Saturday, May 16, 2009

The Can't-Miss Short from Stocks Market of 2010

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza,
I opened the window,
And in-flew-enza.

-American Skipping Rhyme circa 1918, the year of the great pandemic.

Deadly and as dangerous as it may be, the fear of swine flu is spreading at a much faster rate than the virus itself. 

In fact, in little less than a week, the world has become gripped with that fear. Talk of a future pandemic has left the especially nervous wondering whether or not it is safe to head outside.

Meanwhile, I think it's safe to say Howard Hughes would be having a conniption fit right about now if he were alive today. As for another famous mysophobe Howie Mandel, I suppose his nights have been more sleepless lately too.

And while I don't mean to make light of either mysophobia or the seriousness of the "H1N1 virus," I feel as though I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that the first influenza pandemic was recorded in 1580.

Since then influenza pandemics have occurred nearly every 10 to 30 years.

On top of that, it is also worth noting the garden variety influenza that occurs every year kills 30,000 people in the U.S. without inciting a panic, or any help from the swine for that matter. Occasionally, nature strikes back.

That's why, when it comes to betting big on swine flu hot stocks 2010 like Novavax (NVAX) and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc., (BCRX) the only thing likely to suffer a serious setback is your portfolio.

In fact, that is what  our own Brian Hicks warned on Tuesday when he decided to take bets in the opposite direction.

"I Opened the Door and In- Flew-Enza"

Of course, that doesn't mean the fear engendered by this latest bit of swine flu hasn't been earned. Pandemics can and do occur, with the Spanish Flu of 1918 taking top honors as the most infamous. 

Amazingly, this particularly virulent strain killed some 20 to 40 million people worldwide before ending in 1920. Scary stuff.

However, a much better comparison for the swine flu would probably be the SARS pandemic of a just few years ago. And as bad as it was, it came nowhere close to what happened 90 years ago with the Spanish Flu.

SARS caused "only" 774 deaths worldwide before rapidly coming to an end just 4 months later. Of course, where the swine goes from here is anybody's guess.

Even still, if there is one thing we have learned about any of these episodes it's that the fear of contracting these viruses has a much deeper impact on the economy, since those same fears can dramatically alter consumer behavior.

Take SARS for instance. . .

According to the Asian Development Bank, the scare surrounding it cost over $18 billion in 2003, slicing 0.6% off the Asian GDP. Tourism was hit particularly hard, suffering through declines of nearly 35% as SARS fears seriously restricted travel.

The MCSI emerging Asia-ex-Japan index plummeted by nearly 14% in three months as a result, thanks largely to SARS fears.

Swine Flu hot Stocks to buy: Time to Short Mexico

For investors that means, aside from making risky bets on companies with no earnings, the way to play the swine flu may be to go short the economy of its epicenter — which in this case is Mexico.

In fact, already reeling from falling oil prices and a weak tourist season, UBS Investment Research downgraded Mexico this morning from "top pick" to underweight because of its rapid climb the past seven weeks.

Swine flu, naturally, has only added to those problems, as wide swathes of the troubled nation have been idled by the outbreak.

As a result, economic activity in Mexico has slowed markedly as retail shoppers stay home to avoid crowds and foreign tourists simply don't make the trip. That has only pushed Mexico one step closer to the brink as it tries to cope with the global financial crisis and increasing drug cartel violence.

Of course, this disruption in economic activity in Mexico City and the State of Mexico — the two most affected areas — could significantly impact second-quarter GDP growth since they account for 30% of the country's economy.

So, instead of going long healthcare hot stocks for 2010 amid the swine flu fears, the stock to keep an eye on here is the iShares MSCI Mexico ETF (EWW:NYSE).

Because, given what happened in Asia in the spring of 2003, shorting EEW is the safer way to profit from these fears.

Besides, as my old pal Chris Nelder wrote a few months ago, the swine flu is just the tip of the iceberg south of the border. Mexico's troubles are just getting started.

Top Stocks Report: Alzheimer’s Cure and the Collapse of Old Media

Florida's perfect subtropical winter is beginning to fade, unfortunately. On the way are days like ovens and hurricanes from the coast of Africa. Ah, well.

I've just returned home from Baltimore, where I met with some of Agora Financial's leading lights. I felt especially privileged to do so because many other financial organizations have been holding emergency investor conferences recently. Most are playing catch-up to Agora Financial, which nailed the current crisis.

Top Stocks For 2010

The wall of denial in the financial industry regarding the debt has been unbreachable for years. For the most part, people like Agora Financial's Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin have been ignored by the mainstream. Most analysts, unfortunately, pretended that banking and money policies didn't matter.

That's all changed now. So many major banking institutions are functional zombies that those who warned about macroeconomics are no longer brushed off as reactionary paranoids. Short-term portfolio values have gone down with the banks. Analysts who believed that irresponsible government would have no impact on their portfolios are now revealed for the fools they were. Personally, by the way, I began warning about government meddling in the banking system in the mid-'80s in my columns for USA Today and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the current administration's bailout is a cure worse than the disease. The Bush deficits, rightly criticized by Democrats just a few years ago, have been quadrupled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, they'll fall to triple the size of the Bush deficits in 10 years. This is a larger problem than the subprime mortgage meltdown.

I was pleased to see that the eminent futurist Juan Enriquez of the Harvard Business School "gets it." The impact of the radical increase in spending will be to move the entitlement crisis much, much closer to the present. He predicts the date of meltdown as 2017.

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Fortunately, Dr. Enriquez sees an avenue of escape, as I do. He calls it the "reboot," but he is really just talking about the transformational technologies I've been telling you about. These technologies, ranging from cellular engineering to robotics, have the potential to save our collective butts and make you rich enough to buy that private island you've had your eye on.

Prior to the bailout, I was confident that the reboot would come well before entitlements consumed our entire budget, precipitating an intergenerational political crisis. Now, however, it's clear that we're in a race. If transformational technologies are brought to market quickly enough, huge components of our current budget will simply disappear.

Take, for example, just one biotech example: Alzheimer's disease. Estimates are that AD costs the U.S. at least $100 billion annually. Throw in cures for late-stage renal failure and cancers, along with longer productive life spans, and we'll be in the black again.

Speaking of Alzheimer's, Dr. Mark A. Smith is, in my opinion, the foremost authority on AD today. A renowned research scientist from Leicester, England, he is executive director of the esteemed American Aging Association. He is also the editor-in-chief of the critically important Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

More importantly, he saw and warned 20 years ago that Big Pharma's focus on amyloids as the cause of AD was wrong. Today, we know that the billions of dollars spent trying to treat amyloid plaque buildup in the brain have been spent largely vain. Now proven right, Smith has joined forces with Anavex. He told me, in fact, that Anavex appears to be the only company that is pursuing the correct path to curing AD, and recent tests have borne out that statement.

Top Stocks of 2010

Turning our attention to communications, we see that Apple has allowed Skype to offer an iPhone app. This means that iPhone users can make free phone calls from any Wi-Fi hot spot.

The iPhone is by no means the first phone to utilize Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). More sophisticated phones have had the capability for years. When a technology reaches the iPhone, however, it has gone mainstream.
 
So why are we still paying phone companies for phone calls? To a 3G phone with a mobile Internet connect, a phone call is the same as a picture of Angelina Jolie or a forwarded e-mail joke. It's the Web connection that provides the value, not the dialing technology.

VoIP is basically software, so it offers options that old-style hardware switching simply cannot. It is also free beyond basic connections charges. There are no long-distance or country charges on the Web.

The phone companies, of course, have been fighting VoIP tooth and nail. Their business model is obsolete and they know it. Only Apple's massive clout has allowed this small and long-delayed step forward. Nevertheless, iPhone users are already learning how to use the feature well. The Skype app transitions between Wi-Fi and AT&T almost seamlessly.

Old-school phone companies are, therefore, doomed. Only those that become full-blown ISPs will survive. If the past is any indication, current phone companies will resist the inevitable for so long that upstart ISPs and technologies will leapfrog the dinosaurs.

Top Stocks to Buy

Speaking of dinosaurs, newspapers continue to collapse as I predicted. Bankruptcies have hit Philadelphia papers as well as the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News shut down and Hearst has turned the Seattle Post Intelligencer into a smallish Internet site. The San Francisco Chronicle is in a death spiral and the Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for Chapter 11. The Miami Herald and the Boston Globe are teetering.

I suppose I ought to have more sympathy for those who work at those papers. In truth, however, I welcome their collapse. I left policy research, in fact, to help Jim Barksdale and the Netscape crew destroy the old media monopoly on information dissemination.

The mainstream media has done enormous damage by aligning itself with only one side of the political debate. On the one hand, journalists who are unable to solve even basic mathematical equations gave inordinate coverage to climate change hysterics.

Top Stocks 2010

On the other hand, they refused even to cover myriad warnings that Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking our financial institutions over a cliff. It's conceivable that if not for that tribal media bias, we wouldn't be in the shape we are in now.

Incidentally, I would be just as opposed to an incestuous monolithic media run by the right. It wasn't, however, and the creative destruction of old media is a necessary part of our economic recovery. No matter what your political affiliation as old institutions fall, new ones will arise — making fortunes for those who know they're coming.

They are not, however, always obvious. The collapse of newspapers is accelerating the trend toward online news sources. If owners of these decrepit businesses had been thinking, they would have leapt at The Kindle when it emerged. The New York Times, for example, could cut its delivery costs in half by abandoning paper and giving all subscribers new Kindles.

Kindles are only the tip of the convergence iceberg, though. The next generation of mobile devices will combine the features of Kindle, netbook, iPhone and more. We already own several companies that hold key patents in this media evolution. We'll be adding more in the future.

Top Stocks Report: Alzheimer’s Cure and the Collapse of Old Media

Florida's perfect subtropical winter is beginning to fade, unfortunately. On the way are days like ovens and hurricanes from the coast of Africa. Ah, well.

I've just returned home from Baltimore, where I met with some of Agora Financial's leading lights. I felt especially privileged to do so because many other financial organizations have been holding emergency investor conferences recently. Most are playing catch-up to Agora Financial, which nailed the current crisis.

Top Stocks For 2010

The wall of denial in the financial industry regarding the debt has been unbreachable for years. For the most part, people like Agora Financial's Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin have been ignored by the mainstream. Most analysts, unfortunately, pretended that banking and money policies didn't matter.

That's all changed now. So many major banking institutions are functional zombies that those who warned about macroeconomics are no longer brushed off as reactionary paranoids. Short-term portfolio values have gone down with the banks. Analysts who believed that irresponsible government would have no impact on their portfolios are now revealed for the fools they were. Personally, by the way, I began warning about government meddling in the banking system in the mid-'80s in my columns for USA Today and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the current administration's bailout is a cure worse than the disease. The Bush deficits, rightly criticized by Democrats just a few years ago, have been quadrupled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, they'll fall to triple the size of the Bush deficits in 10 years. This is a larger problem than the subprime mortgage meltdown.

I was pleased to see that the eminent futurist Juan Enriquez of the Harvard Business School "gets it." The impact of the radical increase in spending will be to move the entitlement crisis much, much closer to the present. He predicts the date of meltdown as 2017.

Top Stocks Investment

Fortunately, Dr. Enriquez sees an avenue of escape, as I do. He calls it the "reboot," but he is really just talking about the transformational technologies I've been telling you about. These technologies, ranging from cellular engineering to robotics, have the potential to save our collective butts and make you rich enough to buy that private island you've had your eye on.

Prior to the bailout, I was confident that the reboot would come well before entitlements consumed our entire budget, precipitating an intergenerational political crisis. Now, however, it's clear that we're in a race. If transformational technologies are brought to market quickly enough, huge components of our current budget will simply disappear.

Take, for example, just one biotech example: Alzheimer's disease. Estimates are that AD costs the U.S. at least $100 billion annually. Throw in cures for late-stage renal failure and cancers, along with longer productive life spans, and we'll be in the black again.

Speaking of Alzheimer's, Dr. Mark A. Smith is, in my opinion, the foremost authority on AD today. A renowned research scientist from Leicester, England, he is executive director of the esteemed American Aging Association. He is also the editor-in-chief of the critically important Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

More importantly, he saw and warned 20 years ago that Big Pharma's focus on amyloids as the cause of AD was wrong. Today, we know that the billions of dollars spent trying to treat amyloid plaque buildup in the brain have been spent largely vain. Now proven right, Smith has joined forces with Anavex. He told me, in fact, that Anavex appears to be the only company that is pursuing the correct path to curing AD, and recent tests have borne out that statement.

Top Stocks of 2010

Turning our attention to communications, we see that Apple has allowed Skype to offer an iPhone app. This means that iPhone users can make free phone calls from any Wi-Fi hot spot.

The iPhone is by no means the first phone to utilize Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). More sophisticated phones have had the capability for years. When a technology reaches the iPhone, however, it has gone mainstream.
 
So why are we still paying phone companies for phone calls? To a 3G phone with a mobile Internet connect, a phone call is the same as a picture of Angelina Jolie or a forwarded e-mail joke. It's the Web connection that provides the value, not the dialing technology.

VoIP is basically software, so it offers options that old-style hardware switching simply cannot. It is also free beyond basic connections charges. There are no long-distance or country charges on the Web.

The phone companies, of course, have been fighting VoIP tooth and nail. Their business model is obsolete and they know it. Only Apple's massive clout has allowed this small and long-delayed step forward. Nevertheless, iPhone users are already learning how to use the feature well. The Skype app transitions between Wi-Fi and AT&T almost seamlessly.

Old-school phone companies are, therefore, doomed. Only those that become full-blown ISPs will survive. If the past is any indication, current phone companies will resist the inevitable for so long that upstart ISPs and technologies will leapfrog the dinosaurs.

Top Stocks to Buy

Speaking of dinosaurs, newspapers continue to collapse as I predicted. Bankruptcies have hit Philadelphia papers as well as the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News shut down and Hearst has turned the Seattle Post Intelligencer into a smallish Internet site. The San Francisco Chronicle is in a death spiral and the Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for Chapter 11. The Miami Herald and the Boston Globe are teetering.

I suppose I ought to have more sympathy for those who work at those papers. In truth, however, I welcome their collapse. I left policy research, in fact, to help Jim Barksdale and the Netscape crew destroy the old media monopoly on information dissemination.

The mainstream media has done enormous damage by aligning itself with only one side of the political debate. On the one hand, journalists who are unable to solve even basic mathematical equations gave inordinate coverage to climate change hysterics.

Top Stocks 2010

On the other hand, they refused even to cover myriad warnings that Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking our financial institutions over a cliff. It's conceivable that if not for that tribal media bias, we wouldn't be in the shape we are in now.

Incidentally, I would be just as opposed to an incestuous monolithic media run by the right. It wasn't, however, and the creative destruction of old media is a necessary part of our economic recovery. No matter what your political affiliation as old institutions fall, new ones will arise — making fortunes for those who know they're coming.

They are not, however, always obvious. The collapse of newspapers is accelerating the trend toward online news sources. If owners of these decrepit businesses had been thinking, they would have leapt at The Kindle when it emerged. The New York Times, for example, could cut its delivery costs in half by abandoning paper and giving all subscribers new Kindles.

Kindles are only the tip of the convergence iceberg, though. The next generation of mobile devices will combine the features of Kindle, netbook, iPhone and more. We already own several companies that hold key patents in this media evolution. We'll be adding more in the future.

Friday, May 15, 2009

The Direction of Energy Policy

The other day I had lunch with a "brain trust," of sorts. Participants included a retired executive from an aerospace company. This guy helped design and build many of the reconnaissance satellites that the U.S. has launched. There was a senior executive from a large steel company. There was a venture capitalist who made his first $500 million in the software industry, and who now has much of that wealth spread around in biotech and nanotech startups. There was a former senior political appointee who worked in the Treasury Department. And then there was me.

"Climate Change" Driving Policy Now

According to the satellite builder, the dominant elements of the political and media culture are "completely in the tank" when it comes to believing in the dangers of "climate change." It's not as if climate change is demonstrably true, he pointed out. There are valid scientific data from both sides of the climate change issue, and many valid data points in between. But according to the aerospace executive — some of whose satellites were built to track climate change — "For at least ten years, if you have not been promoting the dangers of climate change then you have not been receiving government grants. So the research community is following the money."

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Thus the research literature is coming out strongly in favor of "doing something" about climate change. And policy-makers are using this research literature to justify doing what they've wanted all along, which is change the world as we know it. As a class, the activists want to change the world into something else.

"Pathological Hatred" of Carbon-Based Fuels

According to the steel executive, the climate change issue has spurred what amounts to "a pathological hatred" of carbon-based energy systems. "It doesn't have to make practical sense," says this source. "It doesn't even have to work with economics. It just has to support a policy to utterly transform the nation's energy system. The people making policy now have a crusader's mentality. 'The past is trash,' is how many of the new policy makers view our world. So the new policy makers want to promote radical change in energy policy. They're going to jam it down the throat of the economy."

According to the steel executive, the steel industry expects to see inflation-adjusted, baseline energy prices triple or quadruple within ten years. "Whether the government taxes carbon-based energy at the source, or whether they pass 'cap-and-trade' legislation, it's going to cost us. So we'll pay. Of course, we'll pass along the new costs to the steel buyers. If demand goes down, we'll close facilities. Then the TV cameras will show up at the plant gates to watch us shut the doors and click the padlocks. And we'll get called bad names by the people who never much liked us in the first place."

Can the Economy Support What the Government Wants to Do?

The former Treasury official added that a new "policy paradigm" has yet to form in Washington DC. "It's like during the Cold War, there was a bi-partisan consensus to confront and contain the Soviet Union. It was expensive, but we agreed to do it. We made the national sacrifice. Well, that foreign policy consensus ended when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR came down." The groupthink in the early 1990s was that another kind of broad consensus had to take the place of the confrontation with the Soviets. And by its very nature, that consensus was fragile.

"Let me back up," said the former Treasury official. "Confronting the Soviet Union gave the U.S. an excuse to continue with Franklin Roosevelt's Depression Era, New Deal, big government for 45 years after World War II. But after the USSR fell? Why did we still need big government? To run a modern welfare state? That was the justification. Remember the talk about that 'Peace Dividend?' People were drooling over the idea of cutting the military budget and paying for more and better social welfare through more big government."

"So what happened?" asked the Treasury guy. "Some people thought they were going to run a big government welfare state using modern monetary theory. They convinced themselves that we could do that. They didn't understand the long term problem."

What was the long-term problem? "The welfare state was never going to last. Especially because the nation collectively wanted it to support a rank, consumerist culture that could not earn its keep within the world economy. We imported, imported, imported. And we paid for it with cheap dollars. After the U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, the fundamentals of the American productive economy could never support what the nation was trying to do. We'll look back eventually and realize it was delusional policy-making. All we did was run down the economy for a couple of generations. It finally collapsed in 2008."

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Whatever "post-USSR consensus" existed in the U.S. in the 1990s shattered during the 2000s. "People went nuts because of the Bush Administration," said the Treasury official. "The white-bread explanation — call it 'Decline and Fall for Dummies' — was that it was all about the evil George Bush and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well, Bush and the wars were visible, so that's what people blamed. The real problem for the U.S. was that the whole foundation for post-war American society, economy and governance was caving in under our feet. The timbers were rotten."

The Barn Burned Down — Did Anyone Notice?

According to the Treasury man, the U.S. economy is now confronted by "block obsolescence" of many of the economic and political assumptions with which we've lived for decades, since World War II. "Chrysler isn't the only big institution that's bankrupt. We ought to burn down a few universities, while we're at it," he added.

And he noted that Republicans and Democrats both fed at the trough while the going was good. "But while the politicians had their heads buried in the trough for all those years," he said, "they didn't notice that the barn was burning down around them."

The Treasury-man continued: "Look at the destruction of former industrial titans like General Motors, and with GM the annihilation of much of the rest of the automobile industry. Who's going to invent whatever will take its place? We used to say that 40% of the U.S. economy was based on the auto industry, directly or indirectly. Are we ever going to see 40% of the U.S. economy based on putting solar panels on roofs, or tuning the gearboxes of windmills?"

"Free-Traded" to the Poorhouse — The Best Stocks To Buy

The former Treasury official looked at the ongoing economic crash. He placed it within the context of the long-term decline in U.S. manufacturing. "As a society," he said, "we've made a lot of very bad choices of both moral philosophy and economic policy. Those bad choices have brought us to the edge of the end. We've spent, borrowed and 'free-traded' ourselves to the poorhouse. Now the Chinese own us."

Helping Embryonic Industry — Creating a Success Story

The venture capitalist chimed in with some thoughts. "If the feds are going to spend billions on stimulus, then they ought to direct some of that money to help fund promising research. How about some money to pay for every fossil-fuel power plant in the country to siphon off some of its CO2? Then run the CO2 through a facility to grow algae to make biofuels."

"We'd be killing about four birds with one stone," explained the venture capitalist. "We'd be taking down CO2 emissions. Not much, maybe, but some. We'd be helping an embryonic industry that can be competitive in coming years. Heck, turning algae into fuel is easy. The basic part is just high school chemistry. So we'd be creating a new supply source for the liquid fuels industry. And we'd be able to point to at least one success story where people can agree that we all did something right."

Then the venture capitalist added that one of his startups is "working on coal-eating bugs." He explained that "There's a lot of coal buried so deep, or under other conditions that we can't mine it. That coal will never get out. So why not put bugs down in the deep seams, and let them eat the coal? Then we can harvest the gases that come out the back end of the bugs, and use that as feedstock for other things."

"Well, What Do YOU Think?"

At one point, one of the lunch participants turned to the silent person at the table, who was busy taking it all in and making a few discrete notes. Then came the dreaded question, "Well Byron, what do YOU think?"

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I focused my comments on geothermal development. I pointed out that for all the anti-carbon sentiment out there, the most under-appreciated, "clean and green" energy source is geothermal. There appears to be strong support for geothermal development via tax incentives and other, policy-based standards. Combine this with the growing social focus on clean, renewable energy sources.

Right now, 24 states have renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for electricity production. And Congress is leaning towards setting a national standard of 20% to 25% RPS power production by 2025. We're at the point where a utility like California's Pacific Gas and Electric is so desperate for "clean" energy that they're contracting with a privately-owned company to build a satellite to harvest solar energy from space, and "beam" it back to earth.

The companies that are out there now are in relatively advanced stages of developments. The big problem is that the follow-on pipeline is almost empty. The problem has been lack of access to capital for the past year or so. In other words, lack of capital is the strongest headwind to progress. If the funding delays can break down, then we'll see decreased complexity for funding, and project schedules moving ahead.

That's all for now

The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold

Since the Madoff scandal broke last year, the press has been filled with names and pictures of his victims. The front page of The San Diego Union Tribune on March 13 showed a large photo of a woman joyfully cheering. The caption read: "Miriam Siegman of New York, who said she lost her retirement money with Bernard Madoff, celebrated yesterday upon leaving a Manhattan courthouse, where Madoff was ordered jailed."

We celebrate with the victims when a swindler like Madoff is brought to justice. Yet there is a vastly larger fraud being perpetrated on all Americans, and it's unlikely that any of the perpetrators will ever be jailed for their crime.

Bernard Madoff defrauded a few hundred clients of some $65 billion. Yet his scam pales next to the swindle being perpetrated at this moment on hundreds of millions of Americans who have been told they have accumulated more than $40 trillion in future retirement benefits.
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This scam is the Social Security system.

Those who conceived the Social Security swindle promised that it would end the plight of the aged and disabled by guaranteeing them "security" - a steady income in disability and old age. It was promoted as a life raft that would carry everyone safely through to the end of his or her days.

Today, 74 years later, Americans continue to be told that regardless of what happens to the economy, the government will never renege on this promise. As the population has aged, Social Security beneficiaries have become the biggest political lobby in America. To get elected, any political candidate must participate in the swindle. Both as a candidate and now as President, Barack Obama has consistently maintained that the Social Security program's financing is basically sound, and can be assured far into the future. He's lying.

I became aware of the technique of the fraud in 1975 when Arthur Andersen & Company published a lengthy report titled "Sound Financial Reporting in the Public Sector." It disclosed both the magnitude of the crime, and the simple accounting subterfuge used to disguise the fraud.

The report pointed out that the government keeps its books using the "cash basis" method of accounting rather than the "accrual basis." The cash basis is what you use to balance your checkbook. If you deposit $50,000 in your account for the year and write $49,000 in checks to cover your expenses, your checkbook will show a $1,000 surplus for the year.

However, this does not tell the true story. If you took a vacation in December and ran up $5,000 on your credit card, but the payment didn't come due until the following year, your true expenses for the year were $55,000. You actually ran a $4,000 deficit which didn't show up in your checkbook. Every rational business owner knows that to track the true condition of the business he must add in the cost of purchases he made but must pay for in future years. Sound businesses always use the accrual method of accounting.

In its 1975 report, Arthur Andersen reviewed the U.S. federal budgets for fiscal years ending 1973 and 1974, and came up with shocking figures. Using the cash basis of accounting, the government had reported federal deficits of $14.3 billion for 1973 and $3.5 billion for 1974.

Recalculated according to the accrual method and including future Social Security payments and government pensions, the true 1973 deficit jumped from $14.3 billion to a staggering $86.6 billion. The 1974 budget was even worse, jumping from $3.5 billion to just over $95 billion. The government underreported its deficits by more than $160 billion in a two-year period.
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Peter G. Petersen, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, began sounding the alarm on this looming financial catastrophe more than a decade ago. In his 1996 book, Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America and the World, he pointed out that if federal law required Congress to fund Social Security the way private pensions must be funded, the annual federal deficit in 1996 would have instantly risen by some $675 billion. Add in lavish and unfunded federal-employee pensions and the deficit would have risen by $800 billion. Add in Medicare and it would have risen by more than $1 trillion.

