Inside This Issue You Will Discover…

*** Modern Day Prophecies
*** Joke Time
*** Deep Thoughts from Al Gore
*** And More

Modern Day Prophecies

We recounted the little tale of William Whiston, and his prediction of the end of the world, for entertainment and perspective.  And to raise the question: Do modern day prophecies still get the best of us?

We seem to remember fear driven press coverage and media speculation exciting people over the apparent Y2K Millennium Bug.  At the stroke of midnight December 31, 1999, date related processing errors would cause financial, utilities, and other industries to cease operating.  Social chaos could ensue.

The U.S. Government passed the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act.  And modern day prophets had this to say in the days leading up to the event:

“The Y2K problem is the electronic equivalent of El Niño and there will be nasty surprises around the globe.”  -- John Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense.

“I’m one of the culprits who created this problem.”  -- Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman.

As you know, the day came without much of a hiccup.  Of course, no one really knows if disaster was diverted because of the protective measures put in place leading up to the millennium, or if it was just one big unwarranted hullabaloo.

Here’s another one…

Did you run out and buy duct tape for protection from the eminent terrorist attack?  We didn’t.  But it’s because we didn’t have to – we already had some in stock at home.

We highlight this example, not because we don’t believe the threat of a terrorist attack was real, but rather to contemplate the veracity of provoking the populace to procure duct tape for security.  

And we’re also not above pointing the finger at ourselves, and this little Great Depression Online E-Newsletter.  Our website asks: “Could we really be headed for another Great Depression?”  Followed by, “We don’t know, but we think it’s at great peril to dismiss it.” 

So what are we getting at?

Joke Time

Here we’ll answer with a joke.  It goes like this…

Do you want to hear something funny?

Yeah?  You do?

Ok.  You asked for it.

Brace yourself…  Because here it is…

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you didn’t get it, we’ll repeat the punch line:

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize

Did you laugh?

We’re not exactly sure why, but we just find this to be remarkable funny.

Maybe it’s because we remember when the Nobel Prize was reserved for a noble achievement.  Whatever luster the Nobel Prize still had, in our opinion, was officially scuffed when it was awarded to Al Gore. 

So all we can do is snicker that this political hack, who rode his fathers coattails into the Vice Presidency…sucked his thumb for eight years…and was one dangling chad away from the top throne, has been put in the same class as Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and Linus Pauling.

Did you ever play the game “what doesn’t belong” when you were a kid?  Here we’ll change it to: Who Doesn’t Belong?

Deep Thoughts from Al Gore

And we’ll let the winner speak for himself.  Here is a quote from the great prophet and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore:

“You see that pale, blue dot?  That's us.  Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel.  All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances...it's our only home.  And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization.”

Whoa…dude…that’s deep. 

Pardon the youthful vernacular, but we consider this to be the type of blather you’d here from a freshman physics student who’d imbibed in too much bubbly following finals week.

Consider, too, this wisdom from the Nobel Prize Laureate: “It’s important to rescue the frog.”

Pure brilliance.  Bravo.

Finally, here’s the point of these musings.  Prophet led group think is often mistaken…delusional…and in some instances dangerous.

As the idea of global warming, perpetuated by eco-profiteering scientists, gained market share in the minds of popular media, so too did the bull market of Al Gore. 

How else could you explain this oaf winning the Nobel Prize for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change…”?

It’s the same reason so many, apparently of sound mind, bought tech stocks in the late 90’s.  Don’t you remember?  It was a New Era.  Led by the prophets like Gary Winnick and George Gilder, and dot coms like Amazon, WorldCom, and Pets.com, the popular wisdom was that earnings no longer mattered; it’s all about increased market share.

So, too, we wonder what happened to the prophets at Newsweek magazine that, in the April 28, 1975 issue, penned the article “The Cooling World”.  It seems rather foolish today, since we all know the real cause for alarm is global warming.

No, we aren’t global warming experts.  We don’t pretend to be.  But we suspect that Al Gore is no global warming expert either.  He is merely a prophet.

It’s possible; he could be right.  Global warming could be “…the most dangerous challenge we’ve ever faced,” as quoted on MSNBC on October 12, 2007.

And a comet could have struck London on October 13, 1736, initiating the “beginning of the end.”

Beware of prophets.

In closing, when it comes to your financial well-being, avoiding financial manias is a good place to start.  But it is not always easy to tell if you are in a strong bull market or a dangerous financial mania.  To help answer this question, and show you how to use this knowledge for profit, we have a free publication for you.  It’s titled “Financial Manias and the Trade of a Lifetime”.  You can learn more and download it for free right here.

Sincerely,

M.N. Gordon
Great Depression Online

P.S.  As modern prophet, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, keeps lowering interest rates to soften the housing meltdown and looming credit crisis, the dollars value is going bust in the international currency market.  That means inflation is all but guaranteed.  Find out how to survive the coming hyperinflationary depression.