The gold market has fallen in the past few weeks amid fears of a severe global deflationary period. However, it has begun to pick back up. Greg McCoach, founder and president of The Mining Speculator and Amerigold.com joins Bill and Brian today to discuss our economic health and the investment opportunities in gold, silver, and base metals. He says now is not the time to run away from precious metals.
We have kicked the can down the Keynesian road as far as it will go, and the Federal Reserve and this administration have painted themselves into a corner with their cash pumping of empty dollars into the economy. Through their economic model, they cause the very volatility in the marketplace that they’re seeking to calm.
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Off The Grid Radio
Ep 070
Released: October 7, 2011
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Off the Grid Radio, here at offthegridnews.com. Today, Brian Brawdy, as always along with Mr. Bill Heid. Bill, how are you sir?
Bill: Brian, I’m good as usual. And I’m optimistic. We’ve got a great guest today and we’re going to talk about the economy. We’re going to talk about what happened to gold prices and what opportunities there may exist. I want to say at the beginning of the show that we are not investment advisors in any way. Always find a financial guy or gal that can match up your risk level with what you’re prepared to put in the market. But there’s lots of interesting things that are going on right now. Our guest – as you know, Brian – really is at the epicenter of what’s going on financially.
Brian: And you know what, Bill? In addition to being at that epicenter, he’s got a great passion. You do these interviews, you take – most times – very copious notes. Then when I look back through my book of all the people we’ve interviewed over these last couple of years, I’ve got four pages of notes from the last time we spoke to our guest. Even some of his one-liners – he’s always … not only does he have his finger on the pulse, being at the epicenter, he’s a great guy. So if it’s cool with you, I’ll go ahead and introduce today’s guest.
Bill: You bet.
Brian: He is not only the president of Amerigold, he is an entrepreneur who has successfully started and run several businesses over the past 22 years. For the last seven years, he’s been involved with the precious metals industry as a bullion dealer, an investor, even a newsletter writer. Our guest today, Mr. Greg McCoach, has years of business experience and extensive – Bill, as you know – personal contacts in the mining industry that provide our listeners with unique insights that have generated an impressive track record for the mining speculator since its inception in 2001. Ladies and gentlemen, Bill, say hello to Mr. Greg McCoach.
Bill: Good morning, Greg, again. Welcome to our show.
Greg: Glad to be here, as always.
Bill: Greg, the last few days have been interesting days on the gold market. I know that you’ve got a passion for the junior mining companies, as I do. I’m a subscriber to your newsletter “Mining Speculator.” Always looking forward to the next issue. Just recently, your newest one that was released on the 26th, the headline was “Slaughter or Opportunity: The Choice is Yours.” I wondered if you wanted to dig into that a little bit and give some of our listeners, maybe potential subscribers someday, the heartbeat of where you think the financial world is now. Some people are jumping out of gold, I’m a little different bird, I’m looking for some stink bids on some of these juniors – probably like you – thinking “how can I get in?” It’s been a marvelous opportunity to buy some of these stocks. What’s going on in this world? In this gold market?
Greg: Yeah, we could take hours to answer that one question alone, but let me say this, to get the ball rolling here, we had a devastating few trading days in the precious metals and the junior mining shares. Investors worldwide were really perplexed by all that was happening last week when this “Operation Twist” aka QE3 was announced. How can the dollar be strong in an environment like that and send precious metals into a tailspin? My take on it is it’s irrational. This is irrational behavior, but markets behave irrationally sometimes. I’ve been firm in my writing that I believe the precious metal prices, just talking about them first, we’re going to see extreme volatility in both directions. We’re seeing now the extreme volatility to the downside. After a new recent high in gold at $1929 achieved earlier in the summer, we’ve backtracked 15 percent. That’s normal in this secular bull market that’s now going into its 12th year. We’ve been here before. We’ve seen this time and time and time again. The media jumps on it as “this is the death of the gold bull market …” I say nonsense. This is an extremely interesting buy opportunity for anybody who understands what’s going on. I bought more on Monday. I already own a ton of the physical precious metals. I bought more on Monday. I’m watching it very closely here. I think we’re close to bottoming out and I think this is setting us up for the next big upside volatility. Next time – the next run – is probably going to take gold over $2000 an ounce. Silver, I think, is really poised in the next three to six months, to go $75 to $100.
