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The Daily Reckoning | Saturday, June 11, 2011 Byron King on what's got the Outstanding Investments portfolio cooking, Readers chime in on printing presses and camel carbon credits, Plus, all the rest of this week's reckonings, archived for your la-Z-boy reading... ................................................................................................ Why I'll "Pay" You $9,207 to Cancel Your Subscription Over 70 MILLION ounces of gold... I know that sounds funny -- me "paying" you thousands of dollars to cancel... But that's exactly what I want to do today. Please look here to get to the bottom of this insane situation. *Offer Closes at Midnight on June 16th. No exceptions. Joel Bowman No time for dilly-dallying this weekender, Fellow Reckoner. And no time for lengthy, up-top monologues either. Instead, let's dive straight into this week's feature essay, penned by Mr. Byron King... "My investment letter, Outstanding Investments, looks for opportunities in resource plays," wrote Byron in Wednesday's issue. "Hence, our portfolio is chock-full of oil and gas companies, uranium diggers, gold and silver miners and technology companies that enable basic resource production. This resource focus has been working very well for the past decade -- and it's not just me saying it. The authoritative Hulbert Financial Digest recently ranked Outstanding Investments as No. 1 in overall return from 2000-2010 among 98 investment newsletters." For the rest of the column from our resident geologist and man of letters, please see here. The rest, you'll find, are below... NEWSFLASH: It's Too Late to "Save America" -- That's Good News For You Famous investment research expert reveals the ONE REASON America's next huge collapse could be great news...for Americans. Watch this urgent presentation for all the details. ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning... Playing Old Maid By Frederick Sheehan When my youngest sister was four-years-old, we taught her how to play Old Maid. She learned quickly but played the game like -- a four-year-old. When she was dealt the Old Maid, her little thumb would push it a couple of inches above the others in her hand. She did this with a giggle since her maneuver was tricking us (in her 4-year-old mind) into taking the Old Maid. She succeeded; someone would remove it from her hand so that she could say: "Ha, Ha, you have the Old Maid!" Beryllium...Even Sexier Than it Sounds By Byron King Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The young Marine sniper lays motionless in a shallow bed of sand and broken rock on the mountainside in Afghanistan. The sun blazes down, and he's sweating. He's spent the morning scanning a valley for Taliban fighters who keep a low profile in their maze of spider holes. After a while, another Marine -- the spotter -- says, "I've got him. Just next to the tree, to the left of that stone house." Our Economic Future: From Best to Worst Case, Part I By Doug Casey Buenos Aires, Argentina There is a great deal of uncertainty among investors about what the future of the US economy may look like -- so I decided to take a stab at what's likely to happen over the next 20 years. That's enough time for a child to grow up and mature, and it's long enough for major trends to develop and make themselves felt. Our Economic Future: From Best to Worst Case, Part II By Doug Casey Buenos Aires, Argentina War is the worst thing that can happen to an economy, but it's also the most likely thing at this point. When the going gets tough, the people in charge like to blame somebody else for the problem. That's compounded by the foolish -- but widely accepted -- notion that war is good for the economy and that, for instance, it pulled the U.S. out of the last depression. What Are the 3 Easy Steps to Epic Penny Stock Payouts? New penny stock guide for retirement wealth boosts, college funds, and play money windfalls reveals 3 easy steps for chances at penny stock gains. Watch this for the full story. The Weekly Endnote: And now for a few words from our Fellow Reckoners... First up, this one from Reckoner A. Printer: I read the Daily Reckoning almost daily, and generally find it enlightening and/or amusing. But I have to take exception to the Eric Fry's piece today about QE2. He writes: To be fair, the Fed Chairman did as much as he could, armed with only a printing press and a few moronic economic theories. He's a modern-day Davey Crockett, trying to repel overwhelming hostile forces with the financial equivalent of a Bowie knife. A printing press was never meant to nurture the economic growth of an entire nation. It is good for mass-producing Bibles, and putting monks out of the illuminated manuscript business. But a printing press is not so good for inspiring an entrepreneur to take a chance. In fact, an active printing press undermines capitalistic enterprise because it creates the inflationary episodes that disrupt pricing throughout the supply chain, while also raising the cost of credit. I share Eric's chagrin at "moronic economic theories" that are destroying the monetary foundation of this country. But I'm getting tired of hard money types bashing the printing press as the source of all evil. You see, I am a printer. I've made my living in the printing industry for most of my adult life. For the last twenty years I've made the payroll at the printing company my father ran for ten years before me. Let me tell you, printing is one of the last bastions of true capitalism left in this country. We actually take raw materials -- paper and ink -- and make tangible products for our customers. If we screw up, we pay for it. And I've never heard of a printing company getting a government bailout. Ever. While it's true that paper money has been the ruin of many economies, and not a few republics, today's technology is capable of monetary destruction on a much grander scale, and at the speed of electrons. When Mr. Bernanke wants to create money, he doesn't have to counterfeit it the old fashioned way. He just moves digits around in a some powerful computer. A credit entry here, a balancing debit entry there... viola! Money ex nihilo. So lay off us printers, will you? Most of the stuff we print adds value to the world. As von Mises said, only the government can make something worthless out of valuable ink and paper. And if we independent printers try to do what they do -- we spend some quality time in a federal penitentiary. And this, from Reckoner Kevin, who writes in from "somewhere in IOUSA": When Chucky Scumbag a/k/a Sen. Charles Schumer decides to speak out with the same force against the Fe(de)ral Reserve as he does against an entity he can't regulate, then I would actually consider him to be slightly honest. But now he has again proven himself to be the supporter of tyranny against not just the citizens of America but of the world. Unfortunately, he proves what is most dangerous about political elections...They are just advance auctions of future stolen goods. And the goods he is trying to steal are anything that he can't find a way to finagle control over. He proves Ronald Reagan's definition of a bureaucrat or technocrat: If there's money in it, you tax it. If you can't tax it, regulate it. If you can't regulate it, then illegalize it. And finally, this one from Reckoner V.F., chiming in from Down Under: The people who brought us pink bats and cash-for-clunkers have a new scheme - we can earn carbon credits by shooting wild camels, humanely of course. Surely it would be far easier to shoot tame cattle? There are big mobs near all of our northern ports going nowhere. And if greens have their way and stop all live exports, we can earn heaps more by shooting millions of sheep and goats, humanely of course. What about those mobs of kangaroos? They burn carbon fuel and emit dreaded carbon dioxide. Why should they be spared when the future of the planet is at stake? One small problem - what do we do with all those carcasses? Left alone they will release all the carbon sequestered within the animal bodies within a couple of weeks, thus incurring massive carbon debits. And who counts the dead camels? To prevent carbon cull fraud the economy will boom with jobs for regulators, inspectors, auditors and prosecutors. And that's about it for this week's reckonings. We hope you enjoyed reading them at least as much as we enjoyed penning them. If you have any thoughts or comments of your own, feel free to write to us at the address provided below. And, always... ...enjoy your weekend. Cheers, Joel Bowman Managing Editor The Daily Reckoning