Ep 50: Ayn Rand and Free Markets

Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, discusses Objectivism, healthcare and a free market revolution.

Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, discusses Objectivism, healthcare and a free market revolution.

 

Trading analyst Jeff Clark is the Premium guest. He provides an options trade that you can act on NOW. Subsribe to Stansberry Radio Premium here. Click the Premium tab above to listen.

Aaron Brabham: Welcome to another episode of Stansberry Radio. I'm Aaron Brabham. Porter is out today. He actually has a family emergency to attend to. It's nothing that's detrimental or anything like that, but it's preventing him from being on the radio show. So, fortunately, I'm joined, once again, by Jeff Clark, who's one of our analysts. He runs the Short Report and Advanced Income. Jeff, welcome to Stansberry Radio.

 

Jeff Clark: Thanks, Aaron, my pleasure.

 

Aaron Brabham: Appreciate you sitting in the hot seat today.

 

Jeff Clark: I love being here. I love being in the hot seat.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, awesome, man. I appreciate that. Today, our guest is Dr. Yaron Brook. Dr. Brook is the execute director and president of the Ayn Rand Institute. He's also the author of the new best seller, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. Jeff, have you read any of Ayn Rand's books.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, yeah. Obviously, Atlas Shrugged and then I think Fountainhead was one that was required reading, believe it or not, in the school I went to.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, that's good. I'm glad that they actually had that as required reading. Mine didn't.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah. I'm not sure it's on that list anymore. We are talking about California anyway. But, you know 20 years ago it was a different world.

 

Aaron Brabham: It's definitely one of the best books out there, or Atlas Shrugged is for sure. And we'll be digging into that. Yaron's kinda controversial. He shows up on a lot of media and he definitely speaks his mind, so we'll did into some Libertarian topics for sure. We've been receiving a lot of feedback from our listeners. Some comes in from www.feedback@stansberryradio.com. Others call in to our hotline, (855) 727-2346. That's 855 SARadio. We also have Facebook, Twitter, all that kinda good stuff.

 

So before we jump in to talking to some – about some short-term trading that Jeff specializes in, I want to do a little housekeeping, and I want to talk about the Premium show. Two weeks ago, we launched the Premium Radio Show and, essentially, what it is is it's a 15 minute piece with one of our analysts or with Porter, with their best recommendation for investing.

 

It's what they believe is their best idea, and it's time relevant and we give specific guidelines, trailing stops. It's actionable investing recommendations. So we've had some feedback that says, "Oh, I signed up, but I can't find the Premium Show." And I know that we respond to every one of them, individual, but just everybody knows that our listeners, once you sign up, we'll send you login and passwords.

 

If you're already an Alliance member, you can use your current login and password 'cause as an alliance member you're a lifetime subscriber to everything that we come out with that's new. You get those things. For new subscribers, you're only going to see the Premium tab on the last two shows next to the guest where you normally listen to the entire interview. It's not in iTunes right now; I don't know if we're gonna add it to iTunes.

 

But you have to log in and use your password. Go to the last two episodes and you'll see a separate segment specifically for members. Now, if you're not a member and you're interested, it's only $10.00 a month. Cancel it anytime, no big deal. If you join today, you can go back to the archives and get the last two, as well as Jeff's recommendation today that we're gonna do today after this show.

 

And we encourage you to do that 'cause it's a great way to educate yourself, as well as have some actionable investing recommendations. All right, enough of that nonsense. So, Jeff, you specialized in short-term trading options, as well as generating income from options. How has this whole fiscal cliff debacle affected your trading strategies, if at all?

 

Jeff Clark: Well, it obviously affects the strategies a bit because the fiscal cliff essentially adds an emotional, another emotional element to the market. It's another thing that investors have the opportunity to get all jacked up over, and you can see it every time there's some news even that comes out or some headline about the fiscal cliff.

 

Somebody comes out and says, "Oh, we're making progress," and stocks rally. Somebody comes out and says, "Ah, you know it's not looking so hot," and stocks fall. So you get these wonderful short-term, volatile movements in the marketplace, and so it creates these terrific opportunities to trade either interday – intraday or over the course of a couple of days.

 

And what we're seeing is – we're seeing the rubber band get stretched. Right after the election, the rubber band got stretched far to the downside. Last week, the rubber band snapped all the way back and got stretched far to the upside. So we've had all of these terrific opportunities to trade on a very, very short-term basis.

 

And that's great for stuff that I do and for Short Report subscribers, we have something called "The Direct Line," which is a complementary service that folks get where I give them my opinion on what's going on in real time. And we've been on just a fantastic run in the past couple of weeks. And I'll knock on wood here and, hopefully, we'll be able to keep going. But that's been exceptional.

 

For longer-term oriented traders – and when I say "longer term," I'm talking about several weeks to several months – the great thing about the fiscal cliff is it's adding premium to option prices. Because of all this short-term volatility, option prices are inflating. So if you're – if you like the idea of selling covered calls or selling uncovered puts on stocks that you love, you've got a much better premium opportunity right now, a much better opportunity to collect some extra income off of that.

 

So there's some wonderful things happening. Now, the downside to is it's getting a little bit overdone. The fiscal cliff is – you can't go five minutes watching CNBC without them talking about it incessantly. In fact, I think I noticed this morning, they have the little fiscal-cliff countdown bug in the bottom window on the television.

 

So it's probably getting a little bit obnoxious at this point. So we're probably not going to see much more volatility surrounding the fiscal cliff, as people are likely to get immune to it. So we have a very short-term opportunity to profit off of it.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, they always love their counters on CNBC, don't they? If it's not an oil thing or an election or whatever, it's always something that's changing the markets right now.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, yeah. And it's hilarious because by the time they put it up there on the counter, it's a non-event.

 

Aaron Brabham: As always. And, right now, of course, not to my surprise, the politicians are stalemated. They're deciding not to do anything, and they're still in election mode. It's ridiculous, but this is the modern world of politics that we live in in America, I guess.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, I think it's almost obvious as to how this gets resolved. I mean it's how it always gets resolved. We get this big buildup, this big back-and-forth negotiation, and, ultimately, what winds up happening is nothing. And I think we have to anticipate that this time as well. I think the market – to be honest with you, I think the market would actually love it if we fell off the cliff.

 

Because it would actually force folks to do – force the folks in Washington to do something to help resolve this debt situation that we have. I think any rational person can look at the situation and say, "Well, we're not going to solve the deficit problem by increasing taxes." You just can't raise enough money in taxes for that. It has to come from the spending angle.

