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Educate Yourself… and Agitate the Politicians! – Episode 049

If someone asked you what was the most important thing to know about gold, what would your answer be? That it’s shiny, expensive, makes beautiful jewelry, and everyone ought to have some? According to our guest on Off the Grid Radio this week, that’s not exactly what he would say.

He would tell you that gold is YOUR protection against government mismanagement of the currency and economy. In fact, he calls gold “portfolio insurance.”

Off The Grid Radio
Ep 049
Released: May 20, 2011

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at Off the Grid News – the radio version of offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, today filling in the show for Mr. Bill Heid. He’s feeling a little under the weather. I’ve got to tell you, Jeremy, I’m very excited about today’s guest. As I say countless times, that an hour across the table from a wise man is worth a year’s study in books. So whenever I have an opportunity to hang out with a speaker and a gentleman like we do today … you can see, you look over at my desk, I have a brand new legal pad full of yellow paper, I’ve got two ink pens, so I’m ready to go. Ladies and gentlemen, for the full hour today, we have a guy that you are absolutely going to love listening too. He is Mr. Brien Lundin. You probably recognize him as the editor of one of my favorite online publications – thegoldnewsletter.com. He is a wealth of information. He has written for offthegridnews.com before as well. And if there’s anyone that has their finger on the pulse of the things that are going on today – and we’re going to talk to Brian not just about gold, we’re going to talk to him about debt ceiling and some of the other things going on. This is an interview you’re not going to want to miss. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Mr. Brien Lundin. Brien, how are you sir?

Brien: Doing great, Brian, good to talk to you.

Brian: Thank you my friend, as always. I’m on thegoldnewsletter.com a good bit of the time but what I always dig about the opportunity to speak with you, Brian, is that you help me demystify in my own mind – our listeners will tell you, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer – so when I get that opportunity with you to have you teach me and hopefully other regular folks why it’s so important to pay attention to the things that are going on in thegoldnewsletter.com. Then maybe some general questions we could kick around today – as I said in the intro, about the debt ceiling and the budget battles and everything else.

Brien: It’d be my great pleasure. There’s so many preconceptions about gold. Even the analysts, you’ll see on CNBC and all the major financial media, most of them completely misunderstand the role of gold and the role – the very important role – that it serves in protecting the financial freedom of individual citizens. I’m ecstatic to be able to address this issue for you today.

Brian: Thanks, Brian. If I could jump to it – you hear the stories of Fort Knox, you hear the stories of people saying “the dollar being backed by gold,” even though the most recent time that it has been with President Nixon and the like. What would be the one thing, if you said “Bri – look, I’ve got to run. I’ve only got two minutes.” What would be the one thing that you’d want our listeners to take away from that 120 seconds? What’s the most important thing we need to know about gold?

Brien: I would say gold is your protection from government mismanagement of the currency in economics. That’s really its role. It really serves as a pathway to freedom, to financial freedom. These days, we’re not accustomed – most people today aren’t really accustomed to price inflation and even monetary inflation – what the effect of that is on your financial wellbeing, on the value of everything you’ve worked for all your life. People who were around in the 1970s or have some understanding of what that can be, but we’ve kind of lost that. As a people, as a group of investors, Americans have lost that collective memory of what inflation can do. What they don’t realize, by and large, is that we’re really in that situation once again. Gold is the one thing that protects your financial wellbeing against the ravages of inflation better than anything else.

Brian: You know what, Brian? I can tell you from my personal experience that when you talk about inflation and protection from it – you go to the store, hamburger meat’s up this week, milk is up this week, corn is up this week – there’s a whole list of things that when I run over to the store I pick up. Those prices are all going up. So when people say “inflation” – either they’ve forgotten the inflation of when I was a younger boy in the ‘70s or they go “it’s not going to affect me personally.” It touches us all in ways we might not even think of right off the top of our heads – doesn’t it?

Brien: It really does. All the government measures of inflation in the value of the dollar have been skewed to under-report inflation over the years. Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they broke out the WIN button – “whip inflation now” buttons. They instituted price controls, et cetera, because we were getting up to levels of inflation approaching 5 percent. That’s when they really started to panic. What people don’t realize is, if you used the same CPI measure that was used back then, inflation right now is already over 5 percent, despite what the government is currently reporting.