Bill: What’s amazing to me, Greg, Europe – that the markets seem to have so much of the stuff pre-built into it. European stocks jump on the notion of a debt deal with Greece being announced – just the notion of that. But none of the issues have ever been – the underlying foundational issues – have ever been ironed out. In other words, we’re going to kick the can, we’re going to buy more debt. I would think what’s going on in Europe right now would help gold even more long term, even though we’re getting a short-term reprieve of pricing. Don’t you think that the issue there is – Greece is in trouble, Italy’s in trouble, Spain’s in trouble – we can go on through the PIGS and more. Don’t you see it playing out a little bit for gold in its benefit?
Greg: Oh, sure. Absolutely. You’re absolutely correct. This is where I say this is irrational. Gold and silver prices should be spiking hire but the powers that be – what happened is, they first went to Germany hoping that Germany was going to – they’re the only one in the European Union to have any money. Basically, that decision was not the German politicians’, it was the German Constitutional Court that ultimately the deciding factor whether that money would be lent out or not. They decided no. That decision came out the Germans weren’t going to lend any money because the Greeks and the Spanish and the Italians don’t want any terms. They just want free money. The chance that Germany would be paid back is not very good so they opted not to send their money to these places. Then the central banks of the world, the five largest, had to come up with a quick band-aid – a two month band-aid – to kick the can down the road. It’s ridiculous.
Bill: So the markets jump. The markets say “finally we got the solution! Finally, there’s going to be stability.” They don’t have stability, do they?
Greg: No. They’re far from stability. What’s happening – look, the market situation is worse than it was last week than it was last month than it was last year. How can the dollar be getting stronger? Well, people, the way they think nowadays, if the European Union is in trouble, even with this kick the can down the road event, we’re going to have to deal with this in another two months and then what? There’s no place to kick the can down the road is what I’m saying. They’ve run out of room. They’re caught in a dead-end alley and now they have to deal with the consequences and they don’t know what to do about it, other than create more money out of thin air and pump it into the system. This is the very behavior that’s brought us to our knees financially worldwide.
Bill: Let’s talk a little bit about this Keynesian can kicking. You talk about the Feds in your recent newsletter. You talk about the Fed’s recent track record with respect to providing fixes. What’s the definition of insanity when you do something over and over and over and you expect some kind of result that’s different than the one that you got previously? I mean, it’s not just QE1 and QE2 and QE3 and Twist and Shout and all these things. But prior to that, let’s get in the time machine and talk about Keynes a little bit – if you’ve ever read General Theory, I can’t make sense out of it. I tried to read that one time – and I’m not the highest IQ in the world, probably not the dumbest – but it doesn’t make any sense when someone says – first of all, he doesn’t really say this in so many words but he says “you can break glass and somehow make money from destruction and rebuilding.” Aren’t there some faulty assumptions associated with the Keynesian model that are foundational?
Greg: Yeah, the whole basis of it is – Keynes himself admitted that it would only work under a totalitarian system of government. Of course, anything can work for a period of time, but its ultimate test is over the course of a longer period, which has proven itself that it doesn’t work. All we have in our system – our system of education teaches nothing but Keynesian economics. You’re like a $3 bill if you bring up any other economic theory or idea. I’m fully behind what’s referred to as Austrian economics. I believe that the Austrians have the best thinking on this, just like the Romans had the best thinking about law and things like that. Each society – each great civilization has its contribution to society. From my standpoint, the Austrians have the economic theory down. They have the most sound economic theory that’s been proven over time to give stability to markets over long periods of time. That’s what the gold standard does. It doesn’t have these boom/bust cycles like the Federal Reserve implications do. Since the Federal Reserve has been implemented, they constantly provide large amounts of cash – pump large amounts of cash into the system and this is what brings this boom/bust mentality. It’s devastating when we’re on the downside; it feels great when we’re on the upside. But now we have to deal with all the consequences of this abuse. This is just typical throughout history, when you study economic history, no government has ever gotten away with this behavior. It always ends in inflationary panic and disaster. You have to look at what’s going on with the Fed – their own contradictions in the media just within the last three months. Here’s Bernanke in end of June saying “we won’t need to do anymore QE events after QE2.” He stated that publicly. Here we are, three months later, doing QE3, even more recklessly than QE1 and QE2. The whole thing proves the point that these people don’t know what to do about the problems.
