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Stansberry Radio's First Female Guest

Stansberry Radio's First Female Guest

09/20/2012
with Lauren Lyster

Stansbe...

RT America anchor and host of Capital Account Lauren Lyster discusses the pitfalls of mainstream financial media.

Stansberry Radio welcomes its first ever female guest, RT America anchor Lauren Lyster. Lyster is the host of Capital Account - one of the most popular economic shows on the Internet. This isn’t the normal Q&A debate listeners are used to hearing... you won’t want to miss the game we played with Lauren!

Announcer: It’s time for another episode of Stansberry Radio, the show that’s too loud for radio. Here are your hosts, Porter Stansberry and Aaron Brabham.

Aaron Brabham: Welcome to another episode of Stansberry Radio. I’m Aaron Brabham. Porter Stansberry, honor to have you in the hot seat again today. Man, you’re like on a roll. You haven’t vacationed in a while. You’re a working man.

Porter Stansberry: I am.

Aaron Brabham: I like this. This is good stuff.

Porter Stansberry: I work hard.

Aaron Brabham: Well, today we have our first ever female guest, Lauren Lyster. Lauren is the host of Capital Account on Russian Today American television.

Porter Stansberry: Are you sure she’s our first female guest? What about that guy we had? [laughter] I wasn’t so sure about him.

Aaron Brabham: Which one?

Porter Stansberry: The –

Aaron Brabham: You want to name a name?

Porter Stansberry: The effeminate guy.

Aaron Brabham: I – none are ringing a bell.

Porter Stansberry: Ah, what was his name? It’ll come back to me in a moment.

Aaron Brabham: Okay. We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback from our listeners. People e-mail us at feedback@StansberryRadio.com, while others leave us messages. We had a few. 855-SARADIO. 855-727-2346. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. We’re on all that stuff.

Porter Stansberry: Hang on. Before we go on, there’s a lot of guys who just tuned into the podcast for the first time. They’re just listening. They’ve never heard us before. Who know who we are, what we do. What are we gonna tell people on today’s show that can help them become better, more successful investors? That’s what we gotta focus on.

Aaron Brabham: It’s exactly where we’re gonna go to. And what I want to talk about for new listeners, ‘cause we do have a lot trickling in, is –

Porter Stansberry: Two. We had, two new listeners last week.

Aaron Brabham: We had two. But that’s for our file size, that’s a big bump.

Porter Stansberry: When he says trickle, he really means trickle.

Aaron Brabham: Trickle in, trickle out. So you wrote The End of America. It was viewed by 20 million plus people. Okay? It’s about the dollar losing its world reserve currency status. It’s the end of America as we know it, not the end of our country.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. But it’s absolutely happening. And one of the things I want to talk to Lauren Lyster about is the size of the Russian gold purchases. Got a –

Aaron Brabham: Certainly.

Porter Stansberry: Got a update on that this week. They have purchased – since 2009, since the beginning of quantitative easing, they’ve purchased 500 tons of gold.

Aaron Brabham: So who’s the biggest buyer? China or Russia?

Porter Stansberry: Russia.

Aaron Brabham: Wow.

Porter Stansberry: Russia just ekes out China. 500 –

Aaron Brabham: And they’re committed to continuing this.

Porter Stansberry: Five hundred tons.

Aaron Brabham: Now, where are they buying it from? Who are they buying it from? That’s a lot of gold.

Porter Stansberry: That’s a lot of gold.

Aaron Brabham: Do you know where it comes from? Like, who are the sellers of this and is it just the producers?

Porter Stansberry: Well, the main market is called the London bullion exchange, and it’s the London bullion banks, and it comes from gold producers. And you know, they’re buying it all, all the production they can buy, and then of course another large seller historically have been central banks. But guess what? Central banks aren’t selling anymore. A lot of people haven’t noticed, either, but the Swiss – it’s not just our enemies who are loading up on gold. The Swiss have increased their gold reserves by 25 percent in just the last year.

Aaron Brabham: What’s American doing?

Porter Stansberry: Well, we don’t know.

Aaron Brabham: ‘Cause we don’t disclose it.

Porter Stansberry: Well, they say they do. You know, you can look and see that the Treasury’s holdings of gold remain unchanged. But it’s not audited. So we don’t know.

Aaron Brabham: It’s their word.

Porter Stansberry: They haven’t allowed anyone in Fort Knox since the early 1950s. Now, listen, please. Don’t write in telling me that I’m a crank and a conspiracy theorist. I’m not saying the gold isn’t there. What I’m saying is we don’t know. It hasn’t been audited.

Aaron Brabham: All right. So Russia seems to be the smart player here, and so does China, because last week Bernanke went QE infinity.

Porter Stansberry: QE infinity. That’s right. So what they’re pledging to do is they’re gonna buy something on the order of $40 billion worth of new mortgages –

Aaron Brabham: Starting off.

Porter Stansberry: – or Treasury debt. They haven’t really specified. Yeah. And that they’re gonna support the markets. And they really did this to answer to the ECB, which is pledged to begin interest-rate targeting of Spain and Italian debt, which implies a massive inflation underway in Europe. And to make sure that the dollar isn’t strengthened too much versus the euro, the Fed had to pledge to do essentially the same. One can’t print without the other printing or the whole exchange rate mechanism’s gonna get all screwy.

Aaron Brabham: All right. So now looking at the sovereign bonds, they start dropping in yields, like Spain and Italy, you know, when the presses are announcing. They fell below like five percent or six percent.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Spain went below six percent for the first time since the last ECB promise to buy, which was in May, and Italy went below five percent since the last big announcement of printing.

Aaron Brabham: How foolish would people be to be investors in those bonds? Do you think it’s safe, or you think it’s shaky?

Porter Stansberry: Well, let me ask you the same question. Let’s say you’re running a small community bank, and a guy comes to you and says, “I’d like a loan.” And you say, “Okay, show me your collateral.” “Well, I don’t have any except for I have the right to tax my neighbors. I’m a gangster.”

Aaron Brabham: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: That’s a little shaky.

Aaron Brabham: It’s very shaky.

Porter Stansberry: What if your neighborhood decides to move?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: What if you’re overthrown?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, if they have an uprising.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Hmm. I’m not so sure about that –

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: – right to tax. Is that – that’s not really great collateral.

Aaron Brabham: Not –

Porter Stansberry: In my mind. Well, what’s interesting is in the bond market, the right to tax is seen as the best collateral in the world. But if you look at the history of sovereign debt, it’s terrible. There’s like no such thing as a sovereign borrower who hasn’t defaulted. So right to tax not good collateral. Not great collateral. Okay. So then you’d say, “Okay, I need a higher interest rate, ‘cause I don’t know. Maybe someone deposes you?”

Aaron Brabham: I want a risk reward.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Maybe you’re not a gangster for long. But then, he says, “and you can be sure I’m gonna pay you back because I have a counterfeit printing press in my basement.”

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. I’m not feeling good about this still. You’re not doing anything to make me feel better. I feel worse now.

Porter Stansberry: No. So the bank’s in the position of loaning to a guy with no collateral, except for his monopoly on violence, and he’s promising you that he will print money to pay you back, which will have no intrinsic value.

Aaron Brabham: So who are buying these sovereign bonds?

Porter Stansberry: The central banks are buying most of them. But the real issue is, for the entire monetary system runs on the dollar. This is the real issue. So the whole money system works on the dollar. So all the contracts, all the obligations, all the trading receipts, everything is done in the dollar. So therefore, every bank has to have dollars in reserve, ‘cause that’s what all the transactions are done in. So right now, I want to say – I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head, but there’s around $500 billion in U.S. dollars, in literal, actual, green paper bills, circulating outside the U.S., which is about twice as much paper as we have inside the U.S.

Aaron Brabham: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. So that’s what shows you how important the dollar is internationally. In terms of total reserves, not just the pieces of paper, but in terms of all the different receipts, the numbers are much larger. Overall, central banks around the world, out of all of their reserves, more than 60 percent of them are dollars. The problem is that you can’t do business unless you’re in dollars, so therefore, when you go overnight, when you put your cash deposits away, what do you have to put them in? You have to put them in dollars, ‘cause everyone else uses dollars. So you’re at the mercy of the U.S. central bank.

And the global monetary system has diversified a lot since 1999 when the euro came on. And so now something like – I don’t know – 25 percent of global reserves are euros. So you either have to operate in dollars or euros. And so when you go overnight, you’ve gotta stay in one of these two currencies, which puts you completely at the mercy of the devaluation of the dollar or the euro, which is what’s happening. So the U.S. and Europe are both trading upon the goodwill of their creditors to pay back their debtors.

Aaron Brabham: Not much goodwill right now.

Porter Stansberry: And it’s a giant game. It’s a game of who blinks first.

Aaron Brabham: And it doesn’t look like either of them are gonna blink the other direction because –

Porter Stansberry: Because if there ever –

Aaron Brabham: Unlimited printing.

Porter Stansberry: If there ever is a run on the – if there ever is a real run on the dollar, and I believe that there will be for all the reasons I’ve said over the many years. But the problem is that who gets hurt? The guys who get hurt are the dollar holders. And who are the dollar holders? Well, they’re our largest creditors. So it’s kinda like they’re damned if they do and they’re damned if they don’t. But there certainly is a profit to be had in stability. And so what they’re saying to the Fed is okay, just don’t devalue more than a couple percentage points a year, and we’ll go along with it because we can’t stand for there to be any real global unrest.

Aaron Brabham: All right. So with a QE infinity in your explanation, short term, and I’m gonna qualify short term as the next 12 months.

Porter Stansberry: It’s really simple what you’re gonna see. You’re gonna see much higher prices for everything that’s a hard commodity. So gold, silver. Internationally, I’d say oil prices are gonna go up. Domestically, I don’t think so, because production is soaring. So you’ll see an even bigger spread between WTI and Brent. A lot of things that are difficult to increase production of rapidly, so like soy beans, could see that – they’ve had a huge move. They’re up 50 percent probably in the last three months in anticipation of QE3 and the ECB move.