Brian: Unbelievable. Brien, I would ask you then, back in the ’70s when President Nixon and Vice President Ford – as you said, they whipped out the buttons and the like – what can regular folks do? Do we insert ourselves into the debate, Brien? Do we say “let’s not raise the debt ceiling” or “let’s end the Fed”? If you could, if you don’t mind, Brien, I’m going to give you the top three or four things that we hear about a lot. Then if you could just say to us “yes, Brian, that would have an effect” or not. One would be debt ceiling. The second one would be either “end the Fed” or “audit the Fed.” The third one would be what we’re going to do and the whole debate between spending or taxing – are we better off reducing our spending, are we better off increasing taxes, or is it the balance of each? If you would, could you take the debt ceiling first for us?

Brien: The debt ceiling will almost absolutely have to be raised by the time we get to that point in a couple of months from now. It’ll almost have to be. The question is, what will the republicans be able to get in return for that? What type of fundamental changes in the way government works and taxes and spends can we get in exchange for that? That issue is really – we’re heading for another deadline, another cliff face. It’s really just what they can negotiate in return. The real key is, at this point in time, over the next couple of years until we get to the 2012 elections, Americans who are concerned about this need to continue to agitate, need to continue to put the pressure on. Most importantly, in the 2012 elections they need to vote. They need to vote for someone who is serious about changing the debt structure in the US and really something along the Ryan proposal. I wish that Paul Ryan would be running in 2012. I don’t think he is but his plan is really the most credible plan to get America back on its proper financial footing. But until that happens, there’s little we can do. There’s little the republican-led House can do, in the meantime, to change the way things are going, until the 2012 elections. Hopefully, they can regain the White House at that point in time. If in fact we continue after 2012 with this Administration in power then what you’re going to see is this gold and silver bull market actually accelerate to the up-side.

Brian: Brien, let me ask you – as you were saying that, I was thinking this morning of a debate that I heard. I don’t remember what radio show I was waiting to go on to do the interview, but they said that there are some people out there – most notably the democrats – saying that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, it means an automatic default on our interest payments. Then there was another gentleman that came on, and I forget the name of the organization here in the States, but he said that’s absolutely not true. If they don’t raise the debt ceiling, it doesn’t automatically mean that we default on our debts. Can you tell us the truth?

Brien: Absolutely. It does not mean that we default on our debts and it won’t mean that. The country still brings in money. What the debt ceiling does is prevents America from – the Federal government from borrowing more money. So whatever that deficit is, whatever the difference between income and spending, that’s what we won’t be allowed to close. That gap won’t be allowed to close. There would be cuts in other areas and as time passes they would get more and more draconian. The last thing to go would be payments on outstanding bonds. There will be no defaulting of the debt. There may be some brinksmanship in the negotiations as we approach that point but the country can go on for two or three months after a refusal to raise the debt ceiling. That will be an intense time – it would be an intense time. I really don’t think they’re going to let it get to that, but the world does not stop and America’s credit rating doesn’t go into the trash hamper immediately upon that.

Brian: Brien, we’re going to have to run to a quick commercial break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about some other things that I have on my list. Ladies and gentlemen, come on back after the break – Mr. Brien Lundin, the editor of one of my favorite online publications, goldnewsletter.com. Come on back!

[0:09:57 – 0:14:13 break]

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming back after the break. You are not going to want to miss our final three segments. Mr. Brien Lundin, the editor of goldnewsletter.com is with us for the entire show. Brien, I have to tell you, right before we went to break you used a word that I really dig. That word was agitate. I can’t think – it’s almost like when we were little, Brien – remember those football games that had the little men on it and you would plug it in and you’d turn it on and it would vibrate the football players down the field? I love the idea of having little political figurines on a table that you and I can plug in and agitate them, but we agitate them to go in a direction that’s the best for our country and not necessarily the best for themselves. As you think of that word agitate, what’s the group? Who are the people? What’s going on out there in the political spectrum today as far as agitating and getting us back to where we’re waking up to what’s happening?