Brian: Greg, we’re going to have to run to a quick commercial break. When we come back, there’s a recent meeting that Bill had with another fan of the Austrian school that I think you’ll be very excited to hear about. Ladies and gentlemen, a quick commercial break and then we will be right back, here at Off the Grid News.
[0:11:37 – 0:15:54 break]Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back from the quick commercial break. Brian Brawdy, as always with Mr. Bill Heid. Today, from Angel Publishing and also the Mining Speculator – a newsletter we really dig here at Off the Grid News – Mr. Greg McCoach. Greg, before we went into the break you were talking about “now is the time.” The quick question that I had for you is – I’m not nearly as knowledgeable when it comes to precious metals and investing in them as you and Bill are – but you said something earlier that I wrote down and I’ve been circling for the last couple of minutes. You talked about the education, where people need to get educated. As an outsider looking in, I look at some of the current people in the Obama administration and I look at some of the people from the Bush administration, for that matter – highly educated folks without 35 seconds worth of business experience in the real world. They were educated out the ying yang. They were at Harvard, they were at Dartmouth, they were at Yale, they were all these other pieces. It doesn’t seem to me like that kind of education has gotten us anywhere but in the tank.
Greg: No. Some people would refer to that as educated derelicts. When I say education, I’m talking about trying to find the truth. I think most of what we are fed on a daily basis from the mainstream media – the government media complex, as I like to call it – is mostly disinformation and trying to lead us away from the truth instead of bring us the truth. This is where it gets down to some really diabolical things but I think basically, I mentioned this earlier, the Council on Foreign Relations – I’ve taught my subscribers over the years about the Federal Reserve. A lot of them have woken up to this situation and why it has such a negative effect on us for trying to break out into free markets and returning to prosperity. They have a very negative way of hanging over us. But this Council on Foreign Relations – you have to understand how they got control of the media. It was a group formed by JP Morgan, who was also behind the impetus for forming the Federal Reserve. Once they got control of money in the United States then they want to control our media. The Council on Foreign Relations was initiated to do exactly that. They went around, they did some studies, they figured out that to control the country with information you have to control the newspapers. So they went and bought the 25 most important newspapers in our country, replaced the editors – the top editor – with their guy or gal and made sure that the content of the media fed to the American people was controlled by them. As an American, you need to understand this. You need to understand that’s such important information. Of course these organizations have been doing their thing for quite some time and they’ve got us in a dumbed-down state in America. The average person, who doesn’t dig very much into looking for truth, is caught in all this. I’m doing a report on this right now that I’m sending out to my subscribers. Again, Bill, if you like this and you want to send it to anybody, feel free to use the copy and send it to wherever you need. It’s going to talk about – it shows a short video – and this is what I’m talking about, trying to help educate people in a simple way, not getting too complicated. Just give them the basic facts and people who are interested can take it from there and study themselves. We have the internet. We have the power of the internet. You can find this information if you want. If you want to dig for the truth, it’s there. It’s not going to come to you unless you dig for it though. If you just listen, turn on your CNN or your MSNBC, you’re going to be fed the Kool-Aid. You’re going to be fed what they want you to hear. You’ve got to break away from that as an investor. I think as you know the truth you’ll be more confident at what you’re doing and you’ll be more confident in investing in precious metals and precious metal mining shares, things that I think are going to protect you in the coming societal chaos that I see as fiat currencies worldwide begin to implode now. We know the Euro is on the breach of that. We know the dollar at some point – I can’t tell you whether it’s going to start two hours from on, two weeks, two months, two years – I can’t tell you that, I don’t have a crystal ball. But I’m saying as sure as death and taxes in this life, the Euro and the dollar are going to collapse. There’s no sustainability to what is going on with these currencies and how the politicians are spending the money. Ultimately, our conversations – economically, financials – all about boils down to “how do we protect ourselves, Greg?” How do we make money out of all this? First we have to understand the truth. The more truth you understand, the more confident you’ll be at what you’re doing. When you’re confident in investing and you learn contrarian principles, you’ll make the best buys in your life and you’ll make the most money you’ve ever made in your life. I’ve seen it over and over again. J Paul Getty was a big proponent of this. He taught in his autobiography that, unfortunately, shortly after he released his autobiography he died back in the 90s but very good book to read – J Paul Getty’s autobiography.