 

But you have such posturing now in the political environment that I don't see how that's reasonably going to happen. So they're gonna find some way to keep things going, kick the can down the road a little bit further, and have this as something that we'll deal with sometime next year. So a lot of what's going on as far as the fiscal cliff and back and forth, and everything else, I think it's gonna wind up being one of these giant non-events that we've seen so many times before.

 

Aaron Brabham: I totally agree with you. It's just gonna be one of these things. The deadline will pass, they'll raise it up – the debt ceiling – and then they'll just fight it out later. And, like you said, it's gonna take an end-of-America-type of event, some kinda big currency crisis for the dollar, something dramatic for them to have a little bit of austerity. But until then, same old thing.

 

And I know that Yaron Brook's gonna be able to comment on that as well because he was – he's very active in knowing the politics and finance. And speaking of Yaron, we have him on the hotline. So Dr. Yaron Brook is the executive director and president of Ayn Rand Institute. He's also the author of the new best seller, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. Dr. Brook, welcome to Stansberry Radio.

 

Yaron Brook: Thanks for having me on.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, we appreciate it. I know that you've been very, very busy. You do a lot of media appearances as it is, but you've been very busy, especially with the presidential election that just wrapped up. And I know that Paul Ryan, he stated, publicly, that he's a big Ayn Rand supporter, as most of our listeners are.

 

But the problem is, this guy's part of the government, and he's – although he may be a follower, he doesn't practice what Ayn Rand says. And you've been very outspoken about that, and you've been right. So excluding Paul Ryan, do you see any younger congressional members that more appeal to what Ayn Rand would – what one of her philosophies would preach?

 

Yaron Brook: You know I don't think so. I think it's a little too early for politics. I think if you ran on what I would call an Ayn Rand's platform, an Ayn Rand agenda, it's doubtful you could get elected today, even in front of the more so-called conservative _______. The fact is that her ideas are still radical. Now, I'm encouraged by the fact that there are probably three to four-dozen congressmen that would say she's influenced their thinking, she's moved them in the right direction. And you know this is gonna be, to some extent, incremental.

 

People are gonna take some of her ideas, they can adopt some of the principles with regard to capitalism – they're not gonna get it all – and, hopefully, we can have an influence on the culture, an influence on the world, so that one day we can run congressional, senatorial, maybe even a presidential candidate who can actually say, "I'm a radical for capitalism. I really believe in freedom. In real freedom, not kinda the pseudo freedom that most politicians advocate for today.

 

Aaron Brabham: Now, there's a pretty big divergent with the college students. A log of them, they love Obama, right. He's this rock god to them or this big showman, whatever he is. You know he's gonna promise all this education and all this other stuff that's complete nonsense 'cause he's just burdening them with a bunch of –

 

Yaron Brook: Of debt.

 

Aaron Brabham: – debt.

 

Yaron Brook: Too, too much debt _______ --

 

Aaron Brabham: But there's also a big movement of college students that are leaning towards Libertarian, you know, Ron Paul, and they're speaking out, they're forming groups. They're really looking towards Ayn Rand. Do you see this divergence growing as we move forward? I mean do you think the youth is the next future for Libertarians? Do you think that'll be the next ones that actually get these politicians nominated?

 

Yaron Brook: I think it has to be. The fact is that the ideas that we're advocating and pretty radical, and the only age group that adopts radical ideas in history are typically young people. I mean you got – it's when you're forming your ideas; it's when you're thinking outside the box; it's when you're challenging authority. And I think that it's an enormous opportunity, for those of us who believe in freedom and liberty, to attract young people and to take advantage of the fact that they are questioning and they're challenging the status quo.

 

So I do think that in the future, to the extent that we're gonna be successful, it's gonna be successful among young people. And, look, even among young people who voted for Obama, I think that a lot of them voted for Obama because the fact is the alternative was pretty pathetic, particularly from their perspective. I think, on social issues, young people tend to be more liberal, which I think is a good thing. I don't think it's a bad thing.

 

And I think that on economic issues, they just don't get it yet because they're still young and they don't get the destructive power of government. And there are real opportunities to educate them, so I wouldn't give up on young people, even those of them who voted for Obama.

 

I think if the Republicans had had a strong candidate, who could articulate the message of liberty and what liberty means, and have a consistent view of liberty, not just on some issues, but consistently across the board, then I think young people – even some people who voted for Obama – could be rallied to that cause.

 

But the Republicans, instead, nominated somebody who was very much a statist, very much a status quo kinda guy, somebody who was a "me too" to a lot of what Obama represented, and didn't really present a vision for America, didn't really present an excited alternative to what Obama was telling these kids. And I think somebody like that would have won this election. I really think the loss here is not because of some shift among the voters. I think the loss here is the consequence of the Republican Party presenting the electorate with pathetic choices.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I tend –

 

Jeff Clark: Well, Dr. –

 

Aaron Brabham: – tend to agree.

 

Jeff Clark: I'm sorry.

 

Aaron Brabham: Go ahead, Jeff.

 

Jeff Clark: Let me just jump in here real quick. I'm a little bit confused, Dr. Brook, on your characterization of Ayn Rand's ideas as being radical, because most of what we're talking about here is limited government, we're talking about liberty, we're talking about freedom. And that doesn't seem to me to be radical, so can you elaborate a little bit more as to why you characterize it that way?

 

Yaron Brook: Well, what does radical mean? Radical means outside of the mainstream, ideas that are not typically accepted, that are not part of the way in which most people think about the world. And I think it is still true that the ideas of freedom, the ideas of liberty, the ideas of limited government are still radical ideas. I wouldn't take radical to be anything negative.

 

I mean I think the founding fathers – when you look at the founding fathers – even at their time, were radicals. They were radicals for liberty, and they presented the world with a view, a set of ideas that was very controversial. I think a limited government today, in the world we live in today, is a radical idea, limited by the idea of individual rights, not limited by the whims of politicians.

 

There's no country in the world that lives by this. America hasn’t really been a limited government country for about a hundred years. It's been drifting away from that systematically. The culture doesn't believe in it. Even most people who voted Republican don't believe in true limited government. They just want a slightly smaller government than what Obama gives.

 

Now, and even the Tea Parties – remember the signs that some of the people in the Tea Parties held out saying, "Keep your hands off of my Medicare." There is a massive educational campaign that needs to happen in this country to get us to the principles of liberty and for real understanding of what those principles mean and what they imply in the economic realm and then beyond economics in just – just in day-to-day life.

