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The Daily Reckoning | Saturday, October 22, 2011
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Of Lesser Men and Daily Reckoning Editors
En route to Buenos Aires, Argentina...
Joel Bowman
Who would have thought our very own Eric Fry would graduate from the daily slog of fringy financial newsletter production to become a small time, YouTube quasi-sensation? Such great heights!
Mr. Fry, The Daily Reckoning’s editorial director, recently took a whirlwind trip through Europe, stopping through Holland, Switzerland and Italy along the way.
Lesser men might have given into temptation, abandoned their work and taken the opportunity to indulge in a few of the local euro- delights. One might, for example, have spent a few aimless afternoons wandering through winding, cobblestoned streets, stopping occasionally to ply himself with aperitifs at super-chic bars and trendy cafés. A lesser man might have been content to waste away the blurry twilight hours ogling the euro-fauna as they paraded themselves shamelessly in front of his corner-side table. He might have even met an exotic woman in a slinky red dress (named Doutzen...or Kerstin...or Monica) and taken her to a fancy dinner and show before enjoying a late night, moonlit meander along the river.
A lesser man...yes. But not Eric.
Like all good newspapermen, Eric was — and is — always on duty, forever at the beck and call of a good, boots-on-ground story. And while on his recent trip to Europe, that is exactly what he found. Bravo, Mr. Fry!
Earlier this week, Eric aired the first installment of his dutifully-filed, three-part “Farewell Euro Tour.” Take a look, below...
[This week’s feature column originally appeared in these pages on Thursday, October 19, 2011]The Daily Reckoning Presents Kicking Off the “Farewell Euro Tour”
Today’s issue of The Daily Reckoning features the first installment of the “Farewell Euro Tour” — a collection of on-the-street conversations with ordinary folks in Europe about the Greek crisis, and about what this crisis portends for the euro zone. The tour began in the Netherlands, then moved south to Switzerland and then to Italy.
Eric Fry
Generally speaking, support for “saving Greece” was tepid at best. Although most folks expressed some vague notion that rescuing Greece was worth trying because it was probably in the public good, most folks also expressed a strong preference for their old national currencies. The Dutch, in particular, preferred their guilder. But the Germans preferred their marks and the French their francs too. Even the Italians preferred their liras.
In other words, as we pointed out a few days ago, “The EU’s bailout schemes seemed to have captured the minds of Europe (like a hostage), but very few hearts. Resignation is the dominant emotion, not resolve.” Take a look...
Watch the video here.
However bleak the prospects for the euro may be, it remains a viable currency for the moment. In fact, one euro will still buy one US dollar and 33 cents, which isn’t that much below its all-time high of $1.49. Furthermore, $1.33 is still very far above the euro’s all- time low of $0.82 — the point being that the euro crisis is not very crisis-like...yet.
But we think a genuine crisis is coming...and there will be no mistaking it when it arrives. The euro may not blow apart completely — although that outcome would not surprise us — but it will stumble noticeably...at least relative to gold.
The dollar may rally against the euro initially, but it, too, is facing a frightening future. The world’s faith-based monetary system is testing the faith of all participants. If that faith should fail, the consequences will not be pretty.
Regards,
Eric Fry
for The Daily Reckoning
Joel’s Note: Reckoners are invited to view Parts II and III of Eric’s “Farewell Euro Tour” in upcoming editions of The Daily Reckoning. (And please feel free to pass them along to friends, as you wish.)Why the warning behind this image could...
“Forever change the way you think about the stock market...
Open your eyes to what you can and can’t expect from the United States government...
And even change the ease at which you’re able to buy and sell things...