Bill: Brian, I would also say – as Greg was talking about this educational idea – don’t you think on some level that Americans – the basic core of Americans – they always say “will it play in Peoria?” People out here where we live in the sticks and in Peoria – simple people – they don’t really realize that folks will look at them on TV or wherever and keep their game face on and lie to them. In other words, if Greece goes belly up, Americans aren’t – what’s the right word – cunning in that the average American doesn’t understand that those people are going to lie to them right up to the exact second that somebody’s pulling the switch and they’re being paid to lie right up and create a front while they get their money out of certain accounts to do something in order to clear things out. Americans are still, like we’ve always been, naïve with respect to what’s really going on. People will lie to you. People will tell you something that’s not true. They have vested interest in saying things to you that simply are not true. Americans say “I would never lie to somebody,” so they watch these TV shows – especially the financial networks – and their assumption is that the folks on those shows are just like they are and it’s just not true.
Brian: And Greg, I know Bill knows this and our listeners know this, but I used to be a reporter for CBS in one of the largest markets in the country – owned and operated market. One of the reasons that I left was the constant pressure to sell the drama. I left that experience, Greg, with the tagline “why let truth taint the process?” I do it tongue-in-cheek anymore – why let truth get involved in the debate? Why would you possibly want to report the truth? Because in the major media markets now, that’s not what you’re hired to do. You’re hired to sell the drama, to sell the spin, to say what the editors want you to say. If you don’t play it, there’s hell to pay – in your IFB, in your earpiece, when you get back to the shop. So you either toe the line or you’re out. That’s why I left.
Greg: That’s good for you. That’s a stand. I think more and more Americans are going to have to make stands like that in their own personal life and start holding the media accountable. You have to first understand that they’re controlled. They’re bought and paid for just like our politicians. The same group of people that controls the financial world also controls the media. You have to understand that in order to break out of this and be a wise investor and come out on top, I think. Reporters – the whole idea of honest reporting was to bring the truth to light, not hide it. That’s what we get right now, we have a bunch of disinformation that’s fed to us on a daily basis to keep us involved with what they want us to think. Then there’s another part of it that’s really disturbing to me – how much of our time Americans spend on these news items that, in my opinion, are trite, trivial and of no meaning at all, referring to what some Hollywood starlet is doing or the personal life or the personal drama that’s going on in these people’s lives. It’s right on the front pages of all our media outlets when the most important issues don’t even find the back page sometimes.
Brian: Greg, how do you fight the belief or how do you fight the gut call? I hear you say that and I think to myself “some are going to hear, some aren’t.” For those that aren’t going to hear, let them worry about Lindsay Lohan, let them worry about this one or that one or what this team is doing or what that celebrity is doing. Do you ever get to the point where you get up in your morning and you go “I’m tired of beating my head against the wall. I know what’s going to happen” – I love your term diabolical. You see what’s coming with the Council on Foreign Relations, you see what’s coming with the IMF and all of that. Do you ever get to the point where you go “it’s just not worth the breath anymore.”
