November 29th, 2009
Keep buying gold, you idiots
Don Smerfnerd of Smerfnerd Investments is urging all customers to load up on gold, and do it now. He says he is personally jumping on the bandwagon, joining the new cast of Gold Fever who have been coming out of the woodwork, citing the recently released Shlunkmann Economic Study that, he says, predicts gold could go as high as $2000 per ounce.
But the truth is, the Shlunkmann study, if anyone took the time to read it, never predicted gold would go to 2000. The study itself was about self-fulfilling prophesies, the Pygmalion effect. But it used the example if enough nutcases started predicting that gold would double in price, and ginned-up enough fear in the marketplace, it could all set in motion events that would actually cause the price of gold to double. So, then what’s the deal with Smerfnerd? Many of his colleagues have been wondering the same thing…why is Smerfnerd, a conservative investor, doing this? He has never been one to buy at the high end of the market and get shmucked.
Turns out, our intrepid investigative reporter discovered that Smerf and a couple of his ex-Amway buddies devised a Buy Gold pyramid scheme. It goes like this: You buy some gold, then go pitch/grab some buddies to buy gold, who go hawk even more people to buy it, who then shake down some of their friends/family…and so on. Feed the fear factor of world economic collapse, and roll out some drivel likening our situation to the fall of the Roman Empire. Get someone to do a story of a family storing canned goods in their 60’s -era fallout shelter. Toss in a Nostradamus prediction or two. Develop a network of gold sellers, and grab a little commission on every layer in the sales pyramid. Pocket some serious dough.
At some point, like all good pyramid schemes, it will all come crashing down. Smerf will eventually run out of nimrods to suck into his web, and some people will start doing a little bit of gold dumping….then the gold price will plummet. But by then, Smerf will likely have bailed on all his stash, pocketed a tidy profit, raked in enough commissions, and will be laughing all the way to the Caymans. Smerfnerd could not be reached for comment.
