaders of Nazi Nato on trial.
Saif al-Islam - most recent stories about him have been disinformation.
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