Brien: You know, Brian, that world actually borrows from the playbook of the leftist protesters of the 1960s and ‘70s and since then. And yet, what the Tea Partiers are doing is not borrowing all of the other aspects of those protests. Despite what the mainstream media is reporting, there isn’t the type of anger and intolerance and extremism with the Tea Party protests as we’ve seen, over many years, with all the left wing protests throughout the country. Yet the mainstream media focuses on the very few bad apples that might be found. They really search out and try and even create such bad apples and events at these protests.

Brian: I will tell you, Brian, I’ve been to half a dozen Tea Party protests and you’re right – not only do they search them out, they plant them in them some instances.

Brien: Absolutely.

Brian: You go “wait a minute – how did this guy and the camera show up at the same time?” The coincidence is too great. If you and I had a publicist that worked as good as some of these nuts get at tea parties, where the publicist was able to guarantee that the guest and the media crew shows up at the same time, wouldn’t you hire that publicist?

Brien: I think it’s been proven that a number of them actually have been plants. It’s so funny the way the Tea Partiers will then have signs of arrows pointing to that person saying “plant.” Making it virtually impossible for them to get away with their plan. But the real important point is that this agitation, this uprising – and leaderless uprising – is just a sign of the deep well of heretofore unseen patriotism and pride. And a number of people in America that really value the fundamental principles and freedoms that this country was built upon. And economically they realize that there’s only so much debt that can be rung up. There’s only so much spending that can be done. At some point, we need to man up and take responsibility and get this country back on the right track.

Brian: That’s another great term. I like “man up.” I’ve asked before, what can we do to honor the agreements we have with our grandparents without throwing our grandchildren under the bus? I love your term, Brian – man up – it’s going to take someone to draw a line in the sand and go “look, this is what we have to do. We may not want to do it, but we have to do it.”

Brien: Yes, and I think that Paul Ryan has done that. I sure wish he would be running for President or decided to run for President. But the chances of that republican budget passing are slim and none before the 2012 elections. Again, that’s when we really can do something to change the course of this country. If we can’t do it then, if we don’t capture the White House – republicans, libertarians, people who want to get off this debt binge – if we don’t get someone in the White House who is as committed to that goal as we are, then all hell will break loose.

Brian: Brien, if I could ask – it’s no secret to any of our audience that I’m a libertarian as well – here’s what I would like … with that mindset, can you help me understand the idea of the – not so much the idea of the Federal Reserve, I get that, but for the people – such as Senator Paul, Congressman Ron Paul and the like – calling for either a substantial audit of the Fed or maybe even one day ending the Fed, is the Federal Reserve really the ghost in the closet? Is it really as horrible as they’re portrayed to be in some aspects of the media?

Brien: Unlike most other central banks around the world, the Fed has a dual mandate – to control inflation or the value of the dollar, and to maintain the highest level of employment possible. That dual mandate quite often runs in contrast. They’re mutually exclusive at time. The simplest thing – the quickest thing you can do to reform the Fed is to remove that whole employment mandate. Beyond that, the Fed serves a role when we get in these economic crises and supplying liquidity – opening up the floodgates of liquidity as it were – to prevent a credit crisis as we had in 2008, deepening and turning into another depression. That’s the role it did not perform in the Great Depression and which exacerbated the Great Depression. That said, the reason why we have these crises is precisely because the government interferes with the free market. We would not have had that credit crises of 2008 if we would have had a truly free market, which is a self-correcting market, prior to that. We had Fannie and Freddie funneling securitized mortgage obligations into the market and it was an endless stream. It drove prices up. That was one of the precipitating factors in the collapse of 2008. If we would not have had the government interfering, if it would have truly been a free market, then we would not have had any of those situations. They would have self-corrected well in advance of that, of any type of a crisis developing.

Brian: You know, as I listen to that, Brien, I think back to that line where the guy says – he goes to his doctor and says “it hurts every time I do this … every time I raise my arm …” The doctor says “well stop doing that.” So if the Federal Reserve – it seems to create both the headache and an attempt to act like the aspirin for that headache. Talk about a dual mandate. Just in listening to you know, it’s like “great, if that’s what hurts, then stop doing it.”

