Looking Forward to the Stansberry Conference in Las Vegas

By P.J. O'Rourke

I want to see you Digest readers – every single one of you – at the Stansberry Conference from September 19-20 in Las Vegas.

If you weren't planning on coming, damn it, change your plans. It's an ideal way to begin the fall. You'll be getting back to work and having fun at what I think of as a "vacation with brains."

The timing is perfect. You've closed the lake cottage and gotten rid of the freeloading relatives and guests. The kids are back in school. The bass-fishing tournaments are over and deer season hasn't begun. Your hometown baseball team is probably out of the running, and the NFL is still at that point when it looks like every team will be in the Super Bowl.

Plus, attending the conference will give you all the analysis and insights you'll need for the inevitable election year "October Surprise" that will send markets into some kind of tizzy.

Last year was my first Stansberry Conference event. I was expecting good, but what I got was even better...

Comic magician Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame performed an amazing trick: He made political stupidity disappear!

Penn gave a hilarious talk about his libertarian politics. He said sure, we're a democracy, a government of the people. But that doesn't mean everything the government does is OK. Democracy means you're responsible for everything the government does. The government is you.

But one difference between you-the-individual and the collective you-the-government is that you-the-government can use force to make other people do what you want. You have a gun and no one can stop you from using it.

So whenever you want government to do anything, you have to ask yourself, "Will I use my gun?"

Will I use my gun to keep a woman from being raped? Yes.

Will I use my gun to keep a man from being murdered? Yes.

Will I use my gun to protect private property? Yes to that, too.

Will I use my gun to make grade-school children eat a healthy lunch with low salt, sugar, and fat content, and fresh green vegetables? How would you feel about somebody who came into your kid's school and did that?

By the time Penn was done, even Hillary Clinton would have understood libertarianism... if she had been there... which, for the sake of the friendly and festive atmosphere, I'm glad to say she wasn't.

But former congressman Dr. Ron Paul was, and I got to meet him. Here's a person I've occasionally disagreed with but invariably admired. It turns out he's not only a Great Man, he's a good guy.

The greatest thing about Dr. Paul is he reminds us that loving freedom isn't mere selfishness. We love freedom because a free market is the only place where honest people can make a good living. But we're not just financial creatures – we're moral creatures, too. We love freedom because a free society is the only place where honest people can make a good life.

Memory expert Joshua Foer gave a fabulous presentation about... um... I forget.

Just kidding. He had all sorts of memorable techniques to improve memory.

This is why I can – despite a good deal of evening fun with Stansberry subscribers and Alliance members – remember what Mick Ebeling had to say. He's the CEO of Not Impossible Labs ("NIPL"), a company devoted to practical solutions for "impossible" problems.

How can a person who's totally paralyzed communicate fluently? By writing on a computer with his or her eye movements, thanks to NIPL's Eyewriter.

How can we help the war-victim amputee children in remote parts of Africa, miles from any sophisticated medical facilities? Through NIPL's "Project Daniel," an effort to use 3D printers to create inexpensive, custom-fitted prosthetic limbs for patients half a world away.

Ebeling explained how few things are really "impossible" once you start breaking down the one "big impossibility" into all its "little possibles."

Even something as basic as weaving cloth was "impossible" for our ancient ancestors wearing itchy, smelly animal hides. But animals have hair, so fibers were possible. Twirling fibers together into threads was possible. Making one thread go over another thread and under the next thread and over the thread after that – that was possible. And the next thing you know, we had clothes.

Ebeling's talk was professionally inspiring as well as personally uplifting. Keep a lookout for companies that are working on "little possibles" – like connecting two computers – that might lead to "big impossibilities" – such as creating a World Wide Web. Those are good investments.

Scott Fearon and Carlo Cannell are hedge-fund managers who specialize in short-selling. They explained how they're able to consistently spot "doomed" companies. I don't have space here to do justice to their expertise, but it comes down to three words: frauds, fads, and failures.

They were talking to the right guy. I don't go in much for frauds or fads, but I did once have a stepfather who was the general manager of an Edsel dealership. We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper for dinner that year. (Or would have, if Hamburger Helper had been invented in 1958. And by the way, Hamburger Helper is a good example of a "small possible" leading to a "big impossibility," such as making me capable of cooking things the kids will eat.)

Fearon and Cannell were also great on the dangers of buying "story" stocks.

My stepfather came away from the Edsel dealership with some hard-won wisdom on that subject...

When a car salesman tells you a car's price and options, he is probably being more or less truthful. But when a car salesman starts telling you a car's "story" – how Edsel was Henry Ford's favorite son and it's an all-new design, not just a Mercury with a toilet-seat grille – walk out the door.

Fearon and Cannell will be back this year with more stories that are even worse than that.

Then there was the epic "Prediction Friction" duel of investment forecasts between Digest namesake and pessimist Porter Stansberry and his unspellable buddy, the optimistic editor of True Wealth and True Wealth Systems, Steve Sjuggerud.

