Stansberry Radio Interview….
I joined Porter Stansberry on Friday morning for an interview on his radio show. For those of you who don’t know who Porter Stansberry is, he’s made a controversial and very public call in recent years that the USA is going to suffer a debt crisis similar to what’s occurring in Europe. So you can imagine that our views are likely coming from very different perspectives. Anyhow, we got into some pretty wonky stuff, but Porter was very fair with me and gave me ample opportunity to explain my position on several topics. Some of the items we touched on:
- A brief background on how I got into writing this website.
- My core strategy. How the machine works and how I implement a “funnel approach”.
- Why I believe QE has failed – I ramble a bit here, but I think it’s a rather concise explanation of why the program has failed. In short, there’s no precise transmission mechanism that allows QE to work.
- How the Fed works to stabilize the payments system. I misspoke slightly here. I shouldn’t have said the Fed “guarantees everything”. Rather, the Fed is in the business of guaranteeing that the payments system is always functioning smoothly.
- The Fed and central banks are in the business of manipulating interest rates to influence the economy.
- Why I don’t like the idea of QE equating to “debt monetization”.
- My favorite macro strategy here. I gave a pretty lame answer here, but it’s just so hard to be specific about investment strategies for people without knowing their specific investment needs.
The interview starts at the 17 minute mark. See here for the full interview and click the listen link.
Cullen Roche
Mr. Roche is the Founder of Orcam Financial Group, LLC. Orcam is a financial services firm offering research, private advisory, institutional consulting and educational services.
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9 Comments
I read articles written by Stanberry every now and then and he has some very sound ideas.
Annaly Capital Management makes money by leveraging up on government “protected securities”. So, if/when the gov’t blows up (and/or rates go higher) then Annaly is “toast”. Because then the leverage will start to work against Annaly.
If direct demand for T-bonds is “the highest ever” (bid/offer ratio > 3) then why haven’t T-bond yields gone through the floor more in the last 1.5 months ? They remained more or less flat. Seems there’re a lot of sellers as well.
Did the FED’s balance sheet expand as a result of QE 1 & 2 ? If the answer is yes then it’s “money printing”.
Buffet is a speaker of the elite / oligarchy / kleptocracy / …, so he is biased and has an agenda. He gets many things right, but his agenda always comes through as the silver lining.
So it is nice to hear from the devil’s mouth, but I do not use his speeches as any source of objective opinion or truth.
I thought Stansberry was on a farm in Guatemala raising chickens, hoarding gold coins, and digging apocalypse bunkers. Good to hear he is still hanging around.
Maybe Stansberry and the head of Vanguard’s fixed income group can get together?
“In the absence of a long-term credible plan, we are somewhere around four years away on where the markets are going to say ‘enough is enough,’” said Robert Auwaerter, head of the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based Vanguard’s fixed-income group since 2003 and who this year was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Inc.’s Hall of Fame.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-16/treasuries-doomsday-is-four-years-away-for-vanguard.html
I remember reading his book “Aftershock” a couple of years ago. I read it twice. I was shocked and quite depressed. Then I found this website, and I understand the truth. He is correct that inflation is a possible threat down the road. I think his main thesis is that the U.S. is going to run out of money at some point and just print like crazy. He could be right about inflation, but he’s wrong about the U.S. not being able to “pay” its “debt.”
Cullen – I was extremely unimpressed with your interview.
Thanks Nick. At least you’re honest about it. What did you dislike about the interview?
Nonsense, you were solid. Much too short an interview to move any mountains, and Stansberry admitted to having never read your blog, nor had he any clue of MR. Hard to have a deep discourse on so complex a subject under the aforementioned circumstances.
I appreciated your reluctance to play his little game of picking a specific stock or security. Part of this country’s problem is the mentality that one can “beat the market” if they just find the right asshat broker with a brilliant stock tip.