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by William Fox, Oct 1, 2003
“I know one thing, and that is
that I know nothing,”
Socrates
Later in this section I provide a list of commentators whose views,
in my opinion, appear to be particularly timely. This is list is subject
to change. One reason is that the stock market is in many respects the
ultimate “reality show” in which over time it seems to reflect
almost all aspects of human nature, ranging from a value orientation
to speculative mania, and from conservatism to unbridled greed. Sometimes
success in the market means knowing how to be trendy and play mood swings,
other times it can mean having a deep understanding of economic fundamentals
and underlying sources of fault shifts prior to their realization by
the general public. It is very rare that any one particular investment
advisor has the intellectual diversification and flexible personality
traits to adapt and improvise in all different kinds of market environments.
Given the inherent cyclicality of markets, it is often necessary for
advisors to assume the Socratic attitude “I know nothing”
and periodically reinvent themselves.
One interesting paradox involved in trying to find a competent and
timely guru is that often the best gurus are ones whose views are in
the minority, yet who are not so contrarian that their views are too
far ahead of their time and the investor is left for years in what is
known as a “value trap.” Conversely, gurus who reflect consensus
views are unlikely to outperform market indices because supposedly their
views are already priced into the market. One makes money not by describing
where the market is now, but where it is going. This can be particularly
tricky, because the market is often a discounting mechanism that prices
in today the outlook for six months to a year ahead, therefore, for
longer term investors, one needs to see further over the horizon to
stay ahead of the herd. Interestingly enough, Forbes columnist Ken Fisher
claimed in his April 3, 2000 article "Break
their Crystal Balls” that he has developed a forecasting methodology
that plans around the year-ahead Wall Street consensus, and that this
approach was surprisingly successful in the 1990s. In his March
1, 2003 interview with James Puplava, Dr. Didier Sornette, author
of “Why
Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems”
approached this paradox from a different perspective. He pointed out
that chaos on one end of the market could reflect perfect order on another.
For example when a market crashes, this in fact reflects almost perfect
order on another level, that is, everyone now agrees that it is time
to sell! By the time that public opinion reflects enough “order”
to achieve the comfort level of most people’s herd instincts,
it is typically too late. In fact, in the case where everyone agrees
to sell, it may even be time to start becoming bullish.
One approach to investing is to play an “arbitrage,” that
is, look at where the market or certain individual stocks are trading
now, and find situations where they may be trading out of line with
certain fundamentals that are likely to get priced into the market over
the long run. A common example of an arbitrage is to buy a stock that
is trading well below the price announced by a major takeover offer
by a company likely to consummate its offer. A more abstract form of
arbitrage is to play the spread between current pricing of a stock or
the overall market and where it will likely be once a different view
of reality permeates public consciousness. For various cognitive reasons
(referred to in psychology as the theory of selective inattention and
cognitive dissonance), it takes time for radically different views of
reality to be absorbed by investors. This is even true in the scientific
community among supposedly very rational and well-educated people, as
described in the work “The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn.
One “psychological” arbitrage I have been playing is the
concept that the US Government’s spending growth is completely
out of control and that the Fed is increasingly losing traction in its
efforts to contain the ill effects of the stock, bond, and real estate
bubbles created by aggressive credit expansion since the mid-1990s.
The most likely way out of this mess for America’s current leaders
will probably entail creating money without limit, that is, resorting
to hyperinflation (de facto bankruptcy). This could result in serious
economic dislocations similar to the tragic experience of Argentina
in the 2001-2002 period. This put half of Argentina’s middle class
below the poverty line.
From an investment viewpoint, the scenario of rising interest rates
and double digit inflation may mean that stocks will go lower, bonds
will also go lower, and real estate will drop. Money is likely to flow
into commodity-type investments, similar to what happened in the stagflationary
1970’s. Foreign bonds and precious metals are likely to benefit
from inflation and a continued slide in the dollar. Investors who try
to survive as ace “stock pickers” will be fighting against
the tide as market P/E multiples contract. Investors who try to play
it safe by buying relatively short term income instruments will still
need to figure out a way to protect their purchasing power from inflation.
If I my interpretation of long term trends and reality is correct,
I still expect it to take a number of years for this view of reality
to get fully priced into the markets. One reason is that the financial
system may be saturated with disinformation, fraud, and manipulation,
all of which continues to fool most of the people most of the time and
keep them in a state of denial (c.f. my paper “Amidst
Bullish Hoopla: A `Behind the Curtain’ Look at Fed Desperation
and Intervention Wizardry” which describes how major players
have been working furiously to keep up appearances). A second reason
is that the broader social, political, philosophical, and historical
implications of bearish trends may be too dissonant, anxiety provoking,
and painful for most Americans to deal with at present, to include most
professional money managers. The comprehensive bear view is too much
at odds with the “establishment” view of economics (typically
in the “top down” Keynesian and Monetarist camps) and the
“Whig theory” of American history that Americans have been
fed by our federalized education system. It is also completely at odds
with the rhetoric of most politicians and most liberal writers for America’s
national media. Last, but not least, America may be heavily influenced
by certain special interest groups whose political and economic survival
is too dependent on keeping up appearances to let go right away. One
example is the Federal Reserve Banking System itself and closely connected
banking interests, to include David Rockefeller’s JP Morgan Chase
operation with its suspected $25 trillion plus in derivatives exposure.
Some of my favorite gurus as of late are as follows:
James Puplava’s Perfect
Financial Storm series. This series has been on target ever since
it was started in 2000, and does a good job with charts and basic economic
analysis to set the stage for the reader. By staying focused on economic
and market issues, it is especially appropriate for investors who are
not quite ready yet to get into the more disturbing broader social,
political, and historical ramifications of what is really happening
in America today and why. Recently he has been writing archived market
wrap-ups on Mondays and Storm Watch updates on Fridays that provide
his latest views. James Puplava has done a terrific job of interviewing
other gurus such as Jim
Rogers, Dr.
Marc Faber, Bill
Murphy listed in his Financial
Sense Newshour archives, and also provides a transcript
archive.
Grandfather economic report.
Please consider the Picture
Summary of Five Core Threats and other charts in other sections
and ask yourself, if America remains unable to turn around these trends,
how much more “bargaining time” do we have left?
David Tice’s bear case article archives
for On Wall Street Magazine, a trade publication mailed out
for free to most stockbrokers across America. (How many stockbrokers
do you think have the honesty to pass this kind of information on to
their clients? Readers may enjoy viewing a Saturday Night Live
spoof on Wall Street
“honesty” that I have also linked via my humor/satire section).
David Tice is the investment manager of the Prudent Bear Funds that
are about 60% short the market.
Doug Noland’s Credit Bubble Bulletion archive.
Doug Noland writes for David Tice’s web site www.prudentbear.com.
He provides compelling arguments and supportive data regarding government
related spending and Fed and government-related credit creation that
helped fuel the greatest stock market mania in history from 1995-2000
(which made reckless investors look brilliant and value-conscious investors
look irrelevant or stupid). Now that movie seems to be running backwards.
The continued stimulus measures are showing destructive unintended consequences.
This may be analogous to the way in which continued drug use by addicts
goes beyond forestalling withdrawal symptoms and keeping them high.
Eventually it starts to break down their bodies.
Www.lewrockwell.com and www.mises.org.
Lew Rockwell is the President of the Von Mises Institute, which is a
major interpreter of the “Austrian” school of economics
in America today. This is basically the “bottom up” laissez
faire, libertarian approach to economic analysis which provides an important
counterpoint to the “top down” Keynesian, Monetarist, and
“Supply Side” approaches to economics bandied about by establishment
sources. (All of these approaches justify Big Government intervention
and central bank manipulation of the money supply). The “Austrian”
school is the kind of approach that Thomas Jefferson advocated and what
most Americans practiced through most of the 1800’s when the US
was on the gold standard, there was no income tax, no central bank,
and very little government intervention in the economy (with the major
exception of Lincoln administration, discussed later). I would encourage
the reader to go to my video section and watch the Lew Rockwell interview
with Bill Moyers and the Mises Institute video on the Federal Reserve
Banking System. Both are eye openers. Lew Rockwell has written some
excellent introductory pieces carried in his archive
such as his Jan 24, 2003 article “Keynes
Rules from the Grave.” This is very relevant to investors
who have been continually pitched by Wall Street sources that stimulus
measures will inevitably bring about a healthy economy and reignite
the 1995-2000 bull market. For the full blown analysis, the pithy essays
under the heading "What
Has Government Done to Our Money" and the free online book
"America's Great
Depression" by the eminent late Austrian economist Dr. Murray
Rothbard are "must read." America's politicians and economists
today seem to be repeating all the mistakes identified by Dr. Rothbard,
which is one reason why I can forsee a crash and prolonged depression
ahead as a consequence of our stock market, bond, and real estate bubbles
and a likely massive default on America's historic debt levels.
As a caveat, I need to point out that there is no one approach to economics
(or for that matter political systems) that works in all situations.
There are serious vulnerabilities and problems with the “top down”
approaches to economics such as Keynesianism, Monetarism, and supply
side economics. There are also problems and vulnerabilities with the
“bottom up” Austrian or laissez-faire approach. Economic
policies are often like design solutions in engineering; every time
one heads in certain direction, one usually sacrifices something important
in another area. In addition, economic and political systems are like
“hour-rated” safes, that is, safes that are rated by their
manufacturers according to how long it takes a professional thief to
crack them. There is no such thing as an infinite hour-rated safe; and
vigilance is the price of liberty in maintaining certain economic and
political systems just like it’s the price of keeping bank robbers
from stealing your savings held in a vault.
America’s libertarian economic and political “safe”
of the 1800’s was eventually “cracked” by a combination
of the Lincoln Administration (and its ideological heirs) and the “Robber
Barrons” who met at Jekyll Island in 1912 to create the Federal
Reserve system (c.f. the aforementioned Von Mises video and my section
“Morphogenesis of the Fed Axis” that appears towards the
end of my “Amidst Bullish Hoopla” paper.) Throughout much
of the 20th century America became a candy store with a broken lock,
namely a country with vast resources and a population the equivalent
of England, Germany, Scandinavia, and most of France that was able to
coast on the educational institutions and entrepreneurial infrastructures
created in the 1800s, allowing America to succeed more despite
its overtaxing Federal government and meddlesome central bank than because
of it.
I would also point out that neither the aforementioned top down nor
bottom up approaches to economics still give us a complete picture.
Let’s start with Dan Seligman’s May 12, 2003 Forbes article:
“Professor
Rothman Strikes Again,” He stated, “In The IQ Controversy:
The Media and Public Policy (1988), Rothman and Mark Snyderman collected
data showing that the press overwhelmingly attributed IQ differences
in the population to various cultural artifacts. The authors also surveyed
661 experts –academic psychologists, cognitive scientists, test
specialists –who decisively rejected these cultural explanations
and collectively stated that some 60% of IQ variance reflected the different
genes of the high and low scorers.”
Both the “top down” Keynesian and “bottom up”
Austrian economic schools focus on rational human economic action (the
“learning” or “rational” side of human behavior.).
There is also a different interpretation of economics based on sociobiological
and evolutionary theory that delves into the issue of how the genetic
make-up that enabled our ancestors to survive prehistoric environments
may or may not be adapted to coping with certain contemporary stock
market and economic phenomenon. It also addresses tribalistic instincts
that have been the basis of “nationalist” economic theory
to date. In my opinion this perspective must also be integrated along
with the top down and bottom up schools to gain a more complete picture.
I think that both this and the Austrian school will come roaring back
if the US Government ever succeeds in going bankrupt and America comes
apart at the seams, and both perspectives may even one day supplant
the centrist, internationalist, top down approach to economic and business
theory that predominates in America today.
OTHER MARKET OR ECONOMIC COMMENTATORS
Dr. Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s chief economist, primary
contributor for the Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum Archive.
Dr. Roach supplies valuable facts and has acted as an interesting hybrid
between the views of the aforementioned bears and the Wall Street party
line.
Thom Calandra’s CBS MarketWatch
updates. (A free site but registration required). Thom Calandra
has been unusually prescient and accurate for a financial writer carried
by a national media source.
Warren Buffet-related consolidated
links at www.financialsense.com. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire
Hathaway, is one of the richest and most successful investors in America,
comments on the overall investment climate in his archived annual
letter to shareholders. In the late 1990’s Warren Buffet bought
a massive silver position and has more recently sounded off against
misleading accounting practices, anti-shareholder piracy by corporate
managements, and unregulated burgeoning derivatives market.
Miscellaneous newsletter writers in a “Best of” archive.