 

So I still think that we are still radical. And look, I believe in a complete separation of economics and state. I believe that real limited government – that is government that does one thing and one thing only – protects us, protects our individual rights, protects us from crooks and thieves and flaws and toast and from invaders, and other than that, leaves us alone. That is still a radical vision for this country. I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was mainstream, but it's not.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah, you know it's interesting. Last week was Thanksgiving. We had – at the Clark house here, we had a pretty good crowd of our extended family. And as you talk to them, individually, and we talk about – obviously, politics comes up. And we talk about limited government and we talk about the founding principles of the nation and everything else, everybody seems in agreement on each of those ideas and everybody seems to believe that we ought to have a limited government and certainly not something as intrusive as we have.

 

But, yet, as you go around and talk to the folks about who did you vote for, you wind up with an awful lot of them voted for Obama or they voted in a more liberal fashion, which is contradictory to these individual conversations that we have. And so, I'm just having a difficult time reconciling what I think goes on in most people's heads, individually, and how they react publicly to that.

 

Yaron Brook: Well, but I think it's more than that. Look, I mean you could ask them in theory do they want limited government. Yes. But when you ask them about specifics, "Okay, what would you cut?" that's when discover that people have no clue. And the fact is that very little goes on in people's heads that a lot of this is about emotion. A lot of this is about gut responses and about liking who they like.

 

They like their Medicare. They don't think of Medicare as an intrusion because it's about goodies that they get. They hate bankers. They want banking regulated and they want government to control our banking industry. But they want limited government at the same time. So people live in this contradictory space. They hold completely contradictory ideas and, to me, that would drive me crazy to hold a contradiction.

 

I would want to resolve it somehow. But, somehow, people are willing to live those contradictions. But if we understand what liberty really means, if we understand what liberty government really means, then we shouldn't be regulating Wall Street, we shouldn't have Medicare, we shouldn't have Social Security. These programs are immoral and unsustainable.

 

And we should be advocating for real, individual liberty in leaving people alone, letting people live their lives, making mistakes and letting people suffer the consequence of those mistakes. And it's not the role of government to protect us from our mistakes. So when you start pushing, when you start making it concrete, that's when you start getting the objections, and that's where you see why they vote for Obama or why they vote left.

 

And, again, I don't think voting for Romney represented a laissez-faire capitalist alternative. Voting for Romney meant you still wanted Social Security and Medicare and regulation and all these things. You just wanted a little less of it.

 

Jeff Clark: So do you have any theories as to why that happens to be the case, when we have a population the size that we have, and you look at who the parties put up. Why can't we get somebody like Ron Paul? Why doesn't he get access to that sort of a stage?

 

Yaron Brook: But I think Ron Paul – the country's not ready for Ron Paul. If Ron Paul somehow won the Republican nomination, he would lose in a general election in a landslide. The fact is that the American people moved away from the founding principles dramatically. And what is needed today are not better politicians. What is needed today is an educational campaign to change the culture, to change the attitudes of Americans.

 

We get the politicians we deserve. We get the politicians that reflect back to us the culture that we have. If we want better politicians, what we need to do is to change the cultures that – you guys do it by radio, I do it through books and articles and speaking all over the place. What we need is a better-educated population, a population that respects individual liberty, a population that respects limited government.

 

Again, we get exactly the politicians we deserve. We deserved Romney and Obama because this is what we are as a culture; this is what we are as a country. If we want something better, than we're gonna have to educate the American people. We're gonna have to change the way the American people think about the world. And there's no – I don't think there's some deep mystery here.

 

Our universities are controlled by the left; our intellectual debates in this country is controlled by the left. It's controlled by a particular anti-capitalist, anti-freedom agenda, which many people on the right share to some extent or another. And to find real voices that respect freedom, that respect liberty, that respect individual freedom, individual liberty and understand what that means, is very, very, very rare in this culture. And the American people are just not exposed to it.

 

So what we need is a massive educational campaign in this country to counter everything our young people learn in high schools and in colleges, with the truth about American history, the truth about how capitalism works, and the truth about a moral and philosophical code that makes capitalism not just the system that works, but the system that's just and fair and moral.

 

Notice how Obama uses fairness and justice and how the left has completely dominated the discussion over morality and over fairness. They’ve completely changed the meanings of those words. We need to fight back. We need to reestablish what those words – what those concepts actually mean in terms of individualism, in terms of fairness meaning getting what you deserve, not getting equal treatment. All of these concepts, the way people think about the world, has completely been altered by leftist intellectuals over the last hundred years.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, I was just gonna follow up on that because some folks might argue that we've gone so far to the left, we've gone so far that there's really no coming back from it. Obviously, we have to hold out hope that there is a potential to come back from it. But let me ask you. Do you see that as a viable possibility? Do you see it as something that happens during our generation?

 

Yaron Brook: Well, the odds are against it, that you have to fight. I mean that's how I view it. There's a chance we can win. I travel all across the country and there's plenty of good people out there, but confused people. Even I talk to a lot of Tea Parties, a lot of the young people that are part of the Ron Paul – they're confused. They get pieces of the message, but they're not well educated. They don't know history. They don't know economics. They don't understand the morality of capitalism.

 

There is a lot of work to do out there to convince people, but I don't think we can afford to give up. I don't think we should give up as long as there's a chance. We need to fight. This country and our lives are too valuable to just walk away from. So I'm cautiously optimistic. But I also realize the extent of the magnitude of the challenge that we're facing.

 

We're facing an establishment that dominates our educational institutions. In my view, there's nothing more powerful than controlling the universities, and that's what the left has. And, again, it's not like the right in this country has it right. The right is being perverted as well. So there's a lot, a lot of work to be done, but it is doable, it is possible, and we all need to get to work.

 

By the way, I have a new book out that I think helps in this campaign. It's called Free Market Revolution, and you can get it pretty much anywhere. And it really provides kinda the moral foundation of capitalism. It provides of the – both economic and philosophical ethical foundations for freedom and for capitalism and why we should work hard for it. So I encourage your listeners to pick up a copy, Free Market Revolution.

 

Aaron Brabham: I totally encourage all of our listeners to pick it up. I'll pick it up as well. A book that I've talked about a little bit on air before that relates to one of your ideas on the environment is Rand Paul's latest book.

