Episodes

Announcer:                 Broadcasting from Baltimore, Maryland, and all around the world, you’re listening to the Stansberry Investor Hour. Tune in each Thursday on iTunes for the latest episodes of the Stansberry Investor Hour. Sign up for the free show archive at investorhour.com. Here is your host, Dan Ferris.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Hello and welcome to the Stansberry Investor Hour podcast. I'm your host, Dan Ferris. I'm also the editor of Extreme Value, published by Stansberry Research.

 

Where do I begin? How about here? Coronavirus is the biggest thing to happen on planet Earth since World War II. How about that? That's not a bad starting point. I can't imagine anyone thinking I'm guilty of hyperbole at this point. I was born in 1961, tail end of the Baby Boomers, and the truth is, my generation has got away with a pretty easy time of it until now.

 

My parents were born in the mid-1920s. They grew up in the Great Depression. My father went to Okinawa at age 17 to fight in World War II and various other things. They had six of their seven kids to take care of in the 1970s inflation. I remember that period well. And they grew up in a different world... And they handled a lot of really difficult crises for my parents early in their lives, and they're still alive to talk about it.

 

But, you know, for me, I'm feeling pretty soft, you know? I never went to war. Folks a few years older than me were in Vietnam and a few years older than them in Korea. I never went to war. Most of the people I know never went to war, and we certainly just have never had, you know? World War II was a true world war, all over the globe, and that's a different way of living and thinking about how the world works than when we're not in such circumstances.

 

And I feel like this global pandemic of the coronavirus is reteaching us what it's like to live in a time like that. And just a few thoughts about this whole thing. First of all, I have to say that I was caught in some intellectually questionable territory by a listener, a fellow who we're going to have on the program soon in fact. Last week, I said that I thought there were two likely scenarios. Either we lock everybody down now and there'll be substantial economic pain, or we lock everybody down later and there'll be much more pain.

 

And I was clearly saying, you know, the government needs to do something, etc. I can't even believe that those thoughts came out of me. But I guess it's a sign of the stress I'm feeling at this time, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that that's the best thing that could happen, or the only thing. But I really, I got caught up, and my real viewpoint on this is I'm much more skeptical of the cries for the government to do something, I really am.

 

And so, me calling on, you know, "the government needs to do something and shut things down and we need to be like Italy," I don't even know if I said we need to be like Italy, but you could easily interpret everything I said like that. I don't think I really believe that. And I was called out on it by a few people. More than one person emailed me and listened and, you know, talked to me and said, “Whoa, whoa, where's all this coming from? Who's this Dan? Who's this guy?”

 

And one of them, I told you it was a fellow we're going to have in the program at some point, his name is Kevin Duffy. And he wrote me an email, and he said, “You know, I listened to your latest podcast, and you said we have two choices. Pay me now, bite the bullet and hunker down, or pay me much later. Live normal lives, and let the problem get bigger.”

 

And then he said, “I'm always suspicious when given a narrow set of options. Is there a third? What would happen if the government said, ‘Hey, kids, this time you're on your own?’ Imagine if they did that during the 2008 financial meltdown. In all likelihood, the initial pain would have been deeper, perhaps much deeper for some – but would the system today be as levered and fragile right before a health-related black swan hit? Alternative histories are difficult.” And then he gives me a link to a blog post that he did. And you can type "Kevin Duffy" and – you can probably type "Kevin Duffy blog" and go right to it into Google.

 

He continues, “The issue boils down to the limits of knowledge, a subject any good investor knows well and the pretense of knowledge, a subject of any critical central planning knows well.” I totally agree with every word of that, and you know that from listening to this program. Where was that guy last week when big government Dan lost it and started saying we need to be like Italy?

 

I don't know. I don't know. I'm a little, I'm shocked at myself right now. And the truth is, my real view is that, you know, when the government has your back, your spine goes limp. That's just the way it is. I think government interference, I think you can go into any major city in the United States and see the cultural decline of inner city and lower income inner city people purportedly who have been helped by things going even back to Social Security. Which was born, when? Well, as a result of the Great Depression, right?

 

The Great Depression inspired government to get real, real big and real, real intrusive, and I don't think anything good came out of any of it. And I totally disagree with people like Warren Buffett. Obviously, they're going to be in love with the status quo because they made billions of dollars off of it. So, they're going to say Social Security was a wonderful thing. FDIC deposit insurance is a wonderful thing. I don't think any such backstops are wonderful things because they make us weak and fragile.

 

Kevin is absolutely right. Those things make the system weaker and more fragile, and there’s a drug-like component here because once you do it once, you want to do it again, right? Remember the big, you know, it was like $800 billion odd, I want to say $850 billion, bailout during the financial crisis in 2008, and then they layered things on top of that. But now what are they talking about?

 

Well, now the headlines say Trump's asking for $850 billion. No, no, he's asking for a $1.25 trillion. Oh no, the former president of the Minneapolis Fed says, “Nope, $1.25 trillion is not going to do it. He needs to double it – $2.5 trillion. And we need to send everybody a check for $10,000," that kind of stuff. Is that going to make us more self-reliant? Is that really going to help us get through this? What is really happening right now?

 

Well, everything is shutting down because we're social distancing – so we don't all get sick and kill a whole bunch of people who are in weaker condition, right? Most of the people that get this thing are just going to get a cold or something like it, you know, fever, cold, etc. But it could kill a lot of people if we're careless about it. That's why everything is shutting down. And you can't fix that with any of this stuff.

 

You can't fix it with government intervention. You can't fix it with the Fed buying, you know, their measly $700 billion of securities, which they figured out pretty darn quick, is like way, way too little. So, it's a really difficult problem because it can't be solved by – we really have to be on our metal, don't we? We really have to handle this ourselves. I mean, I think we'll find out even if they do put, you know, $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 of cash in everybody's pocket, they're going to go through that real quick, and then what?

 

You know, at some point you really do have to figure this out for yourself and be self-reliant. Now, do I want to leave people in dire straits? Because you know, at this point it's like a junkie, right? You're going to take away his – he's in withdrawal now – and you're going to take away the smack and he's going to die, right? So, I'm not saying there are easy answers here. I'm just saying that I think we got to a much worse place by being too reliant on big government to fill in various perceived or otherwise cracks in our system, in our society.

 

There's an analogy I've used before on this program, right? Imagine that you took all the safety devices out of an automobile, all the airbags and the seatbelts and everything and replaced it with a six-inch steel spike coming out of the steering wheel. No, I don't think we should actually do this. What I do think is that it is instructive of how people handle risk.

