Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Eureka!

The Daily Growler Economist Warns
Are you aware that Allen Greenspan was an Ayn Rand fool? You bet he is. He sat on her knee and learned the pap she was squeezing out of her pea brain from her tonguing it into his double-ugly face. You ever looked him deadon? Holy cow, what a wreck of a mug. Ayn totally misunderstood Capitalism; she thought it was political. Dumb Russian goofball. The Warning is: the good Allen, a walking idiot, has stopped publishing the Federal Reserve M3, the first time ever in the history of the Federal Reserve, which, by the way, fellow duped citizens, is not a government agency, same as the IRS is not a government agency (the IRS is an incorporated Puerto Rican firm). These birds make their own rules and when Dumbo Allen is making the rules he's banking on Milton Friedman being a genius, which, and this is according to Milton Friedman himself (right out of the horse's ass), he's not. It all goes back to the days of our great communicating president, Ronnie Raygun. Ronnie decided he hated the poor so he took Milton Friedman's advice and totally wrecked the economy. [It's what Pappy Bush called "voodoo economics," and he should know about voodoo economics, his family got rich in Wall Street investing, investment banking, and being crooked as a snake at night when it comes to oilman economics and wheeler dealer interest rates and printing up bales of money--remember, Georgie Porgie's treasury secretary said not to worry about the debt, he'd just print up some more money and take care of it--what a great Yahoo idea--the economy wildcatters are drilling wherever they think there's money gonna come gushing out of Wonderland.] We're still paying for Raygun's dysfunctional [Alzheimer's] reasoning. [Can you imagine the Amurikan Yahoos elected that grade B actor who was out acted by a monkey in his most famous film as president? Remember now, Georgie Porgie never fairly won a presidential election--check out Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, Ken Blackwell, a champion piece of Repugnican crap, and how he manipulated the final vote back in 2004 same as Jeb did for his little bro in 2000, and those girly-men wimps, Al Gore and John "freaky" Kerry gave up without even a hey nonny-nonny.]

So, Allen "Ayn Rand" Greenspan has stopped publishing the M3--it shows how much money the Federal Reserve is printing. That means our money is INFLATED, just like Georgie Porgie's ego. Plus, don't forget, GP's got us who knows how deeply in debt really? Better start brushing up on your Mandarin or Cantonese. Might ought'a learn some Arabic, too. It's gonna be weird being ruled by Chairman Hu...Who? Naw, Who's on first.

In the meantime, Amurikans think everything's hunky-dory. Here in New York City, foreign investors, thanks to New York City's billionaire mayor's giving away development and air rights, are building 50-story luxury apartment buildings so fast the skyline is changing daily. In Midtown Manhattan looking out my window, I see cranes that are taller than fifty stories everywhere. Between 34th Street and 23rd Street down Sixth, Fifth, and Madison there are currently six fifty story jobs going up simultaneously. Out that same window I see six finished fifty story jobs already open for business. Cheapest apartments in these shitty made thin concrete slab, aluminum studs, and sheetrocked walled tacky pieces of crap (architectually speaking) are the lower floors where they offer first-come-first-served Cherokee Strip-style bargaining for as little as $600 a month for junior studios (which means you'd have more room moving into a refrigerator case in the garbage behind Macy's), the rest of the rents rise as the floors go up higher. The average rents in these tacky pieces of crap are $2000 a month. The top floors rent for as much as $12,000 to $20,000 a month. Penthouses go for a million a year. Mayor Bloomingidiot is a poor little unmarried Jewish lad from Boston who had his billions handed to him--he was given the Bloomberg Radio and TV network, which mostly talks about the stock market and gives phony investment advice and shit like that while posing as a legit news network. This billionaire fool truly believes the more rich people you have in NYC, the greater the tax base and thereby the better services the city will get. Besides, hiz dishonor has got a whole staff of illegal immigrants cleaning out his shithouses. Like Pappy Bush, Mayor Bloomingidiot sees no poverty when he looks out the window of one of his out-of-New York estates, or his penthouse gilded cage here in the city; hell, he sees no problem at all with giving NYC's land and air rights away, especially giving them to the People's Republic of China (remember, Pappy Bush was once ambassador to China; and remember, too, these Chinese are the bad Chinese, the Commie Chinese), the Saudi Arabians, the Japanese, or the Indians, Pakis, or Bangledeshis (and you thought those countries were like poor as a whole flock of Job's turkies, too, didn't you? You think of these billion-citizen countries as sacred cows pissing on the beggars in the streets of Oh Calcutta; or dead bodies floating in the shit gutters that line the back streets of Lahore, which probably is where old legend Osama Mama Laudin makes his legendary residence these days, living there in good old Dubai luxury with his precious dialysis machine and his well-used video camera. Can Bin Laudin speak English? Prince Bandar Bush can, why not his brother?