 

And he talks about the EPA being totally out of control to the point where they don't even define the clean water act, and they're literally spying on property owners and busting them for taking a shovel of dirt from one side and moving it to the other, and then saying, "Oh, you just messed up the clean water," even though there's no clean water for 20 miles.

 

I think the EPA's completely out of control, global warming is a complete scam, to me as well as Porter. What's your take on that? I know, Dr. Brook, you feel the same way. But is there a way to reverse this course of action 'cause people are so environmentally friendly these days, their mentality's out of whack.

 

Yaron Brook: Yeah. No, what we need to challenge is what they even mean by environmentalism. So the only environment I care is my environment, is the human environment. And the human environment has never been better for human beings since we've come into existence. There's never been a better human environment than the environment we live in today.

 

Our quality of life, our standard of living, the length of our health has never been better than it is today. So if you care about the environment, you should celebrate capitalism, you should celebrate freedom, you should celebrate industry. You should celebrate the automobile. The automobile has saved more lives than almost any other technology, and it's saved time and it's saved wealth.

 

So I care about human environment and, as a consequence, I'm pro-technology, pro-growth, pro-industry and against these environmental whackos. And I – again, I believe in a radical solution again. I think we need to get rid of the EPA. I don't think we need an EPA. I think you need some basic laws about clean air and clean water.

 

But the primary way in which to get clean water is to just privatize water, privatize water rights the way we did in the West in the 19th century; sell the river, sell the lakes. And you know what; people keep their private property clean. It's when you have public property and if we have the so-called commons is where you get into these problems.

 

So the solution should be an individualistic solution and a capitalist solution, which is to privatize these activities. And, yeah, you need some basic rules about you can't poison your neighbor. But that's not hard; that's pretty easy. You certainly don't need a bureaucratic, fascist organization like the EPA regulating and controlling our lives in order to get clean air and clean water. We've gone a long way – and that's not their goal.

 

Look, the fact is that the environmentalist movement, core movement, the EPA are not interested in human life; they're not interested in the human environment. They're interested in spotted owls and snails, and they don't care about human beings. That is what we need to challenge. We need to bring back the debate to what's good for human beings.

 

And what's good for human beings is private property, capitalism, freedom, and innovation, technology and industry. And once you change the reference – you know the fact is I don't care about spotted owls. If you like spotted owls, buy some. Get a forest and grow them. But you don't have a right to tell me what to do with my forest, with my land.

 

We need to get back to the idea of property rights. And property rights means I get to use my property any way that I choose to as long as I'm not hurting you, as long as I'm not physically damaging your property. And as long as I'm not poisoning you, putting my junk in your backyard, you have to right to tell me what to do or not to do on my property. We need to get back to these very fundamental concepts.

 

Aaron Brabham: Well, one more question then. I know that you're short on time and we'll let you run. What is your take on the movies, right – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of Atlas Shrugged? You guys have – you don't have anything to do with this. That's correct, right.

 

Yaron Brook: No, we don't. And you know I – unfortunately, I think there was – I only saw Part 1, and I just thought it was pretty mediocre. And so I thought he took a great novel – maybe it's one of the greatest novels ever written – with an unbelievable message, and they did an okay job of presenting parts of the story.

 

You just could never do that novel justice, and I encourage anybody to – everybody to read the book. And the real reason to make a movie was to increase sales of the book, and to some extent that succeeded, so I'm happy about that. You know the book changes lives. It changed my life. I know lots and lots of people who read that book and went, "Wow." It just changed the way they thought about the world.

 

Movies just don't do that. It's very rare that they have that kind of impact. On the flip side, very few people read 1000 page books these days, so anything we can do to encourage that, including a movie, is a good thing.

 

Aaron Brabham: I agree. Plus, if you don't like reading, get the audio book. It's just as good actually. It's word for word for –

 

Yaron Brook: Absolutely.

 

Aaron Brabham: – Atlas Shrugged, which is great. Well, Dr. Brook, we certainly thank you for your time. And we encourage all of our listeners to pick up your latest book, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government. Also, visit www.yaronbrook.com, www.aynrand.org and www.freemarketbook.com, or I'm sure you can get it in Amazon. I hope it's doing very well for you.

 

Yaron Brook: Well, it's doing well and, hopefully, it'll do a lot better thanks to you guys. I appreciate it.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, you got at least two sales for sure.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yes, most certainly.

 

Yaron Brook: Excellent.

 

Aaron Brabham: We'll buy some. And we appreciate it and, hopefully we'll talk to you in the future.

 

Yaron Brook: Anytime, let me – just let me know.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, take care.

 

Yaron Brook: Thanks, bye.

 

Aaron Brabham: Jeff, what are your thoughts on Yaron?

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, well, I enjoyed that. I didn't know much about him, except what I've seen on the website of their organization. And so it's fun to get a chance to talk to him. I thought he was being really generous when he said he did an okay job on the Atlas Shrugged movie.

 

Aaron Brabham: I thought so too.

 

Jeff Clark: That movie sucked. I'm sorry, that was just the most pitiful excuse of a movie. And it did no justice whatsoever to the book. Yaron talks about how the book changed his life and it's changed a lot of folks' lives, and it absolutely has. I think anybody who hasn’t read Atlas Shrugged needs to make a commitment to do that right now.

 

Seriously, if you read that book and you don't walk away thinking, "Oh, my God, that's exactly what's happening to this country right now," then you're out of your mind. That's exactly what's going on in the country and the world today, and I think if more people – man, if this was mandatory reading in high schools – it'll never get there, but if it was mandatory reading, we would have an entirely different conversation with Yaron, much more positive.

 

Aaron Brabham: I totally agree. The problem is you make that mandatory reading, all of a sudden you have a bunch of students saying, "Why am I sitting in this classroom learning a bunch of garbage? Why is the Department of Education mandating this crap and why am I taking these state tests, and that's all they're pretty much making me study?" You know what I mean. You'd have like a rebellion, which would be good.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah, like you know what, in California public schools, they mandate the reading of, what, "Sally Has Two Mommies."

 

Aaron Brabham: Oh, Lord.

 

Jeff Clark: I mean come on, we – I don't where we go from here. I think it's a good book from an economic perspective, but it's an outstanding book from an entertainment perspective as well. And I've got – my son, who's just turned 13, is reading that book. And, yes, it's – you first look at it, it's 1000 page book, it's a little bit daunting, but he loves it. It's something that he's getting some information out of and he's understanding that, "Gosh, this is actually what I see happening in the world today."