 

I think if everybody was driving around in a car with no seatbelt, no airbags, and the steel spike, there would not be so much as a fender bender, and there would be a lot of people riding bikes, and they would be a lot more risk averse is the point. They would teach themselves, and they would learn how to handle risk, and they would not optimize themselves for good times. What we have right now, people think they're diversified if they own stocks and bonds. And they're learning that they're nothing like diversified if they own stocks and bonds.

 

You need that cash component. When everything else is trash, cash is king. And yet the government is in charge of the value of cash, aren't they? So, you need a gold component – silver and gold – and a precious metal component as well. Then you can tell me that you're truly diversified. Then you can tell me that you're not as fragile as our society has become.

 

That's the way it works. And we're finding that out, unfortunately. And it's unfortunate, isn't it? I've been saying this stuff for three years, and I've even felt apologetic for it. You've heard me on this program apologizing and saying, “Look, hey, you know, I don't want to be the bearish guy all the time, and I want to have something good to say” and the business I'm in is like that, too.

 

“Oh Dan, I'm sorry. Bearish messages just aren't really resonating with our readers and, you know, basically if you want to keep publishing...” Now, nobody told me this. But it really boils down to the way we bring on new readers. And you can't bring on new readers and get people interested in your message in a bull market by saying this thing is going to crash hard and you better have a lot of cash and gold on hand. You just can't do it. People don't want to hear it. And you know, when they want to hear it, they want to hear it when it's too damn late. They want to hear it now.

 

A friend of mine who is, I won't name him, he's been on the program, very sophisticated value investor. He's been one of these guys who says, you know, gold is like a pet rock and I don't understand it, and I get that. But we're good friends anyway, okay? He called me this morning, and he said, “Oh, I'm sorry” – he woke me up because I had been up very late last night unexpectedly. And so, it was 7:00 a.m. and I was still snoozing, and he woke me up to talk about gold. He wants to talk about gold now.

 

It's actually not a bad time because the price has come down. But the better time to talk about it would have been as fast as this thing has happened – two, three months ago, you know, three months ago... and before three months, one year, three years, five years, ten years. So, you know, now here we are, and everybody wants me to comment, and talk, and say this and say that. And I'm like, look man, I've been saying how to prepare for when this thing goes out.

 

Now I didn't predict a pandemic that shuts society down. I just predicted that stocks are gonna retreat heavily one day. We're going to be in a bear market. They're way over valued, it's really risky, etc. And as it turns out, I believe in my heart of hearts that having lots of cash and gold around prepares you for this type of thing, too. In addition to a bear market, it prepares you for a shutdown of who knows how much big important stuff in our lives.

 

So, where are we right now? Well, as I speak to you, I'm getting texts and my wife is calling me from downstairs and she's saying, “Hey, are you paying attention? ‘Cause the market is tanking hard again.” And I'm afraid that this is really going to be much more brutal than I did even just a week or two ago.

 

It really has the potential to go on for some time. There's a particular paper running around that says we could be effectively sheltering in place if not social distancing. We could be social distancing for as much as 18 months. Can you imagine that? 18 months of no restaurants and the airlines not functioning right, etc.?

 

I read somewhere there's 4.6 million people out of work in the hospitality industry. What are they going to do if this thing goes on really much longer than anyone thinks? And then I have friends who are very smart people and richer and smarter than me saying “I'm buying stocks.” One guy says, “I bought a basket of five airline stocks. This is a fantastic time to be an investor.” I'm sorry, I'm not there yet. I'm just not there. Honor your trailing stops if you use them, and whatever risk controls you have, this is not the time to abandon them. And as you're honoring trailing stops, you're raising cash.

 

I think it's still a good thing to have gold. I know gold stocks have been brutalized. Gold itself is down from where it was. But you know, gold isn't down that much if you look at the way stocks are getting crushed. And even bonds, we were all hepped up on that bond trade, which worked out great. But then I started telling you last week, and maybe even a little before that, this thing is, eventually it's going to be revealed for what it is.

 

It's the obligation of an essentially effectively bankrupt government. So you don't want to get caught holding it when the world figures that out. Eventually the world will figure that out and all this stimulus that creates larger budget deficits, and larger balances at the Fed, and larger amounts of outstanding debt is bad for the currency. I've said that, too, the past couple of weeks.

 

The go-to move, the last resort, is to weaken the currency. Always, in all times and places in all eras, that's always the go-to move of the government, right? You look on the side of a dime or a quarter, it has those little hash marks. Well, that's because way back when, they were shaving the metal off the coins.

 

So, your coin would have a little bit less metal, and then a little bit less, and a little bit less, and a little bit less. So they started doing the hash marks to establish that they hadn't been shaved. Of course, now it's just an aesthetic thing because the coins are just tokens. They're not worth anything really, because they're not made of precious metal.

 

Things seem to be changing rapidly. Life seems to be very different than it was three months ago, three years ago, 30, 100 years ago, 50 years. Name your timeframe. Life seems to change rapidly. But some things never change, and having lots of cash on hand in whatever area you live in, having lots of cash on hand has frequently been a very good idea.

 

Having gold, you know, the things that never change. Gold has been around for 5,000 years, 6,000 if you count the use of electrum, the alloy of gold and silver that was used a long time ago. These things don't change, and the things that don't change are what gets you through times like this, and that is where we are.

 

I had one email in the feedback that said, “Come on, Dan. What's this negative attitude I'm hearing? I’ve never known you to be so negative. What's up, dude? Come on, get positive. Let's fight this thing together.” That was by Ray R in the feedback. I agree. I agree. There's no reason to have a negative attitude. I hope I don't come across as having a negative attitude.

 

My positive attitude is a respect for reality. I'm trying to respect reality and say, "This is where I think we are. I'm afraid it gets a lot worse from here. The second order effect of shutting society down, the second order effect of the virus is this economic effect, which impacts your investments, it impacts your daily life. And then there are other third order effects like big government interventions which come along, and they can be the worst outcome.

 

We've never seen a crisis in which people don't clamor for those third order effects. We want more government, we need more intervention, do something already, do something, do something, do something. And I'm embarrassed that I seem to be trying to hitch a ride on that train last week. We do need to do something. We do all need to stick together. We can get through this. Humanity is stronger than one pandemic, and we've proven that, haven't we?