Click the image play button to first learn the warning...and some simple ways to prepare for the uncertain times ahead.ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning... False Prophets
By Chris Mayer
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Every morning, I start my day by reading my newspapers over a mug of hot tea. (Yes, I still get my newspapers delivered!) Sometimes I just have to shake my head at the absurdity of it all. I don’t get mad or annoyed — I just laugh. One day, the President wants to reduce the deficit he created by hiking taxes — especially on “the rich.” The next day, the G-20 wants to “save the euro” by funneling taxpayer dollars from around the world into the deadbeat countries of Europe — famous for not paying taxes!
Monetary Madness — Is the US Monetary System on the Verge of Collapse?
By David Galland
The US monetary system — and by extension, that of much of the developed world — may very well be on the verge of collapse. Falling back on metaphor, while the world’s many financial experts and economists sit around arguing about the direction of the ship of state, most are missing the point that the ship has already hit an iceberg and is taking on water fast.
Japan, Gold and the Euro Crisis
By Chris Mayer
Gaithersburg, Maryland
The Greek drachma, Italian lira, Portuguese escudo and Spanish peseta may return to the world’s monetary markets before the decade is out. Might this be good for hard assets of the shiny variety? Might the people of the EU buy gold and silver after watching their savings melt away? I think they will. It’s another reason why gold isn’t a sell — and probably won’t be — for quite some time yet...
Uruguay, Rhymes with “You’re a Buy”
By Ronan McMahon and Margaret Summerfield
Lately, the credit rating agencies haven’t been doing much for International Living’s home country of Ireland, other than downgrading it. Moody’s cut Ireland’s credit rating to junk in recent weeks. But some countries are faring much better. In July, Standard & Poor’s bumped Uruguay’s credit rating up to “investment grade.” Moody’s and Fitch, the other major ratings agencies, boosted Uruguay’s rating as well, although not quite to investment grade.
Break On Through
By Patrick Cox
Marco Island, Florida
One of the most naive idioms of all time is that the world will beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. In fact, you’re more likely to be charged with endangering some previously unknown subspecies of rodentia. Readers of my investment letter, Breakthrough Technology Alert, know that historically, the media, the public and the financial community have resisted big changes. Great ideas have a way of succeeding, but they do it without the help of “the world.” Inventors and scientists routinely spend more time and effort defending their ideas than they spent making their discoveries.When Will Obama Confess to the Secret “Timebomb” Event Ahead?
Obama and Congress won’t even talk about it... but we’ve got a much bigger problem ahead than anybody cares to admit... and it could hit harder than the 2008 banking collapse.
What problem?
Nothing less than a secret new meltdown for world oil supplies — with gas potentially doubling in price and oil potentially about to hit $300 — and it could hit as early as the end of this year.
Find out how in this urgent new report...The Weekly Endnote... As faithful — and unfaithful — Fellow Reckoners well know, we here at The Daily Reckoning pride ourselves on being an equal opportunity publication. We’re not going to abstain from heaping disrespect on someone just because of the color of his (or her) skin or the tune of his (or her) creed. Idiots are idiots are idiots. Who are we to deny them their hard-won share of scorn and mockery?
We mention this because Harold Camping is back in the news. You might recall Mr. Camping as the man who occasionally predicts the end of the world, The Rapture. So far, his forecasts for the End of Days have not come to pass. But that doesn’t stop the man from giving it another go. Good for him.
Camping’s last calendar reading had the world ending five months ago, on May 21. Needless to say, that event didn’t quite unfold as planned. So Mr. Camping did what any televangelist worth his holy water would do: he simply changed the doomsday date.
As an update on Camping’s end of the world website explains: “On May 21 Christ did come spiritually to put all of the unsaved throughout the world into judgment. But that universal judgment will not be physically seen until the last day of the five month judgment period, on October 21, 2011.”
Continued the Website , “...we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period.”
Seeing as though the world as we know it ceased to exist some time before midnight last night, your editor is not going to waste time writing another column. What would be the point? Instead, we refer Fellow Reckoners to the Doomsday Eve essay we penned back on the last last day of the world. We hope you find contained in it some helpful hints for the post-rapture era.