These writers include:
Kurt Richebacker
Doug Noland (previously cited Credit
Bubble Bulletin writer at Prudent Bear)
Richard Russell (top long term track record among newsletter writers)
Robert Prechter (leading exponent of Elliott Wave Theory)
Jay Taylor (top gold guru) whose home page is located at www.miningstocks.com
Bob Bishop (top gold guru)
David Morgan (silver guru, who has his own web site www.silver-investor.com)
Gary North (political commentator, also archived
at www.lewrockwell.com)
Bill Bonner also archived at www.dailyreckoning.com
ARCHIVED MARKET COMMENTARY ARTICLES:
Aden, Pamela and Maryanne (the Aden Forecast) at www.adenforecast.com.
A source of intermarket analystis involving foreign currencies.
Longboat Global Advisors Crosscurrents archive.
Prudent Bear’s“Must Read” articles archive.
Survivalist themes: Depression2.tv
Richards, Fred: ‘Tis Only My Opinion archives.
Sennholz, Prof. Hans F. personal web
site:
Temple, Chris. “Other Experts” archive
at www.nationalinvestor.com
Vaughn, David. potpouri of interesting articles, links and his Gold
Report at www.freebucks.com
ECONOMIC THEORY
The Library of Economics
and Liberty Free economic encyclopedia and source of articles on
current topics. Includes even complete books on line, particularly by
libertarian economic thinkers.
The Mises Institute Articles on
economic issues from a libertarian perspective. Includes the Quarterly
Journal of Austrian Economics, and classic books online such as
Dr. Murray Rothbard's "America's
Great Depression.".
Post-Keynesian Thought
Discussion Forum: Academics and writers share thoughts
CURRENT GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS
Once you have read enough of the aforementioned sources, you may become
convinced that there are macroeconomic trends that are coming to head
that could be very bad for both you and your investments. The next question
is what are America’s power elites doing about this? Now we get
into what is called “political economy,” namely the fact
that politics is inextricably intertwined with economics (early in the
20th century economics courses were routinely titled “political
economy” for this reason). The big political question is whether
the various individuals and special interest groups in our society who
are best equipped to deal with these problems are in fact making a serious
effort to arrest them, or worse yet, is it possible that they are not
only covering them up but are actually adding fuel to the fire? This
part of the economic analysis gets very “social,” “political,”
and “cultural” very quickly.
Www.lewrockwell.com archives
numerous columnists
with important commentary that relates politics to economic policy,
such as the maverick Texas Congressman Ron
Paul, Gary
North, Lew
Rockwell (of course),
Pat Buchanan, Joseph Sobran,
economist Murray
Rothbard, and historian Joseph
Stromberg.
William Lind,
archived at www.military.com.
(Previous articles archived
among other Free Congress Foundation authors, you have to hunt and peck
a little bit for his stuff and skip some of his more esoteric articles).
A longstanding professional Washington beltway consultant who wrote
the maneuver warfare manual for the US Marine Corps, Lind is usually
on target in his short pithy essays about underlying problems with US
adventurism and where major policymakers are likely to lead or deceive
us next. On purely military issues, another good source is Col David
H. Hackworth. .
American Free Press;
A condensed version of my “Bear Case Overview” appeared
in the June 23, 2003 issue. This paper specializes in news and analysis
suppressed by mainstream media. Stories
archived since 2000, when the newspaper staff transitioned from
The Spotlight to AFP. This staff has received journalistic awards and
produced numerous scoops over the decades leaked by former heads of
state and operatives with major intelligence services such as the CIA,
Mossad, and the now defunct KGB. In other words, AFP has been a next
stop for material too hot for the New York Times and Washington
Post to print. Incidentally, The
Barnes Review, affiliated with the American Free Press, is an interesting
source of alternative historical viewpoints.
The Village Voice: The
paper has such impeccable leftist/“cosmopolitan” credentials
that it can get away with printing investigative stories that used to
only be accessible by mail order subscriptions to sources on the radical
right or other specialty observers prior to the Internet. I like the
way it “outs” the New York City scene almost to the point
of whacky self-parody, an important perspective given the way in which
media based in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. (NYC
being the most important of the three) shape the nation’s thinking
on economic, political, and investment-related issues.
SOME GENERAL HISTORICAL ROOTS OF TODAY’S
PROBLEMS
How did we get in this mess? I believe that once a person studies American
history from the viewpoints provided below, he may wind up becoming
surprised if America does not go through a major economic crisis, secular
bear market, and even an Argentina-like melt-down.