 

Because we've gone through things like the Plague and the Spanish flu and we're still here. And those things make humanity, you know, they kill people and they show our fragility as individual humans. But as a species, we are quite anti-fragile because we are strengthened by crises. And this one, I guess, is going to make us a lot stronger because it's really going to test us, and it's already doing that.

 

And I'm praying literally for the first time in decades. I've been an atheist for years, but literally, I was on my hands and knees with my head bowed and my hands folded earlier this week saying, “Please, if you're out there, man, we get it. We're fragile. We don't need any more of this.” As you can tell, I'm at a loss.

 

Cash and gold are all I have for you financially. I think bonds are getting hit, they're probably going to continue to do so, and that is all I have.

 

So, let's do an interview, man – my old friend, Doug Casey, who I have not spoken with in a few years – and see what he has for us today. Then we'll check out the mailbag, and I know a lot of people are really concerned and their writing in. Let's do it.

 

All right, everyone, it's time for our interview. Doug Casey spends most of his time these days in Argentina and Uruguay with frequent visits to the U.S., Canada, and various dysfunctional hell holes. And I have to tell you folks that I largely became interested in finance and in the business that I've been in for these 22 years because of Doug. I wanted to be just like him, and I read his newsletter and I thought, man, this guy's brain is turned on and I want to be like that, and here we all are. So, Doug Casey, welcome to the program, sir.

 

Doug Casey:               Thanks, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here, although I'm not there. I'm speaking to you from Estancia near Punta del Este, Uruguay where even though the world is collapsing around our head and shoulders, if I turned off the Internet and the TV, I'd have no idea anything was different than it was last year. Things move slowly here.

 

Dan Ferris:                 That might not be a bad state of mind to be in right now.

 

Doug Casey:               No, it’s not. It's time for us all to dust off our copies of Boccaccio’s The Decameron because we are living in the year of the plague. It would seem, and “seem” might be the operative word, I don't know.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. You know, I still have to believe that the second order effects of this coronavirus are going to be much worse than the virus itself, which for most healthy people will not really be a problem. If you're older, if you're infirm, if you have some underlying issue, you really don't want to get it. But you don't want to get anything if you're like that. You don't want to get any kind of flu or anything. So, I think the second order effects are going to be worse.

 

Doug Casey:               You're absolutely correct. And as a matter of fact, I just before you called, put the finishing touches on an interview that I did, which talks about the second order effects. The first order effects from this are, you know, there've been so many of these medical hysterias just in the last generation. There has been hantavirus and Zika and bird flu, swine flu, MERS, SARS. Okay, maybe this one is more serious than those, or the seasonal flu, which kills 50,000 people, but you're quite correct.

 

It’s the second order effects, namely the consequences of the hysteria, and it is a titanic global hysteria, unparalleled actually, unparalleled for all I can think of since the great witch hunts of the 17th century. But actually, it's the third order effects that are going to be much longer lasting and equally serious in the long run. And by that, I mean what the governments are doing to react to this, to show that they're doing something.

 

Everybody wants government to do something. They think the government is a magic cornucopia that can solve all their problems. So, look out, this is the start of the "Greater Depression," Dan. This plague is really mainly just the pin that broke the biggest financial bubble in world history.

 

Dan Ferris:                 That sounds about right to me. I have to admit, for a brief moment, I was guilty of saying we need to do something. I was a “do something” guy for about 20 minutes last week, and I'm pleased to say I have lots of friends like you who instantly called me out on it. People emailed, they called, they said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who's this guy saying this stuff?”

 

And it's true. I fear those third order effects. I fear that you are right, and that it’s transformational in the way that the Great Depression and World War II were transformational. And of course, as you point out, those events, they invite all of the government folks who have this great need to feel relevant and do something to shift it into high gear. And it's my fear that you're dead on and that's going to happen.

 

Doug Casey:               That's right. It's really a shameful thing. Over the last 100 years, since Western civilization itself peaked just before World War I. And it's been a slow but accelerating ride downhill, since then, in just about every way I can think of, quite frankly. Except for science and technology, which have actually been advancing at the rate of Moore's Law for all that time and have disguised the rot at the base of our civilization, the termites eating away at our foundations.

 

Yeah, this could be the big one because as you may recall, Dan, I've been saying, within the context of civilization going downhill for the last 100 years, and we can talk about that too and why that's true, but since the financial cataclysm broke over the landscape in 2007 to 2008, look at it as being a gigantic economic hurricane. And we just pass through the leading edge in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Since then, we've been in the eye of the storm. Giant hurricane, giant eye, but now we're entering the trailing edge of the storm, and it's going to be much worse and much longer lasting and much different than the unpleasantness that we recall from back in the 2008 and 2009 and so forth.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I've kind of come around to that view in the last few days because I think we're all going to be social distancing and things are going to be shut down for longer. I thought that might be a shorter event, but I think that'll be longer. And of course, the longer that goes on, the more are the cries to do something, and the bigger those somethings get.

 

Doug Casey:               That's right. Talk about the second order effects; these idiots. No governmental authority or organization wants to be looked like it's being caught asleep at the switch, so they're all jumping in on this hysteria and closing down everything. And in the ultra-litigious society that we live in today, even if you own a restaurant or a gym or a business, it doesn't matter, you're induced to close the thing down because somebody's going to sue you if they say that they got this virus because you didn't close down.

 

So, it’s the nature of society at this point to cry wolf. I mean, you know, listen, the ordinary seasonal flu kills 50,000 people a year. That's tough. But unfortunately, one of the unpleasant side effects of life is death. And worst case, it’s said, and nobody knows, because there have only been 8,000 deaths in the whole world so far, as opposed to 50,000 in the U.S. from the seasonal flu... worst case, they're saying, is 500,000.

 

So, okay, that's tough, but is that a reason to totally collapse the economy? Because poverty, which we will see, kills a lot more people than the flu does. So, this is a big deal. This is like the witch hunts of the 17th century as far as people going crazy en masse.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. And you know, as long as – I've been really bearish on stocks for about three years – and as long as I've known you, you've been talking about this rot, this slow rot in civilization, and you've been frequently bearish, too. And here we are. You know, I feel like I was wrong for a long time.

 

I'm sure you had to listen to people telling you that you were wrong for a long time. And then all of a sudden, you're wrong until you're not. And when you're not wrong, you wish that you were. I wish I was, I have to say. I mean, I owned put options and lots of them, and I still, I don't even care. I would happily have watched them go to zero for civilization not to fall apart.