But my top choice is silver, because you’ve already seen central banks begin to load up on gold, and silver’s always been the poor man’s gold. So around the world, people are gonna start hoarding and stockpiling silver and that’s gonna drive the prices up. I’ve said in my newsletter that I expect you’ll see silver over $50.00 by the end of the year.

Aaron Brabham: All right. That’s exactly what our listeners wanted to know for the education piece.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. And if you look at the difference between silver mining companies and the price of silver, you can see pretty clearly that the miners are also radically under-valued in terms of the value of their production compared to silver prices.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, we’ve had a few people write in and say, what do you think of the junior resource sector? ‘Cause you know, it’s starting to build, right?

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: It’s starting to look like it’s on an upswing.

Porter Stansberry: Exactly. But –

Aaron Brabham: There’s so much fraud out there when it comes to the miners.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: You gotta be careful. You want to go for producers, not the speculative miners, right?

Porter Stansberry: Well, I would just say that certainly the bulk of your investment should be in the reputable producers, and they’re not – it’s not hard to find. They’re the ones who increase production every year, who pay a dividend. The companies that are run by people like Ross Beaty, the good folks. And then in terms of the speculative companies, you can do very well on them. We have recommended a couple of speculative companies over my career that have done very, very well. You know their names. I’m not gonna say them on the radio show because they’re worth [laughter] a lot of money. But certainly the prospect companies are not the place for most investors.

Aaron Brabham: People love them, though, ‘cause it’s like gambling.

Porter Stansberry: Well, I know. But –

Aaron Brabham: You can’t keep them out of it, but you’re right. Buy vice.

Porter Stansberry: I would say upwards of 90 percent of them are not even – they’re not around – I’m gonna – I don’t want to – I’m gonna get in big trouble for this, but I’m gonna say 90 percent of them will never be worth anything, okay? And the problem is that most of that 90 percent was never intended to be worth anything. It was just a simple promotion.

Aaron Brabham: Uh-huh. All right, Porter. Let’s get to some little housekeeping business here. Last week we received tons of e-mail about the Dinesh D’Souza interview. Can you guess if they were major –

Porter Stansberry: I told you this –

Aaron Brabham: – like the majority of them were positive or negative?

Porter Stansberry: I told you this yesterday before you even told me anything about it.

Aaron Brabham: I know, but we’re not sposed to – you know, this is a game, right?

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: Positive or negative?

Porter Stansberry: Well, what I love so much about our conservative listeners is that they love it when I attack the left because of their arguments are intellectually bankrupt. For example, the left will not admit – and you know we had a guest on who was a lefty kinda guy – the left will not admit that card check is an abhorrence to all Americans. You should not have to show whether or not you voted for or against a union.

Aaron Brabham: No, it’s bully tactics.

Porter Stansberry: It’s complete bully tactic, and America is founded on the idea of representation and having a vote and having a say, and your vote is always private.

Aaron Brabham: It’s anonymous.

Porter Stansberry: Always anonymous.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: You go inside, you close the curtain, you vote your way, you walk out. No one has the right to know how you voted, right? Of course, the union wants card check. They want to see how you voted, because they are gonna intimidate you into voting yes. That plain, clearcut, simple. And there isn’t a decent human being on the left that would support that position. But they have to because all their financial backing comes from the unions.

So it’s kind of like one of these litmus tests to see whether or not you’re a genuine person or whether or not you’re just a political soldier, a pawn, just following orders. Right? So most listeners love it when I criticize the ridiculous positions that the left finds themselves in.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, yeah. We get the “Porter, you’re a genius.”

Porter Stansberry: Right.

Aaron Brabham: Porter, blah, blah, blah.

Porter Stansberry: But when I attack the right –

Aaron Brabham: Ah, it doesn’t go so well.

Porter Stansberry: – for the same kind of logical inconsistencies, does not go over well. So Dinesh D’Souza honestly believes that we’re facing a United States of Islam. It’s one of the most laughable, ridiculous ideas I’ve ever heard in my entire life, but because there is some infinitesimal, tiny possibility that oh, my goodness, all the guys in towels are gonna be against us, oh, no! Oh, we’re gonna die! Then everyone on the right, which is backed by military contractors and everyone who’s ever been in the armed forces, they’re bam, bam, bam! We need more soldiers. We need more missiles.

You know, I loved it. I mean, Dinesh makes an argument for why we need a certain number of nuclear warheads, but he doesn’t even know how many cities are in the world.

Aaron Brabham: Now, what about – see, I feel like Dinesh right after the interview was laughing all the way because the whole week was the embassy attacks in all these Middle Eastern countries. He would probably argue that that – here we go. But there’s a difference between little demonstrations and organization to battle the United States. I just don’t see these guys organizing with all their differences in religions.

Porter Stansberry: No, and this goes right – I think this goes right to my point, which is that these people are all fighting sectarian civil wars. We want nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with us. And the idea that we should go be involved in a civil war in Libya. For what? Where is our strategic interest in this place? By the way, you want to really upset the right, point out that we have no strategic interest in Israel. There is no reason for us to support Israel militarily. None.

Aaron Brabham: None. And they are pretty trigger-happy. They’re ready to get after it.

Porter Stansberry: Our support of Israel is totally an accident of the U.S. political system. What was I – there is some fantastic number. There are – what was it? I used to know this. There’s something like 15 million Jewish people in the whole world.

Aaron Brabham: That’s it?

Porter Stansberry: That’s it.

Aaron Brabham: I feel like I know a million.

Porter Stansberry: That’s it. But how much political power do they have in the United States? ‘Cause they are an incredibly wealthy –

Aaron Brabham: A lot.

Porter Stansberry: They’re the single wealthiest ethnic group in the United States, and they have tremendous political organization, because they all stick together. They’re a very unified ethnic group. And you cannot oppose them politically in America.

Aaron Brabham: Let’s see. Two people –

Porter Stansberry: But –

Aaron Brabham: Geightner and Bernanke. There’s two that control a lot of –

Porter Stansberry: But the country I‘m saying, I’m telling you. What I’m saying to you is I don’t care about the political consequences of my opinions. I don’t have to.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: I’m just a newsletter publisher. Who cares? I’m just saying it doesn’t make any sense for our country to spend the amount – we spend more money on our military than every other country in the world combined. We have 2,500 nuclear warheads at the ready. There are only 400 major cities in the world –

Aaron Brabham: That have over a million people, right?

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. And most of those cities are already our allies. So there’s probably 150 cities that we could ever possibly have a conflict within the next 30-40 years. Right? How many times do we need to blow them up? It doesn’t make any sense. There is no logical explanation to have a warhead stockpile of 2,500 nuclear weapons. And his whole nonsense about first strike is just insane. You know how accurate the Soviet missiles are that are supposed to be able to strike us all the way from the other side of the world?

Aaron Brabham: Probably as accurate as Saddam Hussein’s SCUD missiles were trying to hit Kuwait.

Porter Stansberry: Where do the SCUD missiles come from?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: The Soviet arsenal.

Aaron Brabham: They’re terrible. They couldn’t even hit within a hundred miles, they couldn’t even hit a couple of miles –

Porter Stansberry: It’s just the whole – it just drives me crazy that people believe this nonsense, because it is so clearly crazy on its face. It’s crazy to believe that people who’ve been fighting each other for their entire history – right? Arab sectarian battles begun in like 700 A.D. They’ve been fighting each other the whole time they’ve had a religion. They hate each other. There’s no way they’re gonna organize against us. Secondly, if they do, so what? Tell me how many aircraft carriers does Iran have?

Aaron Brabham: I’d say zero.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Tell me. Tell me how many nuclear submarines.

Aaron Brabham: Zero.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. We’re fighting people who still mostly live in caves. Ha. I’m not making that up.

Aaron Brabham: No, that’s true.

Porter Stansberry: It’s just crazy that we have this entire culture of fear that feeds this monster in D.C. which is bankrupting us for nothing. There is no need to have all these missiles. There is no need to have this enormous, two-million man army, two million people in the army and the reserves in the United States, for what? Why do we have troops in 120 countries? For what? Why? When’s the last time the U.S. – when’s the last time the continental United States was invaded? Here’s a good question.

Aaron Brabham: I would say by the Europeans when they landed here.

Porter Stansberry: No, the last invasion of the continental United States was in 1812-1813, and that was right here in Baltimore. It was when the British came and burned down Washington, D.C. Now, the interesting thing is the only people that have actually ever invaded us were English. And they’re our closest allies.

Aaron Brabham: They’re our closest allies.

Porter Stansberry: Anyway, I’m just saying that I think that the right’s paranoia is just as stupid and just as illogical and just as crazy as the left’s union-backing and all their crazy stuff. And I know that he made the movie he made, not because it makes any sense or it’s rational, but to touch on the hot buttons that are the core fundraising issues for Republicans. I think his movie is just as bad, where Mike and Waffeau was just as funny, just as laughable, as all of the films by the Detroit guy, Bowling for Columbine and the –

Aaron Brabham: The big Michael Moore.

Porter Stansberry: Michael Moore. It’s the same. It’s just stupid right-wing propaganda, instead of stupid left-wing propaganda. But of course, I don’t expect our listeners to support that at all. They’re gonna think that Dinesh D’Souza hung the moon, because he’s advocating for all the nonsense that they’ve believed in their whole lives.

Aaron Brabham: And you’re right, because whenever we’re on the right side, and you’re hammering politicians, whatever, praise, praise, praise. That one podcast was, “Porter, get out of politics. You don’t know anything. Don’t give me your opinion ever again. Stick to finance. It’s the only thing you know.”

Porter Stansberry: Right. Okay.