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I think it's a great book. It influenced me a lot as well. All right, lets get to a couple of segments, and then we'll get to our feedback, and then we'll get into the Premium show for our paying subscribers and Alliance members. And just to tease them a little bit, one of the things – one of the sectors that you really focus on and you've made our subscribers a ton of money over short-term periods is gold. Is the recommendation today surrounding gold? I'm guessing it is.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, you know it is. You know it is. I'm telling you this. Folks, if you don't have a Premium subscription – what's it cost for a Premium subscription, Aaron?

 

Aaron Brabham: It's $10.00 a month and you're gonna get –

 

Jeff Clark: $10.00 a month.

 

Aaron Brabham: –guaranteed three to four of the best Stansberry Research investment recommendations, with an interview with the newsletter analyst.

 

Jeff Clark: You are not going to get a better $10.00 investment that what you're gonna get off what I have to say today. And I say that – you know me – I'm very humble, I'm very reserved in the way I speak and what I talk about. And I'm telling you the trade that I have today, I call it a Rip Van Winkle trade.

 

And you know Rip Van Winkle, right. He's the guy who went and took a nap and woke up 20 years later. Well, I call it a Rip Van Winkle trade because it's a trade that you actually put on today and then go take a nap. And we'll come back in a few months from now and see how it looks.

 

Now, the last time I did a Rip Van Winkle trade was back in April of this year, and it happened to be with gold stocks, incidentally. And I told folks, "Here's the recommendation." I told my subscribers, "This is what you buy. Buy it, don't look at, don't care if it goes up, don't care if it goes down. Just go take a nap. We'll come back in a few months and take a look at it."

 

And five months later, we had a 106 percent gain on it and that worked out really well. This trade that I'm gonna talk about today, has better potential than that. It's a five-month trade. It's one where we're gonna buy it, take a nap, come back in a few months and see how we've done. And I think we'll do much better than my previous Rip Van Winkle trade.

 

Aaron Brabham: Excellent. I believe you can go to www.stansberryradio1.com. It'll go straight to our order form. It'll give you all the details. Plus, another perk is you instantly start receiving our daily – the S&A Digest, which is probably the best synopsis of the most pertinent information in the financial markets, delivered daily. And if you – literally, if you just read that once a day, you pretty much got all your bases covered. It's written by some of our best analysts. So, yeah, that's great. Also, Jeff, you're in charge of Growth Stock Wire, correct.

 

Jeff Clark: In charge of it. Well, I contribute to it.

 

Aaron Brabham: You're a contributor.

 

Jeff Clark: Two essays a week, typically.

 

Aaron Brabham: Okay, so another freebie out there for anybody that's listening. Go to www.growthstockwire.com, put in your e mail address. And Jeff's a frequent contributor there and does an excellent job. All right, let's jump into a couple of segments here. UBS rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli was jailed –

 

Jeff Clark: Good job on that name.

 

Aaron Brabham: Oh, man, that was tough – was jailed November 20th for causing the largest unauthorized trading loss in British history. So this guy basically said, "Look, the more senior you are, the easier it is to avoid getting slammed to the wall." This is, quote, "funny thing is, though, losing money seems to make you better at making money. Perhaps that's why traders who lose money always get rehired as long as they still have their risk appetite."

 

That's kind of a disturbing statement. Now, being that you were – used to manage a lot of money, Jeff, and you would have a lot of clients calling you. You had a huge fiduciary responsibility, could you find words coming out of your mouth like that, ever?

 

Jeff Clark: Well, no. I wouldn't quite put it that way. "Losing money seems to make you better at making money," is what he said. I think losing your own money makes you better at making money because you understand the risks associated with what you did, and you learn from your mistakes. But when you lose other people's money you're just – it doesn't do anything for you. You just go back to the trough and try to get more money.

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: So its – at that particular level – he had a comment in there, I think, where he talked about how Jamie Diamond's lost money before and Bob Diamond's lost money before. So here he is, losing money, and he's getting slammed to the wall for it. Yeah, there's always gonna be that sacrificial lamb, I guess. But when you do stupid things, you need to pay the price for it.

 

And he did – well, if this is true – he did a significant unauthorized trade, and he deserves to get slammed to the wall for it. I don't think losing money – losing other people's money makes you a better trader. Losing your own money, yes, because you learn from it. Losing other people's money, you're just gonna repeat that.

 

Aaron Brabham: Most people only learn through pain. And having your own money in and some skin in the game, that's how you learn your lessons and that's how you correct your actions. But I agree. Look, I'm a former stockbroker myself. If we lost on a position and that person opened up an account, they were there for a couple of months, they lost in a position, they got frustrated, whatever, and they pulled their money, no big deal.

 

Because, in the meantime, I got ten new clients on. So I agree with you 100 percent. And people don't understand that until you've been in the position of managing other people's money, that it literally is just a numbers game, versus when it's your money, it's an emotional attachment that you don't forget.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, let's also not paint every day with the same brush. Not everybody looks at – you know, I hate losing money, personally, and I hated losing money for clients. I hate when I make a trade recommendation that doesn't work out. Now, obviously, that's going to happen. I'm gonna make trade recommendations that don't work out. I'd love for everything to be 100 percent winners, but that just doesn't happen in the real world.

 

So, yeah, I feel bad when that sorta thing happens. But I try to take that and learn from it. Okay, where could I have improved on this situation, and where can I teach subscribers or where can I teach clients, this is how we can take this and learn from it. That's entirely different from saying, "Well, you know I lost everybody's money. It'll make me a better trader. And I'll just go get more money."

 

That doesn't – it doesn't jive the same way. So not everybody in the stockbroker's business has that sort of an attitude where, "I'll just go find more money." I think, genuinely, nobody wants to lose anybody else's money. But if you can walk away from that with having learned the lesson, then, yeah, you walk away with, basically, a good tuition payment. That's one way to look at it.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. I guess I'm a little more pessimistic than you are when it comes to the professional investment people because the people I run into, man, these guys, you're just a number to them and all they care about is their total book of business. And it's just you're in, you're out, whatever. They don't care, 'cause they're looking at their commissions.

