The S&A Digest: Back home

Back home… Signs of a top in agriculture… Riding the rails… Sound bankers?… Offending the children… The facts of Boumediene...

The best part of coming home after a long trip? The dog. Ruby greeted me like I was Ed McMahon and she'd won the lottery. If you could find a way to bottle up that joy, you'd have the best drug ever made. And nobody would ever be depressed again.

We're usually reluctant to recommend mutual funds. According to David Swensen, superstar manager of the Yale Endowment Fund, 96% of mutual funds miss their benchmark returns. You'd be better off owning an index fund. You'd cut out the middleman, earn better returns, and pay lower fees.

But we trust a few mutual funds with our money. We greatly respect Third Avenue and Tweedy, Browne, for example. And Dan Ferris recently recommended the "greatest mutual fund in the world." Click here to read Dan's essay on the fund.

Finally… signs of a top in the commodity markets. Bunge, the world's largest oilseed processor, will buy Corn Products International for $4.2 billion in stock. Bunge will pay the equivalent of $56 per share for the company, 31% more than CPO's June 20 close price of $42.90. Corn Products makes corn-based sweeteners for customers including Coke and Pepsi, and is already up 31% since February.

So Bunge, up 42% in one year, is using its inflated stock to purchase another inflated company, and shareholders are cheering. Corn Products is up 17% today. Seems frothy to me.

High gas and jet-fuel prices are pushing travelers to the railroad, and Amtrak is posting record numbers. The company set records in May for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues – which is exceptional because May is usually a weak travel month. But Amtrak has shrunk so much, it's having trouble meeting demand. Many long-distance trains are sold out weeks in advance. The problem is the rail has shrunk. The number of "passenger miles" decreased two-thirds since 1960, and the companies that build rail cars and trains also shrank.

A great quote from PrudentBear.com… "A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him." – John Maynard Keynes

Right now, plenty of "sound bankers" are looking for work… Goldman Sachs will cut 10% of its investment-banking division through 2008. And Citigroup is in the midst of a 10% reduction of its 65,000-strong investment-banking staff.

Home sellers outnumber buyers 15 to 1 in the U.K., according to the Financial Times. Online British real estate sales portal Rightmove lists 1 million homes for sale on its website. And what happens when no homes are selling? Sellers are forced to cut prices.

New high: Western Union (WU).

In the mailbag… More accusations, this time about my "character." And a bit more about the U.S. constitution. (If you don't like what's in the mailbag, send us better questions, here: feedback@stansberryresearch.com.)

"Just what I want my daughters and sons to read in an investment paper. That first sentence in the June 20th digest reflects very little character. Start a separate rag for that trash." – Paid-up subscriber Michael D.

Porter comment: Character…? I was only describing the scene, as I found it, in Rome. Besides, I'd bet your daughters are already familiar with the Armani billboard I was describing. (The tabloids say David Beckham received $20 million for posing.)

"Porter, you are a pretty savvy guy, so perhaps you can tell this old Army Aviator turned lawyer exactly what part of our constitution 'CLEARLY requires the government to allow captives access to the courts' Provide the answer to this one Son, and I'll buy you a case of your favorite beer." – Paid-up subscriber Hugh McKenney

Porter comment: No problem, Hugh. And by the way, I drink Miller Light.

You'll find the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus written into the Constitution in Article One, Section 9. Interestingly, the founders of our country considered the concept so important that "the writ" is the only civil liberty included in the main text of the Constitution. I'll quote it here for you:

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.

To codify the principle of habeas corpus and clear up any jurisdictional conflicts between the federal courts and the state courts, the U.S. Congress passed Title 28, Section 2241, which mandates jurisdiction to the Federal Courts and reiterates the authority to demand the release of any prisoner held by any U.S. government entity.

The right to habeas corpus has nothing to do with citizenship. In fact, recently, many people rounded up in raids looking for illegal aliens have cited it.

The most interesting thing to me about the Boumediene case, in which the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration, is the way Fox television and The Wall Street Journal have completely ignored the facts. They want their audience to believe these guys are the worst of the worst terrorists in the world, folks arrested while trying to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. But that's simply not true. In fact, the men in this case had never been to Afghanistan and were cleared by their own legal system of any wrongdoing.

In October 2001, Bensayeh Belkacem, a Bosnian citizen, made a series of telephone calls to Pakistan. U.S. intelligence analysts were worried he was planning a terrorist attack. They asked the Bosnian government to arrest him. In the process, the Bosnians also arrested five other men. It's not clear what the other five people did to warrant an arrest, but a few months later, in January 2002, the Supreme Court of Bosnia ruled there was no evidence to hold any of the six men and ordered them released. Upon their release, all six men were "black bagged" by U.S. Army soldiers, who were in Bosnia on a "peacekeeping" mission. They were taken to Gitmo, and haven't been heard from since.

Now… if you think it's appropriate for our soldiers to kidnap foreign nationals from their homes and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing them access to the courts because of the "war on terrorism," I'd disagree with you. I think these kinds of actions will create far more terrorists. And if these men are terrorists, then getting a U.S. Federal Court judge to sanction their imprisonment isn't a very big hurdle, is it?

Fortunately, through the writ of habeas corpus, our Constitution forbids holding anyone indefinitely. And if you don't like that, according to our laws, you'll have to change the Constitution.

"[You recently published] a news blurb where Schroder Investment Management predicted gold will rise to $5,000 an ounce. These sky-high predictions seem fantasy to me. If that were true, what would happen to the U.S. Dollar? It would probably decline to near zero, which seems preposterous, don't you think?" – Paid-up subscriber Al Venosa

Porter comment: You're saying it's impossible to imagine the value of the U.S. dollar declining by 90% or so? Well, it's fallen by about 50% in the last 10 years. And it's fallen by more than 90% since the creation of the Federal Reserve. History says not only is it possible the dollar will fall 90% from here, it's inevitable.

"I just had the most stupid telephone (Skype VoIP) conversation I could imagine with E*Trade. I want to take a 457 tax deferred fund from ING (which has only one 'int'l. stock' fund and move it into a Rollover IRA so that I can make use of the Oil&Gas and International Strategist advice I get from you (also I have True Wealth and 12%). I have an IRA with Scottrade, but to buy Canadian stock you have to phone call, and they cannot buy others (Brazil, Russia, HK, India, Taiwan, Austral.). At least E*Trade advertises buying of Canadian, London, Frankfurt and HK exchanges, among others. But after I set up my Rollover IRA Acct with then over the internet, I found out by clicking that only 'Complete' Global Accounts could buy. When I called them to ask to upgrade, they told me 'sorry, but your IRA account cannot buy international stocks, and we cannot upgrade them.' The best is why: I was told, 'the IRA account has your retirement, and it is too risky to allow you to buy international stocks, they could lose value.' When I noted the performance of US, he just repeated again, 'but sir, these are your retirement stocks, we cannot allow you to risk them.'" – Paid-up subscriber Michael Hartmann

Porter comment: You're surprised government-regulated brokerage firms don't want you moving large amounts of your assets out of the dollar? Really? Seems like exactly what they'd do to me.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry

Baltimore, Maryland

June 23, 2008

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