Brien: Politicians will meddle in the free market because they have to do something. They go up to Capitol Hill. They’re paid to do something so they do something. You listen to the PhDs that come out of these elite Ivy League universities and they’ve learned all these things which are predominantly wrong about the way the markets and the world works. They have this world view where the government is the overseer of the economy. Really, it’s not far removed from the type of central planning – economic central planning – that we saw in communist countries for many years. But they think they know the way the world works and they have this knowledge bursting out of their brains and when they get in positions of power they have to do something. They have to employ skills that they’ve learned. So they meddle and they fuddle and they create rules and they say “this person shouldn’t do this so we won’t let them do that … that section of the economy should do this, so we’ll force them to do that.” That creates imbalances in the economy. It shifts resources to areas that aren’t productive. In effect, in reality, a true free market automatically rebalances, automatically sends resources where they should be. All we really need to do is leave it alone.

Brian: In addition to leaving it alone, Brien, if you would, talk to me about – again, going back to gold – I’ve only got a minute before we go to the commercial break so I probably will pose a little bit of the question to you and then we’ll pick it up on the other side. If that’s what the politicians are going to do, if that’s what the Fed’s going to do, there’s something you and I can do and that’s what I dig about goldnewsletter.com – it’s a part of the Jefferson companies – because there’s something we can do proactively as well. Quickly, isn’t that true?

Brien: Absolutely. Protect yourself through precious metals and learn about the markets. Learn which segments of the markets are going to rise and/or fall in reaction to what government will do and what government inevitably does in every situation.

Brian: Brien, I’ll have you think about this during the commercial break. My new slogan for you is “here’s what Brien Lundin taught me – educate yourself and agitate the politicians.” Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to run to a quick commercial break. We’re going to be back with Mr. Brien Lundin right after these quick words.

[0:23:54 – 0:28:09 break]

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Here today – I promised you at the beginning of the show this was going to be a guy you’d not only learn from but really enjoy When I said an hour across the table from a wise man is worth a year’s study in books. We’re here with Brien Lundin. You’ve heard of him before, I know, if you’ve been on Off the Grid News. You also know that he is the editor of goldnewsletter at goldnewsletter.com. Brien, I ran with this, so you’re welcome to write this down and then maybe copyright it, but from now on when people ask me “how was it hanging out with Brien?” I’m going to say “he taught me to educate myself and agitate the politicians.” That’s my new slogan for you.

Brien: I think I’m going to adopt that as my trademark. You’ll see it on the website.

Brian: Go real quickly because you’ve got to watch Jeremy – he’ll get right on GoDaddy right now and go “educateyourselfagitatethepoliticians.com.” Alright, Brien, if you could help me – here’s another thing – I hear all the time, even in Congressman Paul’s book, or you hear people on Judge Napolitano’s show or you hear ‘em on “Watch the Money” or any of the other shows that we might watch. They talk about monetary inflation and then they have the term price inflation. For some of us, we look at that Brien and we go “parts is parts. Inflation is inflation.” Can we spend a couple of minutes and could you educate me on the difference between monetary inflation and price inflation?

Brien: Absolutely. Monetary inflation is simply an increase in the supply of money. The supply of currency. That’s been happening in the United States and throughout the world for years now. This is not a new phenomenon. It’s only been accelerated, to a very large degree, since the credit crisis of 2008. What happens with monetary inflation is that every time you increase – if you add one more dollar, you print one more dollar today, that directly and proportionally decreases the value of all the other dollars that are already existing. That happens if you just add one dollar to it. But if you add a billion dollars, then the decrease is that much greater in the value of the rest of the currency that’s out there outstanding at the time. Now, when you start to get into hundreds of billions of dollars and trillions of dollars, then you’re talking about dramatic decreases in the value of the currency that’s already out there. Eventually, that monetary inflation gets translated into the prices of the goods we buy and sell. If there are more dollars out there for the same amount of goods in the marketplace, then it will take more of those dollars to buy the same amount of goods. That’s price inflation. We haven’t seen price inflation yet. We’ve had monetary inflation. We’ve had the supply of fiat dollars, or dollars unbacked by gold or silver, increase dramatically over the past 10 years. That increase has accelerated in the last couple of years. We haven’t seen price inflation yet for a couple of reasons. One is that many of the goods we have now are imported from developing countries where wages are low. We have – you go to a Wal-Mart, you go to a Costco, a Sam’s Club – we buy things in greater quantities and at lower relative costs now than we did in the 1970s because we’re importing them at very low prices from developing and exporting countries. That’s been a dampening effect on consumer prices in the US. The other factor is that the government has fiddled with its measurement of price inflation – with the CPI – over the years. They adjusted it in 1980 and they adjust it in the ‘90s. Each time they adjusted it, it had an effect of underreporting inflation. The inflation rates we’re having reported now bear little relation to the inflation rates that we had in the 1970s. In fact, if we used the same CPI that was used in the 1970s, inflation today is already at the levels that began to start real panic in the halls of Congress and in the White House in the 1970s.