 

I mean, yes, I agree with you 100 percent that's how it should be viewed. And I know you were that way as well as I was. That's why I left the business 'cause it was just too frustrating for me to deal with other people's money 'cause there were so many things I couldn't control, yet I was blamed for everything. And it's just not my style 'cause I don't have a crystal ball.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, I'll say this. The only way you survive long term as a stockbroker or a financial is you have the other person's best interest at heart. That's how you survive long term. If you have a financial adviser that jumps from firm to firm to firm, and never spends more than a year or two at any one place, yeah, you've gotta question whether or not that person has the best interest of the clients at heart.

 

But if you have somebody who has 20 or 15, 20, 25 years of experience, has a client list that – the same people who he started with are the same people he has on his now, that's probably gonna be a good person to stick around.

 

Aaron Brabham: I agree. I'm gonna set up this story a little bit and then I want to get your thoughts on it, Jeff. So six former SAC Capital advisers have been criminally for insider trading. So SAC is a hedge fund with $14 billion in assets under management. Of that, $8 billion is Steven Cohen's personal money, and he's the head of the hedge fund. And this hedge fund has done phenomenally well, like – something like 30 percent since inception and it retains like 20 percent a year.

 

It's kinda been trailing down a little bit, but still, it's up there with Warren Buffet. So the indictment alleges that SAC reaped a huge windfall by trading on confidential, nonpublic information about poor results of an Alzheimer's drug trial. One of their traders was – he allegedly obtained the information from a physician who runs the trials, and that's what he used to short these stocks or buy puts, or whatever it was.

 

But what was shocking to me out of a lot of this information – there's a lot of things that are pathetic – but what was really shocking to me was this guy was given a $5 – he got out of court on a $5 million bond. Meanwhile, people are allegedly in for murder or rape or things like that, they can get out for $25,000.00 or $100,000.00. This is pretty ridiculous.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah, well, we're talking money here. Money is more important than life to a lot of them.

 

Aaron Brabham: It seems to be, right. Especially when it comes to the SEC.

 

Jeff Clark: [Laughter]. Well, you know what's really shocking is that anybody would accuse a hedge fund of trying to profit off of inside information.

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: That's what's shocking. I mean next, it's gonna be what? NFL players are using steroids, I guess. Boy, there's so many ways to go on this. Cohen is a big fish. He's a huge fish in the hedge fish in the hedge fund world. And bagging him is gonna make a prosecutor's career.

 

Aaron Brabham: Um-hmm.

 

Jeff Clark: So they're going to go after him and they're gonna go after him aggressively. Now, having said that, it is phenomenally difficult to prove insider trading. You gotta prove the conversation happened. You have to prove that the – what the content of that conversation was. And then you have to prove intent and not knowing that it was inside information to begin with.

 

So those are – it's really, really difficult to do it. So you're gonna get a lot of headlines; you're gonna get a lot of press over it. But at the end of the day, probably not going to see much actually come down. I mean, obviously, maybe they can. Maybe they bag the big fish and go away with that.

 

But a bigger question here is what's the problem with insider trading. How does insider trading harm anybody and why do we have a law against it? It's interesting that we had Yaron Brook on the show, and this is right up there. Why is the government regulating something like this? If somebody has access to information, and you say, "Well, it's unfair that he had access to information that everybody else didn't have."

 

Aaron Brabham: Ah, he's a good investigator.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah, exactly. It's unfair that some people are smarter than others.

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: And it's unfair that some people are better looking than others. So there's all sorts of unfair things, and it doesn't make any sense to regulate – why it doesn't make any sense at all to regulate fairness, and I guess that's kinda the topic of this whole show today. But why – insider trading is a victimless crime. It doesn't – because somebody makes money off of a trade doesn't make somebody else lose money on a trade.

 

And you say, "Well, the people who lost money were the ones who owned Elan and Wyeth, and Cohen made money because he shorted it and the stock went down." Well, the people who owned Wyeth, well, they were gonna own it whether or not Cohen would short the stock anyway. So they didn't lose because Cohen made money. They lost because they, just basically, made a bad trade.

 

And yeah, okay, so he had access to information that not everybody else has access to. But shoot, Congress members have that all the time, and we don't see them going up on insider trading charges. So I have a – I don't know – I guess just a basic problem with the whole insider trading laws. Now, yes, there are laws against it and you shouldn't act on it, but I question why we even have those laws in the first place.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah. I mean, to me, it just goes right back to once you create federal agencies and these regulatory bodies, they have to stay busy doing something 'cause they have to justify their taxpayer paychecks, and that's just what it just reeks of to me. And I think it's disgusting, I hate it, and I think you're absolutely right.

 

This is – so the SEC committed themselves to cracking down on insider trading because they got so much heat, probably from the Madoff thing where, of course, one of Madoff's sons was dating – or was sitting on the board of, or dating someone that was on the board of the SEC that goes out and investigates all of these things. So they got a lotta heat.

 

So, "Oh, what do we do? Well, let's just turn up the heat and go after some people and prosecute them, and then America will feel good." But no, it's not about that. It's more about the prosecutor; that's gonna make his name. It's more about these guys looking to move up and the SEC justifying the taxpayer dollars or whatever. It's –

 

Jeff Clark: Well, sure. The whole Madoff thing, you had victims. You had people who actually had money stolen from them. And so, yes, you have to prosecute that. And so the SEC has a whole bunch of egg on their face because they didn't go after him –

 

Aaron Brabham: 'Cause they completely missed the –

 

Jeff Clark: – or they had all these –

 

Aaron Brabham: – entire thing.

 

Jeff Clark: – ahead of time.

 

Aaron Brabham: That's right.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, exactly. But in insider trading situations, you don't have victims, or you're gonna really have to argue hard to convince me that there's victims to insider trading. So it doesn't make sense to go after that. I mean, obviously, we've gotta take hardened criminals off the streets, so folks like Cohen or Martha Stewart, you know we gotta get rid of them.

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: That's the philosophy, and I've got –

 

Aaron Brabham: Tearing apart the fabric of the United States.

 

Jeff Clark: Exactly. I think they ought to take the same energy that they're gonna use to go after Cohen and use that to go after folks like Madoff instead.

 

Aaron Brabham: Oh, they had their chance many of times, but they looked the other way and that's one of the issues. All right, Jeff, did you see a couple of weeks ago, or did you hear our last podcast or the podcast before where we talked about the mother of the 3-year-old that urinated on their own lawn, was fined –

 

Jeff Clark: I did. [Laughter].

 

Aaron Brabham: – $2,500.00 because a cop was driving by?

 

Jeff Clark: I know. That's outrageous. They were fined $2,500.00 not because anybody complained –

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: – because, obviously, the kid was peeing on his own – his parent's own lawn. So nobody complained about it.