The cash and accrual deficits that Arthur Anderson discussed in his 1975 report seem trivial compared to last year's federal deficit of $454 billion, and especially compared to this year's projected deficit of $1.8 trillion. Decade after decade the total of the swindle has been inexorably rising, until today the estimated shortfall owed Americans is an incredible $40 trillion. Nor has it stopped. The total continues to rise at a rate of $2 to $3 trillion per year.

Bernie Madoff was able to get away with his fraud by using the same technique as Charles Ponzi did in the 1920s. He sold fictitious securities, promised a high return, and paid off old investors out of monies taken in from new investors. It collapsed when new victims could no longer be found to support withdrawals from old victims.

The Social Security swindle has worked exactly the same way. It receives "contributions" in the form of FICA taxes, pretends to place those funds in trust, and pays benefits to current retirees out of taxes collected from current workers. Just as in the case of Madoff, there is no trust, there is no income to the non-existent trust, and the payments are simply made from current collections. Madoff's scheme lasted 20 years before collapsing. The Social Security swindle is now in its 74th year...the end is near.

It's clear that Social Security cannot fulfill its promises to future retirees, but the casualties will not be limited to those victims, like Miriam Siegman, who find there is no life raft to carry them safely through retirement. In order to continue the fraud, politicians have no alternative except to issue more promises. Retirement checks will come, but they will be financed by more federal borrowing. Cash basis deficits will rise. Treasury IOUs will be converted by the Federal Reserve into dollars. As the monetary inflation morphs into price inflation, the victim list will swell to include everyone who doesn't see it coming.

Last year, former Comptroller of the Currency, David Walker, teamed up with Addison Wiggin of Agora Financial to produce an eye-opening movie, I.O.U.S.A., which documented the stunning financial swindle being perpetrated on the nation. This compelling addition to Petersen's disclosure of the government's financial fraud is being widely shown, and has just become available on DVD.

Unfortunately, we will never enjoy the sight of the politicians responsible for the Social Security swindle being sent to jail, but we can protect ourselves from their fraud.

It's time to don your lifejacket.
Welcome to visit Top Stocks of 2010

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Cashed Out 150% Gains Form Gold Stocks…

Over the next two years, you'll witness the greatest surge in gold prices in market history - at least 100% above where gold sits today, as I write this.

I'm so convinced, I'll even make you a guarantee.

More on that guarantee in just a second.

But even better, I've just discovered a way for you to sneak into the soaring gold market for next to nothing, with what I call "penny-per-ounce" gold.

That is, doing this is a "backdoor" way to own as much of a position in gold as you like... for the equivalent of paying a single cent per ounce.

There's no alchemy involved. And no trick.

It's just a gold market "loophole" most investors know nothing about.

I'll show you here in this letter how it works.

It's no skin off my nose if you opt not to do this. I'd just hate to see you miss out. And even if you decide it's not for you, you'll still want to know about the astounding silver stock I'll name for you.

You can it pick up right now for a 40% discount to what it should be worth on Wall Street... plus, in this same letter, I'll show you the best way to play gold using the powerful new efficiency of gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs)... not to mention, the single best gold stock to own right now and possibly for the next several years, if you choose to own only one.

Here's the clincher...

I'm going to give you all four of these recommendations... and all the information you need to act on them... FREE.

The symbols, the buy and sell targets, and specific step-by-step instructions on what to do. No charge.

Why would I do that? You'll see.

But first, let's dig in and get started...

Epic Boom Opportunity #1: HOW TO SNAP UP RAW GOLD... AT JUST ONE PENNY PER OUNCE!

What if, just before the biggest gold price surge in recent history, you could get your hands on a large stash of the yellow metal... for less than one penny per ounce?

There's no alchemy involved. No secret technology. And no smoke and mirrors. But a small, upstart new mining company is doing exactly that.

Its technique is simple.

But it's just about the only company across the entire mining industry that's able to do this, right now.

In 2005, it mined about 100,000 ounces this way. For 2006, it quadrupled that haul, using this same technique. Now it's on track to be a million-ounce producer... with at least 12 million ounces of gold still in the ground.

The math is simple...

Four Times Your Money Even if Gold Prices Don't Budge Another Inch

Think about it.

Anybody who can get gold out of the ground for a penny...

And sell it for even $500 per ounce or $400 per ounce, stands to make a handsome return. And so do their shareholders.

What I'll show you here is gold hitting as high as $700... a $1000... or even $2,000 per ounce... over the next 12—24 months.

Owning shares of this company could mean at least a 400% gain in that time period, even if only half of what we're calling for comes through.

So here's how this works.

For most miners, getting gold out of the ground is done pretty much the same, across the industry. But not for this wily little company I've been telling you about.

What it's done is invent a way to mine the gold — and rich veins of raw copper — at the same time.

The copper mining is so lucrative, the profits more than cover the cost of pulling the gold out of the same hole. And that means close to 100% upside potential on the gold, no matter what the current spot price on the market.

Any way you slice it, they're booking massive profit.

At Least 2 Years of Locked-in Value, No Matter How High Gold Actually Soars

Right now, this "little" undiscovered new mining company already has five mines up and running. Plus one more under construction. And three more projects after that heading into development.

It also has enormous land holdings with lots of undisclosed mineral potential. Plus, it just swallowed whole another holding with as much as 2 million more ounces of gold in the ground.

Add that to measured and recorded reserves of 12 million ounces... plus another 14 million ounces that are either "inferred" or "proven and probable."

Sound rich?

Don't forget, I haven't even said anything yet about the nearly 2 billion pounds of copper tucked under this company's territory. And copper is the key to this whole secret.

Because it's the steady flow of cash from the copper — remember, this company has innovated a way to get both the copper and gold out of the ground at the same time — that's making the gold production, in relative terms, possible for less than one penny per ounce.

Here's the best part...

This little company's savvy management had the foresight to hedge the entire copper reserve, by making deals that locked in its copper sales at record levels for essentially the next two years.

So even if the global economy keels over and copper prices in general fall, this company will keep on raking it in on their copper discoveries... which means it keeps on getting the gold out of the ground for next-to-nothing at the same time.

Did I mention?

This company has no debt. It's also sitting on a massive pile of cash. And that pile just keeps getting bigger. This is partly why the stock not only has huge upward potential, but it also pays a dividend.

This is a powder keg waiting to pop. With gold prices creeping higher... and then accelerating... this isn't going to stay off mainstream radars for long. You'll need to make a move on this soon.

I want you to have everything you need to make the call, as educated about the pros and cons of this as possible.

So I've commissioned the best experts on my team of analysts to write it up, in a FREE special report I want to send you. It's called Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead!

I'd like to get this into your hands as soon as possible. At no charge. Inside, you'll find out everything you'd want to know about "penny-per-ounce gold." You'll also discover even more brilliant and innovative new ways to get in on the sudden new surge in the yellow metal, inside this same free report.

But maybe, you're already asking yourself...

Why Gold and Why Now?

Before I rush you that FREE report, let me ask you this...

Do you remember the last time gold sold for over $2,000 an ounce?

Of course you do. Maybe you didn't think of that way. But actually, gold has already sold for more than $2000 per ounce. Let me show you.

First, you have to think for a moment like it's 1971. Gold is selling for $35. This is the year Nixon breaks it from ties to the dollar. Gold prices start climbing. By 1975, it's hit $196. And by 1980, we're talking $850. Sure, you say, that I remember.

But maybe you also remember, back then you could also make $27,700 a year and it was a pretty decent living. About as good as making $100,000 per year today.

You could also buy a house for $50,000 then and, just on an inflation basis, it would be worth $250,000 today. (In real estate terms, it might sell now for $500,000 or more). And back then, you could retire on $270,000 in savings... and it would be as good, today, as being a millionaire.

So you can see, trying to compare yesterday's gold price to today's — on an even basis — is like trying to compare apples and armadillos!

In today's dollars, 1975 gold at $196 is more like $750 in the current market. And 1980 gold, the peak year at the historical price of $850, would now clock in closer to $2,176. And remember, this is only what you get using the most conservative market calculation of gold's worth. There are other, even more telling ways to value gold.

Try this on for size...

$38,349 per Ounce!

Remember, for a good part of America's history, every dollar in your pocket was a dollar backed by gold. So it's not so crazy to ask yourself... if America has 8,180 tons - or nearly 261.7 million ounces - of gold in reserve... how many dollars does that buy?

