Recently, he (Rich) went on this diatribe against Robert Prechter and all of us so-called "perma-bears". As is typical of most Lamestream media articles these days it was a vacuous piece that focused on a select few data points while totally ignoring the much broader picture and the much more salient facts such as overall debt levels, failed policy response etc. So, just for fun I dissected his piece to show how ludicrous and denialistic the consensus opinion is at this juncture.
So, according to Karlgaard, Prechter is wrong because:
1) He (Prechter) wants to be like Roubini...
Yes, apparently we all want to be constantly derided University Professors wearing Hush Puppies and speaking in foreign accents while Joe ("the troglodyte") Kernan laughs at us...
2) "Americans love debt"...
I couldn't come up with a suitable rejoinder for a statement this stupid
3) I, Karlgaard, predicted Dow 18,000...
Yet the stock market has gone nowhere for 12 years and Treasury Bills (let alone bonds) have outperformed stocks. Dow today? 10,200.
4) "I've given up on formulas and models"...
Right, we get that Rich, now you rely on "interviewing" (on the golf course, no doubt), data mining recent historical trends, and plain old fashioned wishful thinking...good strategy.
5) Interviewing is the way to go. I have interviewed a thousand other Baby Boomers and despite the fact that things are not great now, they are bound to get better any minute now. That's the way it's always been since 1968 and the Democratic Convention...Whoa, sorry, flashback !
Since Rich tells us he is a student of history (his version at least), here's an overwhelming historical fact: no country in the history of the planet has borrowed its way to prosperity......and guess what, the U.S. will not be the first.
6) We are like Japan...
Except different in every way i.e. the rest of the world cannot bail us out while we are going through the death throes of deflation...We (the U.S.) are not a primarily export-based nation, like Japan, duh !!! and the rest of the world relies (25%) on our consumption...
7) I, Karlgaard, like Barry Ritholtz and Doug Kass because they think like me and therefore reinforce my overwhelming need to believe that the future will be just like the past. I also would like some Google links into their sites, which I just got.
I was going to call this the Kass collapse for that other smug disinformer, but thanks to his timely article Karlgaard got the honour.
The basic overall theme here is that 'ol Rich can't look into the abyss because it's "too scary". I hear this all the time, that the economy can't get worse because that would be really bad. Ralph Acampora just said the exact same thing in the NY Times Article here:
“I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over.”
So, let's get to the heart of the denialism movement, 50,000 plus children worldwide die every day because we can't come up with a few dollars worth of food and medicine, but the Baby Boomer generation can't face life without Sauvignon Blanc.
Sorry folks, largely owing to the likes of Rich Karlgaard and his comfort-seeking brethren, we are going down again (much) sooner than one would like to think. Those who do not acknowledge or comprehend the overwhelmingly deflationary forces that are gathering at this point in time, do not understand the credit-based monetary system, economics, or even basic math, which unfortunately describes the vast majority of economic commentators at this juncture. Until you get a package of hundred dollar bills in the mail from Helicopter Ben Bernanke, any fears of inflation and indeed fantasies around reflation, are totally unfounded.
