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The Daily Reckoning | Saturday, July 30, 2011 ------------------------------------------------------- Advocating the active default on the US debt, Cholesterol-eating nano-bots of the future, Plus, all the rest of this week's reckonings, and your ringside ticket to this year's Whiskey Bar rough and tumble debate... Wrapping Up Another Brilliant Symposium Joel Bowman On the way to the U.K., checking in... We're off to rainy Ol' Blighty this weekend, Fellow Reckoner, after a fantastic week here at the Agora Financial Investment Symposium in sunny Vancouver. If you've been reading Jim Amrhein's daily dispatches, you'll know this year's conference, entitled Fight of Flight: Your Capital at Risk, was a big one. We heard from dozens of world-class speakers, all reckoning on one of the most important questions of our time. Doug Casey, Bill Bonner, Addison Wiggin and a ton of other luminaries gave us there various insights on everything from gold investing, entrepreneurial risk, opportunities in frontier markets and plenty more. As always, one of the highlights of this year's event was the Whiskey Bar. Basically, we rally a panel of our most controversial speakers, give a few whiskeys and let them loose in an intellectual free-for-all. Jim wrote up some great boots-on-ground notes from his place, ringside. We've decided, in the interest of keeping it a bit lighter in the weekend edition, to make this piece our feature column. Please enjoy... [P.S. Of course, if you want to hear the entire conference on CD or MP3, you can do so by placing your order here. The discounted rate expires on Tuesday (NOT Monday, as we mistakenly wrote yesterday.) Still, that doesn't give you a lot of time. Get your CD or MP3 set here and bring this year's conference, our biggest and best yet, home with you.] The Daily Reckoning Presents Molotov Cocktails at The Whiskey Bar Jim Amrhein "Your life sucks!" Mauldin yelled... That's a context-free highlight (one of the tamer ones) from the unhinged free-for-all event we've all come to know as the Whiskey Bar, which went down last night at the Fairmont's British Columbia Ballroom. For 2011, this rogues gallery consisted of Agora Financial talents Chris Mayer, Byron King, and Patrick Cox and Eric Fry (as MC), Whiskey & Gunpowder's Gary Gibson, plus invited Symposium speakers John Mauldin, Barry Ritholtz – and the inimitable Whiskey Bar staple, Doug Casey. As one of the charter Editors of W&G, this event holds special meaning for me – since I had the good fortune of sharing the stage with some of these same characters in 2007 and 2008. And it's true, I found myself practically jumping out of my seat to interject at various points. I was dying to give Mr. Mauldin in particular both barrels about one thing he said. Who cares if he's rich, brilliant, and writes for the New York Times – I still think he's dead wrong about oil... But I'm here to observe and report, not participate. Besides, Eric took care of it for me, though in a slightly less kinetic way than I would have. What can I say? He has a rapier wit – mine's a Louisville Slugger. It happened around 16 minutes into the event – which had warmed up with a lot of laughs as MC Fry asked everyone to share their favorite movie, philosopher, and cocktail (Byron took the laugh prize, with Patton, Patton, and Molotov)... But then it got down to the nitty-gritty of issues and investment plays for the future. Mauldin was almost three minutes (I timed it) into a rambling monologue about the pace of technological change in the world, when he tossed in this grenade: "Who cares about peak oil? We won't be using the stuff. The world is going to change so much faster than you can possibly..." That's when Fry – in a priceless piece of comic timing – deftly interjected: "Byron, how are those next-generation solar Boeing planes coming along?" Huge laughs. Of course, Byron had a different take. The right one, if you ask me... "It's going to take decades or generations, in my view, for these things to change. It took probably 75 years for the incandescent light bulb to become the world standard... It took 100 years for steam-powered electric generating turbines to become a standard feature around the..." "WRONG!" Mauldin thundered. His evidence: "Fourteen million i-Pads were sold this year. The adoption curve for technology is on such a ramp-up... You're going back to a model that was SO 1980s." Hmmm. I know these guys are brilliant – and I'm just a gun-toting rube who eats too few vegetables... But I'm having a hard time understanding how the widespread adoption of the computer interface equivalent of the touch-tone phone equates to a new world standard of energy that'll obsolete hydrocarbons... That was just the beginning, though. Thinking about gold? Gary says you should buy nickels instead. "Give the bank $100, they give you back $120 in metal." A fringe benefit: "If you have $10,000 worth of nickels in your house, whoever breaks in won't get away with more than like forty bucks." Priceless. I could never truly do this event justice in print – so I'm just going to hit you with some of the juicier sound bites from the discussion. I won't even attribute them. But if you're sharp and know the players here, you can probably guess: "I don't want to give you a rant on fascism – it would offend too many Americans... The US is unquestionably a fascist state." "I just want to know when my cholesterol-eating nano-bot will be here..." "You're going to be able to take this technology, put it on a drone, and blow the crap out of people with