The answer will shock you.

When dollars became unhinged from gold, the printing presses at the Fed cranked up. By 1980, for every ounce of gold in America, the financial system carried $6,966 in cash. That's $1.8 trillion total. But get this, by the end of 2005, the total real money supply shot to over $10 trillion.

That's $38,349 in circulation for every ounce of gold in reserve!

Of course, it's even higher now. The printing presses are still cranking, well into 2008. Only now, it's much harder for you to know how fat the actual money supply has gotten. See, by March 23, 2006... the number had gotten so embarrassing... the Fed actually "retired" a number called "M3," which was the most broad-reaching measure of how much cash floats around in the system.

Yep. Instead of fixing the problem, the politicians just stopped talking about it. Is that any surprise? Fortunately, you don't need Washington's help to get the real picture of what's happening today in the economy... or to find out what's next for the price of gold.

Because you can just read on and see for yourself...

Precious Metals Megatrend: 3 Charts and the Truth

I'm about to show you three charts.

Take a look at these first two side by side...


A hundred different snapshots could show you the mess we're in. Soaring personal and government debt. A plunging savings rate. Record-high mortgages as a percentage of GDP. Plunging yields on 10-year Treasuries. Soaring but "hidden" unfunded government liabilities, to the tune of $53 trillion...

But none show it better — and more plainly — than these two I'm showing you right here, above. The first is our skyrocketing money supply. The second is our plummeting purchasing power. That's about as plain as you need to get.

How so?

Because this is the starkest vision you'll ever get of the absolute carnage that's piling up in a "secret war" Washington's fighting right now... and has fought, unsuccessfully, for the last 20 plus years. No, not the war in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or even some possible future conflict with Iran.

This is another kind of war... right here at home.

The enemy is the dark nemesis of a dead and stagnant economy. And the Fed secretly fights to hold it off desperately every single day. This is a worse enemy than recession. It's the enemy called deflation, an economy where nothing moves and nobody buys a thing.

The weapon of choice in this ongoing secret war is to flood the market with cash and easy credit. Because regular cash and credit injections make everyone feel rich. The theory goes, when you've got cash and low-priced credit, companies borrow and expand. Consumers borrow and spend. Families borrow and buy homes.

Which is why, since 1950, the total amount of money in circulation has soared well over 3,000%! And it's all good... or seems good... until it goes all wrong.

See, the trouble is even money can't escape the natural law of supply and demand. When there's too much of it floating around, each dollar is worth that much less relative to the whole. Suddenly, you've got price inflation.

Suddenly, every dollar you have in the bank is worth less.

Hemingway called it the "first panacea of a mismanaged nation."

And in our case, it's helped plummet the purchasing power of our dollars by a mind-blowing 96%. The dollar's worth today is just pennies compared with what it bought a century ago. In fact, its worth is just a fraction now — as we just demonstrated — compared to the last time gold prices boomed, in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Only now, unlike then, the "wiggle room" we have left now between us and a complete dollar implosion is so thin it's practically transparent. Could total implosion actually happen? Absolutely.

Take what relatively new Fed Chairman professor Ben Bernanke famously said in a speech at the National Economists Club in Washington, in November 2002...

Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent) that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost... We conclude that under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

In other words, if you want to juice an economy... turn on the printing presses and make it as easy as all get-out to borrow money at a low, low rate of interest. Bernake and others in the Fed think that's no problem. They think they can handle it, just so long as short-term interest rates don't go to zero.

But a brilliant and famous colleague of mine — someone I'll introduce you to in just a second — completely disagrees. Flooding the market with easy money, he recently told me in private, is more like burning your furniture to keep warm. It cannot last as a stopgap measure. It's courting disaster.

He and I both like to think an even smarter economist, Ludwig von Mises, got it right instead, when he said...

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of the voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

See, thanks to all that Fed-driven loose credit, consumer debt has soared. It's never been higher. In 1987, when Alan Greenspan first took his job in Washington, consumers where in the hole by about $10 trillion. Where are they now? An unbelievable $37.3 trillion in the red - or nearly 350% of GDP!

Think about that.

As a whole, Americans owe 3½ times more than the entire U.S. economy — the largest in history — produces in a year. If you or I owed that much on a personal level, we'd be suicidal.

Meanwhile, the government doesn't seem to worry. It spends money even faster. It borrows even deeper. Even this administration now, with full knowledge of the implications of a credit disaster, has already borrowed more money since 2000 than every White House since the time of Washington!

By 2017 - says the Heritage Foundation - our federal deficits should be soaring by at least $1 trillion per year. After that, it will jump to $2 trillion. That's not how much we'll owe. It's how much we'll add to what we owe... every 12 months, for as far as the eye can see.

Doesn't that sound, to you, like we're at a turning point?

If There's a Crossroad on The Way to Catastrophe...This Is It!

Here's the third chart I promised you.

And though you might not know it at first glance, this one is a doozy...


This is what's called a "yield-curve inversion."

The recent one you're looking at above first happened on Dec. 28, 2005... and it has remained inverted... on this last occasion, it's basically been upside-down for the last few months. This is bad. How bad?

Think dynamite and a tripwire.

See, normally a yield-curve inversion should be an extremely rare event. Until very recently, it's only happened six times since 1970. And guess what... five out of those six times, a major recession followed within the year.

This is so precise an indicator of recession, in fact, that it has only been wrong once in the past 40 years. One study published by the New York Federal Reserve pegged it as a better measure of what will happen to the U.S. economy than the U.S. stock market or any other general index of other leading indicators.

Translation: When the curve flips, we'd better listen.

On the day of this inversion above - practically at the moment the lines crossed - the Dow plunged 105 points. What happens the next time, when the curve inverts not just for an afternoon, but for a week or more? Or months at a time?

This is like holding back a flood with a cork. The longer the yield curve is out of balance, the bigger the disaster that follows. And there's only one way to stop a yield-curve inversion from happening.

The Fed has to slash short-term rates. Will they?

Bernanke would love to. In fact, he's done some cutting already.

But he's trapped between a rock and a hard place.

Slashing the rates means an even bigger dollar collapse. And even higher credit debt, at a time when few Americans can afford it. It would also mean less overseas confidence in the U.S. economy. And that alone could spark a whole new wave of disaster.

See, when all those overseas bondholders out there see the United States disintegrating its economic base, that's all she wrote! They'll start dumping the dollar and our debt investments with abandon. I'm sure you're smart enough to see where this is headed...

That kind of unraveling is the perfect recipe for $2,000 gold. Which is why I want to make sure you're in a good strong position before this next radical power move in gold unfolds...

Epic Boom Opportunity #2: "MORE GOLD THAN FORT KNOX..." AND THE WORLD'S EASIEST 94% GAIN

This next move is easily one of the best ways anybody can double their money in 2008. You rarely see something this close to a pure play.

At the center is a town so tiny, it may as well be the end of the world. And what, just seven years ago, used to be one of the tiniest junior mining companies in the industry.

Today, both are suddenly sitting on what could be $27 billion worth of unprocessed gold — "that's like finding more gold than the government stores in Fort Knox, all in one location" says one of my smartest investment research colleagues.

Nobody imagined it was down there.

At best, they all thought, they've got just 7 million ounces.

Not only were they wrong, but suddenly this junior miner doesn't look so "junior" any more. Because it now owns one of the largest single gold deposits in the world, with as much as 33 million ounces underground.

Thanks to a partnership with one of the world's largest senior mining companies, this once-undiscovered firm can get that gold out of the ground for about $233 per ounce.

At today's gold prices, that's pure profit of as much as $700 or more.

Here's what's truly incredible...

The $40 Billion Treasure Wall Street Forgot

This same firm has another 13 billion pounds of copper tucked underground, just south of the border of the Yukon, deep in the north of British Columbia.

Up until recently, it cost too much in water and electricity to get that copper out of the ground. And that knocked the wind out of this firm's share price when investors figured costs would spiral out of control.

I don't know if you've paid attention, but copper demand — and prices — have exploded in recent months. That's completely changed the equation.

One of the massive gold miners — I can't say which one or it would give away too much — offered $16 per share just to buy this company and their options on these two mineral-rich properties outright.

If they just made that offer again, without any other changes in the company's outlook, you're talking an instant 94% gain in the shares just since the start of this year.

That alone is enough to nearly double every dollar invested.

Before the end of 2008.

But feel free to expect a much bigger move this year, especially as those 33 million ounces of gold and 13 billion pounds of copper come online.

While you can't wait too long on this second move, you can still read the full story for yourself before you decide. It's all in the FREE copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead! that I want to send.

