A biography for Porter Stansberryhasn’t been written yet.
“The average household income has really stagnated since 1971.”
“There is a tremendous amount of oil in Iraq and it's still very, very cheap due to all the political uncertainty. So if you want to be a serious oil investor, I would say get yourself to Iraq in person and look around to find great opportunities.”
“As you know, the United States has been a net debtor to the world each year since 1976, I believe. We've put a huge amount of dollars out into the world and those dollars have to be recycled in some way.”
“Currency regimes in the past were always destroyed by volatility. So sooner or later, people desire a currency that is stable.”
“Many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned or switched over to natural gas, but that takes a long time.”
“Manipulating the bond market is so greatly reducing the cost of capital that so far companies have been able to maintain profit margins without raising prices. As a result, we've been exchanging capital cost for commodity costs but you can only do that for so long.”
“Measuring the oil industry in dollars gives you a very warped view. Pick a sound currency such as Swiss francs or gold grams and look at the oil business through that lens.”
“There's been a dichotomy in the world financial markets over the last 30 years between the developed markets and the developing markets. Brazil, for example, always had to pay a lot more in interest to borrow money than governments in developed nations.”
“I can tell you what happens to countries that go bankrupt. I've been to Argentina. I'm familiar with the history of Mexico and Great Britain. We'll see the same things here shortly: inflation, huge tax increases, capital flight and, eventually, capital controls.”
“I think the only thing that really can be done - it would be painful, but less painful than the calamity we're heading toward - is to demand that people be responsible for their private obligations. No more bailouts, no more stimulus, no cash for clunkers.”
“You know that Mexico has enormous natural gas reservoirs that have yet to be tapped and the technology for tapping these alternative reservoirs continually needs to get better and better.”
“You wouldn't want to underestimate the perfidy of the government. I have no doubt that the government will need to increase revenues substantially to avoid default on either debt or social welfare promises. How they will increase those revenues, I can't predict.”
“I was very bearish on natural gas for many years, pretty much from 2006 on. There was a tremendous natural gas bubble in the United States.”
“You can survive your income falling if it's not dramatic. Your income can decrease for a long time before you start living beyond your means.”
“The Fed's buying is far more important to the market price of U.S. debt than any other economic variable. If the Fed stops buying, it doesn't matter whether unemployment goes up or down. It doesn't matter whether inflation is higher or lower. Its influence on the market is dominant.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that as central banks begin to abandon the dollar, there will be an enormous amount of monetary demand for silver and the silver ratio will plummet. If you look at all of the monetary crises over the last 100 years, any time that there has been even a whiff of a collapse of the dollar, the silver ratio has soared.”
“I studied what happened in the bond and the stock markets during previous periods when the Fed stopped manipulating the bond market. In every single case, the moment the Fed announced that there would be a cessation of intervention, stocks declined and interest rates went up.”