Aaron Brabham: All right. All right. Well, on the hotline, we have our guest, Lauren Lyster. Lauren is the host of Capital Account on Russia Today television. She is also the first ever female guest on Stansberry Radio.

Lauren, welcome to Stansberry Radio.

Porter Stansberry: Lauren, how are you?

Lauren Lyster: Hi, Porter. Doing well. How are you?

Porter Stansberry: I’m doing great. Thanks for joining us.

Lauren Lyster: Thank you so much for having me on this show. What an honor.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, jeez.

Aaron Brabham: Wow. You’re already setting us up, like you’re gonna come at us.

Porter Stansberry: And I thought you had a much more interesting life than that.

Lauren Lyster: Oh, come on. I’ve gotta butter you guys up so you’re nice to me.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, we’re nice to everyone.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, we’re nice. Actually, we’ve got a fun game that we’re gonna play with you.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah, we got a new game to play.

Aaron Brabham: We’re going to introduce it.

Lauren Lyster: All right. Is that right?

Aaron Brabham: Yes.

Porter Stansberry: But first I wanted to share with you my latest ambition. I’ve just come to this realization.

Lauren Lyster: Let’s hear it.

Porter Stansberry: We were looking at you bio, and it says that you are gonna participate in some standup.

Lauren Lyster: Yes, allegedly.

Aaron Brabham: No, no. No alleged. You gotta do it, right?

Porter Stansberry: I would kill for an invitation.

Aaron Brabham: Yes. We would love that.

Porter Stansberry: But –

Lauren Lyster: Is it anywhere near New York?

Porter Stansberry: Oh, absolutely.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, yeah, we’re in Baltimore. We can train it up there.

Lauren Lyster: You guys have to come. You have to come. It’s ____ –

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: I will like – what I’ll do is I’ll scow at everyone if they don’t laugh at your jokes. And then if they don’t, I’ll threaten to beat them up.

Aaron Brabham: And Lauren, you’ve heard some of our podcasts. You know Porter’s got the horse laugh that –

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: It can’t be stopped. If you can get that going while you’re up on stage, it’ll make everybody else laugh.

Porter Stansberry: I will snort.

Lauren Lyster: That is amazing.

Porter Stansberry: I will.

Lauren Lyster: Exactly what I need.

Aaron Brabham: When is this event, ‘cause I’m in. We’re gonna do this.

Lauren Lyster: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Because I’m gonna suck, so I’m gonna need all the help I can get from the _________.

Porter Stansberry: Lauren, you’ve never sucked at anything in your life.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I’m pretty sure though that you don’t know what that is, but okay.

Lauren Lyster: I haven’t done standup comedy yet, so that’s why I haven’t sucked yet. [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: All right. Well, we’ll find out.

All right, Porter. Let’s explain the game.

Porter Stansberry: All right.

Aaron Brabham: ‘Cause we want to get to know her a little bit better.

Porter Stansberry: All right. So we were trying to do some research on you, and you’re a journalist, and you haven’t written a book yet, at least that we know of. And we couldn’t find much about your likes, dislikes, your beliefs, your value system, this kind of thing. So we came up with this game, and I used to use it a lot on first dates. And believe me, I went on a lot of first dates. And that wasn’t because I was a ladies man. It was because I always got shot down.

Aaron Brabham: Because he didn’t get the call back.

Porter Stansberry: Right. So –

Lauren Lyster: Wait. Hold on. When did this become a date? Am I on a date card?

Porter Stansberry: No. No.

Aaron Brabham: No.

Porter Stansberry: This is a game. This is a game I –

Aaron Brabham: This is a game.

Porter Stansberry: This is a game we used to play on first dates. It’s a way –

Lauren Lyster: I know. I’m just messing with you. I get what –

Porter Stansberry: Great.

Aaron Brabham: Great.

Porter Stansberry: This is how all my first dates always went.

Aaron Brabham: Right. This is why you didn’t get the call back.

Porter Stansberry: Just messing with you.

Aaron Brabham: Doesn’t like the teasing.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. So it’s called – the game is called neither, either, both.

Lauren Lyster: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: So what you – I’m gonna give you two choices. You can say one choice or the other choice, or you can say neither, or you can say both.

Lauren Lyster: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: Either, neither, both. All right?

Lauren Lyster: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: So we’ll start out with some easy ones. Okay?

Lauren Lyster: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: Jon Stewart or Bill O’Reilly?

Lauren Lyster: Both.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Coffee or tea?

Lauren Lyster: But for different reasons, and –

Porter Stansberry: Right. Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna go back.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. We’re gonna go back into these.

Porter Stansberry: There’s 25 of them. We’re gonna burn through them real quick, ‘cause I want to – you gotta think fast. I don’t want you –

Lauren Lyster: Okay. All right.

Porter Stansberry: I don’t you to analyze it too much. And then we’ll go back and discuss them. Okay?

Lauren Lyster: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Jon Stewart or Bill O’Reilly? You said both.

Lauren Lyster: Both.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Coffee or tea?

Lauren Lyster: Coffee. Oh.

Porter Stansberry: Girl –

Lauren Lyster: Either. Sorry. I can’t even follow rules. Either.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. So that would be both.

Lauren Lyster: Both. Okay.

Porter Stansberry: Right. So either is you say one or the other.

Lauren Lyster: Okay. So I name one.

Porter Stansberry: You name one.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: So you like both coffee and tea?

Lauren Lyster: Okay. No, no, no. Coffee. Sorry. I gotta commit to that.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, my gosh.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, Jesus. This might take a while. Okay. Stocks or bonds.

Lauren Lyster: Neither.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Private school or public school?

Lauren Lyster: Public.

Porter Stansberry: Tax cuts or stimulus?

Lauren Lyster: Neither.

Porter Stansberry: Ooh. Vladimir Putin or Robert Kraft?

Lauren Lyster: I don’t know. I plead the Fifth. Neither.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter] Monogamy or dating.

Lauren Lyster: Well, it depends on the time. Either. Oh, oh. Both. Both. Both.

Aaron Brabham: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Lauren Lyster: I suck at this game, you guys.

Porter Stansberry: You’re not doing very well.

Aaron Brabham: Well, I would – this is entertaining.

Porter Stansberry: Like half of them you’ve answered one way, then the other. I don’t – you gotta give me – okay.

Aaron Brabham: She’s female. She waffles. We get it.

Porter Stansberry: So let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. Eric Clapton or John Mayer?

Lauren Lyster: John Mayer.

Porter Stansberry: Seinfeld or Friends?

Lauren Lyster: What was the first?

Porter Stansberry: Seinfeld or Friends?

Lauren Lyster: Friends.

Porter Stansberry: Card check or right to work?

Lauren Lyster: I don’t want to – neither.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, ho, ho.

Aaron Brabham: All right.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Hayek or Keynes?

Lauren Lyster: Not Keynes. But, you know what? I think Keynes has been misunderstood, to an extent, so you know, both have value.

Porter Stansberry: Both. Peak oil or shale boom?

Lauren Lyster: Now you’re getting tough, guys. I have issues with both, so –

Porter Stansberry: Neither.

Lauren Lyster: – neither.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Boys or girls?

Lauren Lyster: Boys.

Porter Stansberry: Inflation or deflation?

Lauren Lyster: Depends on the day. It could go either way. Both.

Porter Stansberry: iPad or Droid?

Lauren Lyster: iPad.

Porter Stansberry: Coach or first class?

Lauren Lyster: Coach.

Porter Stansberry: Comcast or Direct TV?

Lauren Lyster: Comcast.

Porter Stansberry: Thongs or grannies?

Lauren Lyster: What?

Porter Stansberry: Thongs or grannies?

Lauren Lyster: What are grannies?

Porter Stansberry: Grannies are big, comfortable underwear, like men’s boxers.

Lauren Lyster: Oh. Not grannies. Oh, thongs. Jeez. You guys are getting real personal.

Porter Stansberry: Thongs or grannies?

Aaron Brabham: Hey, _________ –

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: You can say neither.

Aaron Brabham: You can say neither. Yeah, you can plead the Fifth.

Lauren Lyster: Who’s gonna say granny? That’s embarrassing. Thong.

Aaron Brabham: All right.

Porter Stansberry: All right. All right. We’re just asking questions.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: Leastman or Santelli?

Lauren Lyster: Santelli.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Maria Bartiromo. I can’t pronounce her last name. Sorry. Or Erin Burnett.

Lauren Lyster: Uh.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: You’re like neither.

Lauren Lyster: Okay. No. Because I value those women for what they’ve done.

Porter Stansberry: Of course.

Aaron Brabham: They paved the way.

Porter Stansberry: Of course. So both.

Lauren Lyster: So both. So both.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Pro life or pro choice?

Lauren Lyster: Pro choice.

Porter Stansberry: All right. And one more. This is a cultural one.

Lauren Lyster: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: Team Aniston or Team Jolie?

Lauren Lyster: Aniston.

Porter Stansberry: All right.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. All right.

Porter Stansberry: All right. So let’s go back to the couple that you sorta stumbled over.

Lauren Lyster: All right.

Porter Stansberry: What do you think is the most misunderstood about Keynes?

Lauren Lyster: Well, I think that modern Keynesianism, which is associated with every kind of establishment figure in Washington that just wants to print money, I think that that, when you really go back and look at Keynes’ work and kind of listen to some of the ways that he thought, I think that maybe he wouldn’t be so happy with how his theories have been used or misused, because I think he was more of a nuanced academic. But in the way that Keynesianism and Keynes is used today, I would say that I disagree with those policies. I don’t think that stimulus is a solution to our economic problems in the U.S., or anywhere.

Porter Stansberry: I’d tell you that if you read some of the things that Keynes said to journalists at the time, I think you get a picture of him in the early 30s, at least, as being a pretty radical socialist.