 

Aaron Brabham: A cop just happened to see it.

 

Jeff Clark: But the cop was driving by. That's funny.

 

Aaron Brabham: That's right. So Porter was – literally was like, "You know what. This is ridiculous. Let's pay it." And I know that we sent Naresh out to find this lady. And he was having a hard time – no surprise to me 'cause I'm sure she is being contacted by everybody. Well, the good news is the $2,500.00 fine was dropped.

 

So I think it's just a result of too much heat. I'm going to go on record and take credit for Stansberry Radio and our podcast and our listeners for putting the heat on the judges or the mayor or whoever it was to drop this. Now, it's probably not true, but I'm gonna go on record and take credit for our listenership.

 

Jeff Clark: I think you can do that. I think that makes sense. What – there was some conversation, I think last week, with you and Porter about possibly having the mother on the show.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, we were trying to get –

 

Jeff Clark: Is that still a possibility?

 

Aaron Brabham: That's exactly right. Yeah, we were trying to get a hold of her, but Naresh said – and Naresh is – he's our producer. This guy can find anyone. And, man, he said it's just unlisted, can't find her. I'm sure she probably shut everything down immediately because she was just inundated with –

 

Jeff Clark: Well, she probably got inundated with Hard Copy and all those other folks, Maury Povich knocking on her door.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, no doubt.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, get her or get the cop. That would be fun too.

 

Aaron Brabham: Oh, yeah. I'd prefer to get the cop on 'cause that would be awesome. I don't know what police officer in his right mind would give a mother a $2,500.00 ticket for a 3-year-old's act on their own property that the 3-year-old doesn't even know what's right and wrong. I would love to have an interview with that guy.

 

Jeff Clark: What's wrong with peeing on somebody's – peeing on your own lawn. If you want to do it, it's your own property. Let's Ayn Rand this thing. You know it's your own property. You want to pee on your own lawn, pee on your own lawn.

 

Aaron Brabham: Totally agree. I totally agree.

 

Jeff Clark: That'll be great.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, I think we have one voice mail. Tim, fire it up.

 

Jeff Clark: I want your take on junk silver. I like to call it pot anal silver. What is your take on that as a means of collecting silver, particularly like 50-cent Ben Franklin coins?

 

Aaron Brabham: Jeff, so the question is – we have a caller that wants on taking on buying junk silver.

 

Jeff Clark: Buying junk silver. Well, you know there's two ways to go with this. Obviously, from an investment perspective, you usually want to buy the highest quality, best stuff you can get for your money. And so that would imply that you don't buy the junk. And so that would imply that you don't buy the junk.

 

But if you really think that the country is in the process of eventually hitting the fan, the dollar's gonna collapse and nobody's gonna accept it for trading anymore, and you're gonna have to go down to your local grocery store with a handful of gold or silver to buy a loaf of bread.

 

Well, in that case, you're gonna want to own some junk silver or a named junk gold as well, because, typically, the person behind the counter over at the local Piggly Wiggly isn't gonna know what good quality gold is or good quality silver. So they're gonna value everything as low-quality junk.

 

So, yeah, if you're one of those prepper types, where the end of the world's coming, there's the apocalypse then, yeah, you want to have a little bit of stash of junk silver and junk gold. That makes total sense. But if you're looking at it from an investment perspective, obviously the good stuff's gonna work out better as an investment.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right, we have – we're gonna go to the mailbag now. We have Donald ask, "I know you've said the bond market is a bubble waiting to pop. But I don't understand why on a macro level. Can you briefly explain this? Also, part of my strategy to maintain a balanced portfolio, I have a portion of my investments in various bond funds. In light of this, would you recommend I trim these positions?" First of all, we can't give individual advice. The SEC bars us from that.

 

We certainly don't want to be on their radar. And I am not paying a fine to get out of jail to give you individual advice. However, Jeff, as you know, many investors don't participate in equities these days. They just – they're sick of it, they got burned too bad. They're in an OA collapse and they just – they're confused. So a lot of money is flooded into the bond market. What is your answer for how to treat the bond market in a bubble waiting to pop?

 

Jeff Clark: Well, you know I'm kind of a contrarian, right. If everybody's running one way, I will tend to [break in audio] way. If everybody is voting for one thing, I will tend to be against it. And if everybody's running into the bond market – and we've certainly seen that – I'm gonna want to go the other way.

 

Now, granted, everybody's been talking about this giant bubble in the bond market for the past couple of years. And all that's happened is the bubble has gotten bigger and bigger. Now, what we're talking about in terms of calling it a bubble is when you buy a ten-year treasury bond right now, you're locking in what, about 1.5 percent. The going rate of inflation, even the government's numbers, are 2 percent.

 

So you are locking in a rate of return that guarantees, over time, you are getting back less money. So any time that situation exists in the investment market, that's a sign – that's a sure sign of a bubble where you are locking in, basically, a loss. And you were willingly doing it.

 

Nobody's putting a gun to your head saying, "You've gotta buy bonds." No, you're willingly going in because you like the idea of buying bonds. So there's definitely a bubble there. Now, if I'm in that situation – and, again, I'm not gonna give individual advice, but I think you're absolutely crazy to participate in that situation.

 

There are many alternative investments that can work out better, at least have some upside, or, at least, not guarantee a loss. So if you're sitting there looking at the possible investments that you could put money into, and you've got treasury bonds that yield – where you're guaranteed to lose money over time, I would be looking for something else. Again, I'm not giving individual advice.

 

Aaron Brabham: Right.

 

Jeff Clark: But I think you're nuts.

 

Aaron Brabham: All right. We had Ken said, "Obama's completely beholden to the environmental movement whackos, and all of his past actions have been hostile to domestic energy production." I agree with you there.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, I don't agree. Well, hostile to energy production, absolutely. But beholden to the environmental whackos, I don't think that's true at all.

 

Aaron Brabham: No, no, not the beholden. I was giving the hostile to domestic energy production with all this green energy boondoggles.

 

Jeff Clark: Um-hmm. Well, he's, obviously, got friends in the green industry in this country.

 

Aaron Brabham: Oh, absolutely. Powerful lobbyists. So Ken says, "I think he and his administration will erect every roadblock they can in order to stop domestic oil production." I couldn't disagree more with this for the reason of this is gonna bring so much money to the government for them to be able to create whatever programs that they want. Like Porter's talked about, Obama can literally hold these LNG export licenses out for the highest bidders.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, absolutely.