Greg: I do. I get exhausted and frustrated because people don’t understand. You try to give it to them on the most simple terms. You don’t go into the really tough subjects to understand. You give them milk before meat. I don’t know, I’ve always been a person – I try – I want to help other people. I really do. At the basis of what I’m doing, I have a desire to help other people protect themselves financially and help them understand the truth. Do I get tired? Sometimes yes. Do I get tired and say “the hell with this. I don’t need to do this anymore.” Financially I’m fine, I could go off and be merry and not worry about this anymore. But I want to see my country survive because I want something for my kids to have hope for, to live for. So I feel like I have to stay involved because I want my kids to have at least a chance. Unless people like me and you and others – unless we fight the fight, then it’s a lost cause and they win. Ultimately, I have to believe that better people will prevail even though the powers that be have all the power with the media. I’m hoping that sooner or later, and I’m of the opinion at this point that it’s going to take a financial crash to wake people up. Unfortunately, there’s no hope that I have now that we can fix this thing. There’s no solution to what’s coming financially. We’re going to live through this but it will bring people to their knees and it will bring them to the truth. They will come to understand what’s happened to them. We would have hoped that we could have educated them beforehand to avoid this disaster but at this point it’s unavoidable. It’s going to happen. But the good part of it, it will bring people to understanding. Then and only then do I think we can make the real changes, the systemic changes. You have to abolish the Federal Reserve. This organization can’t exist. ??[0:27:21] reserve banking has to be understood by the masses to understand how evil this is and how corrupt it is and how it gives power to a small group of people. Our country wasn’t set up that way. The liberty and prosperity that we were given through the Constitution and the Founding Fathers – we have to get back to those principles if we’re going to be prosperous and survive as a people. If we abandon that, then we’re going the wrong way I think. But I look around, I see the young people struggling to get jobs, regardless of whether they’re educated or not. I look at the families that are struggling. The solutions being offered by the two-party systems of Republicans and Democrats are a disaster. That’s not the right thing. We’ve got to get people focused away from that, understanding there’s got to be a different way to do this. We have to abolish the Federal Reserve. You’ve got to get back to the basics. You’ve got to get back to Austrian economic principles instead of Keynesian economic principles. These are things that I think are going to come to the forefront as we come to learn through financial crisis where we are. The people always have the power to make the ultimate changes but the people have to be educated first. We’re in the dark right now. People ask me “Greg, what percentage of the people do you think are in the dark?” When I speak I use the term and the percentage 80 percent. I think 80 percent of the world population is in the dark about what’s going on. We have to turn that around. We have to have 80 percent of the people understand what’s going on and then we can make all these changes.
Bill: Brian, I think you had mentioned that this fatigue that happens – what do you do? There’s that old Stonewall Jackson admonition that’s one of my favorites – “duty is ours; consequences are God’s.” In other words, guys like us – we’ve just got to keep hammering and we have to have the faith to know and to understand where sovereignty lies. I think if your sovereignty lies in God then you have that faith to push forward. Solzhenitsyn talked about – they said “what’s wrong with the Soviet Union?” He said “the nation’s forgotten God.” I think that’s something similar. In other words, there are standards from which – and we Christians call them transcendent standards – by which we can judge the Fed. If there is no God, you can’t create a standard by which to judge the Fed. It’s all arbitrary, it’s one guy’s got a bigger stick than another guy. There’s this foundational idea of “where do our ideas come from? Where do our laws come from? What’s justice?” Inherent in the idea of justice is where do laws come from? The god of any society is the source of that society’s laws. Trace our society back, guys, where do our laws come from? Rogue judges, a crazy congress that buys its way in with money that appeals and throws cheap bread and circus … whoever has the most monkeys can win a congressional district because he can put on the best show. That’s what’s sovereign in our country right now. I think – I’m trying to get below that surface and I think you see this Fed problem and these other problems are symptoms of a greater issue of misplaced sovereignty. I don’t think we can think that for any second that the Fed and those guys are the ultimate source of power. We just have to labor – and you know what? Sometimes generations go by and people work and you don’t see a victory in your generation, but that doesn’t mean that the things … let’s say Ron Paul doesn’t become President – that doesn’t mean that the labor and the effort that he puts forth in educating people won’t have some unbelievable – what’s that in the movie Gladiator when Russell Crowe gives that speech to those people “what we do in life …”
Greg: Yeah, that was great.
