Winner of the Stupidest Statement Of the Month Award — Larry Summers and James Gailbrath

This month, we are blessed with two amazingly stupid statements from two of the most incapable, arrogant and incompetent economic criminals in the US: James Galbraith and Larry Summers.

Frankly, it was very difficult to chose between the two, and we're not even at month end yet, but I think it will hard to beat any of these two, even if you purposefully try. I still had to pick one, so here's the result:


Runner-up:
"It’s Time to Spend Our Way to Recovery", says Galbraith

Winner:
"The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending." Larry Summers

I am honoured to give the Stupidest Statement of the Month Award to Larry Summers.

If you run into some similar stupid statements and would like to submit them to me for the next month award, please drop me an email!

PS: I just realized I forgot to listen to the interview of John Embry and Eric Sprott and other crazy lunatics over at King World News, so I might have to revert my decision if I get a chance to go through the interviews soon.

Winner of the Stupidest Statement Of the Month Award — Bloomberg Columnist

Last month, we had the first ever awarded Stupidest Statement of the Month, and I was happy to give it to John Embry one of the senior lunatics of Sprott Asset Management.

For the month of September 2011, we had some serious contenders: John Embry himself (though you can't win the award twice a row, specially if you're working for Sprott, as it would be too easy), Eric Sprott as well, both using the King World News which is breeding ground of all the conspiracy theorists and market lunatics.

But fortunately for me, I managed to find better than these two, and avoid awarding the same guys over and over again...

And the winner is....

... the Bloomberg columnists duo, Eunkyung Seo and Sungwoo Park, for the following joint statement try wrote on the September 22nd Bloomberg report title "Gold Surge Vexes Asian Officials as Inflation Numbers Sent Awry":

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The surging price of gold is fueling inflation from India to Indonesia and forcing statisticians to decide whether jewelry made of the metal still belongs in consumer-price indexes.

Basically, what they are saying, is that the rising price of gold is fueling inflation, getting it completely upside down. I think it's well understood that it's inflation (the increase of the supply of money and credit) that makes the price rise and not the opposite!

But I guess they really wanted to earn and deserve their internationally thought for Stupidest Statement of the Month award!

John Embry's Tragycomic Statements on Silver

I was sure I would hear about the silver crazy lunatics soon, and was delighted to see that John Embry was interviewed on King World News during the silver crash. I knew it would be such a delightful moment to hear all the nonsensical comments he would have to make, so I kept it as a week-end treat.

For those who do not know him, here's a short bio that will summarize all you need to know:

John Embry is the the Chief Investment Strategist of Sprott Asset Management.
John Embry is very famed as the winner of the Stupidest Statement of The Month (for August 2011)
He is renown for having had only two investment strategies for what it seems forever now: 

1 - buy gold and silver 

2 - buy gold and silver shares

Anyway, here are some delightful comments Embry made during the interview:

The Central Planners had to smash silver... when you're motivated the response is in proportion of the problem.

They've created a fabulous buying opportunity.

Any free money that I have would be committed to the physical and the shares. [...] Some of them are just crying out to be bought.

And he goes on and on what they want, what they will do, and how they will fail. They don't want you to believe that silver is a safe haven.

I mean, come on, do people who have given their money to these incompetent losers at Sprott seriously believe that giving your money to be managed by Fox Mulder is a good idea?

In the meantime, my silver shorts positions are looking quite nice:

I have been warning all the people I could, and prevented as much of them from buying silver and gold in the past many months. I just hope my readers managed to also save their assets and not fall into this massive bull-trap.

Sprott Clueless About His Own Statements

Eric Sprott, once again, is gutting me with his statements and his conspiracy theories which seem to have gone beyond his own rationalization process.

His been advocating for many months now that we're running out of silver and gold and that it won't be possible to source more physical bullion — another reason for him to point to manipulation by banks, and the "fake" paper markets for precious metals.

Here's a quote from his interviewed on King World News on the 20th of August:
— People have been buying a lot of physical gold. Where is that gold coming from?
— Well this is a great question, and I've been immensely struggling with it and I struggle with it more every day. [...] There's far more demand that supply, so it brings the question: Where is that gold coming from? [...] And it is taking me today more than any other period in my life to the GATA view that banks have all along [...] been selling gold and I think they have to been selling gold now, to keep things under control. And I don't know where this gold is coming from. I have no idea where the gold is coming from but somebody is supplying this market. [...] The price of gold has been kept under control. [...] Somebody out there is making sure the price do not get too much carried away.

Jim Sinclair also mentioned that gold will be at $12,000...
They go on have a laugh at Carlos Slim selling some of this silver, stating how big a mistake this is...

Anyway, getting back to the point, it looks like we have a first runner for the September's Award of the Stupidest Statement of the Month Award (see last month's: Winner of the Stupidest Statement Of the Month Award — John Embry).

Another rule that I will have to create for this contest, is that the Award can only be given once during a calendar year. Because otherwise, it looks like Embry and Sprott will be competing for it every month!

Winner of the Stupidest Statement Of the Month Award — John Embry

John Embry, teaming with Eric Sprott at Sprott Asset Management to create the duo of conspiracy theorists and precious metals charlants was interviewed on King World News in August.

I am happy to award him the Trophy of the Stupidest Statement of the Month for the following statement. Talking about the action in the gold mining shares, John Embry said:

I think there's a computer algo program out there that's being used to discourage people from getting into gold shares by making the share prices act counter intuitively.

Remember that this genius believes that gold and silver shares are manipulated by investment banks who have massive short positions in the futures market — showing his complete lack of understanding of what the investment banks do — attends to GATA.org conspiracy theory meetings, and think that silver will reach $300 soon. So it's not his first stupid statement of this kind, and probably not the last one neither.

Given his track records, I started laughing at loud when he said that people who bought US Treasuries "were stupid" and that this asset is the biggest bubble he's ever seen, "making the previous bubbles look rational".

The fact that these kinds of lunatics can come on air and much such statements without the host making any remarks is very damageable to the reputation of the show as well.

Anyway, I hope you don't have money managed by these guys, as their credibility will fall to zero once their performance show a 90% decline and that their theories proves completely wrong.

I've decided to try and award deserve this trophy every month. Given the amount of stupidity available in the asset management world, the only problem I'll be facing is probably to find which one of those extremely stupid comments deserves the price. I hope I'll be able to keep up and make these Awards a monthly one.