Posts Alan Abelson und kommentiert:
Eine tragisch-komische Geschichte, die erstaunlich wahr klingt.
Alan Abelson reinforces-unintentionally-gold-bug dialogue
Mar 20, 17:09
[GUYS, THIS TYPE OF DIALOGUE HAS BECOME MAINSTREAM THE PAST YR OR SO-FORMERLY IT WAS LIMITED TO GOLD-BUG/PAPER ASSET BEARISH CIRCLES--THIS CAN ONLY BE HELPFUL TO GOLD & SHOULD-IN NO WAY--BE SEEN AS A CONTRARY INDICATOR---THIS DIALOGUE IS PREPARING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A BULL RUN TO $850 & BEYOND]
ABELSON WRITES:
Mr. Wright, as you can see from these droll aperçus, is the thinking man's stand-up comic. And beyond providing a welcome chuckle, we discovered, he can also serve up the odd epiphany. For example, one of the pressing current cosmic puzzles is why Uncle Sam has been able to live so extravagantly beyond his means without driving his creditors insane with consternation. That question took on greater immediacy with the disclosure that our dealings with the rest of the world last year resulted in a historic hole in our global accounts of a tidy $666 billion.
We found the answer in Mr. Wright's simple but devilishly sensible injunction to "borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back."
That's it, of course! The Japanese, the Chinese and the Koreans, by tradition, disposition and circumstances, are the perfect pessimists. Aware of the likely consequences of our financial fecklessness that has spawned twin deficits, domestic and foreign, that together are a staggering 10% of GDP, they nonetheless grin and bear it and continue to lend to us because they fear the alternative is global apocalypse.
The bad news is that, as we've nervously noted more than once of late, these generous bankrollers of our fiscal folly appear to be shedding some of their pessimism, or, at least, growing less willing to finance our wayward ways. True to their legendary inscrutability, they're exceedingly shy to admit they've undergone a change of heart. Our own suspicion is that, in fact, they've gone one stage beyond pessimism and become resigned, deciding that if it has to be apocalypse, it might as well be now.
Since there's no indication that our already humongous indebtedness to the rest of the world has anywhere to go but up (Goldman Sachs estimates that the current-account deficit will balloon to $778 billion this year and $812 billion next) and since those old reliable lenders have lost their yen for ponying up moola, it's obviously imperative that we find a new group of patsies -- sorry, make that pessimists -- to borrow from.
How do you say, "Hey buddy, got a few spare hundred billion?" in Ukrainian or Bulgarian? Or, come to think of it, maybe we can hit up the World Bank once trusty Paul Wolfowitz takes over. Sure, we know it's dedicated to helping needy nations. But right now, we can't think of anyone who needs a trillion or so more than we do.