"Sunny-side up" Steve told us we would find lots of profitable opportunities in the coming year – especially in residential real estate and solid stock picks.

"Over hard" Porter told us trouble was coming in subprime loans and emerging-market bond debt. Central banks can't keep rolling out money like Charmin rolls out bumwad.

Turns out, they were both right. And everybody who listened to Porter and Steve learned something useful from each. At a Stansberry Conference, you don't hear, "The glass is half-empty." And you don't hear, "The glass is half-full." What you hear is, "Order another round."

You can do that by coming to this year's conference. This year's lineup features...

Political slugger Dr. Ron Paul. He'll be back, and I can't wait to see him knock Hillary and Donald out of the park.

Steve Eisman is coming. He's the real-life "Mark Baum" played by Steve Carell in The Big Short. When everybody was looking at the "prime" in subprime mortgages, Eisman saw the "sub" that was about to torpedo them.

Todd Buchholz was the White House director of economic policy for Bush 41. In those days, the White House had an economic policy. Todd knows everything about economics. And he can explain it.

I was a former English major who couldn't count to 11 without taking a sock off until I read Todd's book New Ideas From Dead Economists. It's an evening or two of fun and funny reading that will earn you a PhD in the history of economics while you sit in your favorite easy chair.

Andrew Left is the genius short-seller who the Wall Street Journal called "The 'Short' Who Sank Valeant Stock." Bless the short-sellers. The real secret to capitalism is failure – getting rid of bad ideas about how to use money, time, and effort. When the government has a bad idea about how to use money, time, and effort, it lasts forever. The free market disposes of bad ideas. And we couldn't "take out the trash" if we didn't have short-sellers.

Turney Duff is the author of the acclaimed book The Buy Side, a memoir of the high life and the low life on Wall Street. Bless the buyers. The other real secret of capitalism is nurturing good ideas about how to use money, time, and effort. Somebody has to buy those good ideas.

Alec Ross was the secretary of state's senior advisor for innovation. He traveled to 41 countries looking for just what his title said he was looking for. Want to find out which edge will be the cutting one in robotics, genomics, big data, digital money, or cybersecurity? Ross knows.

Brad Krevoy co-founded the Motion Picture Corporation of America (MPCA). If capitalism has a third real secret, it's finding maximum young talent and putting it to work with modest budgets. The MPCA did just that with Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers in the box-office hit Dumb and Dumber.

Speaking of which, I'll be talking about the presidential election and giving you a preview of my next book. I intend to finish the book on the night of Tuesday, November 11. Of course, I don't know the ending yet. But I do know the title: How the Hell Did This Happen?

But this is not all Stansberry has in store at the futuristic ARIA Resort and Casino. (The brochure tells me every room is a "smart room." I could use one. In fact, it sounds like something I might tell my children – or my wife might tell me – "Go sit in the Smart Room.")

Anyway, as I was saying, we'll also be getting inspiration and excitement from people like Mike Ritland, founder of the Warrior Dog Foundation. Mike is a former Navy SEAL and a disabled combat veteran who went on to an amazing career breeding, raising, and training dogs for police, military, and private protection. (Gosh, I wish America's two major political parties had gone to see what Mike had in his kennels before they picked their presidential nominees.)

And...

Robert Edsel, author of the book The Monuments Men chronicling the recovery of artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War II. We'll get the story behind the movie of the same name, directed by and starring George Clooney, without having to listen to any of Looney Clooney's political opinions.

Chris Davenport, two-time world champion extreme skier who is also a renowned risk-management expert. (What better preparation for risk management could there be than extreme skiing?)

Hugh Herr, head of MIT's Biomechatronics research group. Herr, a double amputee himself, is the world's leading expert on combining human physiology with electromechanics to give real-life "bionic man" mobility to people with physical disabilities.

Craig Ballantyne, editor of the Early to Rise newsletter. He's a strength-and-conditioning coach who doesn't just want to strengthen your body – he wants to strengthen your attitude, your happiness, and your portfolio. Craig will make you glad to see what condition your condition is in.

And naturally, the conference will feature a full lineup of Stansberry Research editors, including David Lashmet (Stansberry Venture), Jeff Clark (Stansberry Short Report), Dr. David Eifrig, Jr., (Retirement Millionaire), Matt Badiali (Stansberry Resource Report), and Porter Stansberry (Stansberry's Investment Advisory).

But most important, you will be there.

That's the part I'm looking forward to most. I want to put a face and a name to Stansberry Digest's readers. I want to meet you. If you like what I've been writing for the Digest, you can buy me a drink. (Famous Grouse and soda, please.) Or if you don't like what I've been writing, you can buy a Famous Grouse and soda anyway and toss it in my face. Either way, it should be exciting. Register for the event here.

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke