Gyroscopic Investing

Just reading the first section and looking at that first chart...  it's totally meaningless.  All he did was divide the nominal GDP per capita by the price of gold over time.  Then, he claims that this is an accurate representation of the "real GDP per capita."  That's a pretty ridiculous assertion if you think about what it implies.  In 2000, gold was $290/ounce.  Today, gold is $1,616/ounce. 

That implies that the 2011 dollar is worth 17.9 cents in year-2000 money.  Does anyone really believe that one dollar will today buy what 17.9 cents bought in the year 2000?  If you think that's ridiculous, then his first chart is equally ridiculous.

MachineGhost wrote: http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pub/r ... issue.html

Using gold as a constant would imply rampant deflation a few days a go when "prices" dropped by 5% in one day.

I agree in its role in the PP, but it's one commodity that happens to have very nice monetary qualities... not the center of the universe.

Its good to see him take notice and engage with real problems but I agree with edsanville that his charts are a joke. The government spending and unemployment chart seems to me just as ludicrous as his GDP denominated in gold chart. The short term changes in government spending are caused by the extent of unemployment benefit payouts. Those are governed by the amount of unemployment- go figure.

Bear in mind that the source of this article--Porter Stansberry--is a person who has been successfully sued for defrauding his own clients.

Right now, there seems to be a whole cottage industry of these Chicken Little types who say the sky is falling tomorrow and then want to sell you falling sky insurance of one type or another.  My sense, however, is that the fine print in these falling sky insurance policies stipulate that they only become effective the day after tomorrow.