“Sockdolager:
A Tale of Davy Crockett.” This quaint story crystallizes the
dramatic changes in the American government, economy, and values since
the days of the Founding Fathers. We have become so conditioned to liberal,
demagogic, pork barrel politics that Crockett’s appeal to Congress
for government to refrain from getting involved with charity is a much
bigger “sockdolager” today than it was back then.
When the famous French observer Alexis de Tocqueville visited America
in the 1830’s, he noted that a distinguishing characteristic of
most Americans is that they essentially had no government. Although
America had a population larger than his native France, de Tocqueville
noted that France had 30 times as many governmental bureaucrats. It
was not unusual for an individual American to belong to over twenty
volunteer organizations (jury duty, fire department, militia, posse,
church charities, and other organizations that handled all the functions
typically filled by professional bureaucrats in Europe). This kept political
and economic power decentralized in an era where the currency did not
depreciate while on the gold standard. The economy grew at about 5%
a year, and the average American male could usually support a large
family in a medium-sized house and the wife did not need a job outside
of being a homemaker. There was no income tax until the year 1913. Today,
average American wage earners, who now usually include both spouses
to help make ends meet, are taxed at about 50% of income. This takes
into account state, federal, excise, and other taxes. This is over 50%
greater than the 30% rate in which the average serf was taxed by his
lord in the Middle Ages. A Russian anarchist who fled Czarist police
and visited America not long after de Tocqueville commented that he
had nothing to teach Americans, because they were already living in
his idea of a state of “utopian anarchy.” Flash forward
to the present era, and savor the irony where Steve Forbes wrote in
his magazine’s April 15, 2002 Fact and Comment
section, “Early last year President Vladimir Putin junked Russia’s
tax system and replaced it with a 13% flat tax…on this issue I
never thought I would be outflanked on the right by a onetime KGB agent.”
“Sockdolager:
A Tale of Davy Crockett” makes another important point consistent
with famous
comments against democracy made by two Founding Fathers. James Madison
stated: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security,
or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their
lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” John Adams commented:
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts,
and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit
suicide.”
Since the times of ancient Grecian city states, one of the greatest
vulnerabilities of democracy has been the ease with which demagogues
can rise to the fore and build their power base with the masses by simultaneously
promoting lofty social causes and inflaming envy. They then use all
of this to justify playing Santa Claus through wealth redistribution
schemes. Confiscating wealth often means damaging the entrepreneurial
capital formation process required for economic growth, antagonizing
business owners who may be more competent than anyone else in creating
useful jobs, enhancing the size and strong arm powers of the state to
confiscate wealth, and removing restrictions on the ability of the state
to inflate the money supply. (Inflation is a subtle form of involuntary
taxation and wealth confiscation). Since anyone can think up virtually
endless charitable projects, once the government gets into the charity
business, politicians can acquire almost unlimited license to use the
formidable police powers of the state to aggrandize themselves on other
people’s money through endless pork barrel projects. In the long
run, this can turn into a political version of a ponzi scheme, as depicted
by the runaway government spending and debt graphs portrayed by the
aforementioned Grandfather
Economic Report series. Our politicians seem to be addicted to runaway
government spending with no end in sight, except perhaps an implosion
similar to what happened to Argentina when domestic and foreign creditors
finally decided to pull the plug and the Argentinian government had
no choice but to launch into hyperinflation (de facto bankruptcy).
ECONOMIC DISTORTION
RELATED TO CENTRISM, SPECIAL
PRIVILEGE
High water mark of the Confederacy,
Gettysburg Cyclorama
The greatest disaster and turning point in American history was the
Civil War, which killed 620,000 Americans. The war killed or mutilated
one
out of two white Southerners of military age, a higher casualty
rate than any World War II combatant. . The “King
Lincoln” archive at the libertarian www.lewrockwell.com
site analyzes this critical juncture in American history that bears
important similarities to the shift in ancient Roman history from its
self-restrained republican period to its unrestrained imperial era.
After getting its first major start with the Lincoln administration,
the road to centrism, interventionism, and a more perfect pork barrel
government includes the following highlights: The William McKinley administration
saw America’s first overseas conquests during the Spanish-American
War, Theodore Roosevelt pioneered the presidency as a cult of personality
that ran roughshod over Congress in making war and expanded the “progressive”
social welfare agenda, Woodrow Wilson created the personal income tax
and a privately owned central banking cartel as permanent peacetime
entities, made massive increases in the size of Federal government,
ran global activist government that included WWI entanglement and efforts
to redraw ancient borders of Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt reincarnated
WWI-era Federal regulatory authorities as peacetime New Deal entities,
pioneered quantum escalations in government size, economic intervention,
and global activism beyond Wilson, and Lyndon B. Johnson firmly institutionalized
the guns-and-butter social welfare state.
