It is only fit that a book devoted to not taking business too seriously should have its genesis in fun.
In August 2014 I gave a speech at a conference in Las Vegas hosted by the investment advisory firm Stansberry Research. I met Stansberry founder Porter Stansberry, General Manager Jamison Miller, and Stansberry’s top analysts. They were smart and they were enjoying themselves. Likewise, Stansberry’s clients. We had a lot of food, drink, and fun. (And—a sidelight on people who understand math and statistics—hardly anyone gambled.)
Stansberry is a publishing company specializing in information about and analysis of finance and economics. It produces a score of newsletters and numerous books, video conferences, and podcasts devoted to investment insights.
I realize that I am not the person to be giving advice on investment advice. I was an English major or, as they call it in business school, stupid. The best investment I’ve made lately? I left a $20 bill in my suit jacket pocket when I took my wife out for dinner on Labor Day weekend, and I found it this morning.
I’m probably too stupid to talk about business. But, in fairness to myself, I’m not just stupid. I am a student of stupidity. I’m a political reporter.
I may not be competent to talk about anything else, but I am fully competent to talk about politics. I’ve been covering the stuff for forty-eight years. After decades of mucking through politics you become aware that it is a business—a bad business, but a business nonetheless. It’s not just a matter of the net greed in gross campaign contributions. Politics has a strong economic component even (maybe especially) when the pay comes in the form of power rather than pelf.
The original term for the interaction of government, money, and law, coined in the seventeenth century, was “political economics”—a disciple grounded in the study of Moral Philosophy. And, gosh, politics and economics should go back to Moral Philosophy and study harder.
Anyway, a half-decent political reporter always ends up as an amateur economist. In this capacity I did my due diligence before speaking at the Las Vegas event.
Stansberry’s investment advice seems solid by my modest lights. More importantly, the information and analysis Stansberry generates isn’t home to any of the “Four Horsemen of the Personal Finance Apocalypse.”
Fraudulence
Stupidity
Dead Wrong Ideas
M.O.T.O. – Mastery of the Obvious
I gave my speech: “Pirates In Neckties – Business or Government, Which Is Worse?” Later that year Porter and Jamison invited me to speak at another Stansberry event in the Dominican Republic. We had more fun. We went deep-sea fishing. I spoke again at Stansberry’s August 2015 Las Vegas conference. That fall Porter asked me if I’d like to write a weekly column in his Stansberry Digest newsletter.
I said, “Porter, you know I don’t know anything about business.”
Porter said, “You know funny business when you see it.”
Then, in 2017, Porter started a free web magazine, American Consequences, to give Stansberry analysts and other writers a wider scope for financial commentary, economic investigation, and political inquiry. He asked me to edit it. And Jamison sketched all the plays on the blackboard.
It’s been fun. This book is a collection of columns, articles, and essays I’ve written for the Stansberry Digest and American Consequences. Thank you, Porter.
And thank you, American Consequences staff. (“Staff” being a euphemism for people who do all the work.)
Editorial Director Carli Flippen provides genius. Managing Editor Steven Longenecker brings more of it. Creative Director Erica Wood has, with further genius, created the world’s first web page designs that don’t look like they were designed by web page designers (sitting in their moms’ basements wearing pajamas and acne cream). Assistant Editors Chris Gaarde and Laura Greaver give much more than assists in their fresh, clean, and pellucid editing. Newswire Editors C. Scott Garliss, John Gillin, and Greg Diamond return with record catches when they troll the murky depths of modern media. And Sam DeCroes, Jared Kelly, and Jill Peterson sell our ads and are a reminder to us: “All of life is selling.” It’s when we die that you say, “He bought it.”
American Consequences has been blessed with vital, vivid, vivacious—all the invigorating words starting with V but none of the V hand gestures post-Churchill—contributors: Hank Blaustein, Doug Casey, Peter Churchouse, Tama Churchouse, Turney Duff, Nicholas Eberstadt, Dr. David Eifrig, Andrew Ferguson, Kim Iskyan, Mary Kuntz, Alice B. Lloyd, Victorino Matus, John Podhoretz, Christine Rosen, Rahul Saraogi, Buck Sexton, Bill Shaw, Steve Sjuggerud, and more.
Also a blessing has been a chance to work with many of the other people at Stansberry Research, including—but not limited to—CEO Mark Arnold and Justin Brill, Justin Dove, Dan Ferris, Sean Goldsmith, Sam Latter, Dan Ostrowski, and Mike Palmer.
