fuBarrio Shrugged

I just looked at my blog and noticed that I haven't been keeping up with my normal flury of semi-coherent posts the last couple of weeks.

What can I say?

Is it that the world has finally come to its senses? No. I can't definitively say that is the case at all? Are there fewer absurdities to ridicule? No. Again, I wouldn't say that.

Why just today I was reading an article posted on the New York times about a professor who wrote a paper about gold and stocks.....he thinks that they are disconnected from their historical adverse relationship and either gold is anticipating inflation or it is *wrong* right now....his reason: inflation has gone down the last 5 years at the same time gold was going up. do professors shop, go to the hospital, pay tuition or drive cars?

the counter argument is that the gov't stats for inflation are cooked.

his "counter-counter" is that if the numbers are cooked, it's ok, cause he is only measuring changes in the cooked numbers to changes to the cooked numbers now....

uh, fuBarrio's counter counter counter is that you can't use something that can be CHANGED as a baseline for anything!!! the cpi measurements have changed countless times over that period, and in everycase I'm aware of, the changes understate price inflation.

Look, I realize that this story and my arguments against this egghead aren't backed up by links, direct quotes, or even a storyline that is easy to follow....And, it's the same reason that i haven't posted a lot lately:

I would have to chalk it up to good old fashioned apathy.

The reach of some egghead professor getting a writeup in the New York Times is mindboggling. Nevermind that his analysis is completely flawed, and as a matter of fact if you'd followed his advice up until now you'd have LOST MONEY.

It seems like anyone that doesn't have something to gain by having their voice heard is drowned out by the rampant commercialism of opinions these days.

Larry "cocaine" Kudlow was telling me - on CNBC where he's afforded an hour every day - gold was going back to 400 shortly before I came down to Uruguay because his connections at the Fed were bound and determined to crush out speculation as it was a signal to the market that inflation was cropping up.

Where is the "mea-culpa"???

Steve Forbes, riding the coattails of his old man's media empire made some monster prognostication that oil was going back to $35/barrel right before I came down to Uruguay. I think I just saw that it punctured the $90 mark in the front month futures contract.

The sad part is that Cocaine Kudlow and Steve Forbes will *always* have more influence, wealth, power, comfort, supporters, for themselves and their families than some doofus like fuBarrio. Their children will enter the ivy league schools, have the introductions to others in the halls of power and continue the incestuous inbreeding that is bifurcating our society into those that have and control and those that shine their shoes.

Were Forbes and Kudlow really serious that they believed these prognostications or were they asked to lie for a grander economic or political purpose???

Either way, they should be ashamed.....tarred and feathered....strung up by their gonads and ridiculed.

Is it so bad to make a prediction and be wrong? of course now, but how about a little bit of admission of fault. Forbes did a freakin' press junket in support of his absurd $35/barrel call.

What the Hell does Steve Forbes know about Oil? The sad thing is, he has name recognition (and a conduit to be heard), so people will listen to his "wishes" over the sound reasoning and science put forward by someone like Matthew Simmons who insists that Saudi Arabia is peaking (or has already peaked) with light sweet crude production.

In light of it all, is it any wonder that fuBarrio is shrugging?

ciao,
fuBarrio