The Lincoln Legend is such an integral part of American ideology that
favors socially activist, interventionist, big-spender government that
we need to see how well it can be brought into accord with historical
facts. If there is a big discrepancy, this raises another important
issue, namely if a man like Abraham Lincoln, who has been dead for over
138 years, has been grossly misrepresented to us by our schools, media,
and politicians, is it possible that we are also being misled about
the current realities of our overall economy and capital markets and
the likely future of this country?
Contrary to popular mythology, the real Lincoln was hardly some kind
of honest-to-a-fault, softhearted, highly principled rustic lawyer who
spent most of his time defending common folks in court with whimsical
good humor. In reality, Lincoln became wealthy representing the Illinois
Central Railroad
(one of the world's largest corporations at the time) and spent most
of his political career promoting high
tariffs (mercantilism or economic special privilege), public works
(corporate welfare), and central banking (private banking monopoly).
Lincoln openly admired political machine
bosses, exerted close control over his party’s political machine
in Illinois, and was tainted with pork barrel scandals
in his home state. He consistently promoted the centralized state, even
at the price of waging ruthless total war against innocent
civilians. General William T. Sherman wrote that Lincoln laughed
almost
uncontrollably when he recounted his atrocities to him. Scholars
have called him America’s first dictator,
and have even compared him to “Jacobins”
and V.I. Lenin.
He closed
down dozens of opposition newspapers in the North, illegally suspended
the writ of Habeas Corpus, deported a critical Member of Congress, ordered
troops to intervene in Northern elections to insure Republican victories
and also used them to arrest tens
of thousands of Northern political opponents. (Lincoln arrested
nearly twice as many political prisoners as Mussolini,
the archetype of modern fascism). In “Shattering
the Icon of Abraham Lincoln” lawyer Sam Dickson explains how
Lincoln spoke out of both sides of his mouth, exemplified a “selective
democratic conscience,” slyly provoked war, and artfully cloaked
autocracy within the “Whig” theory of history. In “What
If the South Had Won the Civil War?” William Lind, a proud
descendent of a Union soldier, rethinks the long term impact of a country
forced to remain forever conditionally united regardless of the social
and political consequences. Lincoln was reviled by many abolitionists
because they believed he was really interested in aggrandizing state
power and relatively disinterested
in freeing slaves. (In fact, Lincoln once voluntarily took on a case
where he argued in court for the right of Kentucky slaveholder Robert
Matson to reclaim his runaway slaves who sought refuge in Illinois,
and early in the Civil War countermanded efforts to free slaves by two
of his generals). Also, Lincoln apparently led a complex personal life.
He admitted to a biographer that he was infected
with syphilis (he may have infected his wife and contributed to her
insanity). He shared a bed with another
man for four years.
This should provide some food for thought, and we have not even
got to McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Lyndon Baines Johnson,
and the alien agendas found in Hollywood, national media, the Federal
Reserve Reserve, Wall Street, and all
that. Nor have I gone into tremendous detail why on a political, economic,
and demographic level America's high greed/high fraud society
just does not seem to work anymore. One example of "high greed" is
the widespread way American CEOs keep awarding themselves tens of
millions
of dollars more in various forms of compensation every year while
their corporations flounder through ineptitude and while they simultaneously
unmercifally strip away salary and R&D
money from
employees on the lower rungs by outsourcing jobs. They are quick to
lavishly "reinvest" in themselves while ruthlessly disinvesting in
their fellow Americans (many of whom have families and desperately
need jobs
to
get by). What
country can possibly survive whose top leadership operates on this
very short-sighted and greedy level? Without
going
into
further
detail
now (I have
other
writing
projects on the
front
burner
for the time being),
I think that I have
accomplished
my primary
objective,
namely to furnish enough leads and ideas to greatly assist the reader
in researching and putting together for himself a more realistic picture
of “the score” in America today, particularly in regard
to making prudent investment decisions
I appreciate hearing your thoughts and comments.
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at the Battle of Cowpens, S. Carolina, 1781