Lauren Lyster: Well, that is fair enough. At the same time, I do think that there have been examples of him taking a more nuanced point of view or at least being open.

Porter Stansberry: Sure. Yes.

Lauren Lyster: The idea is that I think or it’s been appropriated a very certain, specific way, in this day and age, that I’m not so sure.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. All right.

Lauren Lyster: In example, I know that Keynes was a pretty active trader, I believe I’ve read and ____ –

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. He was. He was a very good speculator.

Lauren Lyster: – that appropriate his theories today are more of the academics that sit in their ivory towers, rather than people that are actually have money in the game.

Porter Stansberry: You’re saying that it’s the ivory tower that interprets him today, not the speculators.

Lauren Lyster: Yeah, I think – I don’t – I think that people in the ivory towers that consider themselves Keynesians are more economists, and people that don’t necessarily have skin in the game as an investor.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. Now, I wasn’t quite sure you knew the meaning of this one, of Vladimir Putin or Robert Kraft. Are you familiar with the story of Robert Kraft and Vladimir Putin?

Lauren Lyster: I’m not. Let’s hear it.

Porter Stansberry: So Robert Kraft is a paperboard magnate in New England, and he owns the New England Patriots. And he was visiting Vladimir Putin right after Putin sent the oil tycoon guy to jail in the spring of 2005. And Putin organized a little dog and pony show for these western CEOs. It was Robert Kraft and the head of Intel and the head of IBM and the head of Alcoa and all these guys.

And it was a really weird press conference thing where Putin was trying to show himself as being a man of capitalism, even though he’d just stole Yukos and sent this poor bastard to prison for whatever, 20 years. You know. Anyway. So at the press conference following the meeting, he asked to see Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl championship ring from 2005. The Patriots had just won the Super Bowl. And so in front of the entire Russian press corps, Robert Kraft hands him his Super Bowl ring. Well, Putin puts it on and then he puts it in his pocket and he walks away with it.

Lauren Lyster: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: And that is a true story.

Porter Stansberry: That’s a true story.

Lauren Lyster: No way.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Lauren Lyster: Did he give it – was it a stunt?

Aaron Brabham: No.

Porter Stansberry: No, it wasn’t a stunt. He kept it.

Aaron Brabham: He kept it. He – Kraft never got it back.

Porter Stansberry: And now it’s on display at the library at the Kremlin.

Lauren Lyster: That’s absurd.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. You’re right. It is absurd, but it’s true.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Lauren Lyster: That is crazy.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. It’s true. So I just wondered, it was a great stunt, because what Putin was really doing was – what he was saying to the West is I’m one of you guys, but what he was saying to all the Russians is, these guys are my bitches.

Aaron Brabham: I own them.

Lauren Lyster: Yeah. Totally. Wow. You know what? I have to hand it to Putin in that case, because that Patriot sounds like a sucker. Why would he give up his ring?

Porter Stansberry: I don’t know.

Aaron Brabham: I agree with that. He shoulda gone back after him.

Lauren Lyster: He even got the ring, made his message. I mean, gotta hand it to the guy. That’s pretty clever.

Porter Stansberry: Very clever, and I think these guys who underestimate all the time are just fools. He’s a very, very, very dangerous but powerful guy. How about you said – when I said stocks or bonds, you said neither. What’s your third choice?

Lauren Lyster: Yeah. I would say alternative investments. I mean, every day we have people on the show talking about all of the problems with the financial system and the interconnection and the counterparty risk and the correlated risk. And I just am at a point where I’m just like, okay, hands off. Alternative investments.

Porter Stansberry: Wow. Very sophisticated view.

Lauren Lyster: Well, I mean, the stock market is – I mean, it’s not even where individual fundamentals matter anymore. It’s all about the macro climate. I mean, so many people that I’ve spoken to are saying, you know, I have fund managers that are getting out of the game because they don’t know how to bet on how Angela Merkel is feeling today. And I think that’s a really dangerous place to be, not to mention the Fed’s role in the economy today has everything distorted, has risk distorted. It’s just, I think it’s a really scary time. I mean, bonds are – I don’t know – the Fed’s so involved.

Treasury yields are so low for such weird reasons, because the U.S. financial situation is a mess, but I think the U.S. is being helped out right now by the fact that Europe is such a mess, and the U.S. dollar’s still the reserve currency, so I just think that there’s too much risk. Not to mention getting into the way that rules are just systemically broken. I mean, MF Global was just such a glowing example of the fact that –

Porter Stansberry: Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Lyster: – there is no limit to what’s possible. I mean –

Porter Stansberry: No. And look what happened at Lehman, right? They were shifting $50 billion back and forth between New York and London, depending upon which quarterly report was due where, and that was while the SEC was in their building watching them.

Lauren Lyster: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know. And like when you think about all of the regulators that are in JPMorgan every single day, they go to work, there, and the whale trade just was completely _________ –

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: “We had no idea.” Yeah, right.

Lauren Lyster: Yeah. They had no idea that that was going on. They had no idea of the risk. I just, I – it all concerns me. It all worries me. I’m just way more apt to pay attention to people that have ideas to get outside of the financial system. I mean, you have Jim Grant who talks about planting black walnut trees, and at this point that sounds like a pretty good idea, because I would rather deal with the weather than deal with central bankers, regulators, too-big-to-fail banks, and how everything is so messed up.

Porter Stansberry: Well, I can tell you that my personal largest investment this year was pine trees, so –

Lauren Lyster: Really. All right.

Porter Stansberry: – I’m on board. Yeah. Southern Georgia pine trees.

Lauren Lyster: How’s that going for you?

Porter Stansberry: It’s growing very well. They grow whether the Fed inflates or not.

Lauren Lyster: Amazing.

Porter Stansberry: So, listen. I wanted to get to – I want to – I know you’ve got better things to do than talk to us, but I do have one serious question for you. Could you try to explain to our listeners exactly how your media company works, and the name of your website? It’s RT –

Lauren Lyster: RT.com is the news organization’s website. Our show is seen on YouTube.com/CapitalAccount and Hulu.com/Capital-Account. So the way our news network works is it’s an international news network, English language. It’s independently run. Like my boss, for example, was a war reporter for a decade, and all sorts of things, and he’s the editorial director here in our Washington bureau. It does get its funding from the Russian government. I’ll be quite honest about that. So do other networks like BBC get funding from the government.

The way our shows works is that we do our own thing. I mean, it’s me. It’s my producer, our producer, Demetri Kofinas, who has a background as a financial blogger. He reported on the crisis on the Greece, on the ground in Athens, and is very versed in finance. And we do the show together, and we get our kind of what we want to do signed off by my director here, who says great. Doesn’t give a lot of input, typically, and we get to do our thing.

Porter Stansberry: Very interesting model. It’s a Russian-backed, English language news program on the Internet, and from what I can –

[Crosstalk]

Lauren Lyster: _________. I mean, it’s a network, but it’s a TV network, so it’s shown all over the world to, I think, _________ million homes.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, yeah. You guys have a huge audience, and not only that, but you are very respected on Wall Street.

Lauren Lyster: Well, that’s because, I think, that people are pretty – finding it very refreshing to see some alternative points of view to what you see on CNBC or Bloomberg every day.

Porter Stansberry: I don’t have much problem with Bloomberg’s coverage of things, but in my opinion, you –

Lauren Lyster: And I do want to preface that. I do agree with you there, Stansberry. I think Bloomberg does a much better job, but CNBC I do think has –

Porter Stansberry: Oh, it’s horrible.

Lauren Lyster: – a specific point of view, and a lot of perspectives are _________.

Porter Stansberry: They’re a mouthpiece of Washington for sure.

Lauren Lyster: Right.

Porter Stansberry: Well, I want to refresh – oh, Aaron, one last question.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. I do have one question, and this is not to be creepy or anything like that, but do you – I’m sure you realize this. Like on YouTube, there are YouTube videos devoted to your legs. Like, do you think it’s a little creepy that people are go on there to listen to you but it’s really that wide-angle shot with your legs, and it gets a ton or views.

Lauren Lyster: Well, how do I answer? I mean, I hope –

Porter Stansberry: It’s a tough question, but it’s a fair question.

Lauren Lyster: I’m very confident with what I’m doing intellectually, and think that what we’re doing is really important, so I hope at the end of the day that that is more valued and viewed in the end than my legs, but I mean, that’s complimentary. I’m sure there’s a day that my legs won’t get any attention, so I’ll take it.

Porter Stansberry: There you go. That’s a good answer.

Aaron Brabham: All right. I like it. You owned it. I appreciate that.

Porter Stansberry: Good answer. Good answer.

Lauren Lyster: You know, that’s the bottom line. I mean, I’m a woman. I’m somewhat young, and someday I won’t be, so.

Porter Stansberry: Fair.

Lauren Lyster: Okay with it.

Porter Stansberry: Fair. Hey, Lauren, it was a very enjoyable conversation. We truly do respect your news programming, and we look forward to seeing you on standup. You gotta give us those details.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Lauren Lyster: I will –

Aaron Brabham: Do you have any of the details for the funniest reporter show?

Lauren Lyster: I _________ –

[Crosstalk]

Aaron Brabham: And by the way, I mean, could I technically enter this thing? Because I might get up there and kill.

Lauren Lyster: We’ll see. I don’t know. And I fully endorse competition, but I might have to get involved in that, get in the way of that.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, nice.

Aaron Brabham: All right. I like that.

Porter Stansberry: I just want to – I just wish – you know, Aaron has a future career planned as being a standup guy, and my future goal is just to drive the RV.

Lauren Lyster: There you go.

Aaron Brabham: We have lofty goals.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Lauren Lyster: Those are great goals. All right. Well, you guys, thank you. And I do want to say, you know, I’m not an expert on Keynes. I’m just saying I just had an interesting interview with Mark Faber recently, who was talking about how some modern – or how some modern economists use some of these thinkers in a way that maybe they wouldn’t appreciate. And so that’s what me read –

Porter Stansberry: I’m gonna send you some Keynes quotes that you might not have seen yet. I’m gonna e-mail you a couple choice ones.