Bill: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. We’ve got to rally and we’ve got to start thinking what we do now is going to have an effect, not only in our own afterlife but on this earth – it’s going to affect other people. Every little thing. It’s the butterfly effect.
Greg: Absolutely. I’ll tell you, two books that I would read – especially for young people. I’ve had my kids – 24 daughter, 21 son – had them read Ron Paul’s “Liberty Defined” to help them understand the politics of what is going on in Washington. That book is a must read, I think, for especially young people to understand what’s happening and to understand each one of the topics that he addresses. To understand both sides of the issue so you can clearly understand for yourself where you stand on this stuff. Very good book. The second is a series of books called the “Uncle Eric” series of books by a man named Richard Maybury who is a favorite of mine. People always ask me as a newsletter writer who do I read. I read Jim Sinclair because of his understanding of the derivative market. He understands it better than anybody else and he has a free website that basically gives us this information without any … he’s a good individual to do that. It’s jsmineset.com to get Jim Sinclair’s comments. I like Richard Russell. I read Richard Russell. I think he’s got a good understanding of Dow Theory. He’s also a big gold supporter, understands what’s going on. Richard Maybury – he writes a newsletter called “Early Warning Report” that I think is very, very well done. But he also writes a series of books that a 14-year-old could read that’s called the “Uncle Eric” series of books. For $200 to $300 you can buy the whole series of books. It’s 9 or 10 books. You could read each one in a day. It explains in very simple terms the things that you’re addressing, Bill, the sovereignty issues, the laws, where our system came from, how it came about, in very, very simple terms. I think it’s a must read for young Americans in particular. All my nieces and nephews – I’ve bought many, many copies of these books. I send them out religiously to people who I love and care about. I would recommend it to any of your subscribers or your listeners.
Bill: Nice, Brian. You got anything else – other than urge people to check out Greg’s website? As I said, I’m a subscriber. I pay close attention. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wish the issues would come out sooner, Greg, but …
Greg: Yeah, I’m trying to spend more time in the office.
Bill: I’m sitting here every day, punching it in saying “where’s my newsletter?” But that tells you one thing, that tells you that I’m very interested in what you have to say and that I’m looking to what you have to say for advice and guidance.
Greg: One thing I would say for people right now, this is an exceptional opportunity with physical precious metal prices where they are right now. This is an incredible time to buy. If they want a safe and reliable dealer to work with, amerigold.com – call them. They’ll take you through all the issues related to precious metals. They take an educational approach. There’s never any sales pressure. For people who don’t own the physical precious metals, this is a great opportunity.
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to run to a quick commercial break. When we come back, the final segment with Mr. Greg McCoach and the Mining Speculator. Come on back after this quick break.
[0:35:03 – 0:39:17 break]Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Off the Grid News. Boy, our guest today is most certainly offering a different paradigm – different if you look at everything going on in the world today. Bill Heid today, along with Mr. Greg McCoach. Bill, I was thinking when Greg said – right before we went to the break – about being a fan of the Austrian school, didn’t I see on your Facebook page recently where you had your picture taken with someone – you had a brief little discussion as well, I’m told. A picture with someone who you could probably put in the same category as Greg as being a fan of Austrian economics.
Bill: Yeah, that would be Ron Paul. One of my acquaintances is Murray Rothbard and Murray Rothbard was one of Ron’s too. We had time to share a little moment about Murray there and there’s a little common ground. I think that Ron Paul would certainly agree that we’re headed towards an abyss and, as Greg is saying, people don’t really understand what’s going on. They don’t understand at the top but if you drill it down – this is probably a whole other show – but if you drill it down … Greg, do you think people could – the average American, given the public schools and given the dumbing down of America – would the average person be able to pick up von Mises and read that and comprehend it? I think the average person, despite what I said, the average person could probably pick up Hazlitt’s Economics in one lesson and make some sense out of that. But I don’t know about von Mises. What do you think?
