Saturday, November 26, 2011

Every "Investment Strategy" is Bass-Ackwards


Financial Advice From an Admitted Ignoramus

Be 100% Successful Without Really Doing Anything

You’ve seen them on your magic picture device. Modern Cathedrals full of frenzied humans, waving, shouting, shuffling papers, frantically pecking at computer keyboards and cell phones. These are the new Financial Elite.

Once, long ago, people made money by mass-producing cheap crap, selling it for as much as possible to someone else, who, with lies and trickery, convinced others they needed the crap, for even more profit. This clearly superior system has filled our land of freedom with more cheap crap than any other nation in history. But no longer.

Let other, lesser countries make the crap. We’re busy with Fantasy Football, Dancing With Stars, and Internet Pornography! (Kids now have it easy. In the old days we had to find Dad’s hiding place, or dig through the neighbors’ trash, to get Free Porn.)

Now only fools actually make or do anything useful. Now Financial Success requires Magic Vehicles, from be-suited gangs with lawyers to wide-eyed salesmen, with Corporate lack of conscience.

Cheap Dude long clung to the foolish notion that success came from hard work, honesty, and thrift. Ha ha, what a sap! “Finance” with computers in the game is paper-shuffling on steroids. If you can’t earn your piece of the pie with honest labor, steal it with legal sorcery, salesmen, and computer programs. God bless the “economy” and our government for assisting with this “opportunity!”

The Cheap Dude has devised a system update, to include regular folks eating federal peanut butter and many-days-old bread, living in their car on the fringe of Free Market Fairyland. The former hard-working, honest, and thrifty, now bereft and completely demoralized. “The Economy" is not dead, it just smells like it. Every “investment strategy" is wrong. From my forthcoming book, Who Cut the Cheese: the Sweet Smell of Success, a fiscal reverse:

1. Stocks are still a wise investment. However, one must not be strictly bullish; one must be cow-ish as well. One bull, one cow, soft jazz music and a candle-lit dinner of high grade alfalfa, your stocks are sure to grow. The Stock Yard can easily replace the Stock Exchange, since both involve crowded herds wandering earnestly through fields of crap hoping for some sort of reward. In the end, all must die, but creatures from the Stock Yard taste much better than those sickly bipeds.

You will not get rich with this stock. They are not being crowded into pens full of poop, force-fed indigestible food, or shot up with antibiotics and hormones. But if the stock market crashes, they will still be delicious.

2. Mutual Funds are numerals on complicated computer programs representing magic invisible money. All of it is completely and arbitrarily made up, and you can lose all your money in a split second when some computer somewhere says so. Much better, then, to invest in Mutual Fun: Use all your money to throw a party, and invite all your friends. Your Mutual Fun can never be taken from anyone, and often leads to a lot more Mutual Fun! An excellent long-term investment!

3. CDs--never buy them. Bank CDs can cost $1,000, $5,000, even $20,000. If you must have a CD, the Used Crap Store has piles of them for only a dollar each. Even these are bad investments; upon listening, their value usually drops to zero.

Getting ready to burn some CDs


4. Loans are stupid. Arrogant be-suited humans delve into every aspect of your private life to determine whether you are worthy of owing them. (They have huge piles of money, but act as if it’s really precious.) After verifying your complete lack of need for the loan, they give it to you, then want you to start paying it back--plus made-up “fees,” “interest,” and “service charges”! If you ever finish paying off a home loan (does anyone?), you will have paid $250,000 for a $100,000 house--if you are lucky enough to get a “low rate”! How did this flagrantly criminal scam become normal, even desirable? In summary: No one wants to be “a loan.” The banks, however, hope to get you “a loan,” so they can have their way with you.

5. Regarding “principal” and “interest.” Cheap Dude’s pittance is all invested in his “principal interest”: snuggling nude with Mrs. Cheap Dude as often as possible. In fact, this type of principal interest makes the entire world’s markets go; the more money you have, the more nude snuggling will be available. A risky investment in an always volatile marketplace, but with endless potential for delightful dividends.

6. Bonds are another excellent investment. As you invest in the happiness of friends and family, bonds strengthen and increase in value. This is not to be confused with “Bondage and Domination,” which describes your relationship with the bank if you ever miss your monthly extortion, er, payment.

7. Hedge Funds are self-explanatory: money you invest in landscaping always increases you property’s value. Pay the gardener well; he is helping to support nine people in a one room apartment and another 14 back home--a true Financial Wizard.

8. FIRE: Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. This is a handy way to remember which businesses are completely imaginary. These involve shuffling incomprehensible documents, entering huge numbers into computers at random, and frightening people into signing stuff they will never read or understand. An apt acronym, as you are likely to get burned.

For Sale: Cute little fixer-upper. Steel and block construction. Carpet. Fenced yard with trees. Great views. Great starter home. Full basement. Financing unavailable.

9. NASDAQ is just like NASCAR--people with money to burn, going nowhere as fast as possible--but a lot more boring. Very risky: vehicles often crash and burn without warning.

10. SEC: as in “Wait a SEC, Richie Rich, I think you’re ripping me off.”

11. IRA: Hayes, from the Johnny Cash song about an alcoholic Native American WWII veteran. Heavy drinking is a logical reaction to the current financial gang-rape of These States, especially if you fought for what you thought was your country. An investment available at parking lots and back alleys in Window Rock, Arizona: “Dude, got spare change for a’ old vet who needs a drink?” Hell yes, Sir!

12. CDO: Remember the rock band BTO, Bachman/Turner Overdrive? They were OK. Clapton/Dion Overkill? Coltrane/Dolly Overload? Cobain Drug Overkill? Cornflake Destruction Outrage? How about Complete Debt Optimization (Have You Borrowed Your Maximum?) There is no CDO that would not suck. Do not invest.

13. IPO is an Initial Public Offering. This is much like a church offering. You give your money to a quasi-corrupt organization, and get little or nothing in return except a tax write-off.

14. A tax shelter is another magic place, where rich people and corporations hide money from their governments. Also known as “welfare for the rich.” If you need a tax shelter, you have too much money.

15. The DEPP fund: Drugs, Extortion, Prostitution, and Pornography. A surefire investment if there ever was one. Unfortunately 100% fiction.

16. ATF: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. An actual branch of the government, but could be a literally “surefire” investment. In Arizona, ATF is a routine investment for a good party. Recently, Explosives were added to the ATF. How much fun can one bureaucracy have?!

If you want financial security, guaranteed income, and protected assets, two words of advice: Forget it. The whole system is rigged to take your little capital, and stack it with their big pile. Hide every penny in a hole in your backyard, stuff it in your mattress, stash it in your sock drawer. Smaller amounts should be stuffed down your pants, less likely to be spent when reeking of crotch.

Or, find someone poorer than you, and give it all to them. Better to invest it on the downtrodden and desperate, than some financial ass who makes more money in one year than you do in twenty. Your loss is their gain.

Somewhere, in some old “Holy Book,” is written: “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Wow, how wrong can you get? Thankfully, the U.S. got it right: the love of money is the basis of all capitalist enterprise!

All that glitters is not gold. Usually, it's broken glass. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does Mrs Cheap have a variable interest rate?

The Cheap said...

Thank you for reading, sir.

Yes, Dudine's interest rate is highly variable, in a volatile market,and subject to penalties.
Her interest rate seems extremely sensitive to the J-Factor, that is, how often Cheap is a Jerk.
The most important thing to remember is to avoid zero interest, by any means possible. This may include the purchase of precious metals.
Thanks again pal,
a. jones