Lauren Lyster: Oh, great.

Porter Stansberry: Might color your opinion a little bit.

Lauren Lyster: I’m sure. I’m sure. ‘Cause I know where you stand. At least I think I know.

Porter Stansberry: Ha, ha. Lauren, it was a great pleasure.

Lauren Lyster: Thank you so much for having me on today.

Porter Stansberry: Best of luck with the show.

Lauren Lyster: All right. Thanks.

Porter Stansberry: Bye bye.

Lauren Lyster: Bye.

Aaron Brabham: Another charming guest.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. She said we were mean.

Aaron Brabham: Ah. I liked that she answered the questions honestly.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. She did.

Aaron Brabham: It was impressive. You know, she didn’t weasel out of anything.

Porter Stansberry: No. She didn’t say anything about Putin, though. I don’t blame her.

Aaron Brabham: I don’t either, man. I feel like Kraft really didn’t want to ask for it back ‘cause he’s afraid his hand might get chopped off at that point.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Plane might blow up in the air.

Aaron Brabham: Stranger things have happened over there.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Man, that one poor guy, he poisoned him with radioactive material. Uh.

Aaron Brabham: And then the guy you’re talking about with – the guy he put in jail.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, yeah. Khodorkovsky or whatever his name was.

Aaron Brabham: For pretty much no reason.

Porter Stansberry: Mikhail.

Aaron Brabham: And then when he had his date to get out, they extended it like another seven years for some kind of a fine.

Porter Stansberry: He’s never getting out. But I don’t know. People won’t even know this. They didn’t just send him to jail. They sent him to a Siberian work camp that’s at a uranium mine, where there’s – that’s been in operation since like the ‘60s, and then the whole town is covered in uranium tailings, which are radioactive. And basically you go there, no one comes out alive. It’s terrible.

Aaron Brabham: It’s a death sentence.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Wuh. Not a guy you want to upset.

Aaron Brabham: All right, Porter. No scumbag this week as a nominee. However, you challenged our listeners to find an award. What are we gonna award the person who wins the Stansberry Scumbag of the Year Award? Well, we had a guy write in.

Porter Stansberry: I got an idea.

Aaron Brabham: All right. Let’s hear it.

Porter Stansberry: Well. You tell that listener –

Aaron Brabham: Well, see _________ –

Porter Stansberry: Let’s go to the listener first.

Aaron Brabham: So Allan has a suggestion. He says, “I think I have a winner. You should send them a bobble turd.” Okay?

Porter Stansberry: No. No.

Aaron Brabham: You don’t like it.

Porter Stansberry: No.

Aaron Brabham: But you make it look real fancy.

Porter Stansberry: No.

Aaron Brabham: You have this little casing on it.

Porter Stansberry: No, I think what we should send them is –

Aaron Brabham: All right.

Porter Stansberry: You know, like a – did you ever get one of these – we had a, when I was growing up, my family, my grandparents owned a small beach cottage.

Aaron Brabham: Okay.

Porter Stansberry: On New Smyrna Beach, and it would stay empty for most of the winter, and then the first guy into the house, there would always be – it’s Florida, so there would always be cockroaches.

Aaron Brabham: Yech. I don’t like those.

Porter Stansberry: Right. So to get rid of them, you had to do what’s called this roach bomb thing.

Aaron Brabham: I know. Yeah. I’ve done it before.

Porter Stansberry: You put in the house, you close all the windows and the doors, and you let this thing go.

Aaron Brabham: Like a fogger.

Porter Stansberry: It fumigates it off.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, it fumigates.

Porter Stansberry: That’s what we should send these people. We should send them a roach or a rat pesticide thing.

Aaron Brabham: So when they open the box, it fumigates them.

Porter Stansberry: No, no, no.

Aaron Brabham: I know.

Porter Stansberry: Not doing any violence to them.

Aaron Brabham: I know. I was kidding.

Porter Stansberry: Just send them a box of rat poison, and ask them to clean up.

Aaron Brabham: I feel like, though, if we gave them –

Porter Stansberry: Let me be very clear, for all the Homeland Security officers who are listening –

Aaron Brabham: Yes.

Porter Stansberry: I am not advocating that we apply rat poison or fumigation to any politician or leader.

Aaron Brabham: No.

Porter Stansberry: I’m saying, that as a gesture, we would send them a box of such things. Everyone clear? I’m not threatening anyone. I’m not threatening the president.

Aaron Brabham: I think that we should do a really nice trophy, but have a nice acronym, where they don’t understand it, because I feel like –

Porter Stansberry: Oh, you mean they need to display it.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. I feel like that –

Porter Stansberry: Ha, ha, ha.

Aaron Brabham: They will display it and they’ll have – because they’ll – you’ll write them a nice letter.

Porter Stansberry: But what would we do?

Aaron Brabham: – and then they’ll think, “Great, I won an award.” They’ll never look into it.

Porter Stansberry: I love it. We could send them an award that is a lifetime achievement in politics, which in our way of saying you are a lifetime scumbag –

Aaron Brabham: Lifetime scumbag.

Porter Stansberry: – of the highest order. But they’ll think it’s a real award. Now, that’s genius.

Aaron Brabham: That way it’s displayed in their office. They’re so proud of it. They’ll never listen to one podcast, and then hopefully people will come in and they’ll be like, ooh, yeah, you’re a total scumbag.

Porter Stansberry: I love it. Or then they’ll listen to the radio show.

Aaron Brabham: Which will be even better.

Porter Stansberry: And they’ll be like, oh, these guys are fast.

Aaron Brabham: Maybe we can get them to take a picture of it, too, and then we can post it on our –

Porter Stansberry: I like that.

Aaron Brabham: We’ll really give them a good fake letter. It’ll be nice.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. You’ve won the Stansberry Award.

Aaron Brabham: Lifetime achievement award.

Porter Stansberry: Which is the – I don’t want it to be named after me. We need a really old scumbag politician to name it after.

Aaron Brabham: That’s a good idea.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: One that they kinda look up to, because they don’t really understand it.

Porter Stansberry: Right. Someone who’s revered in Washington and hated everywhere else.

Aaron Brabham: That’s a good idea. I’ll have to write that down. Yeah. We’re looking for – yeah. If you guys can think of anybody, write us.

Porter Stansberry: Richard Nixon.

Aaron Brabham: Write us at Stansberry Radio. That’s what I was thinking.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: Immediately. But I don’t know. Would that be too obvious?

Porter Stansberry: The Nixon Award for Achievement in Politics. [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: I like it. Yeah, if you guys have any suggestions, send them in. Feedback@StansberryRadio.com.

All right, Porter, CEO or crook? We were talking about this the other day as well. So hip hop entrepreneur Jay-Z recently trashed the Occupy Wall Street in a New York Times piece, saying “what’s the thing on the Wall? What are you fighting for? I’m not going to a park and picnic. I have no idea what to do.” So this comes a year after the rapper turned –

Porter Stansberry: Hold on. What does that mean?

Aaron Brabham: I don’t even know what that means. Maybe he was _________ _________.

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: And by the way, let me be very clear. I’m a fan of Jay-Z. I think the guy is a tremendous talent, and he has been fantastic for the music business. He’s made a lot of money for himself and –

Aaron Brabham: Phenomenal entrepreneurs.

Porter Stansberry: Phenomenal. I’m not critical. I don’t want you to think I’m busting on Jay-Z just because I don’t like rap music or I don’t like Jay-Z or – there’s a bunch of listeners out there who think, “Oh, there’s Porter criticizing another black guy. He’s a racist.” It’s ridiculous.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. The problem –

Porter Stansberry: I just don’t understand what Jay-Z was saying, and I wonder why that was interpreted as being a slam of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Aaron Brabham: I don’t really either, but they, but Harry Belafonte came out and hammered him, and because basically Jay-Z was selling shirts, street T-shirts to the Occupy Wall Street crowd a year ago. So he was making money off them, right?

Porter Stansberry: Nothing wrong with that.

Aaron Brabham: Nothing wrong with that at all. But then you brought up a good point which was entrepreneur Russell Simmons.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, yeah.

Aaron Brabham: This guy came out and went crazy about like –

Porter Stansberry: He is such a scumbag, though.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, but he’s got such a great spin. His –

Porter Stansberry: But I love it. I love it, because – what I love about Russell Simmons is he sends his own people completely down the river. And they love him for it. So like he came out with this thing. Were I talking to you about this yesterday?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. We were talking about this.

Porter Stansberry: The bank card?

Aaron Brabham: Yep.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. He came out with this thing, ‘cause he knows that a lot of people who are minorities and live in the ghettos in the cities on the East Coast, they don’t –

Aaron Brabham: No credit.

Porter Stansberry: They don’t use banks.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: So they can’t get a Visa card. And so he would say, “Hey, you buy the Russell Simmons Visa card, and you get $25.00 prepaid Visa card. But it costs you like $36.00 to buy it.” [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. It’s – this guy is hammering them on fees.

Porter Stansberry: But, yeah, exactly. He was killing his own people on banking fees.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: But he was posing as though he was doing a great humanitarian service to his community. And let me be very clear. I think it’s great to hammer people on banking fees. I think it’s great to make money in banking. I got no problem with that whatsoever.

Aaron Brabham: Sure.

Porter Stansberry: But it’s hypocritical as all hell to sit there and lecture to your own community about how you are trying to help them when really you’re selling them down the river.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. Let me just read a sentence from him as a quote. “Today it’s close to impossible to be you or me and get out of Marcy projects or Hollis, Queens without changing our government to have our politicians work for the people who elect them and not the special interests and corporations that pay them." He’s a big corporation, and he’s getting fat over this.