Greg: Yeah, they’d get pretty deep. You’d have to have somebody interpret it for them and boil it down in simple terms. That’s what I try to do. When I talk to my subscribers about Austrian economics I’m boiling it down. I’m bringing the principles to laymen’s terms so they can get the basics of what it is compared to what we have and what we’re taught. I get a lot of comments. People are very thankful that I explain things at that level because they get it. They understand it. They can see it for themselves. That’s what we have to do. We have to help our countrymen come to this knowledge. It’s a shame that even highly intelligent people, highly educated people, regardless of their situation with education – they don’t know what’s going on. We have to have some good people who are willing to bring this information to them so they can readily understand it because without the majority of our populous understanding what’s happened there’s very little hope of changing anything. Right now, we’re roped into supporting this two-party system of Republicans and Democrats which, in my opinion, has catastrophically failed the American people. Yet we keep voting for these idiots. Then you look up the next band of morons that are going to be running for election – they’re all power seekers, other than one person that I see is Ron Paul. He stands out as a beacon of light and yet the mainstream media ignores him. Why? Because his message is basically in the face of the elitists who run our country. He’s not going to get any attention. I noticed on one of the caucuses – the Iowa caucus – when Michele Bachmann barely beat Ron Paul out and all three news agencies – the way they reported it was “Michele Bachmann won the Iowa caucus. In third came Mitt Romney.” They didn’t even mention Ron Paul who almost beat Michele Bachmann in that caucus situation. It just shows you that they will not give him the time of day. This is shocking to me. This is where Americans need to, I think, wake up. It’s unfortunate. How did we get here? We could take a whole other show on that. But we have to start delving into topics about how the Federal Reserve got started, who the Council on Foreign Relations is, how they got control of our media. It’s a small group of elitists who are at the top of the pile who basically want a one-world currency and control. They want world control. That starts sounding like a James Bond movie and it’s hard to get people to go down that road with you, but it’s something that I think has to occur to bring real change and understanding to where we are right now.
Bill: People need to really know the history. I think another good book you could read, in addition to Hazlitt’s “Economics” would be “Creature from Jekyll Island” which takes you down that path. I think that book carefully documents what really happened, how the whole thing got started. As we move into this thing, I think it’s important for people to see – if you’ve got some money saved up for a rainy day, I think it’s important for people to see the psychology … Greg and I and Brian are all old enough to know what happened in the late 1970s through 1980. We saw these tremendous gyrations back then of people getting on and coming back. That’s a sign of a market that’s a little messed up, as you pointed out, Greg. In your new newsletter, you have a little chart in there about – maybe we could take people through the psychology of this because you’ve got to learn – in addition to knowing what to buy, and I pay attention to what juniors you say to buy, but in addition to that, I think you need to say “I’m going to be exposed to a number of emotions along this journey.” in other words, investing is not so simple as just buying at the lowest possible price and selling at the highest possible price. Almost nobody can do that. You have this really cool little chart that starts – it’s like a little roller coaster. Talk about the beginning of that and what people go through and maybe touch base on what they went back through from Carter to Reagan and how that played out and how that plays out in every cycle.