All I need is your permission to put it in the mail... or you can download it yourself, five minutes from now, from a link I'll give you at the end of this letter.

But before I show you how...

Allow Me to Come Clean: Why I'm in Love...With Gold

My name is Addison Wiggin.

I'm sure you've guessed, gold is more than a "fad" investing idea for me.

I've followed these market forces behind the yellow metal for years. I've even written about it, in a New York Times best seller that maybe you've read, called Financial Reckoning Day.

I wrote about these forces again in a second New York Times best-seller, Empire of Debt. And again in a quick little book, also a best-seller, called The Demise of the Dollar.

This is not, in short, new territory for me.

I've hit the radio circuit to talk about this too, appearing on over 350 local and national interview shows. Maybe you've also seen me talking it up on television, from ABC News and Forbes on Fox to Bloomberg Television.

I've even just put the wraps on a new feature-length documentary called I.O.U.S.A. — with a team from Hollywood — to get this message out to the public. It debuted at Sundance just recently. And should be in theaters very soon.

And at least part of that documentary should give viewers all the reasons I'm giving you here, about why a major move into gold will be essential for growing and safeguarding your wealth over the years ahead.

I don't say this to brag. I just want you to be clear, this isn't coming from out of the blue. In fact, I also head a multi-million dollar international research organization that's very much focused right now on exactly the same opportunities we've just talked about.

And really, that's why I'm writing to you today.

See, finding and assembling the world's best experts in this field is what I do. It's my life calling. I've been at this for the last 15 years. And in that time, nothing makes me more proud than what we've managed to do with one of those ventures, a powerful, major force in the resource advisory industry called Outstanding Investments.

Maybe you've heard of it...

Like I said, I couldn't be more proud...

Mark Hulbert, the no-nonsense industry watchdog, recently ranked Outstanding Investments as the No.1 performing investment advisory letter over a five-year period in 2005. In 2006, he put us among his top-ranked performers yet again.

And it's no wonder. Especially with the winners you could have found in the Outstanding Investments over these last several years...

Like the 332% we logged on Glamis/Francisco Gold... 668% gains on Metallica Resources... 249% gains on Coeur d'Alene Mines... 83% gains on Placer Dome... 156% already on Newmont... and 540% gains already on American Century Global Gold...

Plus plenty of non-gold gains, too.

Like 137% on KeyWest Energy... 174% on PetroChina... 270% gains on the July 2005 silver call options... 160% gains on Western Oil Sands... and 179% gains on Talisman Energy...

One of the biggest reasons for our success is the string of brilliant analysts we've been able to entice on board to lead Outstanding Investments readers to that top-performance position.

Maybe you've already heard of our current top analyst, Byron King.

When it comes to gold and other metals, oil, gas, energy — even the politics and trends that move resource markets — there's a good chance nobody is as qualified as Byron.

See, unlike most market analysts, Byron actually has in-the-field experience.

He's even what you might call a "rock-hound."

Byron's a geologist with a degree from Harvard.

After graduating with honors in the 1970s, he broke into the oil industry. Byron worked as a geologist in the exploration and production division of a major oil company — one of the Fortune Top 20.

When he got tired of that, he did what no other analyst would do — and joined the U.S. Navy, logging over 1,000 hours flying navy bombers as a tailhook aviator... including more than 127 death-defying carrier landings.

(Ask your broker if he has that on his resume!)

Not one to sit still, after leaving the Navy, Byron worked as a practicing attorney in Pennsylvania for 17 years, during which time he became one of the most sought-after resource experts in the country.

He's been invited to give speeches across the U.S. and Canada, he's written countless articles for major publications, and he's been interviewed by even more, from small town journals to national newspapers like The Globe & Mail and the Los Angeles Times.

Byron once even met with M. King Hubbert himself, the genius who discovered the "Peak Oil" crisis that would plague world petroleum... 20 years before it actually happened. Again, that's not a claim your average energy market analyst can make.

You couldn't ask for a better pedigree.

What's Byron saying right now?

Byron and I are both pretty excited about the future of most commodities. But we're very excited, right now, by the future of gold.

In your FREE copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead, you can see what Byron and his Outstanding Investments team are recommending right now to readers.

Just give me permission to send you a copy.

And then, I'll ask you to do something for me. With your permission, I'll ask you to let me also start sending you — at no risk to you — up to a full year of FREE issues of Outstanding Investments too.

Inside those issues, you'll read about all kinds of ways to make money — not just on gold, but surging new alternative energy investments, oil and gas, corn, sugar, and soybeans, and the China-driven resource boom... plus plenty more.

All FREE for up to a full year. You can find all the details at the end of this letter. The thing is, however, Byron and his readers are already moving on these opportunities I'm telling you about. So time is of the essence.

Let me at least rush you a FREE copy of this groundbreaking report, Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead!... so you can look over these simple recommendations and see for yourself.

All five picks are geared for 2008 and beyond. And you'll find all the information you need on each of them packed into the report. Which is, as I've said, yours free just as soon as you tell me you're ready. Just follow the steps at the end of this letter.

But don't wait too long.

If only because the pressure behind gold prices just keeps increasing by the hour. For instance, take a look at this...

Precious Metals Megatrend: China's Secret Endgame

Fan Gang, director of China's National Economic Research Institute, stood in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In tortured English, he said...

The U.S. dollar is no longer, in our opinion, is no longer a stable currency. It is devaluating all the time, and that's [making] troubles all the time. So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging to a more manageable reference, say, euros, yen... those kinds of more diversified systems...

And it's not just China. Malaysia is also shifting from the dollar. So is Indonesia. And Thailand. And possibly Japan. But who could blame them?

China and Japan alone own about $906 billion of the $1.1 trillion of U.S. Treasuries held overseas.

But a weak dollar is a wasting asset. To the Chinese, it's starting to look like a giant pile of liabilities. Yu Yongding, who sits on the Chinese central bank monetary policy committee, told the China Securities Journal he was worried America would drop interest rates in 2006, putting pressure on the dollar and the yuan.

"More seriously," he said, "China's economy would take a big hit if the U.S. dollar weakened sharply due to such factors as a bursting of the U.S. property bubble. The loss for China's foreign exchange reserves would be extremely serious."

They won't hang on for long.

Publicly, the talk is of China moving more of its currency reserves away from the dollar and to the euro. And that might happen. But the euro is only paper too, backed by its own debt problems at home.

The real story is China quietly converting those dollars into... you guessed it... GOLD.

China just recently cashed in about 2.4% of its dollar reserves to buy gold. It has a better track record than the dollar. In fact, gold has a better track record - historically - than any paper currency.

On Dec. 28, 2005 - the same day as the first in a series of recent U.S. yield-curve inversions that we just talked about, an economist at China's biggest brokerage firm, China Galaxy Securities, quietly hinted China's central bank should quadruple its gold reserves in the very near future.

Japan's central bank has also talked about cranking up its gold reserves. So have the central banks of South Africa, Argentina and Russia. In November 2005, Russia said it would hike up its gold reserves from 5% of total financial reserves to 10%.

That's double what it's already holding now.

To get it, Russia would have to absorb its own entire gold output for the next three years. That's a long time for the rest of the world to go without Russian gold production.

Any more whispers on the news about this or the China gold reserve hike could send gold prices skyrocketing overnight. You'll want to be ready to profit on this surge as soon as you can.

Here's another way most other investors will miss...

Epic Boom Opportunity #3: The "Blue Chip" Gold Mining Share Nobody's Talking About

When gold takes off, major "blue chip" gold producers like Newmont, Barrick, and AngloGold grab lots of headlines. But there's another of the top 10 producers that's not getting nearly as much attention — yet.

Now is your chance to grab it before soaring gold prices push it higher.

This company owns one of the five largest inventories of gold deposits. Plus it owns nine operating mines in five different countries, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Chile, and even Russia.

But here's where it has its biggest "undiscovered" edge.

This major miner has three very promising projects in development that could easily up its output to levels 60% above where they are right now. That's a lot of new gold. And coming on line over the next two years.

What's more, this company does it all with an extremely tight rein on costs, with profit margins running an impressive 18%.

And by the way, this company is also one of a few beneficiaries of a 131-year old federal law that literally gives it the U.S. land it mines and all the deposits underneath for only $10 per acre.

That's given this company more mineral-rich land holdings than 99.5% of their competitors. At the same time, this company trades for $174 of market capitalization per ounce of gold reserves, which is one of the lowest premiums among major mining companies.

Call it "cheap gold."

Especially considering what you would have to pay for those other major gold stocks I mentioned.

