Americans waking up to Zimbabwe Ben's dollar debasement?

Gallup:



My first reaction to this was concern that perhaps gold love had become so widespread that we were perhaps at risk of a bubble.

But of course this poll asks about opinion, not ownership. How many of those 28% actually have a significant portion of their net worth or retirement assets in gold?  How many actually own a single ounce?

What defines a bubble is not what people say, but what they do.  Think about the housing bubble.  Everybody was in it.  People were becoming mortgage brokers and house flippers by the thousands.  Broke and unemployed 20-year-olds were getting loans from Countrywide to buy multiple houses.  Or consider the internet stock bubble.  Cabbies and waitresses were trading CSCO, JDSU, and EDIG.  How is that remotely like what's happening now with gold?

Americans are busted.  The median family net worth was $120k at the peak of the housing bubble, and likely zero or negative now.  The median 401(k) balance is only $23,000, and you can't even own gold in most 401(k)s.

This poll is about Americans having been burned by all the other asset classes: Greenspan's housing bubble, the centrally planned stock market, and Zimbabwe Ben's negative real rates on bonds and savings.  Americans now see that gold is the only safe haven from central bankers and deficit spenders gone wild, but they don't have enough money to buy much of it.

I'd like to have seen Gallup ask, "How much of your retirement funds are in gold, stocks, real estate, bonds?"  Try it yourself: ask your friends, neighbors, co-workers whether they have any of their retirement funds in gold.  I know you won't find 28% of their wealth in gold, and I'd be surprised if 28% of them own a single bullion coin at all.

Sweet poetic justice

CNBC, major cheerleaders for Fed central planning and stock market manipulation, losing viewers as nobody finds a centrally planned economy interesting.

Happy May Day!

It's the international socialist movement's own holiday today.  History here and here.

Those lovable lefties in San Francisco got an early start celebrating last night.

And to mark the occasion, America's best-known socialist just released a new "Forward" campaign theme steeped in socialist history.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."

"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

Kick it Forward!

Robert Wenzel and Jim Grant bitch-slap the Dirty Fed

I'll give the New York Fed some credit: they're man enough to invite dissidents in to smack them upside the head with a 2x4 of Truth.

For whatever reason, the groupthinking central planners allowed critics to come tell them just how horrible they are.

And Robert Wenzel and Jim Grant did not disappoint. Click on over and read the whole things.

Wenzel.

Grant.

Zimbabwe Ben: keep those deficits coming; I need more debt to monetize!

Bernanke on the "fiscal cliff" of allowing the Bush tax cuts, the Obama 99-week unemployment benefits, and the Obama Social Security Trust Fund-looting payroll tax cut all to expire on December 31:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday warned he won’t be able to save the economy if Congress takes the country over a “fiscal cliff."

The Fed chairman continued to sound the alarm about the "fiscal cliff" the nation is facing at the end of the year, when a slew of policy changes are set to take effect that could drain billions of dollars from the economy.

Yeah. Four years after the financial crisis is obviously waaaaay too soon to stop running Greece-sized deficits. Party on, Boehner!

For a more adult view of our nation's fiscal insanity, see Federal Budget in Pictures from Heritage.org.

Quotations from Chairman Varones

I think I've thought a thousand thoughts
Of thinking thoughtful thoughts
I think I thought them thoughtlessly 
Or so I think I thought.

Got milk? Mad cow disease found in California dairy cow

Bloomberg:

     April 24 (Bloomberg) -- A case of mad cow disease has been found in a dairy cow in central California, John Clifford, the USDA’s chief veterinarian, told reporters today in a briefing in Washington.
     The animal was found at a rendering facility, Clifford said. Its meat did not enter the food chain and the carcass will be destroyed, Clifford said. This is the fourth confirmed case of the brain-wasting disease in the U.S. cattle herd since the first was discovered in December 2003 in an animal that came from Canada.

But, hey, there probably aren't any documented cases of people getting mad cow disease through milk.  The hormones and antibiotics probably kill the disease anyway.  Drink up!

UPDATE: Your USDA-factory-farm-complex at work.