*** Several months ago, we mocked a fellow scribbler for buying Google. The stock had already risen from $80 to $200. Our target saw the stock rise, and rise, and rise and couldn't resist. She bought near $200.

"What kind of investment strategy is that?" we wanted to know. The idea is to buy low and sell high. Buying high won't work, we said. Of course, in our normal endearingly modest way, we added that we didn't know. One of us was clearly an idiot, we allowed, only time would tell which of us it was.

Well, now time has told her tale. She wasn't coy about it, nor ambivalent. No, dear reader, she said it clearly: we are the idiot.

The trouble was that we didn't know what high was. Since then, Google has climbed to nearly $400. Which gives us another opportunity to make fools of ourselves. The trouble with new technology, we point out, is that there is always newer technology. Google may be a great company. But it is not worth $400. Sell.

*** The feds announced this week that they would no longer report M3, the money supply figure. M3 has been rising recently at a 10% rate - three times as fast as the economy it is supposed to serve. This is what is known as "inflation" of the money supply. But there is so much conflicting and corrupt data; it is almost impossible to know what is really going on.

The government reports a "core" rate of inflation that has no real-world significance - it excludes the costs of transportation, housing and food!

And almost all the figures - including inflation - are distorted by the practice of adjusting prices for "quality enhancements." As computers become more powerful, their price per unit of computing power goes down - even though people may spend more money on them.

So, the feds record a lower price, while the actual price paid has gone up. The more of these kinds of figures people have, the less they know.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.