Porter Stansberry: I’m so tired of the “I made it out of the ghetto but you can’t.”

Aaron Brabham: Hey, it really is –

Porter Stansberry: So.

Aaron Brabham: – something that kind of like puts their thumb on top of people, in a way.

Porter Stansberry: I just hate it. I don’t care. In the United States, anyone can do anything they want in business or life. It just takes some perseverance, some brains, and some effort. And there are way too many people like, by the way, the two guys on this podcast right now, who could demonstrate that. No, Aaron and I did not grow up in the ghetto. That’s true. But we didn’t have any special favors. Believe me. Aaron’s whole family looks like a – well, I’ll let him describe it.

Aaron Brabham: Well, let’s just say when people ask my heritage, I say, you know, I’m a quarter Scottish, a quarter Irish, 50 percent white trash.

Porter Stansberry: There you go. Anyway, I’m just so tired. I’m so tired of hearing Americans say other people owe me something. I’m so tried of it, I just can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry if you were born in the ghetto. I’m sorry if your mother was a crack whore. I really am. I’m actually very, very sorry about that. But that’s not my fault. I don’t owe you a thing because of it.

Aaron Brabham: And you don’t have to continue on that path –

Porter Stansberry: No.

Aaron Brabham: – just because your family did that.

Porter Stansberry: You don’t.

Aaron Brabham: You can break it.

Porter Stansberry: And I can guarantee you if you just work hard, if you work hard and you try to serve other people, you will do fine. But if you’re Russell Simmons and you’re a complete hypocrite and all you’re really after serving yourself then sooner or later, you will be destroyed.

Aaron Brabham: As you always say, what’s a friend in need?

Porter Stansberry: A pest.

Aaron Brabham: So when you learn to give value instead of taking –

Porter Stansberry: Right.

Aaron Brabham: – people will give you opportunities.

Porter Stansberry: Absolutely. You show up at work every day and you complain and you ask your boss for a raise every day, and you tell him that you need him to do more for you, you’re out of work.

Aaron Brabham: Well, let’s give an example of something that happened a few times at Stansberry. You used to be in charge of the discretionary bonuses.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, I’m not. That’s not my role anymore.

Aaron Brabham: Not yours anymore, but discretionary. At your discretion.

Porter Stansberry: Right. Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: You would actually have people – and by the way, it’s a bonus. You would have people – a few people – that would complain to you about the bonus.

Porter Stansberry: Not just a few. In every single year.

Aaron Brabham: Shocking to me.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. So what I did was, I’d gather the employees together at Christmastime, and I’d say, “Hey, we had another record year. Everyone’s bonus will be bigger than it was last year. Everyone’s. Okay? And if you want to complain about your bonus, the line starts at the unemployment office. I’m tired of it. It’s not my fault.”

Aaron Brabham: It’s a good way to weed out our employees that are takers versus givers.

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Aaron Brabham: All right, Porter. Winning the war on the middle class. The median U.S. income is the lowest since 1995 according to the annual data from the Census Bureau. Median income adjusted for inflation fell to $50,054.00 in 2011, which is 1.5 percent below its 2010 level. This doesn’t really even take into consideration inflation, either, and the cost of energy and food.

Porter Stansberry: No. I think that is inflation-adjusted.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, it is. Okay.

Porter Stansberry: It’s gotta be. It’s gotta be. Because nominal wages are way up since ’95.

Aaron Brabham: It’s 4.1 percent below its score when Obama took office in 2009.

Porter Stansberry: So this is a very important concept. If you’ve never heard or thought about this before, I really want you to pay attention. This is the whole game. This is why you keep getting poorer and everyone on Wall Street and in Washington keeps gets richer. This is the game. Not only are real wages down since 1995. I can show you data from the Department of Labor which will prove to you, if you didn’t already know it, that real wages have fallen since 1971. On an after-tax per-person real wage basis. In other words, if you’ve been working at a job in America, average job, you’ve gotten poorer over a 40-year period. Okay? That’s never happened before in America. The longest previous downturn in real wages was like six or seven years during the Great Depression. Okay? This was way longer than that.

It’s why the average quality of life, the average standard of living, has continued to decline in America, and it’s why you’re seeing such heated political rhetoric between the rich and the poor. Basically, this is all a result of what we call the war on the middle class. This is why we know the government’s winning the war on the middle class, and why it’s happening is not hard to understand once you get this one thing, and here it is.

Increases to productivity and increases to wage rates cannot keep pace with inflation. It’s just that simple. You keep getting poorer because the government keeps inflating away your savings and your wages. They do that for one simple reason. One reason. Because it protects the banks. This is what makes up for all the bad lending decisions the banks make. It’s what makes up for all their frauds and their scams. This is the government in collusion with big banks. It’s just that simple.

The terrible part is that the working class believes that the central bank – and its inflationary policies – are what lead to full employment. If they think that fiscal deficits, which cause inflation as well, they think that leads to more opportunity, to more jobs, to more government largesse. What it really leads to, folks, is inflation. And you can just take this simple metaphor, okay? It doesn’t matter where you are in life. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the high taxpayer or the free rider. Taxes and the government impede the economy. Pure and simple.

And when one in six people in America works for a government, a state, federal, or local government, okay, we’ve got a huge burden on us. We can’t support that. When the government has to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar it spends, there’s a huge problem in our country. This problem is not gonna go away with more government. It can only go away with less government. I don’t care who pays for government. I don’t care what you – I don’t care how risky it would be to have a banking system without a central bank.

We can’t continue to go down this path, or the middle class will be completely wiped out, and all of the rule of law and all of the things that hold our country together will be destroyed in the process. This is the real danger of the end of America scenario that I talk about. The run on the dollar. And the real cause of it is central banking.

Aaron Brabham: So two things. Number one, no accident that you mentioned 1971.

Porter Stansberry: Right. That was the end of the gold standard. That’s when the banks got the power to inflate their reserves to any level that they want, and it’s no mistake that since before that time, the total debt of the United States had never been more than about 100 percent of GDP. When I say total debt, I mean federal debt, state debt, private debt, public debt, banking system debt. All of the debt had never been more than about 100 percent of GDP. Today it’s four times.

Aaron Brabham: Four hundred percent.

Porter Stansberry: Of GDP. Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: For every man, woman, and child, what’s the figure? Close to what? $700,000.00 or something? Or is that too high? I can’t remember what it was that you –

Porter Stansberry: In total debt, in total debt, it’s $56 trillion. Okay? In total debt right now in the U.S. We have an economy of roughly $15 trillion. We have a population of roughly 300 million. So you can do the math any way you want to. But the bottom line is when we let go of a tangible standard of value in our banking and currency system. We surrendered the fate of that system to the politicians. There is no firm foundation which means that they can create credit in an unlimited scale and they can create as many dollars as they want. We should have never given them this power. Ever.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, and expanding the government to reduce the unemployment numbers is ludicrous, because the government doesn’t produce. They transfer. That’s all they do. They just transfer.

Porter Stansberry: What boggles my mind is that people can’t understand that it’s not other people who pay for taxes.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: We all pay for taxes. There are people who write big checks. There are people who write no checks. But the entire cost of the government comes out of the economy that you participate in. So the more taxes there are, the less opportunity they are for you, on average, across the whole country. There is no free ride, and it’s – there’s just – if you thought that more government and more federal programs would benefit society, then I’d urge you to move to Detroit and see how it goes.

Aaron Brabham: All right. Another winning the war on the middle class. You know, we talk about all these huge ammo buys and crazy things from Department of Homeland Security, and we got a good debate yesterday talking about there’s gonna be a desire for people to want real privacy, because there’s no privacy anymore in this country, and it’s becoming less and less. Well, a 16-year-old boy was questioned by FBI agents over a YouTube video he created for a school project. The video highlighted how America was slipping into a police state and discusses the National Defense Authorization Act evidence suggesting that Republic caucus in Maine was fixed to disenfranchise Ron Paul, the hacktivist group Anonymous.

Anyways. The FBI goes to this kid’s door. You know, he gets notified – the parents get a call. This is FBI so-and-so, Agent blah, blah, blah. They’re like, uh, yes? Well, we got reports that your son is doing some kind of suspicious things on YouTube. We need to go investigate him. They literally come over to the house, sit down with the kid, and they want this kid to become an informant for them against the group Anonymous. That’s too far.

Porter Stansberry: I don’t know.

Aaron Brabham: That’s too far.

Porter Stansberry: I guess you could just say no.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, but why – I mean, it’s so ridiculous. You can’t even have like free speech on YouTube anymore.

Porter Stansberry: I don’t know. I can’t – well, I don’t even really know what to say, ‘cause I don’t think – I mean, I know personally that you don’t have free speech in this country. If you say these things that I say, get ready. They’re coming for you. I’ve had all my bank accounts seized. [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, you’ve lived it.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. I tell people what’s happened to me. They don’t even believe me, and I don’t blame them, ‘cause it just sounds so crazy. But it’s what happens.

Aaron Brabham: All right. Stupid business models. Business Week did a great piece on private equity solving the National Hockey League problems. I’m not a big hockey guy, but I could see how people enjoy it. So the NHL is almost nonexistent in the U.S. and will have its second work stoppage in seven years. So Bain Capital made a surprise offer to buy out the entire league for $3.5 billion in 2005. The owners were like, no way. We don’t want any private equity firms coming in here. I think it could be a good solution.

Porter Stansberry: If I was a hockey owner, I would have accepted that offer. But I’m not a hockey owner, unlikely to become one.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: I don’t really care much about hockey. But I also don’t really care much about professional sports in general, and I think that what the people are paid to pay professional sports is ludicrous. I would much rather go watch a group of hockey players, home players who were actually from Baltimore, who actually grew up here, who actually went to college around here. I’d rather see a regional team play another regional team than watch a bunch of guys who all grew up in Miami and Tampa and Texas, because all the pro football players come from the same couple of places, right? I don’t know. I just –

Aaron Brabham: All right.