Brian: So, Brien, when I hear about the CPI and how they can fudge the numbers – I have to be honest, the old … the ex-New York cop kicks in in me and I go “it’s a lot like getting to a crime scene and then trying to mess with the evidence or cover your tracks so that you can’t understand it.” If they’re inflating or fraudulently reporting – I don’t want to accuse anyone, but let’s say they’re massaging the CPI to fit the way they see the world, it seems to me it’s no different than someone going in and messing up a crime scene.

Brien: They use some new measurements – one of them called the hedonic inflator and other measures that I don’t agree with – but that they say reports price inflation more accurately than was done in the 1970s. You can have that argument all day long. And you can argue, for example, that it makes more sense to measure gasoline in liters than gallons. You can make that argument all day long and you might be correct, but you can’t argue that it’s two different measurements.

Brian: It would seem to me, just as a simple guy … parts is parts.

Brien: Exactly. And if you want a consistent indicator of price levels, then you need to use the same indicator throughout. The government has, as I said, changed the CPI twice. Both times the effect was to underreport inflation. You know that they wouldn’t change it to over-report inflation or show higher inflation. From a practical measure, that would bankrupt the country. So you know that whatever changes they made to the CPI, they may say it made the CPI more accurate, but you also know well and good that those changes would report lower inflation. That’s just the way the government works.

Brian: Again, as you say that to me, it’s like “they’re covering their tracks.” So Brien, I want to spend the rest of this segment, if it’s OK sir, and our final segment – now that you’ve caught our listeners up – what are we going to do? What do we got to do, Brien? Talk to us about – let’s say you’ve never invested in gold before. How do we get involved, what should we be looking at, what’s the difference between … I’d like you to run for me, if you would, talking to a regular guy, regular girl, that has been “you know what? I listen to Brien. He makes sense to me …” – listen to you, not to me – if it makes sense to our listeners they’re listening to you, they’re not listening to me. But if it makes sense to our listeners, how do they get involved? What’s a little guy like me going to do?

Brien: It’s important to realize that gold and silver rise in proportion to the decrease of the value of the dollar – whatever the reigning fiat currency is in the world. So whereas the dollar may fall in value or rise in value, compared to other currencies, the fact of the matter is it needs to be measured against the ultimate barometer, the independent barometer, which is gold. When gold prices are rising, it’s the relative purchasing power of the dollar that’s dropping. The way to protect yourself from the decrease in the value of the dollar is through holding and owning gold and precious metals and related investments. One of the key ways to do this – and I like to call it, and gold is typically referred to as “portfolio insurance” – gold and silver. Every important and relevant analyst in gold will tell investors and savers to hold a core holding of precious metals that acts as portfolio insurance – that they put away, they don’t’ touch, they don’t try and trade the market. They just put away a portion of their savings, their income, into gold and silver and hold that for the long term. There are various percentages that have been recommended, from 5 to 10 percent. I think if you’re going over 10 percent for that core holding you’re being a bit too aggressive. I think that investors really need to hold within that range, typically. This is very generally, I’m not a registered investment advisor so I can’t give out individual investment advice. But generally, 5 to 10 percent of one’s investments should be allocated to physical metals and should not be traded back and forth in the market. Ways to buy that are – there are many more ways to do that these days than there ever were before. There are physical holdings of coins and bullion which can be purchased at any local coin shop in any city. I advise that you shop around although bullion coins typically trade within a very narrow range. You can check prices with groups on the internet and your local coin dealer. You’ll be able to get a comfort level of what the proper price levels are.