The building I live in is 157 years old. When I moved into it, it had been taken over by a whole flock of illegal People's Republic of China immigrants. Mama sans were all over the place warehousing rooms and then when a Fukian snakehead brought in a cargo container load of his fellow brothers and sisters, these mama sans would packed these boys and girls 5 and 6 to a room in this building. The building was full of Chinese, Koreans, VietNamese, along with a pack or two of Pakis, Bangledeshis, and some enterprising Nigerians whose apartments were packed with counterfeit Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, Versuckee, Louie Vuiton purses, bags, scarves, watches and printed up letters offering foolish Amurikans a chance to help a fellow Nigerian, usually a high official's widow who needs an Amurikan's bank account and life savings in order to free up 30 million dollars, of which, she's going to graciously give you half.

This building was filthy when I moved into it. The Chinese shat in the hallways or stairwells or they did their kitchen work in the hallways on the floors because in China their kitchens were outdoors or in the hallways of their peasant shacks. The building stunk of boiled fish (the Koreans love boiled fish and eels and shit like that and it stinks to high heaven), curdling curry (the Indians put curry on everything; I think they brush their teeth with it), and heavy garlic. All Asians eat garlic like it was peanuts. The owner of the building was a weird pair of old Jewish brothers who owned most of the buildings from this building down Broadway to 19th. The building was a Class B hotel. It had been a hotel in a former heyday--a cheap fleabag hotel going back to after the Civil War when it may have been a fine hotel, though who the hell knows. As a Class B hotel, they couldn't raise the rents, so my rent when I moved in here was $240 a month and now after 22 years here it's only $350 a month.

Suddenly one day we woke up to find in our mail a statement that the building had been sold. We didn't know to whom or what the hell was going to happen. I lived on the top floor which wasn't as bad as the rest of the building; plus, it's the quietest place I've lived since I moved to New York back in the end days of the Civil Rights Movement--and I once lived with my rich wife on Sutton Place, the mucky-muck neighborhood in NYC over on the East Stinking River.

Soon we got word who the new owner was. He looked like a Paki; or he could be an Indian; or he could be a Bangledeshi--they are thick in this neighborhood (nice people, too, I might add in their favor). I soon heard he'd paid 40 million bucks for this dump. Huh? His first communication with us said if you had a lease you didn't have to worry, but if you didn't have a lease, you could get the hell out, the quicker the better. He started kicking Chinese out by the dozens. They fought back; the Chinese are tough mothers and they don't take being kicked out without a lot of "Fuck yous" and "Kiss my ass mudderfucker" threats (they love the word "Fuck," but then, that is the greatest curse word every invented). The new Lord of the Manor kicked 'em out like they were rats and he started freeing up rooms and then he sent his Vietnamese carpenter-plumbers-painters into these rooms and like ants they rehabbed apartment after apartment. In the meantime, the fire department came and told him the foundations of the older building were tumbling down and that he'd have to evacuate the building or fix the problem, which they estimated would cost millions. The new lord didn't bat an eye in saying he'd spend the millions. He had plans--he renamed the building "The Ultra," and he found an old postcard of the building back at the turn of the century when it was a gangster- playboy transient hotel called The Ultra.