Porter Stansberry: I think all you’re really rooting for is uniforms. That’s the only thing that doesn’t change.

Aaron Brabham: You’re right.

Porter Stansberry: The coaches change. The players change. The stadiums change. There’s no tradition, and none of the people care anything about the community. But they have, but somehow they get a free pass to the entire community support. How many people do you see walking around with Ravens stuff, right? The people –

Aaron Brabham: Oh, it’s crazy.

Porter Stansberry: The people don’t even know, the Ravens aren’t even the Ravens. They’re the Cleveland Browns.

Aaron Brabham: I know. And the old school guys here like –

Porter Stansberry: The Colts.

Aaron Brabham: Like Mr. Watkins. He’s like, ah, I’m not a Ravens fan.

Porter Stansberry: I’m a Colts fan.

Aaron Brabham: I’m a Colts fan.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: I quit being a Baltimore fan when they left.

Porter Stansberry: I just, the whole thing boggles my mind. I just don’t understand. I really don’t understand. You’ve got millionaires fighting billionaires over being paid to play a game. And then you’ve got communities that go into crazy amounts of debt to build stadiums for these assholes. I don’t get it. And then guess what? The stadiums never even get paid for, so then people 40 years later, right? Who weren’t even alive when the stadium was built, they get conned into paying for the damn thing.

Aaron Brabham: What was it, the Giants stadium is a parking lot now. The old one. And there’s still $100 million outstanding of debt.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. They still owe $130 million on a stadium that’s now a parking lot for a new stadium.

Aaron Brabham: That they owe on that, too.

Porter Stansberry: It’s just – the outcome is criminal. Maybe the process wasn’t criminal, but the outcome’s criminal, and it all benefits these schmucks.

Aaron Brabham: I do love some NFL. I’m not gonna lie, as I’m a big fan of it, and I hate this whole ref strike thing. How the NFL doesn’t just pay these guys, it shocks me.

Porter Stansberry: The only professional sport I can even tolerate is golf.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, ‘cause you go out there and you earn your money.

Porter Stansberry: You wanna know why I like golf? I like golf because the people that play it are still gentlemen. Yeah. I just, I can’t even – I don’t want my children watching NFL when there’s a fight on every other play, and people act like total jerks when they score, when they make a good play. Act like you’ve been there. You’re a professional. How about the game last weekend, where you had the Tampa Bay Bucs, who like doing a hard charge on the last play of the game, and there’s like two seconds left?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, it was – was it – yeah, where they knocked over Eli. He was going to take a knee and they smashed him. That’s not _________ –

Porter Stansberry: That’s ridiculous.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, that’s ____. They knew what he was gonna do.

Porter Stansberry: It’s so – all this does is reinforce all the bad behavior that the kids are learning in the jail schools. Right? It just reinforces it. It’s like broadcasting thuggery. How about the fact that there’s not an NBA player left that’s not covered in tattoos?

Aaron Brabham: Sure.

Porter Stansberry: What of these people have to offer me and my family for entertainment value? How about nothing? All they can do is help bring us down. Help make our lives seem more hopeless. I’m not gonna go pay for that.

Aaron Brabham: I do like golf also because if you don’t make the cut, you don’t get paid that week. It’s earning a paycheck. I like that.

Porter Stansberry: I like golf because you can compete with someone and still have a conversation with them and still say nice shot. And when the round’s over, you can take your hat off and shake your hand like a gentleman. That’s what I want my children to see. Hey, when’s the last time a pro golfer was in a don’t snitch on the cops video?

Aaron Brabham: I can’t think of any.

Porter Stansberry: How about never?

Aaron Brabham: Yeah.

Porter Stansberry: I hope – you know, it won’t happen, but I hope all those damn professional leagues go out of business. I hate all of them.

Aaron Brabham: All right, Porter. It’s time for the voice mails and a few e-mails, and then we’re outta here, man.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Let’s do it.

Aaron Brabham: Tim, fire ‘em up.

Female: This is Jane that made me lose respect for you and your so-called advice when you made fun of the gentleman that made that movie.

Porter Stansberry: I couldn’t help myself.

Female: Obviously you don’t give a damn how our country ends up in 2016. I do.

Aaron Brabham: Obviously. Yeah. _________.

Female: I’ve followed the Muslim. They’ll never convince me he’s anything but –

Porter Stansberry: Go Obama. He’s a Muslim.

Female: – because of the information I have found on the Internet. It’s _________ –

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: Oh, the Internet. You know it’s true.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, yeah. It has everything.

Female: – before a Hitler state, and I happened to have lived through that period, young man, and you may think it’s funny –

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Female: – but I’ll be damned if I do.

Porter Stansberry: I think you’re pretty funny.

Female: And I’ve lived with the people from Cuba and other places where they’ve come from tyranny, and they say the same things. I’m losing more and more of my respect for any advice you would give.

Porter Stansberry: Okay.

Aaron Brabham: Well, bring on the heat. Next –

Porter Stansberry: I don’t – hold on. Hold on. Where did that conversation go? She got mad at me –

Aaron Brabham: For hammering Dinesh.

Porter Stansberry: For hammering on Dinesh, and somehow she converted that to I don’t care about the country.

Aaron Brabham: To I hate Muslims.

Porter Stansberry: And I hate Muslims.

Aaron Brabham: Because he’s a Muslim. Or, you know, Obama is.

Porter Stansberry: Dinesh is a Hindu.

Aaron Brabham: I think she’s referring to –

Porter Stansberry: I think she’s a Christian.

Aaron Brabham: I think she might have been alluding to Obama being a Muslim.

Porter Stansberry: But just because I didn’t agree with Dinesh doesn’t mean I agree with Obama.

Aaron Brabham: And now you hate your country.

Porter Stansberry: Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like Obama. I make fun of him constantly.

Aaron Brabham: And we make fun of Republicans a lot, too. Whatever.

Porter Stansberry: No, but I mean, like, I always capitalize his name and put the exclamation point on it and stuff.

Aaron Brabham: Sure. Put the exclamation. Yeah. And people get riled up.

Porter Stansberry: Obama. Yeah, come on. I hate the –

Aaron Brabham: Obama.

Porter Stansberry: I hate the entire black, Democratic wing of the party. I think they’re all scumbags. I don’t know how she – I don’t know – like I said, I said at the beginning of the show. I don’t know why you can’t criticize someone’s movie just ’cause it’s a bad – it’s full of bad ideas.

Aaron Brabham: All right. Next.

Male: Hi. My name’s ____. I’m interested in trying to find out if you guys are going to have app on the mobile units.

Aaron Brabham: Like an app.

Male: So we can listen to the radio program on our cell phones? Thinking maybe if you had apps, I could listen to it while I’m at work on the cell phone.

Porter Stansberry: Nice.

Aaron Brabham: I like that.

Male: Thanks for listening to my rant and raving.

Aaron Brabham: Big fan of listening at work.

Porter Stansberry: Don’t – he’s probably like driving a school bus or something.

Aaron Brabham: So there are a few things –

Porter Stansberry: It’s not important.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. So there are few things that you can do. We don’t have an app out right now. However, you can go to iTunes of course. You can load that on your phone. You can also go to our website and download the mp3s, which pretty much any Smartphone can handle these days or you can even transfer it to an iPod or an mp3 player. And then you can play all of our shows.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, come on. Give the guy an app. How hard can that be?

Aaron Brabham: All right. Let’s get an app going. Naresh, let’s get an app.

Porter Stansberry: Come on, guys.

Aaron Brabham: There’s an app for that. All right. One more, I think, Tim.

Porter Stansberry: The Porter app. You know, part of the Porter app would be my horse laugh. You can just push it and it laughs.

Aaron Brabham: I’d like that.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: That’s gonna be my ringtone.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: God, it would annoy people so much.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: That’s it. That’s it. I just recorded it.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: 99 cents. StansberryRadio.com. Get your horse laugh.

Porter Stansberry: That would be good. Get your horse laugh now. Hot and ready.

Aaron Brabham: Hot and ready. All right, Tim. Fire up the last one.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Male: Dinesh D’Souza really ate your lunch.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah, I know he did.

Male: You missed the point of the movie. I just wonder what other points you missed.

Porter Stansberry: Okay. All right.

Aaron Brabham: Okay. All right. We already addressed that.

Porter Stansberry: He ate my lunch. Yep. He’s the guy that was reduced to calling me names, but he won the argument.

Aaron Brabham: Since we’re on a roll of people hammering you, Eric wrote in and said, “Please name one disease that is related to the lack of drugs and not nutrition, which is the magic bullet.” Question mark. “You should become aware of all the fines levied against big pharma.”

Porter Stansberry: Maybe he’s never heard of bacterial infections of any kind?

Aaron Brabham: And he says, “You cannot honestly believe altering Mother Nature can turn out well. I will start listening to your nutrition advice as soon as you are not sick for more than one week.”

Porter Stansberry: [laughter] I love that.

Aaron Brabham: I like the sizzle of that.

Porter Stansberry: Well, clearly he doesn’t understand – you know, and I can’t say I really understand much about virology either, ‘cause I don’t think we really understand much about viruses at all.

Aaron Brabham: I don’t either.

Porter Stansberry: We don’t really understand them yet, but viruses are not commonly thought to come from nutrition, and I think bacteria has been studied well enough to know that it absolutely does not come from nutrition or lack of it. Certainly you can be more susceptible to these things the weaker immune system if you have poor nutrition, but Aaron, I think you know me well enough to assure the readers that I eat extremely well.

Aaron Brabham: You eat very well. The best food you can eat.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. I mean, my wife only shops at Fresh Market and Whole Foods. I mean, she pays five times more for groceries than anyone else I know.

Aaron Brabham: If there was something above Whole Foods, she would go there.