Brian: Brien, we’re going to run to a quick commercial break. But on the other side, on our final segment with Mr. Brien Lundin. Brien, I’m probably going to ask if you had the top three things that you could say for our listeners that go “here are the action steps that I need to take today.” I’d like to focus on that. Ladies and gentlemen, quick commercial break. When we come back, offthegridnews.com.

[0:37:52 – 0:42:01 break]

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, a part of that preparing for the worst is we are here today with Mr. Brien Lundin from goldnewsletter.com. Brien, I said before we went into the break, how about the top three things? We’ve talked about now, somewhere in and around 10 percent – that you mentioned – nor am I an investment advisor. You and I are just kicking the can around to help folks be in the position to work on that idea for themselves. I want to talk about your annual conference. Obviously I’m a huge of goldnewsletter.com. But give me the hat trick – what are the three things that our listeners can do right now to start to hedge against some of the things that are happening and could very well be dramatically increasing in the future?

Brien: Buy physical metals, physical gold and silver – somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. Put it away in a safe deposit box, somewhere where you physically own it, where it’s not stored in your name by anyone else. Hold that metal. And add to it over time. Second, if you recognize that gold and silver are in long-term uptrends, then you can make a good bit of money trading in those uptrends. Buy some metals, and even some of your core holdings can be in these ETFs – they make it very easy to buy and sell gold and silver, much as you would a stock. Buy gold, get a position on the ETF that you can easily trade at low cost. When gold or silver makes a very big run, sell near those peaks. When it has a significant drop, purchase again near those bottoms. You can trade the fluctuations and the volatility along that uptrend, but never let go of your core holdings in the metals. Thirdly, you can get leverage to these long-term gains in the metals by buying the mining and exploration stocks. The mining stocks, obviously, as gold and silver go up in price, the companies that are mining these metals – their profit rises and they leverage the gains in the metals. They rise and correspondingly fall to a greater degree as metals go up and down. But again, if you recognize that the metals are in long-term uptrends, you’ll make a lot more money in these mining stocks. One of the things we feature in Gold Newsletter are the junior mining exploration stocks which are the companies that actually go out and find the deposits that today are worth a whole lot more than they were 10 years ago. A lot of these stocks are a very risky environment to invest in but we’ve had tremendous success. Over the last two years, our average stock that we’ve recommended has been up 175 percent. In that time span, we’ve had some go up as much as 30 times in value. That’s the kind of gains that you can see in that sector. Again, it’s for a small portion of a portfolio for investors who have a tolerance for risk, because it is a much riskier area. But the gains can be outsized to say the least.

Brian: Alright, Brien, if you would – what’s going on with the annual conference? That was something else I was reading up about and I thought “no one better to tell us about it than you.”

Brien: Since 1974, we’ve held what is the biggest and grandest of the found money and investment conferences. We started – my late friend and mentor, Jim Blanchard, was an icon in the gold and hard money movement. He actually was a key figure in having the right to own gold returned to American citizens in 1974. He started Gold Newsletter and our annual conferences. The New Orleans Investment Conference, today and over the last nearly 40 years, has brought the real icons of history – the leading free market advocates – in one place at one time. Not only individual investors but the kind of leaders of the pro freedom, pro individuality movement. We’ve had Ayn Rand, we’ve had Margaret Thatcher. We’ve had, of all people, Alan Greenspan, when he used to be a gold bug. We’ve had a number of the leading lights of the last four decades grace our stage and we’re planning another big, blockbuster event in New Orleans here this fall, in late October. I urge anyone who wants to learn more about that to go to our website – neworleansconference.com – to learn a lot more about what we do.

Brian: And, Brian, they can go on Facebook too, right? I believe you have a link to that – if you’re listening and you’re on Facebook?

Brien: Yeah.

Brian: You also have the conference general session presentations and there’s a spot on goldnewsletter.com where you can click – right now you can click to order those.

Brien: Yes, they can hear the presentations from last year’s event.

Brian: Very cool. Any repeat presenters from last year? Any names that you can leak to us now or do you keep that pretty close to the cuff until it’s time?