All the old residents sat here stunned. He was turning this B hotel into an apartment building. And that he did. Soon he was moving in a whole new breed into the apartments he had renovated and, we all heard with dropped jaws he was getting $1500 a month for even the tiny rooms in the old building and $2000 a month for the bigger apartments in the back building, the building I live in. I talked to him; he's a nice enough guy, and he said he was going to make this a really nice place for us all to live. He wasn't going to bother the old tenants who had leases and we wouldn't be affected by the new rents; we'd keep our old rents. Then he started renovating the whole building, starting on the outside, pointing the bricks, remortaring, replacing the gutters, etc. Soon, real estate agents were bringing people here by the droves and these suckers were renting these apartments at $1500 and $2000 a month. Holy shit. These were mostly young people, mostly young Asian women, and young white James-Dean-posing males, even young black women. Now, when I get on the elevator, where I used to know nearly everybody who got on as we went down the floors, I don't recognize anybody. The penthouse he's renting at $7000 a month to a bunch of Nazi bankers (Deusch Bank), and, he kicked the white whorehouse up to a second floor, and turned the cum-stained joint into a 4 bedroom apartment at $6000 a month.

Then the truth came to me one day when I was listening to Grandpa Al Lewis's wife on the radio talking about the group she belonged to that helped people with rent problems. She explained what the landlords were up to. Their intentions are to get these old falling down buildings up to a so-called code and then they have the right, according to our billionaire mayor's plans, to raise rents to market value, which in this neighborhood is $2000 a month. Then what happens is, he comes to us low-rent stupidos and says, you can stay in your apartments at your old rents but you have to prove you could pay $2000 a month rent if you had to (does that make sense to you folks? why would I live in this dump if I could afford $2000-a-month rent)--you know, you will have to show him your tax returns to prove you make enough money to pay $2000 a month rent and if you can't, he has the right to boot your ass out. The scheming foreign assholes. Shit yeah I began to become a Yahoo Amurikan--these assholes are ruining New York City. They are turning it into a rich man's playground and most of the rich coming here are foreigners since foreigners seem to have plenty of money and will pay most anything for apartments, houses, SUVs. Suddenly my old Korean neighborhood is filling up with Mercedes, Beamers, and these 50-story luxury pieces of crap, and people paying half their salaries for rent.

The surprise that is coming? Like I said, it's INFLATION. The US dollar is falling and it looks like it's going to fall right into the economic sewer. Soon we'll see these pseudo-successful young people leaping off their high-floor concrete thin slabbed balconies (you know, you can't use a balcony in NYC the air is so dirty--they are merely there for show). Soon a crash is coming and there'll be a lot of empty high floors opened for homesteading by the rest of us who'll be sidewalk beggars a la Calcutta. These sons of bitches are turning NYC into Little Lahore, or Little Mexico City, or Little Bombay, or Little Jakarta. Holy shit. I throw up my hands and look at the price of gold. It's up and going over $600 an ounce. I heard a doomsayer economist say gold will go to $2000 an ounce and right now is the best investment available since the stock market is a paper tiger and will soon blow away as so much dust. Today, too, it was announced that Iranian oil will be based on the Euro buck and not US dollars anymore; US dollars are no longer the money standard, the money most deals are done in. Norway, too, has announced it will now sell its oil based on the Euro buck, which means, us Amurikans, whatever our country of origin, are fucked good. Get ready to beg or move to Canada. Actually, I like what they're doing in Venezuela and Bolivia. Hell, I like Caracas, though there's a hell of a lot of crime there; and, too, La Paz, with its above-the-clouds existence, is beautiful, but dirty and poor as hell--as poor as a whole Tyson's plant full of Job's turkies.

The Daily Growler advises all our readers to dump your US cash and buy some gold. Remember, "Romance without finance is a nuisance, so, baby, bring me some gold."
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The Daily Growler a la Oprah Book Club
1) The Astonished Man, by Blaise Cendrars
2) The Ancient Near East, a History, by William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson
3) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, by Ernest Hemingway
4) The Function of Reason, by Alfred North Whitehead, Beacon Press, Boston, 1957
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The Daily Growler Quote of the Day
"My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not islolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a part of life as trees, stars, or dung." Henry Miller, Books in My Life, Preface, New Directions, 1969.
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