 

Doug Casey:               Yeah, that's right. And it's still very, very early days. So, you know, we’re going into the "Greater Depression," which is a term that I believe I coined, actually. And the thing is, is that depression is a period of time when most people's standard of living drops significantly. And the reason, there are many reasons...

 

We could have a whole separate conversation about the economics behind all of this, but basically because of the policies of the Federal Reserve, which should be abolished, not changed. It should be abolished... serves no useful purpose. The whole of society has been living above its means. And unfortunately, in order to rebuild capital, we're now going to have to live below our means for some time.

 

In other words, the whole essence of this is you've got to produce more than you consume, and you have to save the difference. But people haven't been doing that. And as the government prints up trillions of new currency units, after we have perhaps a 1929 U.S.-style deflationary collapse, then we're going to go right into a 1923 German-style hyperinflation, which will make it very hard for people to save, because people save in dollars, and the dollar is going to turn into toilet paper.

 

I hate to sound too apocalyptic, but you know, Dan, things that you expect to happen often take much longer than you think to actually get underway, which of course, you and I have both noticed. But once they get underway, they happen much, much more quickly than you could have imagined. And that's what we're seeing right now.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yes. You know, you mentioned you're really referring to debt destruction and then capital reformation has to take place, but that's been one of the massive screwups. One of the massive fallacies of our age is that the economy ought to be measured in spending and not in capital formation, isn't it? I mean, isn't that part of the myth that is propagated, that sort of gets you to all the other policies, right? We must spend, therefore we must print, therefore we must bail out, etc.

 

Doug Casey:               You're absolutely correct. All of these so-called economists, which populate the government and corporations and organizations, they're not economists. They’re political apologists. They're soothsayers. They're hacks. They have really no understanding of what actual economics is, which is a description of the way the world works, not a prescription of the way they think the world ought to work. It's not good.

 

Dan Ferris:                 It’s not. But you know, the way the world works, it rankles them. It rubs against their sensibilities because it's the – who was that fellow who wrote, Bernard Mandeville, the "grumbling hive," right? "The world is a grumbling hive," and that that doesn't sit well with the intelligentsia, right?

 

So, they criticize it, and they say we're all greedy pigs and capitalist pigs and so forth, and we need to be throttled. And the throttling is purportedly to help, you know, the less fortunate among us, and it makes life worse for them. And the whole thing, it kind of goes downhill from there. As soon as you look at the grumbling hive and don't appreciate it for what it is, you're sunk.

 

Doug Casey:               Yeah. This is ingrained in U.S. society at this point because for the last couple of generations, everybody has felt you got to go to college, you've got to go to college, which is an idiotic meme to start with. And then when they go to college, which is totally dominated by Marxists, Keynesians and socialists, horrible people, and I speak as somebody who was a trustee of two separate colleges, so I know what I'm talking about from boots on the ground.

 

So, kids who are sponges at that stage in life, and it's true in high school, too, they've captured the high schools, even the grade schools, are inculpated all of these really poisonous ideas, and it's hard to get rid of them. It's hard to unlearn them. So, yeah, things are gonna get worse. And people think the best and brightest go into government, but that's not true. Actually, it's the worst kind of people that go into government, that people have so much trust in.

 

They're not people that know anything about controlling physical reality, but they're interested, and they only know about controlling other people. So, this is really a formula for disaster. I mean, there are about a thousand things, strands, that we could pull any one of them and have an hour-long conversation about it. This is actually fascinating to think that we may actually, right now, be at the start of not just the biggest thing since the unpleasantness of 1929 to 1946, this could be the biggest thing since the founding of the U.S.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I agree. And it took a very smart Brit named Raoul Pal to bring me around to that viewpoint. We had him on the program, and he expressed that view, and I have to agree. It's interesting, though, Doug, I was thinking about. I like to think well of my fellow man, and I know you do, too.

 

Doug Casey:               I’d like to, but I don't. I'm sorry to cut you off, Dan.

 

Dan Ferris:                 No. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I don't want to put words in your mouth at all. But I like to think well of my fellow man, and I realized that he mostly has a problem of scale. For example, at the scale of my household, I may be seen as a hopefully benevolent dictator. And at the scale of interactions with individuals, I may be seen as quite the altruist and quite the whatever you want to call it these days. I mean, I would call it an altruist, or even a collectivist at the scale of a few friends or something.

 

But at the scale of a society, people, they lose their bearing and they can't handle scale. And I think that's one of the problems that it goes through all humanity. It's just inherent in being a human being. You feel for someone in trouble and therefore you want to help them, and therefore you quickly make this really horrible leap from "let's not infringe upon other persons and property" to "infringe however you wish to help whoever you wish." I think we get in trouble there.

 

Doug Casey:               We definitely do. And talking about scale, it's that there are about a billion people in the world right now, and they're mostly living in cities. And when that's the case, it makes it much easier for mass hysteria to break open when people are in close proximity. And over the last hundred years, government has become very, very important. It’s a witch's brew. I'm not sure how this is all going to come down.

 

Well, it may wind up in a political revolution because we are in an election year after all. And it appears that the Democrats, I mean, I knew they were stupid, but the best they can do is come up with a senile, mildly demented old thief in the form of, what's his name? Biden. So, you've got your choice between that and Donald Trump, who’s cultural conservative, I'll give him that much, and I appreciate that. He'd like to see the U.S. go back to the days it was domestically. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, before it became a multicultural domestic empire, which is what it is right now.

 

So, it can't be held together. In fact, I think the U.S. certainly over the next couple of generations is likely to fall apart into several different countries, which actually is a good idea. But he's likely to act like a real authoritarian, which is the way he is with zero understanding of economics added into the witch's brew. So, these are your two choices. This is really dangerous.

 

Dan Ferris:                 You know, you mentioned the U.S. breaking up, Doug. I think that's another one of my scale problems because I don't believe that nation states are a good idea. I think that's – large nation states, just there's a nonstarter there for me. It took me a long time to figure that out. Folks in New York can't tell folks in California how to live, period.

 

Doug Casey:               No. No, the idea of a nation state, and they've all become domestic multicultural empires, which is, I think, a more accurate description of the situation in many countries, certainly, the United States. They're a bad idea, and let me go further. Democracy is a bad idea. It's a fine idea for a few friends deciding what to have for dinner or what movie to see, although it's hard enough even just with a few friends with common values to decide those things. But when you have a democracy, it really just becomes mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie.