Greg: This is the basis of contrarian investing. Ultimately, at the foundation of all this for me, I’m a contrarian. I don’t invest with crowds. I don’t like to invest with crowds. As a matter of fact, when I feel like I’m one of very few group of people who are investing in something, that’s where I’m most comfortable. I like that. That makes me understand that this is the right thing to do. When I’m investing in crowds I feel like I’m going to get my head handed to me. But the little roller coaster graphic you’re talking about shows how investors go through these set of emotions. At first you make your investment, it goes up, you start having some euphoria. Then reality sets in and the roller coaster starts its downward trek, as markets go up and down. You go through this set of emotions where at the bottom of the set of emotions, where you’re feeling despondency and despair and utter frustration, that’s the point of maximum financial return. That’s the point where you should train yourself to buy. But most investors do what? They sell. They panic sell at the moment of the greatest entry point of financial gain. Conversely, at the top of the roller coaster, when people are feeling good, when there’s euphoria, that’s the point of the minimum return on investment. That’s when you have your maximum risk because there’s a lot of downside risk. Most investors buy at the top and they sell at the bottom. That’s the nature of investing and in general of markets. You have to turn that around. You have to reverse that for yourself. That’s how you make big money. J Paul Getty, one of the first billionaires in our world, that was his whole philosophy. He didn’t care about market timing, he invested when the news was really bad and everybody was feeling total despondency and utter frustration. That’s when he felt most comfortable investing in things. It’s not easy to do. It’s hard to train yourself to be a contrarian but that’s how you make the biggest money in investing. There’s a whole topic on that we could go, but that graphic, I think, shows it. For anybody that would like to see that, Bill, you’re free to send that out to whoever you need to, anybody that would request that through your company. You’re free to send that out. Ultimately, as a contrarian, we see an amazing contrarian moment right now in the precious metals. I’m a firm believer that precious metals are going to make another new high here very soon. I don’t know if it’s two weeks away, two months, but we’re getting close to major events again where the precious metal prices are going to take off. We’ve had our correction. This has been going on for the last 11 years – gold and silver reach a new high, they correct back 10-15 percent, everybody thinks the market’s over and then – boom – here we are at another new high again. This has been going on. There’s nothing that I see that has changed the impetus for this continuation of the higher and higher precious metal prices. You look around, you say “what has changed? How has the dollar gotten stronger with all this debt? With another QE3 event being announced?” It’s ridiculous. There’s no way that the dollar can be sustained at this level. It’s temporary. Very, very temporary. That means get ready. Be smart. Be a contrarian. Buy when the general public is despondent about physical precious metals right now. This is an excellent time to buy. You never know how low you’re going to go on the downside volatility. It was a big one. Silver got knocked 25 percent from where it was just before the market tanked – that’s a 25 percent haircut. But the volatility in silver, I think, is going to be even greater than the volatility in gold. I’ve been saying now for a year “watch for this increased volatility in all markets.” This is part of the downside volatility. The junior mining shares – the performance has been dismal because here we had very high precious metal prices and this huge disconnect where even the major mining companies aren’t performing well. Their stock prices are sucking wind because there’s very little interest of people wanting to come in and buy shares.
Bill: But Greg, shouldn’t they be flush with cash? If you’ve got $400 gold in the ground and you’ve got decent costs of production, or less, shouldn’t some of these companies – irrespective of their stock price – shouldn’t they be internally making money?
Greg: Absolutely. They are. That’s why companies like Agnico Eagle – they’re writing checks for $70 million to acquire other junior mining companies that have promising discoveries. They know they have to keep replenishing the ounces they’re producing so they’re desperate to find another discovery that they can put online. They’re flush with cash but their prices of their stocks are not performing as well as they should based on where gold and silver are. These people are making money hand over fist right now at $1600, $1700, $1900 gold. They’re making tons of money. There’s a great opportunity in these precious metal mining shares. I’ve told people my mantra for 12 years – own the physical precious metals as financial bedrock in your portfolio. It has very little risk to it. It’s proven true. We’ve made a ton of money owning the physical precious metals and there’s been very little risk. I have lots of happy subscribers, lots of happy clients at Amerigold because I’ve been saying this for years and years. The mining stocks offer us great leverage but that market is also extremely volatile so you have to make sure you stick with the right juniors but there’s no guarantees. We know we’re going to lose some money on some of these juniors but we also know we’re going to make a pile of money on some of them. So we play the odds and we play the markets – the ups and downs of it – and we try to position ourselves for the biggest position of the best companies when the big parabolic moves start to happen. I think we’re getting closer and closer to that moment.
Brian: Greg, unfortunately we’ve got to keep to our word of letting you go at the bottom of the hour. I’m going to say goodbye real quick. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been with Mr. Greg McCoach, the president of Amerigold. You can find out more, obviously logging on to our website or also check him out at Angel Publishing – the website is angelpub.com. 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.
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