Brien: We’re still trying to build our roster. We have some invitations going out that we’re waiting for acceptance from some figures everyone will recognize. The biggest names out there. Right now we’ve signed up, for a repeat performance, Charles Krauthammer, who I think is a brilliant individual. He’s actually going to be debating James Carville.

Brian: Oh, great!

Brien: Should be some real fireworks.

Brian: Wow! That’s worth the trip down, in and of itself. I love listening to him. I really do. That should be a great debate.

Brien: Yeah, he’s a wonderful guy and absolute brilliant analysis.

Brian: Brien, if I could ask you – I would love the idea if there were a book – you know, the series “Wine for Dummies,” “Basket weaving for Dummies.” If you’ve written one, I apologize that I don’t know about it, but what would be the book? If regular folks wanted to go “I really dig Brien Lundin, I thought that was a great interview at Off the Grid News” – do you have a favorite book? Without us all having to go back and go to four years of college and get MBAs, do you know of a book out there you’d go “you know what guy? This is where you start … so that you can be pretty well prepared.”

Brien: There’s been a number of them done over the years. All of the authors who’ve written them are – not all of them, but most of them, are good friends of mine so I feel put on the spot to recommend one …

Brian: Alright, my fault.

Brien: No, but you know? Adrian Day has a good one. I forget the name of it. I think it’s “Investing in Resources.” Adrian is a good friend of mine …

Brian: And his last name is spelled D-A-Y?

Brien: D-A-Y.

Brian: D-A-Y. OK, I’ve written that down. Adrian Day. Very cool. I’ve got it. Alright, Brien, unfortunately we only have about three minutes left so I think I’d like to circle the wagons again and say for our listeners that don’t have the opportunity to spend an hour with you most days, anything else that you can think that we want to use as a close to say to them “here’s what you need to do to protect yourself and your family.”

Brien: Investing in precious metals – it’s not too late. The metals have been on a tremendous run over the last 10 years, but they’ve yet to even approach the highs and constant dollars that they hit in 1980. Silver would have to get to over $120 in current dollars to equal the high of $50 it reached in 1980. Gold would have to reach $2300 to equal that 1980 high.

Brian: So Brien, for the people that think “it’s already going up, going up, going up. I missed it. It’s too late for me to get in.” You’re saying, historically that’s absolutely incorrect.

Brien: It is incorrect. That’s judging on what we went through in the 1970s. I think we can reach those highs by 2012 just staying on the path that we’re in. If, in fact, common sense doesn’t reign in the 2012 election and we get more of the same, then I think those records will be broken, on the up-side.

Brian: Unbelievable. I think a lot of people, when they first think of getting in investing, they go “you know what, Brian? That would have been good if I could have got back in when it was $40 or $50, but now that it’s up, what’s there to do?” But it’s very helpful for me to know that we’re not even close to the way it was in our own lifetime, in our own country. So this is not some far and away kind of idea.

Brien: That’s correct. The mining and exploration stocks offer a way to leverage the gains in the metals as well … over the next couple of years, but also, they also leverage the megatrends of the growth of China and other developing countries that are placing tremendous demand on commodities. There’s another complete story there on why to invest in resource stocks in general.

Brian: Well, Brien, I hate to do it but I promised I would get you out the door by quarter-till and I’m one minute over. I know you’re very busy but I cannot thank you enough for hanging out with our guests and answering some of the questions that I think are probably always on our minds but we never get an opportunity to talk to someone as smart as you and, most certainly, with their fingers on the pulse the way you have. So thank you so very much. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Brien Lundin from goldnewsletter.com. Of course you can log on to Off the Grid News and we’ll put you with a link to Brien’s site as well. Brien, farewell.

Brien: Thank you.

Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, as always, thank you for listening to Off the Grid Radio. Please be sure to email us with questions, comments, critiques at [email protected]. Of course you can find us on Facebook – Facebook.com/offthegridnews. And you can follow us on Twitter @offgridnews. We know an hour is a huge chunk of your day. It really is an honor to be able to share it with you. Thank you so very much. On behalf of everyone from here at Off the Grid News, I’m Brian Brawdy.