It's no wonder this one company recently attracted some of the top talent from every corner of the industry. It's also no wonder that more than 57% of this company's shares are in the clutches of institutional investors.

And that trend is only going to speed up, given the top-quality deals and acquisitions this company has already cooked up, which should send its total gold production soaring even faster over the next three years.

You can read all about this "undiscovered" mining major, along with all the other opportunities we've already talked about, in your free copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead!

Here's something else you'll find inside...

Epic Boom Opportunity #4: THE SAFEST WAY TO OWN GOLD

What's the safest way to own gold today?

It has to be the new gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

These did not exist two decades ago, the first time legal gold investing in the United States set the markets on fire. And now they've completely revolutionized the market for gold, in more ways than one.

The way they work, you buy shares. Just like you would in a mutual fund. Each share is as good as holding a title to real gold. When you put money in, the gold ETF buys physical metal and stores it, to back your shares.

As if you had the gold itself in your own safety deposit box. Only the ETF saves you the trouble of ever storing, transporting or insuring the metal.

I recommended my Outstanding Investments readers get in the more liquid of the two main gold ETFs on the market. And I've got some recommendations to share with you on how to get started on this yourself, in your FREE copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead!

But here's something you might not know about ETFs.

By cracking open the gold market to more marginal metal investors, all the fundamentals of gold investing have changed forever.

Suddenly, pension funds, young investors and retirees who want to dabble in metals can do so. More easily than they ever could before. But all these millions of dollars in new electronic gold transactions have to be backed — by law — with real gold.

So the success of the gold ETF is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The more investors it attracts, the more gold it buys. That cranks up pressure on the rest of the gold market. And gold prices tick higher, making the ETF look even more attractive all over again.

Take the ETF we have in our Outstanding Investments portfolio.

It first came out in October 2004, with a float of about $200 million worth of gold holdings in its portfolio. In the first year, the total float ballooned to $1 billion worth of bullion.

Now it's over $9.94 billion!

That's $9.94 billion worth of physical gold that has to come off the market, just to back the fund's investors. The bigger that fund gets, the higher the gold price rises. And around we go.

If you don't own a chunk of this ETF, now would be a good time to get in.

Meanwhile, we're tracking another gold fund right now — not an ETF — that you should also own. Since it was first added to our Outstanding Investments portfolio, it's already up 509%. But you can still get in now and watch it go still higher. This select fund has averaged 77% gains over the last seven years. In one recent year, it soared 81.2% in less than 12 months.

Buying it now may be the simplest and safest way for you to take up positions in all the biggest gold shares — like Newmont, Barrick and Placer Dome — without paying commissions on all those separate trades.

Plus, this particular fund also takes a stake in physical gold. So this is a way for you to safely take a position in bullion too.

Read all about it in upcoming issues of Outstanding Investments. But be sure first to send for your FREE copy of the report, Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead!

I can drop this report into the mail for you immediately. Or you can download it for yourself right now, just by following the steps at the end of this letter. No charge.

But first, here's something else most investors don't know about...

Precious Metals Megatrend: The Hidden Cost of Terror

The Milken Institute did a study that estimated the short- and long-term costs of Sept. 11.

Outside of the loss of human life, the immediate hit was about $53 billion. In the weeks that followed, another $47 billion disappeared thanks to lost economic output in the U.S. economy. Plus another $1.7 trillion that disappeared from the U.S. stock market.

Then the costs REALLY started to add up...

Airlines and aerospace, tourism and travel, hotels and motels, restaurants, the Postal Service and the insurance industry all suffered. Just in the first month, at least 125,000 people lost their jobs. Another 1.6 million jobs evaporated over the next year. And businesses retooling for the new "terror economy" had to spend an extra $151 billion.

This is where what's called the cost of distortion comes into play - the ripple effect from a shock event like this can cause people to behave in strange ways for a long time to come.

Think about it.

Governments wasting billions they otherwise couldn't have, because every new security bill gets passed. Nations fighting battles they otherwise wouldn't have, because every conflict suddenly looks connected to the war on terror. Individuals and businesses not spending money in ways they otherwise would have, because they're afraid to take the risk.

Air travel falls. Tourism falls. Trade suffers and foreign investment dries up. In 2002, 29 ports on the U.S. West Coast shut down for two weeks. Two hundred ships, carrying over 300,000 shipment containers, just sat in the water.

Waiting.

Railcars and warehouses all over the country waited too. Along with freezers and grain elevators and companies who had to shut down their production lines. More jobs disappeared. And the added insurance costs against security shutdowns tacked on another $30 billion to the cost of doing business in America.

You might remember pundits having plenty to say about how we recovered so quickly from the attacks. Yet new estimates put the uncovered costs, so far... at close to $2 trillion!

And remember, this is only one event we're talking about.

You and your family pay roughly $450 extra every year in taxes to cover the cost of a bloated Homeland Security agency. The same agency, by the way, whose air marshals have been caught sleeping on planes... and who hold up flights with huge security lines... and whose airport inspectors still let weapons and even dummy explosives slip through security.

You can never know how much a "war on terror" will cost.

Because fighting terrorism is like fighting a hurricane. You can see it forming on the radar screen. You know when it's headed your way. But you don't know what to expect when it lands. Or how much it will cost you over time.

Every enhanced cockpit door on a plane costs $30,000 to 50,000. Screening every bag carried by airline passengers will cost taxpayers an extra $4.7 billion just for this year.

Ten million dollars to teach bus drivers how to deal with terrorist passengers. Twenty-two million dollars to teach terrorism safety techniques to truck drivers...

Two and a half billion dollars for highway security. Seventy million dollars for a student Homeland Security fellowship program. Twenty million dollars to renovate Homeland Security headquarters.

As I said, it all starts to add up. Along with the undetermined future costs of Iraq... Afghanistan... and now maybe Iran... over the next decade, could set us back as much as $5.7 trillion!

Nobody knows for sure.

But the true hidden cost is the risk premium this creates for the foreign investors who lend us money for all this extra spending. This is how instability destroys faith in the dollar.

It's also why, in unstable times, the value of hard assets like gold, oil, and other real resources are even more likely to take off. Here's one more way for you to get rich on that reality...

Epic Boom Opportunity #5: THE SINGLE BEST GOLD STOCK TO OWN IF YOU'RE ONLY BUYING ONE

Which gold stock would you buy if you only wanted to own one? Well, so far our Outstanding Investments readers have already seen 163% gains on Newmont Mining so far.

They've seen another 249% gain on Coeur d'Alene Mines... 332% gains on Glamis Gold... and 668% gains on Metallica Resources. Just to name a few. But these opportunities have already sailed by.

Your best bet is the gold company I'll tell you about right now. It's not small. In fact, it's one of the mega-producers I'm sure you already know by name.

What you might not know is this one gold producer will land leagues beyond competitors for 2008 and beyond...

Turn Every $1000 Into $30,000

See, just a couple years ago, this company was on its back. Mines were dying. Gold production had collapsed.

Then this company did something.

With just a little under $600,000 invested in a whole new wave of gold exploration technology... they took the entire mining industry into the innovation age.

Applying new discoveries in applied math, advanced physics, and computer graphics... to the age old business of digging holes in the earth and calling them mines... it got its payoff.

Within months, this company discovered 110 new pockets of undiscovered gold on property their own geologists has once given up for dead.

A shocking 80% of those new deposits turned out to be jammed with gold. Enough to crank out over $3 billion in new discoveries over the years that followed.

Once again, you can do the math. Any way you slice it, turning a half-million dollars in R&D costs into over $3 billion is stunning. But that wasn't all of it.

The shares in the company also took off.

Every $1,000 invested in this company's stock soared, over that same period, to a stunning $30,000. That's impressive. But here's why this one innovative little mining company is just beginning to hit its stride...

Ten Steps Ahead of Every Other Gold Producer

There's already the usual stuff going for this company that you'd imagine for any world class mining share. For instance, it has no company debt. Zilch. It also has $300 million in cash sitting in its bank accounts.

But it's this company's surprising move to "new tech" mining innovation that's really given it the edge. And, quietly, put it ahead of just about all of its mining competitors.

Take what it costs this company to get the gold out of the ground ­ just half what major mining companies like Newmont, Anglogold, Barrick, and Harmony pay for the same product.

Meanwhile, this company is also producing gold faster than its competitors too. More than 10 times faster than Newmont... triple the production rate of Newcrest... and better than five times the rate of Anglogold or Gold Fields.

In short, this one company crushes the nearest competitor.

Which makes it a perfect share for you to own as gold soars over the 12—24 months ahead. Political risk for this company is minimal. And all their gold is what you call "unhedged" — which basically means they'll start reaping even greater rewards as gold values go up.

