False Gods The Rude Awakening

[hilly7]

False Gods

The Rude Awakening
Paris, France
Monday, August 13, 2007

-------------------------

An unquestioning faith in paper…and derivatives of paper,
Worshipping false money and the punishment for sacrilege,
The perils of keeping two wives and plenty more…
-------------------------

Eric Fry, reporting from Laguna Beach, California…

"No man can serve two masters," Jesus Christ asserts in the Gospel of Matthew. "Either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."

"Mammon" is, of course, an olde English word for "money"… and the love of money certainly wars against every other form of affection and devotion. But most of us try not to worship mammon; we just try to have enough of it around to tide us over from Sunday to Sunday. And even if we did attempt to worship mammon, very few of us could afford to erect much of a shrine.

Most of us are simply trying to earn a few dollars for now, and to set aside a few dollars for later…without doing something financially stupid in the mean time.

Occasionally, we may entertain thoughts that border on money-worship. But that's only during those times when check-writing exceeds check-cashing.

Jesus was right, of course. You cannot serve two masters at the same time…any more than you can serve two spouses at the same time…or drive two cars at the same time….or hold your assets in two currencies at the same time. You must choose your master, and your spouse, and your car, and your currency.

Here in America, whether we worship Jesus or money or plastic surgery, we all share a common faith in dollars bills. We all believe that dollar bills are money incarnate. We all trust in the transubstantiation of paper and ink into value eternal. We have embraced a collective faith in paper AS money. In fact, we have embraced a collective faith in DERIVATIVES of paper as money.

Hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds - and yes, even money-market funds - have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other derivative instruments that had never appeared on this planet until the late 1990s.

In other words, these funds have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the freakish offspring of paper money and Nobel-prize winning formulas. And now the world is populated with ten of trillions of dollars of credit derivatives that almost no one understands and that absolutely no one can appraise.

This is a dangerous religion that we have created. No one knows where faith in paper will lead, much less our faith in derivatives of paper.

Perhaps our faith is misplaced, as our enlightened and enlightening colleague, Bill Bonner, explains in the column below.

--- Mayer's Special Situations Special Report ---

115 years ago…

A one-armed brick maker and self-trained geologist unleashed the "Beaumont Miracle"… sparking a resource wealth explosion and the richest century in U.S. history…

Today, there's a whole new and little-talked-about American energy "miracle" taking shape… one that's already creating a whole new wave of resource millionaires… and out of 64 publicly traded companies invested…

This one company is the one to own if you hope to get rich on this revolutionary new discovery "event."

But you have to let me know by Sept. 4 if you want in…Click Here For All The Details.

----------------------------------------------

False Gods
By Bill Bonner

In a remarkable interview in Barron's this week, David Richards said that he thinks the world economy is on the road to even greater heights of glory. One of the reasons given is that the "Theology of Capitalism" is sweeping the globe.

Everywhere you look, people seem to be bowing down to the holy ghosts of Smith and Keynes…and reciting the Gospel according to Markowitz. And like the other great secular theology of our time, global climate change, the faithful ask few questions. Instead, they become true believers without so much as going blind, like Paul, or winning an important battle, like Clovis. Too bad. Because there are a lot of questions that need to be asked.

What is this new god? What sacrifices does he require? What are this new religion's solemn rites? What are its feast days and holidays? Who are its sinners, its saints, its Lucifers and its prophets?

In the interest of helping Rude Awakening readers understand this new faith, here we offer a brief explanation:

We begin with the history of the cult. In the beginning, there was the word. And the word was 'money.' But what was money? Ah, there, we have our first and most important holy mystery. In the past, more or less from the beginning of time until August 15, 1971, money was rare and difficult to reproduce. The Yap islanders, for example, used large, carved stones to represent wealth. Most of the rest of the world used gold and silver.

Since 1971, however, the high priests of the new money cult produced a kind of miracle, equivalent to the virgin birth and the wedding feast at Cana combined. That is to say, they produced money with no connection to anything rare or valuable. In the words of St. John Maynard Keynes himself, they created money "out of thin air." This miracle has had the whole world agog ever since. Today, the world's entire economic and financial system operates on this faith-based money.

Thin air was never more forthcoming. No one knows where the money comes from or what it is worth; but everyone is happy to take delivery. Indeed, the multitudes worship it…and pray for it. Muslims go to mecca; Jews have their Wailing Wall; these mammon-worshipers dream of nothing more than getting a job on Wall Street and getting lucky in Las Vegas.