Porter Stansberry: And I haven’t missed a meal since 1977.

Aaron Brabham: No, you haven’t.

Porter Stansberry: [laughter] So nutrition’s not my problem. But the guy said one more thing that was interesting. Oh, improving nature.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: But where does he think food comes from? It’s so funny. He thinks, he says oh, you can’t do anything to improve nature. The guy doesn’t understand anything. Human beings have been improving their surroundings for all of recorded history. We’ve been breeding cattle so that it makes more, bigger animals. We’ve been grafting with plants to make things that are heartier and more resistant or more tolerant of drought and all that stuff.

We’ve been changing nature since Day One, and that’s why, by the way, there’s so much wealth in the world, because of all the changes that humans have made. If you don’t – try not taking care of your property for ten years, and see what it’s worth. I mean, human beings alter nature all the time. That we’re able to do so now with much finer and more powerful tools is good, not bad. Sorry.

Aaron Brabham: All right, Porter. I’ve got one from Rudolph, and this is a good question because it’s one that is brought up often. “My question is about the ethics of owning a security. So from reading Porter’s Digest and hearing him on the podcast, he seems to be a man of integrity. For example, he says that he would not accept a Social Security check, based on the fact that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.”

Porter Stansberry: I will not accept Social Security payments.

Aaron Brabham: I will not either. “I’ve heard Porter recommend Analy.”

Porter Stansberry: You might not want to pledge to that right now, Aaron. But –

Aaron Brabham: Well.

Porter Stansberry: – you might need the –

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, look. If I can’t make it happen on my own, man, forget it, dude. I don’t need those handouts. I have integrity, too, Porter.

Porter Stansberry: All right. Okay.

Aaron Brabham: He said, “I’ve heard Porter recommend Analy. I’ve also heard him question the morality of what they are doing in the interview with Senator Dorgan. So I was wondering if there was a stock that he would not own based on ethics, morality, and why?”

Porter Stansberry: Oh, lots. Many of them. Yes. But you know what? I don’t have to back all the way down into ethics. Companies that are run poorly, for the benefit of the management, instead of for the benefit of the legitimate owners, I wouldn’t own their shares, and I think the management’s crooked. But I wouldn’t own their shares, ‘cause it’d be a very poor economic decision. It doesn’t even have to get to the point of ethics. I think that if I had a seminar one day and I went through all the major sectors of the economy, you can break them down into different S&P groups. I can show you dramatic differences in the way companies are managed, and I would say roughly half of the management teams out there have no interest in serving the shareholders whatsoever.

Aaron Brabham: Okay. What he’s specifically talking about –

Porter Stansberry: And I think that’s unethical on the part of the management. But that doesn’t mean the company itself is bad. Just the managers are bad. But I wouldn’t own the stock, ‘cause I don’t trust the managers.

Aaron Brabham: Spoken like a true analyst here. He’s really referring to like a Phillip Morris and –

Porter Stansberry: No.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. See, you break it down the way that a person should invest.

Porter Stansberry: Right. So what – so the question is would I not own a company because I don’t like the business it’s in. And the answer to that question, in my mind, is no. Because I’m a huge fan of liberty. And I think that human beings all have different objectives in their life. There are some people who might want the enjoyment of tobacco, even though they fully realize it’s gonna lead to emphysema and a terrible death. That, in my opinion, is their choice to make. I wouldn’t tell them how to live, and I don’t want them to tell me how to live. So I don’t have any problem with companies that are serving the legitimate needs of their customers, as long as they’re doing so without being fraudulent.

So if there was a company out there that I believed was fraudulent, I’ll short the heck out of that stock. I wouldn’t own it. And Aaron, you’ve seen me do it many times. So for example, last big industry I shorted a lot of was the education, the for-profit education companies, because I know that the eduction they’re selling is worthless, and they’re defrauding people who can’t even afford it in the first place. So the answer is yes. There are companies whose products and services are unethical, but it’s probably not the companies that you would suspect.

Aaron Brabham: Money doesn’t sleep, and if you do a good analysis on a company, you better get in on it. Don’t buy things just because you like it. George said, “Concerning your childish attempt to pull me into betting you.” This was last week we did.

Porter Stansberry: Yeah.

Aaron Brabham: Right.

Porter Stansberry: Childish.

Aaron Brabham: “Your offer is declined, but I will issue –”

Porter Stansberry: Yeah. Of course it is.

Aaron Brabham: “– a counter –” He’ll issue a counter-offer. “Why don’t you run for Congress?”

Porter Stansberry: [laughter]

Aaron Brabham: “You have the passion. You have the money. You are intelligent. You hate the corruption that is commonplace in our society. You have the support of most of your listeners, and this country would greatly benefit from having another Libertarian in Congress.”

Porter Stansberry: Next to suicide, it’s probably the last thing I would ever do.

Aaron Brabham: And you get that a lot. People really want you to do something –

Porter Stansberry: That’s just insane.

Aaron Brabham: – I don’t want you to.

Porter Stansberry: Why would I want to turn my life into a useless, hopeless battle with a bunch of other numbskulls? Why would anyone want to live in the public eye? I just – it makes no sense to me.

Aaron Brabham: All right. Well…

Porter Stansberry: And by the way. You know, I couldn’t live on that paycheck.

Aaron Brabham: There’s no way. Lifestyle would have to change dramatically. All right. Well, that’s our show for today. The guest on the next show will be prominent –

Porter Stansberry: Oh, and by the way. I will go a little further on this. I also have no interest in public service. None. I think that doing what’s best for my country means doing what I’m good at, which is newsletter publishing. I think I’m making my subscribers wealthier. I think I know I’m making my partners wealthier. I’m making my employees wealthier. I’m helping a very large group of people by doing what I’m good at. I think people who go into public service do so because they’re not good at anything else. They can’t survive in the private markets. So they have to go be a con man. I’m not interested in that.

Aaron Brabham: All right. That’s our show for today. The guest on the next show will be prominent Australian economist and debt doomsayer Steve Keen. We appreciate you listening to Stansberry Radio. Special thanks to Lauren Lyster for joining us on the show.

[Crosstalk]

Porter Stansberry: She’s _________.

Aaron Brabham: You can go to RT.Com and check her out.

Porter Stansberry: She’s a real gentleman.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. You can go into YouTube.

Porter Stansberry: Oh, you know what I mean.

Aaron Brabham: I know what you mean.

Porter Stansberry: A gentlelady.

Aaron Brabham: Go onto YouTube. Check out her videos. Follow us on Twitter at Stansberry Radio. Like us on Facebook.com/StansberryRadio, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Don’t forget, call us. 855-SARADIO. That’s 855-727-2346.

Also coming up in probably four or five weeks, we have a new twist that we’re gonna add to Stansberry Radio. I think our listeners are gonna love it, but we’ll tease it next week.

Porter Stansberry: Cool.

Aaron Brabham: That’s it.

Porter Stansberry: All right.

Aaron Brabham: Have a great week.

Porter Stansberry: _________.

Announcer: Stansberry Radio is a purely public broadcast and is not intended to be personalized financial advice for any individual’s specific situation. Each individual’s financial situation is unique, and Stansberry Radio should not relied upon and/or considered as personalized advice. Stansberry Radio is not licensed to render personalized advice, and should be considered simply the public opinions of Stansberry Radio and its guests. Recommendations on specific financial securities are not intended to address any listener’s particular financial situation.

[End of Audio]

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TRANSCRIPT

This Episode's Guest

Lauren Lyster

Lauren Lyster is host of Capital Account, a daily, live alternative financial/economics news discussion show broadcast internationally on RTTV. On Capital Account, Lauren has interviewed some of the biggest names in finance and economics, such as Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian, bestselling author Jim Rickards, and commodities guru Jim Rogers.

The show has taken her on the road to report from financial hubs ranging from the New York Stock Exchange floor to the World Economic Forum in Davos. On Capital Account, we report on stories we feel are not given adequate attention by the mainstream financial press, including the MF Global and PFG bankruptcies. Prior to hosting Capital Account, Lauren traveled internationally in her role as a news correspondent, reporting in the field from major events including the G20 summit and protests in Canada, the presidential election in Brazil, the UNGA, and the NATO Summit in Lisbon.

Before joining RT, Lauren was a reporter and news anchor covering the Los Angeles area for Time Warner Cable SoCal News. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in journalism, with a double major in gender studies, from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. There she also investigated miscarriages of the criminal justice system focusing on wrongful murder convictions as part of the renowned Medill Innocence Project.

In addition to her experience in news, Lauren brings her background in finance to her reporting and hosting, having worked previously as a senior equity research analyst covering publicly-traded US companies for institutional investors.

Website: Russia Today

Ep 60: The "No Brainer" Resource Investment
- 02/07/2013
- with Rick Rule
Ep 63: Is Now The Time To Buy Gold?
- 03/01/2013
- with John Doody
03-21-2013 Premium Segment: Porter Recommends a Blue Chip Stock
- 03/21/2013
- with Porter Stansberry
February 2013 Premium Episode: Porter and Doug On The End Of America
- 02/08/2013
- with Doug Casey
03-29-2013 Black Label Episode 3
- 03/29/2013
- with Porter Stansberry

Stansberry Radio's First Female Guest

This Episode's Guest

Lauren Lyster

Ep 60: The "No Brainer" Resource Investment

Ep 63: Is Now The Time To Buy Gold?

03-21-2013 Premium Segment: Porter Recommends a Blue Chip Stock

February 2013 Premium Episode: Porter and Doug On The End Of America

03-29-2013 Black Label Episode 3

Ep 60: The "No Brainer" Resource Investment

Ep 57: Alex Jones Blasts Piers Morgan on Stansberry Radio

Ep. 67 The Best Guest Ever

Ep 56: Dissecting Social Security & Medicare

Premium Segment: Valuation Video Porter’s Lesson On Valuing Stocks

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