 

And, as we’re seeing all around the world today in just about every country, the mob is voting for a strong leader. You know, this is true in Brazil, it’s true in the Philippines, it’s true in China. Pick a country, any country. Russia! A strong man in the U.S. for that matter, a strong man gets in office, and people like the idea of somebody that'll keep a lid on things.

 

So, while democracy is also going to be debunked, the problem is, and cut me off here if I'm rapping too much, it's that we’re on the cusp of not just a financial catastrophe, that's obvious, but an economic catastrophe, the Greater Depression. But it's going to be a political catastrophe, too, and it could turn into something like the French Revolution in 1789 or the Russian Revolution in 1917.

 

And that's really dangerous because after the revolution occurs, it doesn't get better, even though it was good to get rid of the old regime. But then it gets worse because they got Robespierre, there's the French, and they got Lenin and then Stalin in the case of the Russians. And that could happen anywhere. It could happen here... or there, where you are. I'm in Uruguay.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yes. So, you mentioned mob rule, and I immediately thought, you know, true. And we, humanity, we've known this for at least 2,000 years, right? The ancient Greeks knew this, or at least one of them did, Aristotle. And why don't we, you know... I remember, this reminds me of something, Doug. I remember hearing a story of the folks who knew Ayn Rand when she was writing Atlas Shrugged.

 

And one of them was a very, at the time, very naive fellow named Leonard Peikoff. He thought six months after Atlas Shrugged came out, which made all these same criticisms of society, he thought everything was going to be good, everybody was going to figure it out, and everything was going to get better, and we were going to have a laissez-faire society, and people were going to be productive and happy and rationally self-interested in all the rest of it.

 

But, you know, six months? How about 2,000 years? What is it about us? We just don't seem to get it. Are we that desperate to feel secure?

 

Doug Casey:               Well, I don't know. It depends on the level to which we want to dig. I mean, maybe, just maybe, I have absolutely no proof or even indication that this is true, but for all I know, maybe this is a prison planet where everybody here has been sent here from a distant part of the galaxy for major crimes and misdemeanors as punishment. And perhaps you and I are like the trustees in this prison, and just thank God we're not down in the hole like people in Africa and India.

 

So, I mean, that's an extreme explanation of why this place is so crazy. But I can think of... I'm going to handle, incidentally, I'm going to handle this problem that you just brought up, Dan. Speculator was my first novel, Drug Lord the second. They're both very good. Assassin is coming out.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Love them both. Excellent books. Loved them. Couldn’t get enough.

 

Doug Casey:               Ah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you're going to like Assassin, but in the final novel, which is I think gonna be called Apocalypse, our hero, Charles Knight, decides that about 80%, this is a Pareto’s law number, the old 80/20 rule of the human race, just suffer from a serious genetic defect. It's called envy, socialism, collectivism, the kind of thing that people like Krugman and this guy, and pick a crappy economics book that they all suffer from. And it's like a genetic disease.

 

So, I think, I hate to do a reveal early on, but it's probably genetic, quite frankly. It's bred into people the way pit bulls tend to be aggressive, and Irish setters tend to be dumb, and poodles tend to be smart. It's the same kind of thing.

 

Dan Ferris:                 So, Doug, let's talk about the books, because as long as I've known you, you've been telling me about this series of books, and I was so hoping that you would do it and you started doing it. I read Speculator, I loved it. I read Drug Lord. I loved it. Can't wait for Assassin. Maybe you could tell our listeners the idea behind this series of books.

 

Doug Casey:               Thank you, Dan. Everybody likes to give a commercial for what they're doing. I'll take advantage of that. Thank you. It's a series of seven novels in which one of the themes is I'm trying to reform the unjustly besmirched reputations of highly politically incorrect occupations. Like Speculator, our hero Charles goes to Africa, gets involved, doesn't get involved, he profits from a gold-mining scam, gets involved in a bush war.

 

Then in Drug Lord, it shows that you can be a good guy as in Speculator, and then in Drug Lord he becomes a drug lord dealing in both DEA- and FDA-regulated drugs. In both of those books, he has many, many millions of dollars stolen from him by the government. So, he's pissed off, and he decides that there are some people that just need killing in Assassin, but he finds that that's like pulling shark's teeth. It's pointless. And also, it's somewhat unsavory, unaesthetic to have to take these horrible people out even if they get what they deserve.

 

So, he's accused of being a terrorist. And I have lots of views on terrorism as a method of warfare. You can be a good guy as a terrorist. Yes, yes. I know. I'm a freedom fighter. You're a rebel. He's a terrorist. So, it's a matter of definition. So, he goes back to Africa, then he has to become a warlord. He goes back to Africa because when they're hunting you as a terrorist, you're in big trouble in today's world. So, it's best to go to a chaos zone.

 

So, if you ever get accused of being a terrorist, go to a war zone. That's what Charles does, and he becomes a warlord. And here I reform the unjustly besmirched occupation of a warlord to show that it can be a good guy. And he turns this mythical country in West Africa, Gondwana, from a shithole. And all the countries in Africa I'm sad to say are shitholes and they're getting worse because they all live on foreign aid, but that's a whole other conversation. So, he turns it into Singapore on steroids.

 

And here I talk about one of my hobbies, which is going to third-world countries and talking to preferably the military dictator about how they can turn their place around, make it into Singapore on steroids. And that leads me to Antichrist where they think he's a god, and here I get to do my thing on religion, which I think will be fun and will gain me lots of new enemies. And then the last thing after Antichrist, which is number six, is Apocalypse, number seven. So that's a fun series, and they're getting better as they go along. So anyway, everybody get on Amazon and buy your copy. Don't fall behind.

 

Dan Ferris:                 I agree. Everybody get on Amazon and buy your copy. I frankly like, you know when somebody you know says they're going to write a book, it's like you really pray it's going to be good. I've read your other books, your nonfiction work. So, I thought, well I know he can write, but you also got somebody, John Hunt, to help you write these, and the two of you together, whatever you're doing, it works.

 

For example, I mentioned Ayn Rand and you know, Atlas Shrugged is a great book, but it's long and the speech at the end is like 105 pages or so. And I think you work similar ideas in a much more exciting and compelling and readable fashion, and I was really just grateful for that. And everyone who reads these will learn a lot. You'll learn a lot about economics, morality, etc., life. So, yeah, I'm happy to a stump for your books, man. Happy to be a commercial for your books.