It is upon this miracle money that the whole faith rests. Saint Alan of Manhattan owes his reputation to it. Goldman and Merrill Lynch can trace much of their success to it. Asia's huge export boom was made possible by it. But so were the booms in leveraged buyouts…and subprime mortgage lending. If Christ had not risen from the dead, he would be just another prophet. And if Alan Greenspan had not created trillions of dollars worth of new credit from nothing, the present boom would have not reached the Hindenburg Bubble proportions it is today.

In this sense, the new creed is more like a 'cargo cult' than a sophisticated religion. After WWII, anthropologists discovered isolated groups of savages in the South Pacific who were worshipping crashed U.S. Army cargo planes. The planes had brought them food, clothing, tools, cigarettes and alcohol. The islanders saw these things as gifts from heaven, and developed religious beliefs around them. So too does the modern Theology of Capitalism look to the skies over its central banks for cash. If the money ever seems to run short, U.S. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is on record saying he will drop it from helicopters!

This week and last, capitalism's markets shook like the Western Front in 1914. The archbishops of the new church put on their purple robes and rushed to reassure the world. Like priests in the trenches of WWI, their faith was reinforced by the bombs bursting around them. Our new gods will never abandon us they said. Why? Because now we are all believers in the Theology of Capitalism! This reminds us of Mr. Angell's popular book put out in 1910, which argued that peace in Europe was guaranteed, because all Europeans had become capitalists. Since they traded with each other for so many good things, none would ever want to go to war. Well, now that even the Russians and Chinese believe in the Theology of Capitalism what could go wrong? We will have peace, prosperity and high asset prices forever and ever, amen.

Capitalism, of course, has been with us for millennia. You can look at cuneiform inscriptions in Egypt and find evidence of capital investment, trade and speculation. Capitalism has been alternately enriching and ruining people ever since. Grinding, churning, innovating, and evolving… always unstable, capitalism is always driving forward in what Schumpeter called a process of 'creative destruction' - sometimes squeezing the rich, as though through the eye of a needle…sometimes rewarding the meek…and always punishing those who expect to get something for nothing. To the extent it is understood as the free movement of privately owned capital, capitalism is a harsh, unforgiving Old Testament kind of god. For as soon as a man gitteth, along comes a new wave of destruction to taketh it a way from him. And in a crisis, he might just as well cling to an exploding hand grenade. That is why, as soon as a fellow is flush, he wants nothing more than to put a stop to capitalism forever. He asks his legislators for protective tariffs. He implores his leaders for import duties and exchange controls. He begs his central bankers to fix interest rates at a more commodious level.

The old capitalism is dead, say converts. This is a New Testament faith; the tooth and claw jungle of capitalist evolutionary competition has been transformed into a healthy, stable and cooperative eco-system - like the Baltimore Public Zoo. Now the animals are in their cages. Lions will lie down with lambs…and suckers will all get an even break.

We're all believers now. Hallelujah.

[Joel's Note: In times of yore, sacrilege was punishable by torture and even death. Fortunately, today's ignoble, insolent gold worshippers have little more to suffer through than public mockery. When faced with a choice between unquestioning faith and sound reason, we gravitate toward the latter. Faith, in today's financial realm, exists in the form of paper…and derivatives of paper. Reason exists in the form of gold - shiny, tangible, valuable gold.

For an entirely new way to invest in gold, check out the following Wealth Insurance Report. You'll may have to endure some mockery from those relying on paper IOU's but hey, it's better than the alternative.

Wealth Insurance - A Zero-Downside Way To Invest In Gold

----------------------------------------------

Rude Endnote: Bill Bonner is the founder and President of Agora Publishing Inc. and author, with Addison Wiggin, of Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis. From now on, you'll find his weekly columns appearing in the Monday edition of your Rude Awakening. We're delighted to have Mr. Bonner on board and trust you will enjoy his unique brand of financial commentary each and every week.

Consider this as another benefit to being an Executive Series member. Speaking of which, our colleagues in Baltimore will have the 5-Minute Forecast to you momentarily. Don't miss it.

Cheers,

Joel Bowman
Rude Awakening

http://www.agorafinancialpublications.com/...g/RA081407.html