turbans on their heads in Afghanistan." "They already attached it to a Roomba, and weaponized the Roomba..." "The most dangerous job in the world today is the #3 man in the Taliban... You'll notice whenever some senior guy in the Taliban is killed, it's always the #3 guy." "The market's an idiot... The markets don't know Jack." "All these Hitler-like dogs... all these sociopaths have very acceptable social veneers." "Tuscany is not a country." "All these damn countries cover the Earth like a skin disease." "...You-know-who is going to sell off the whole Strategic Petroleum Reserve..." "I advocate the active default on the US debt." "The situation's hopeless – but it's not serious." "Immortality may suck, and it's not worth it." "People are going to die, because of these a**holes from Chicago." "The average American is such is whipped dog... If the American people weren't such wussies, they'd storm into Washington and they'd replicate the execution of Mussolini on every lamppost..." I think it was the best (and funniest) Whiskey Bar event I've ever seen. And like I said, I could never do it justice in print. That's why we've recorded the whole thing. Details below... Regards, Jim Amrhein Roving Reporter for The Daily Reckoning P.S. By the time you read this, it'll be mid-day or afternoon on Saturday... And by midnight on Tuesday night – just two more business days – your chance to get the complete CD or MP3 recordings of the 2011 Agora Financial Investment Symposium at 33% OFF will be gone. Once more, here are the specifics: For just $99, you'll get complete digital, downloadable MP3 files of every marquis speaker's presentation... And for $149, you'll get them all on CDs, in a special, durable and portable box set... OR YOU CAN GET THEM BOTH FOR THE SAME $149 PRICE. (Click HERE to select your preferred media now.) Obama's Burning Shame Revealed Here... This is the unspoken, burning shame that could kill Obama's presidency... It could spell the end of his short political career... It's all revealed in this extremely urgent and controversial documentary report. ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning... Bankruptcy: From Greece to Rhode Island By Frederick Sheehan Central Falls, Rhode Island faces a plight that should be studied for its application elsewhere. It is nearly out of money. This is common news today, whether in Greece or California. The various parties are assumed to possess a means to carry on. This is assumed because it is generally so. The banks had the Fed; General Electric had the Fed and the FDIC; Greece has the ECB; California is prepared to launch a bridge loan. Petroleum Permitorium By Matt Insley Baltimore, Maryland Did you hear the news? This year's government budget included a new tax on oil producers. Bad timing, if you ask me. What, with oil prices sitting around $100 a barrel, the last thing I'd think the government would want to do is reduce incentive for oil producers. But hey, who am I to say? I'll let the numbers have the podium... Is Gold Money? By Charles Kadlec That question, directed to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke by Congressman Ron Paul in last week's hearings before the House Financial Services Committee, strikes terror in the heart of all central bankers. Bernanke looked stunned and then answered, "No: Gold is an asset." The rising price of gold reflects global uncertainties, he explained. "The reason that people hold gold is as a protection against what we call tail risks: really, really bad outcomes." What Didn't Change When Nixon Cut the Gold Link By Ben Traynor London, England "Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation," Richard Nixon told his fellow Americans on August 15, 1971. The 37th President had just announced the US would "temporarily" close the gold window – ending the convertibility of Dollars into gold that had been key to the postwar Bretton Woods system. The Great Correction: 5 Years...and Still No Recovery in Sight By Bill Bonner Vancouver, British Columbia I'm glad to be the last speaker. Nobody can come after me and tell you why I'm wrong about everything. Instead, I get to tell you why the other speakers were numbskulls. Besides, we all have a tendency to be most influenced by the last person we talk to. Or at least I do. Do You Stay or Go? That's the question we're asking at this year's Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver, Canada. And, after listening to the plethora of incredible presentations by the world-class line-up of speakers here, the answers we're hearing, may surprise you... Of course, we understand that Vancouver isn't right around the corner for most of you. That's why we've decided to record the entire line-up of speakers and make them available to you on both MP3 and CD formats. So even if you weren't able to join us at this year's event, you don't have to miss out on a single piece of advice or recommendation. And right now, while the event is still going on, they're available at a nice discount. Click here to get yours now. But hurry, the price will go up shortly after the conference ends. Weekly Endnote... We met a great bunch of new people at this year's conference, both speakers and attendees. And, of course, we were able to catch up with old friends, too. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for another great event. Thanks to the Agora Financial crew who made it possible...and to each and every one of you who attended for making it special. Hopefully we'll have the chance to see you all again next year. Cheers, Joel Bowman Managing Editor The Daily Reckoning