And did I mention? This stock also pays a dividend.

Annually, 18 cents per share. And the company promises to hike up that rate even higher as the gold price goes up. It's like getting paid to own one of the best and safest gold stocks for 2010 in the entire industry.

Just send for your FREE copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead! to find out more.

So now let's get to brass tacks...

Here's How to Get a FREE Copy of This Report

Inside the FREE copy of Bullion and Beyond: Five Stunning Ways to Get Richer on the Epic Metals Boom Ahead! you'll get...

A nearly undiscovered and unique way to snap up a position in gold for less than a single penny per ounce. And this advantage is pretty much locked in for the next two years, no matter how high gold prices fly

An early chance to lock in 94% or better on the junior miner that just found 33 million ounces of gold — catapulting it to become one of the most important gold finds in history

The easiest money-doubling gain you'll make on the world's "other" precious metal... using a stock you can quietly pick up right now for nearly half what it's actually worth

An easy way to buy a stake in virtually all of the most stable and well-known gold companies... with a savvy move that's already given my readers hefty gains of 509%

The one best gold stock to buy right now and for the long term if you're set on only buying a single gold share. It'll churn out more gold at a lower cost, faster, than just about any producer in the world — plus this one stock pays a handsome dividend.

Getting a copy of this FREE report sent to you is easy.

I can rush it to you in the mail. You can even download it right now. For either option, just click on the special order button below.

But there's still more...

Every week, I'd also like to send you a FREE personal commodities investment update, straight to your e-mail account. You'll read about the top stocks for 2010 in Byron's Outstanding Investments portfolio. Plus other hot opportunities I have percolating on the stove. No charge whatsoever

I also want to give you FREE access to our 24-hour Outstanding Investments Web site. This site is strictly "member's only" and password protected. I'm inviting you to use it whenever you'd like to look up Byron's newest picks, latest news or more. Also yours at no charge

If you're not a subscriber already, I'll give you a FREE subscription to the highly praised and widely read Agora Financial Executive Series, which includes two profit-laden e-mails, the Rude Awakening and the 5 Min. Forecast and another FREE subscription to the shocking twice-weekly e-letter Whiskey & Gunpowder - one of the most colorful, controversial and insightful sources on economics, politics and resource investing out there.

Why just give all this away?

Because, naturally, there's something I want you to do for me in return...

I Also Want You to Try Byron's Best Picks FREE For Up To a Full Year

I believe you are like me.

I believe you know, as I do, that while $1 million worth of dot-com stock certificates isn't worth much more than kindling these days...

Raw real resources like copper... cotton... platinum... silver... natural gas... steel... oil... coal... and especially gold hold real and tangible value for civilization.

And that's what Outstanding Investments is all about.

While some stock investments can crash and fall to zero... we cannot exist or do business more than a few weeks, a few days or even in some cases a few hours... without the commodities that matter...

Oil to burn... land to stand on... copper pipes and wires in our walls... circuitry in our computers... electricity to power our lights, our appliances, the Internet... lumber, steel and grain... and precious metals like gold and silver to help us protect our wealth.

We've always stood for making a fortune in rich resource plays, even when it wasn't popular. But over time, the strategy has consistently paid off...

With a 151% gain on Wheaton River Minerals... 162% gains on Intrepid Minerals... a solid 332% gain on Glamis/Francisco Gold... and 668% gains on Metallica Resources, all in 2002...

Plus another plus 105% gain on Gentry Resources... 151% gains on Tocqueville Gold... 235% gains on Niko Resources... and 249% gains on Coeur d'Alene Mines, all in 2003...

116% gains on Cameco... 174% gains on PetroChina... and 270% gains on the July silver calls, all in 2004...

In 2005, 107% gains on Norsk Hydro... 108% gains on Anglo American PLC... 160% gains on Western Oil Sands.... and an impressive 179% gain on Talisman Energy...

And in 2006 and 2007, we locked in 83% on Placer Dome... 147% gains on BG Group PLC... 78% gains on OMM... 87% returns on Walter Industries... and a solid 177% on Coeur d'Alene Mines...in fact, in 2007 alone, we averaged 79% gains across the board and scored a cumulative gain of 317%.

And so far in 2008, we're already up 255% on Foundation Coal Holdings... 165% on Goldcorp... 164% on Newmont Mining... 369% on EnCana Corp... 358% on Valero... 509% on American Century Global Gold... 1,011% on Suncor Energy... just to name a few.

What I'd like to ask you to do — in return for giving you all five FREE picks in the Outstanding Investments "Bullion and Beyond" Library... plus all the other gifts we've talked about... is simply agree to give the award-winning Outstanding Investments monthly advisory letter itself a try.

Like I said, right now you can have this trial subscription FREE for up to a full year. FREE. I'll show you month to month what Byron's watching, what he's recommending and what to do next with the holdings we'll track in each issue in our highly ranked, resource-focused Outstanding Investments portfolio.

FREE, you'll find out how to shore up your wealth safely with bullion investments. And FREE, Byron will also walk you through even better and easier ways to get in on the same mega-trends.

You'll get to keep all this at no charge. Along with everything else I'll send. No questions asked. But in order to make this possible, there's only one small thing more I'll need you to do for me.

(Yes, there's a catch. But it's one I'm confident you'll like very much.)

See, it's not free — on my end — to send out these newsletters. Or to put together, print, and mail out the library of five special investing picks I'll be giving you at no cost to you.

So, just to be sure you're as committed to these ideas as I am... here's what we're going to do. I'm making this possible by simply slashing the subscription rate I'll offer you by half.

So, let's say you sign on for a year's worth of Outstanding Investments. It's like getting six full months of issues, FREE. Gratis.

What you pay to sign on need only cover the second half — by which time, you'll have had six FREE issues, all the FREE picks, and the rest of my gifts to you, to make money and to decide if this is for you.

Doesn't that sound fair?

And then, if you decide right away to sign on for two full years of issues, the same kind of deal applies — you get the whole first half of your subscription, or 12 full issues, FREE. You're getting a two-year membership, but at only the one year price.

What's that price?

Normally, others would pay $99 to get 12 months of issues. You'll pay only $49 — half price — which means you're getting six of your 12 issues absolutely FREE.

To get 24 months of issues — two years of Outstanding Investments — others would normally pay $198. You'll pay only $89 — actually LESS than half price — which means you'll get 12 of your 24 issues absolutely FREE.

I can't think of a better deal. Or a better way for you to get plugged in fast to all the opportunities both Byron and I see playing out over the coming year and well into 2009.

But there's still more...

My Revolutionary "'Double-the-Value' Guarantee"

At the very start of this letter, I told you I would make you a guarantee that gold would soar at least 100% above today's price levels, or you pay nothing. Let me be more precise.

Gold prices, obviously, change every day.

When I first made Outstanding Investments' "gold at $2000" prediction public, it would have had to soar 257% to hit that mark.

Now that margin is narrowing.

As of this writing, it's now only a 100% move. That would mean double the value of an ounce of gold today. And that, you might say, is still a big jump. But I'm so sure the Outstanding Investments call is right on the money, I'm willing to back it myself, with my own reputation on the line.

That is, if gold doesn't close that 100% gap by the time your Outstanding Investments subscription — both the trial and paid parts — is finished, then I'll eat my words. Your entire sign up costs are on me. I'll refund every penny, if you feel that's what's due.

All I ask is you read the issues... study the picks... visit the website and dig into the archives and extra materials... and then decide for yourself what Outstanding Investments can do.

In fact, if you decide to cancel for any reason, even up to the very last day of your very last issue... you just let me know and I'll still give you a full refund. Even if gold has crossed the milestone mark Byron and I say it will.

Why?

Because I know already it's no accident Outstanding Investments wins awards. And it's no accident Hulbert ranked it the No. 1 performing advisory letter of the last five years in 2005 and again in 2006, either. We're onto something. And I'm confident, after you give Outstanding Investments an honest try, you'll think so too.

You won't want to cancel, at the end of the subscription period. In fact, I'm confident you'll beg to renew. Because you'll have the chance to make too much money on these opportunities not to.

Sign up, read and profit, share what you find with your family.

Then wait. Watch the gold cycle. Watch the other rich resource opportunities we'll talk about in upcoming issues. And then you decide what you'd like to do.

You risk nothing by giving this a try. Your only risk is sitting on the sidelines. Even if you don't decide to stay on, everything we send is yours to keep. This is entirely up to you.

I hope that sounds fair.

More importantly, I hope this sounds like something you're ready to do. Byron's other readers are already locking into these soaring trends for the long term. I hope you'll decide to act on them sooner rather than later, too.