 

Aaron Brabham: I mean they are about to see a flood of money they haven't seen since FDR.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, yeah. It's definitely going to happen that way. I mean there's no need for Obama or the Democrats, in general, to do anything for the environmental movement because the environmentalists are a lock to vote. There's no way anybody in the environmental movement is gonna vote for a Republican. So the Democrats – heck we could have offshore oil drilling, we could have all sorts of stuff going on, and the environmentalists are still going to be in the pocket of Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party.

 

Aaron Brabham: Absolutely. Shannon said, "The Obamacare law has a provision that caps student-loan payments at 10 percent of the person's income after ten years. And after ten years, they are forgiven. So you could borrow $500,000.00 to go to college, decide you want a career at Starbucks at $8.00 an hour, and ten years later your loans disappear. Nice, huh." Yeah so I looked at this a little bit and, first of all, I don't think anybody would decide to go to – to work at Starbucks for $8.00 an hour. I think that –

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah. You're not gonna sandbag ten years of your career –

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, you're not doing that. You're not –

 

Jeff Clark: – to save a little money on a student loan.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, you're not gonna do that. But it is interesting because you cannot get rid of your – under current bankruptcy laws, you can't get rid of your student loan debt. Then again, the government holds most of the paper on the student loan debts, so that makes sense why they changed the bankruptcy laws.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, maybe a more important question is why the heck are we talking about student loans in the Obamacare law.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, so that's the thing, right. So this – it's a provision that was written in there. And when I read it, I was shocked because – I agree with you. What does this have anything to do with health care, and why is this in here. And why are they making this stipulation. And I say it's just a – it's political maneuvering.

 

It's just to placate the Obama supporters and say, "Well, look. I know you're gonna be riddled with a lot of student loan debt, but here's the good news. If the economy's still a disaster and you can't find a job that can earn you a decent living, we'll let you off the hook on your student loans eventually. But you have to suffer for a decade in order for us to do that."

 

Jeff Clark: Well, and the other thing is, it's not the politicians' money.

 

Aaron Brabham: That's right.

 

Jeff Clark: So they don't really care.

 

Aaron Brabham: No, they don't care. It's our money.

 

Jeff Clark: I mean it's your tax money and my tax money, everybody else's tax money. So whether or not we get it back, eh, it's not worth it if it's gonna sacrifice a few votes. I don't know. God, I'm just getting depressed, absolutely.

 

Aaron Brabham: I hear you. It's hard for me to listen to any type of a TV or news or talk – it's even hard for me to go read drudge reports sometimes, and I love the drudge.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, you know what all the characters in Atlas Shrugged did when they reached the breaking point, right. They –

 

Aaron Brabham: Galt's Gulch.

 

Jeff Clark: Yeah, exactly. So they threw up their hands. They disappeared to Galt's Gulch – boy that's a mouthful – and they destroyed everything they built.

 

Aaron Brabham: Um-hmm.

 

Jeff Clark: And so, perhaps we're – boy, I wish I had Yaron back on the show here – perhaps we're reaching that point for a lot of folks. We already talk about what you need to do, what you need to prepare for in order to get out of the country. Have a couple of passports, have an outside bank account, hold gold in an overseas account. Boy, we're so quickly reaching that. I'm just – like I said, I'm getting depressed.

 

Aaron Brabham: I know second passports are getting more expensive and harder to obtain. There's a lot of people out there that are basically saying, "You know what, "F" you, America, I'm outta here. This is not the country that it once was, and I see it getting worse." I'm trying to be optimistic, but, man, it's depressing. I agree with you because every move they make, it seems to get worse.

 

Jeff Clark: Well, it's a huge shame. Yeah, it's an absolute shame. You know I live in Northern California, which – frankly, I've been all over the world, and I love Northern California. It's just that the –

 

Aaron Brabham: It's beautiful there, man. I love it.

 

Jeff Clark: – the beauty, the environment, the people, everything is wonderful. But, my God, we are just stuck with the biggest morons in the political office out here. It's just it's absolutely insane. And people ask me all the time, "Why do you put up with it? Why do you pay 13 percent now, state tax? Why do you pay 9.25 percent sales tax on top of it? Why do you pay obscene amounts of property tax every year?"

 

Well, it's because I love Northern California. And I'm telling you, if I could find someplace else in the world that doesn't have the bureaucratic burdens that we have out here, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, I hear you.

 

Jeff Clark: But I haven't found it yet.

 

Aaron Brabham: I hear you. I pay almost that much and I live in Baltimore. So what's wrong with me. [Laughter]. All right, well –

 

Jeff Clark: But you see there's always somebody worse off than you.

 

Aaron Brabham: Ach. Well, you're talking to him. Well, that's our show for today. We want to give a special thanks to Yaron Brook for joining us. Visit us online at www.stansberryradio.com, where you can subscribe to our mailing list and listen to podcasts. Follow us on Twitter Stansberry Radio, like us on Facebook.

 

Also, go to www.stansberryradion1.com if you're interested in joining the podcast, which is what we're gonna do next. Right after we wrap here, we're gonna go straight into the Premium show where you're going to give your next Rip Van Winkle trade. And I'm looking forward to hearing about it. And, of course, I'm gonna sizzle you a little bit and make sure that it's the best idea you have right now in your mind, which I believe it is.

 

Everybody, if you want to call in, we encourage you to do so, (855) 7272-2346. And for our Premium subscribers, starting next month we will have the Black Label show, as well as we have Van Simmons, who is a gold coin expert. You know Van Simmons, right Jeff.

 

Jeff Clark: Yes, I do.

 

Aaron Brabham: I mean this guy is a master. He invented the Professional Coin Grading Services, a whole matrix of how to grade gold coins. I don't believe there's anybody on earth that knows more about gold coins than he does.

 

Jeff Clark: Oh, you're absolutely right. Probably nobody on earth that knows more about gold coins. But also just about any other collectible. Van collects –

 

Aaron Brabham: He does, man.

 

Jeff Clark: – everything.

 

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, this guy is –

 

Jeff Clark: So he's got rooms and rooms and rooms, and storage facilities filled with collectibles. So, yeah, any – he's gonna be a great guest. You gotta listen to that.

 

Aaron Brabham: Awesome. Well, guys, if you've enjoyed our show, please tell your friends about it, and we look forward to hearing from you next week. Thanks.

 

[End of Audio]