[The following column originally appeared in these pages on May 21, 2011...the last last day of the world.]
The Post-Rapture Service Sector
By Joel Bowman
If you’re reading this issue from the comfort of your own home, here on earth, Heaven’s Day of Reckoning has not yet come to pass. The sun has risen and — to the ignominious consternation of Rapturesayers the world over, we would imagine — our random, rocky orb continues to hurtle around it.
Or, perhaps they have The Daily Reckoning (and an Internet connection) in Heaven, and you’re actually reading this atop a fluffy cloud, the Twelve Disciples looking over your shoulder and Mother Theresa helpfully correcting our ungodly grammatical errors (but not judging us for having committed them). Who are we to say?
Alternatively, this weekend’s issue might simply have arrived in your inbox earlier than usual...and maybe the Rapture is not scheduled until later this afternoon. If this is the case, true doomsday enthusiasts may wish to take advantage of one, or both, of these helpful services we came across earlier in the week...
The first, called simply, though unapologetically, “You’ve Been Left Behind,” offers a post-Rapture line of communication for paradise- bound Christians who wish, for whatever reason, to contact their heathen, earth-shackled brethren. Seriously, can you imagine a better time to send an “I told you so!” email?
According to Wired magazine, “For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when — according to Christian end times dogma — Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.
“You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ,” explains the company’s website, which is purportedly run “by Christians, for Christians.”
According to Wired, “The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness, and not because they’re up to anything shady. The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers ‘scattered around the US’ fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.”
So, that’s your “you should have listened to me” email taken care of. And, presumably, God already has you taken care of. (We imagine He has a pretty sweet pad up there, and, if English writer Sidney Smith is correct in his picture of the afterlife, you’ll be too busy “eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets” to care about much else anyway.)
But what about your beloved pets? What is to become of them? Ah, glad you asked.
That’s where Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA, comes in. Bart Centre, a New Hampshire atheist, author and entrepreneur, began the after hours pet care service back in 2009. According to the company’s website, it’s “The next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World.”
Umm...can we get a “Halleluiah!”?
As The Wall Street Journal explains, “For a 10-year policy that costs $135, he [Centre] and his band of atheists promise to come to their [true believers’] homes after the Rapture, collect their pets and care for them. He says his 259 clients tend to be devout believers over the age of 40 ‘who love their pets and are sincerely concerned for what will happen to them.’”
Mr. Centre carefully screens all job applicants, making sure they are both animal lovers and, perhaps more importantly, not Jesus lovers.
“These are people not likely to be Raptured under any circumstances,” Mr. Centre toldThe Washington Post.
Continued the paper: “After a background check, each rescuer must satisfy Centre by blaspheming in accordance with Mark 3:29, the part of the New Testament that reads: ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’”
“We leave it up to the imagination of the rescuer to come up with a blasphemy that would be offensive to a Holy Spirit,” explained Centre, adding, “if there were one.”
Needless to say, this service is not for everyone. Some believers, for instance, are convinced their pooches will be whisked away alongside their God-fearing/-believing owners. Others reckon they’ll be left behind, due in no small part to their distinct lack of a soul. Either way, animals didn’t fair too well in The Great Flood, so it might be better to just err on the side of caution with this one. No matter how quickly Fido learned to sit and to stay, he probably still doesn’t grasp the subtlety of, say, Pascal’s Wager. That’s not likely to change by rapture-o’clock this afternoon.
Of course, your editors have no idea what Heaven or Hell look like, or whether they even exist. And, more germane to the usual theme of this publication, we certainly don’t know what unemployment figures might look like in a post-Rapture economic landscape, or what might happen to Greek or US bond yields. Presumably things would change — the size of the available, earthly workforce, for example — but we can only guess as to how. Truth be told, we have enough trouble just making heads or tails of events in this world, never mind the next one.
Joel Bowman,
Managing Editor
for The Daily Reckoning
Saturday, 22 October 2011
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