And every night the publishing house Grove Atlantic is in my prayers, “Forgive us our book advances.”
Saintly Associate Editor Allison Malecha shaped this mess of an ill-typed, misspelled, grammatically challenged, and factually approximate manuscript into a form that closely resembles a book. Managing Editor Julia Berner-Tobin took the flood of words, pile of literary lumber, and rows of similes two-by-two and made them into an ark that will “set sale.” Director of Publicity Deb Seager, famous director that she is, raised her megaphone and demanded, “Lights! Camera! Action!” Publicity Manager Justina Batchelor managed somehow—even though the book has not been the subject of a White House lawsuit and the author hasn’t, as far as he knows, been indicted by a grand jury—to get us publicity. Rights Manager Erica Nunez protected our First Amendment right to charge for free speech. Art Director Gretchen Mergenthaler, with her masterful artistry, directed the art. (Please do judge this book by its cover.) Copyeditor Tom Cherwin, faced with a Labor of Hercules in cleaning the Augean Stable of my prose, did not shirk but diverted [his/her] rivers of learning and knowledge to wash away the dung in my scribblings. Wizard photographer James Kegley’s work graces the cover. (Observe the dynamic composition, the subtle play of light and shadow, James can’t help the subject.) And Scott Manning of Scott Manning and Associates—publicists to the stars, also me—was Vigil to my hapless Dante on book tour. (“I found myself within a dark talk show where the straight way was lost.”)
There are many others to whom I owe thanks. Michael Farr, CEO of Farr, Miller & Washington, manages our family finances in conjunction with my too-smart-to-be-an-English major wife. Left to my own devices I’d hand over our savings to this “Mernie Badoff” guy I’ve been hearing about who runs Federal Corrections Institution Medium-Security Investments LLC in Butner, North Carolina.
Then there are those who are willing to listen to me natter about economics without laughing out loud. Thank you Jay Caauwe, Stacey Hadash, Ed Mallon, Michael Meehan, and Nick Silitch. You are good friends all.
Something that anti-capitalists will never understand about business is how much of the free market is a friendship.
Let me note that by friendship I don’t mean a cabal or secret society of top-hatters carrying moneybags and ruling the world by meeting in Davos. Let me also note that by anti-capitalists I mean people across the political spectrum—from the increasingly friendless man in the Oval Office to the unfriendly mob protesting him.
What I’m talking about is that the free market depends on trust. And that business depends far more on cooperation for mutual benefit than competition for lonely winner-take-all profit. It was the original superhero of the free market, Adam Smith, who pointed out that whenever A trades with B both gain. Each has given the other something that he values less in return for something that he values more. You might even call it love. I surrendered my bachelor license for wedded bliss and my wife forfeited her unmarried liberty for (and here the analogy breaks down somewhat) me.
Let’s stick with friendship, to which I owe this book. First there are my friendships—now going on what’s called life-long—with my editor and publisher Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove Atlantic, and my lecture agent Don Epstein, CEO of Greater Talent Network Speakers Bureau.
Morgan and I met in the late 1970s when he was a young book editor looking for books to publish and I was a young magazine editor looking to publish a book. The indomitable Elaine Kaufman—proprietor of Elaine’s and friend to all in the lit biz—said, “You two do a book together.” (Which command may have had something to do with the large restaurant tabs she had allowed us both to run up.)
Don and I met not long after. He had a fledgling speakers bureau and was trying to find speakers. I had a fledgling freelance career and was trying to not starve. We had the same lawyer—and friend—Mort Janklow. Mort said, “You two talk.” (Which command may have had something to do with the large legal bills he had allowed us both to run up.)
The innocent cynic says, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The experienced businessperson says, “It’s what you know about who’s your friend.”
Through Don, I became friends with GTN Senior Vice President David Buchalter whose job is to befriend business people who want their friends, the clients, to have a friendly speaker at business events. David’s other job is to be—in a friendly way—tough as Bill Belichick in negotiating what the speaker (me!) gets paid. Negotiation is what David does for fun (combined with golf).
Which brings us full circle to my meeting my Stansberry Research friends (with whom David ended up golfing a lot).
This is another thing that anti-capitalists will never understand about business. Capitalism is fun. Big fun. Even more fun than golf. You’re out there with your team, blocking losses, tackling profits, connecting with the long ball or throwing an interception, making incredible yardage on third- and-impossible or punting when you have to, and how well you’re doing is visible on the scoreboard.
Anti-capitalists are playing hacky-sack.