 

Doug Casey:               I really appreciate that, Dan. And of course, as Rand believed, and she was correct, there are many things you can say in the form of fiction that you really dare not say in the form of nonfiction. Of course, on the other hand, Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was turned from fiction into nonfiction as it developed. I've always held that science fiction generally is a much, much better predictor of the future than any think tank or NGO or people that do this type of thing. I think that's a factual statement.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Are you aware of the Dean Koontz book that that named, it was years ago, I think it was in the 1980s, and it named a virus coming out of Wuhan, China in the year 2020?

 

Doug Casey:               No. Is that a fact? Wow.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Amazing.

 

Doug Casey:               Well, whoever the publisher is of that volume is going to have to get on the stick and reissue and re-promote it. I'll have to look that up myself.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Absolutely. Yeah.

 

Doug Casey:               You know, this is, this is kind of, mentioning that, there have been, memes circulating about this having been an artificial virus created by the U.S. military or by the Chinese or all kinds of conspiracy theories. I don't know what the facts are. Not sure anybody does. But I think about World War III sometimes because 8 billion chimpanzees on this planet do like to get on opposite sides of the watering hole from each other and start hooting and panting.

 

So, yeah, we're going to have World War III. The question is what nation will be? And I've said for many years that the F22s and F35s and B23s, the replacement for the B2, M1 tanks, this is all crap. These things are about as valuable as cavalry and battleships before World War II. World War III is going to have a very big biological component, for lots of good reasons.

 

You can tailor make it against another racial group, which is likely to be the Chinese at this point, or, well, turnaround is fair play. Depends on who starts it, and you've got plausible deniability, and it's better than a neutron bomb, because bio wars won't destroy all the capital, at least physical capital, although most capital is intellectual today and brought it back.

 

It's low-cost. Anybody can become a major biological warfare player. You don't have to be a superpower. So, I think we can plan our lives around that. So, this Wuhan virus is a shade of things to come, I fear.

 

Dan Ferris:                 I wish I could really say you're absolutely dead wrong, I really do.

 

Doug Casey:               I do too.

 

Dan Ferris:                 I want to be that guy. I want to say, “oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no” and give you a list of reasons.

 

Doug Casey:               I’d be anxious to hear them. I’m not looking forward to that any more than I’m looking forward to the greater depression because as Richard Russell once famously said, in a depression, everybody loses. The winner is just the person that loses the least, and that's no fun.

 

Dan Ferris:                 No, that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Although it really rams home some of the principles that we've talked about for years when telling people what to do with their money. And rule number one, don't lose money. Rule number two, see rule number one. That'll help you, lose the least.

 

Doug Casey:               Well, you know, it's interesting. Being in the newsletter business myself... Well, I'm not really because they're kind of putting me out to pasture because they don't like the things that I say. It doesn't sell newsletters during a bull market. They'll bring me, my publisher, which, I don't know. It's a division of the same people that publish you too.

 

Anyway. It doesn't matter. When it’s real gloom and doom and all that, then they'll ask me to come out and say these things, which is really, because that's when people want to hear about it. But it's really stupid because you can tell with all these trading services and touting high-tech stocks and make 312,263% on some, you know, ridiculously small investment. This is a sign of the bell ringing at the top of the market, and I know you've diagnosed this accurately too. So, this is perverse.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. It makes me wonder like what our business is going to look like in 10 years, if it's still going to be here and if we're still going to be doing similar things. I feel like, I mean, I hate to be self-servingly optimistic, but I feel like there is such a thing as reality, and if you respect it and tell people to do something like, you know, I told him, I said, “You better hold a bunch of cash. You better have cash and gold. You can buy stocks if you want to, but you better have cash and gold.” Because let's face it, even right now, gold is getting hit in dollar terms, admittedly, just in dollar terms, and cash is therefore one of the ultimate diversifiers. But those don't sell newsletters either.

 

Doug Casey:               No, no, no, no. But, as far as the stock market's concerned, actually, I've always been a specialist. I've always liked mining stocks. Why? Because they're the most volatile class of stocks on the planet. I mean, a bull market, I wish there had been about six or seven, five or six. I don't know. I'll have to look at my notes.

 

Since gold was freed up, starting, or broke away starting in the late '60s, and there have been about five or six major gold stock bull markets, and each of them has gone, the group, all stocks, gold stocks have gone up about 1,000%. Some stocks have gone 100 to 1. I personally owned. at least one stock that went 1,000 to 1. Not 100 to 1, 1,000 to 1. So this is the kind of stuff that can happen, not over the course of a lifetime. I'm talking over the course of two or three or four years.

 

But right now, gold stocks are actually very, very cheap, very, very, very cheap because the all-in sustaining costs, the best way of determining costs in a mine are less than $1,000 an ounce for any producing gold mine in the world today, sometimes much less. Meanwhile, the costs are going down because with oil having collapsed to $27 a barrel, probably going lower, another discussion, their costs are dropping even while gold is going to go to the moon finally, because that's the only financial asset that's not simultaneously somebody else's liability, and counterparty risk is going to be gigantic with all the debt in the world, most of which won't be paid, which is yet another thing to talk about for a long time.

 

Dan Ferris:                 It is another thing to talk about for a long time. We got a lot of deep subjects here.

 

Doug Casey:               Oh, we could rap on for several days, actually. But one of the nice things I guess about the world being locked down is all you can do is sit around and talk. We can do our own De Cameron, actually, maybe not as amusing as Boccaccio’s version, but we can do it because everybody's got a lot of time on their hands. No place to go, nothing to do. Just watch the world fall apart.

 

You know, what's happening, Dan, we're seeing the second law of thermodynamics, the law which conquers everything. It's one of the very, very few laws of any type that I believe in. It's the law that says everything winds down. Entropy conquers all, and you're seeing it right before our very eyes, in America and all over the world.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Right. So, the second law of thermodynamics, about the total entropy of a system maintained. Thermodynamic equilibrium.

 

Doug Casey:               Exactly. Unless there's an outside input of new energy to keep the ball rolling as it were. But, not only are there no, well, except for science and technology advances in that, but one of the problems that we have there is that science, while not in all respects, biotech is a special case, and there are others, but most big science today, things like the Hubble telescope and the CERN collider and things like that, these are billion-dollar projects.

 

And if capital is destroyed, you can't afford that kind of science. So even science and technology could slow down. I'm not predicting a new dark age, although anything is possible. But, you know, this is quite an upset that we're looking at.

 

Dan Ferris:                 It is. I can’t predict a new dark age, as you put it, either. I feel like one of the things I learned from an economist named Julian Simon is that sure, there's a new mouth defeat every time someone is born, but there's a new brain that thinks. And the more people, the better in general, which goes counter to what the average economist will tell you.

 

Resources in a local area can be overwhelmed in the short term, but generally speaking, the more people the better. So, I think as long as we as the human race continue to grow, maybe I'm too much of an optimist, the better it ought to get. The worst I can say, the most dire expression I can say, it ought to rather than it definitely will.

 

Doug Casey:               Well, I completely agree with you of course. What you said is absolutely accurate, in my opinion, Dan. There are some circumstances at large though that somewhat mitigate that optimism. It's that all of these new brains that are being born are being miseducated in government schools where they're learning all kinds of destructive things, and you know, we might next have a guaranteed annual income for everybody. Where that capital comes from is a mystery. It’s insoluble.

 

You treat people like children, which is what that's all about, and they'll act like children. That's not good. So, the wrong ideas, teach them to act irresponsibly. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, but basically, you're right. And ultimately, after we get through this, we'll advance to colonizing the planets, and then ultimately, I think other star systems. So, it'll be a story with a happy ending or hopefully not an unhappy ending until the universe itself is subject to the second law and it goes into heat death. But no point talking about that because that becomes a cosmically gloomy conversation and no point in that.

 

Dan Ferris:                 It does. Pretty sure I won't be around for that one. You know, unless who knows? Who knows what some biotech might be working on right now and I will be around for that, I don't know. I’m not sure I want to be.

 

Doug Casey:               Listen, I've said for years that if we can hold on another – because I'm a few years older than you are, but if I can hold on in my case I think another 20 years – there's a sporting chance that I can trade my body in for – I’ll take Bruce Jenner’s just before he won the decathlon. That would do, and it may be technologically possible if Ray Kurzweil is right about the singularity, and I think he is actually.

 

Dan Ferris:                 You know, I think we might differ there. I don't know if the machines will sort of take over, if you will. I don't know if that's a fair way to put it. There's something chaotic and unpredictable and wonderful. Maybe I'm being too religious or otherwise kind of dreamy here, but I think there's something chaotic and unpredictable and wonderful about this squishy, biological computer between my ears, and I don't think we'll ever build a machine that will completely overtake it.

 

And I'm not talking about my brain, of course. I'm sure there'll be a machine that will do better than Dan Ferris, but you know, just in general, between the machines and humanity, I think humanity will always kind of have the upper hand.

 

Doug Casey:               Well, I hope so. We've all seen the Terminator. I don’t know. This is why reality is actually becoming less mellow as everything speeds up, which in fact, it is actually. This Moore's Law has been in existence, in my opinion, not just since the '50s or when Moore formulated it, but for actually a couple hundred thousand years. Growing slowly, slowly at first, but exponentially. And now we've passed the knee and it's going obviously hyperbolic.

 

But, listen, I'm a solipsist, basically, Dan and a solipsist, one variety, many varieties of it, believes that absolutely anything is possible. Anything that you imagine to be possible can be possible. In other words, it's like in that movie, The Matrix, which was a great movie incidentally, where the whole world is basically a hologram, a creation of your own mind. So, I think anything's possible.

 

Maybe there's an infinite number of alternate universes and we can somehow transfer over to another one if things go bad on this little ball of dirt circulating this obscure star in an obscure galaxy, of which there are hundreds of billions of the universe. There might be an infinite number of universes. I try not to take anything seriously. You know, when you look at it in these terms, you can't take anything seriously except paying the rent next week.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Of course. There you go. That's well put. And that brings us kind of close to the end of our time here, Doug, I have a stock question that I like to ask all our guests and I'm really, really super curious to see how you might answer it. And that is this: If you could leave our listeners with just one thought, and it's usually something about finance, because that's usually the topic, but in your case, whatever you feel like, if I could ask you to leave them with one thought, what might that be?

 

Doug Casey:               Well, you've kind of taken me by surprise here, and we've already covered the waterfront pretty much.

 

Dan Ferris:                 We have.

 

Doug Casey:               Hmm. Let me say this. I'll say the situation is hopeless, but it's not serious. And in that context, all you can do is keep your pecker hard and your powder dry and the world will turn.

 

Dan Ferris:                 That is perhaps the single best answer to that question than I ever heard, and it doesn't surprise me, Doug, that it came from you. Thank you for that. Brilliant.

 

Doug Casey:               I was just going to say, I'm so sorry that it's been years since we've spoken because it's a pleasure chatting with you.

 

Dan Ferris:                 And you as well, Doug. It's been way too long and hopefully we'll get past all this business that's going on in the world, or not, and we'll see each other anyway and talk again soon.

 

Doug Casey:               And the invitation is always open to come down here and hang out on the Estancia and we've got plenty of cows and chickens and pigs and all kinds of stuff here, so you'll be well-fed anyway.

 

Dan Ferris:                 Sounds wonderful. I am an idiot if I don't take you up on that. All right, Doug, thanks a lot and great talking with you and I hope we'll talk again real soon.

 

Doug Casey:               OK, Dan. Super. Thanks.

 

Dan Ferris:                 All right, bye-bye for now. OK. We've got a lot of stuff in the mail bag and I'm going to get through each one. There's a lot of longer ones, and I'm not gonna be able to read those unfortunately. I want to get to as many as possible today as quickly as possible. So, write into [email protected] with your comments and questions and politely-worded criticisms and suggestions on how to get through this crisis that we're all in, and I will promise you, I will read every single one of them and I will respond to as many as possible.

 

First one today is from Mark S. Hi, Mark. Good to see you're writing in. We exchange thoughts on Twitter frequently. And so, Mark's basic message here is he says, “Gold is a relatively new holding for me and I've been inspired to hold it from you and other editors at Stansberry Research. I've been wondering how it will behave in a market panic like we're having. Interesting that at first it went up when the stock market was down, but now it seems to be just going down with everything else. Although admittedly gold is still up year to date as I write this. Thanks for continuing to express confidence in the metal that eventually it will turn around.”

 

He says, “Also, I'm probably guilty of thinking the virus will not be as bad as the worst-case projections, but it's good to hear a voice of reason to remind me that maybe I could be wrong. Keep calm and carry on, I guess, Mark S.”

 

I have nothing to add to that except this. I think we're still in this liquidation phase with gold, and I absolutely do not believe that lasts. Like I said, the go-to move of government will be to weaken the currency. It is guaranteed to happen, and I think gold really shines in that environment.

 

Next one is from Veneta G. and Veneta G. says, “Is it possible to totally lose everything you have in both types of funds? In other words, can it go down to zero?” Now, Veneta, I don't know what you're talking about here. I'm going to take a wild guess that you mean stocks and bonds. Technically speaking, yes. Will it happen? Your guess is as good as mine. I suspect not. That's why I'm counseling plenty of cash and the use of trailing stops. We started using trailing stop in Extreme Value within just the past year and I think it turned out well and is turning out well.

 

Robert H. says, “So, what has happened to the absolute biggest gain in stocks? Meltdown and drained out? Not such a good call. Robert H.” Robert, you're not talking about me. I didn't predict any such thing. You must be talking about somebody else.

 

Hoyt says, “Is it necessary to throw in political commentary about the U.S. response to the Wuhan coronavirus? Stick to the data rather than unsubstantiated wild predictions. Italy is not the USA. One could regard the recent market crash as an incredible buying opportunity.”

 

Hoyt, yeah, if you think it's a buying opportunity, you do you, man. I'm not there yet, and I think you're right. Italy is not the USA. I was wrong on the call for more government. I've covered that and I freely admit that I went over the line there. But you know, effectively we better be all isolating ourselves or this thing will continue to spread, period.

 

And then Joanne R. express similar thoughts. She says,
"Seriously, I think coronavirus is mostly concerned for 80-90-year-olds with some risk for 70-80. The media is blowing it all out of proportion from the medical reviews I've read. You are helping them. Four major research labs say it's an engineered virus, China with help from Russia, then Russia torpedoes our oil prices. Iran is mad. They could have something to do with it, and Hong Kong is now quiet, so China doesn't care who they kill."

 

I'm not sure what all that means exactly, but you are telling me, and you say we are not underreacting, we are overreacting. The deaths are way under influenza each year, Joanne R. says. And I think the comparison to influenza is completely off the mark. We know about influenza. You can get an influenza shot for God's sake. People are still getting on cruise ships with this coronavirus. It is between, I don’t know, I've seen 10 and 50 times more lethal than the flu, OK? Period. Nothing else need to be said. There's your data from the other guy, from Hoyt. I think it was.

 

OK, so Millie H. says, “Dan, you sound like a liberal leftist Democrat politicizing the coronavirus.” I hope not. I don't think I do. Robert H. says, “So the bull market is over, but Steve Sjuggerud says the Melt Up will resume in some number of months. That must mean the resumption of the Melt Up will be a new bull market. Is that how you see it?” Not exactly, Robert. I think we're in a bear market that could go on for longer than anyone currently understands.

 

There are other e-mails like all of the ones I've read so far, so I can't read them all. Rocco asks, “Why did you not comment on the recent market crash?” Not sure what you mean, Rocco. We've been all over this. I'm not really sure what you mean, but it's hilarious.

 

Paul M. is one of the people who, he wrote a really wonderful, eloquent e-mail and he called me out on this thing and I'll just read the one little section he says, he says, “I now have heard several Stansberry associates say that this latest pandemic has been handled poorly by the United States government. I'm at a loss as why investment advisors say this. Isn’t it the common belief amongst investment pros that government should try to stay out of the market in most situations? I've heard at Stansberry that the government has been slow to react to the latest crisis and they need to have more corona testing in place."

 

And then he goes on to raise, you know, the objections that I've already responded to. You're spot-on, Paul. Totally agree. I was wrong there.

 

And then we have a politely-worded criticism from Daniel G. who complained that the last podcast was too short. I will do my best to make them longer, Daniel. You're on, buddy. I'm taking you up on it.

 

Let's see. We got a lot of things here. I think that's about it. Everything else is pretty much in the vein of everything I've already read, and one guy says he's sick and tired of reading our promotional e-mails and you know, you're not the first person to say that. I am, too. We all are. Everyone is. Somehow, I think our business is going to change quite a bit over the next few months.

 

But you know, for now we're doing everything we can do. We held a special event earlier this week and we just kind of got on the horn with each other. There were four of us on the call, or actually there were about, I think there were six or seven of us. There was a bunch of us, myself, Steve Sjuggerud, David Eifrig, Mike DeBiase, Greg Diamond, Brett Aitken, Austin Root.

 

I think that's everybody, maybe, I want to say who was on the call. And we were just talking. We weren't trying to sell anything. So, I think you're going to see a lot more of that, and you should. You have a right to expect that, and you will hear it from me and you will hear it from others at Stansberry.

 

Hey, look man, look, my 401(k) has been obliterated, too. I'm right next to you. I've got stock funds in my 401(k). I just put my wife's 401(k) into – she didn't have any gold in there and I put it into, I think, one of the publicly traded gold ETFs. And you know, those things haven't behaved the way we wanted them to. So, we're all in the same boat and we are here for our listeners and our readers.

 

So that's another episode of the Stansberry Investment Hour. It's my privilege to come to you this week and every week. Go to www.investorhour.com. You can listen to every single episode we've ever done. You can get a transcript for every episode we've ever done. Sometimes it takes a few days for the transcript to arrive for the latest episode. You just click on the episode, scroll all the way down, and that's where the transcript will be when it arrives.

 

Go to iTunes, subscribe to Stansberry Investor Hour on iTunes and give us a like, and that like will push us up in the rankings and it’ll attract more like-minded folks like yourself to write in and ask me lots of good questions and send me lots of thoughtful, politely worded criticisms like we heard today. Thank you very much.

 

Tough times, man. I'm really at a loss half the time for what to say to you, but you know what? I'm going to keep reading and thinking and looking at what's happening, and we're going to do our very best for you here at the podcast and at Stansberry. With that, I bid you adieu for this week and I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye for now.

 

Announcer:                 Thank you for listening to the Stansberry Investor Hour. To access today's notes and receive notice of upcoming episodes, go to investorhour.com and enter your email. Have a question for Dan? Send him an e-mail at [email protected].

 

                                    This broadcast is provided for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment advice. Trading stocks and all other financial instruments involves risk. You should not make any investment decision based solely on what you hear. Stansberry Investor Hour is produced by Stansberry Research and is copyrighted by the Stansberry Radio Network.

 

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