The problem with revelations is that they always come when you least expect them.
I was in Athens this past weekend — on vacation, against all odds, and not on business.
I did the tourist thing: went to the Acropolis; checked out the national museum; found the most out-of-the-way restaurant I could and tried (in vain) to order in Greek.
It was the last leg of voyage that I’d been waiting for — that I’d needed — for quite some time.
But, as usual, the shadow of work was following me. Even when I intentionally isolated myself from my e-mail accounts and my Blackberry, my professional mind just couldn’t ignore the signs.
Between the closed shops and the graffiti that was, quite literally, providing the writing on the walls, clues about Europe’s economic future were impossible to ignore.
Of course, it wasn’t anything I didn’t know already… Anybody with a pulse has been hearing about Europe’s financial woes for much of the last year.
Between the trillion-dollar bailout, the multitude of bank failures, skyrocketing inflation, and the euro’s collapse, the world’s second biggest economy is a giant on life support.
And now, it seems its citizens themselves are getting ready to pull the plug.
This particular revelation happened in the final hours of my trip.
We were on the way to the airport, riding in a Skoda Taxi driven by Andreas, a mid-thirties native Greek who had once owned his own residential contracting company.
His English was a bit spotty, but he had no problem at all expressing himself when it came to his life, and where he saw it going if things didn’t change soon.
“Foreigners can come in and buy the land as much as they want. It has never been as popular,” he said after I reflexively mentioned the idea of vacation property in the Greek Isles. “But I cannot make my payments. My business is gone… My money is gone.”
With three times the average inflation rate of the Eurozone, and with an annual budget deficit of 13.4%, Andreas’s pains were easy to understand.
But at least he had a job, which is much more than 12% (a 10-year high for Greece) of the population can say.
I knew these numbers almost by heart, but it wasn’t until he delivered his next statement that I realized what this meant, on a personal level, to the Greek people.
“We are not the kind of people who talk; we are the kind of people who do. By December, when there is no money to pay end-of-year bonus, when there is no money to go on holiday, the people will force changes,” he said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
It was silent in the car for a moment when he said that. He didn’t need to elaborate.
And I knew what he meant: Greece’s imminent break with the European Union.
It had been on everyone’s mind since the EU stripped Greece of voting rights on decisions regarding its own taxing and spending rights at a meeting in mid-March of this year.
But even this was just a sign of things to come.
Greece may have been the worst example of European economic calamity as of late, but it’s certainly not the only example.
Italy and Spain are not far behind, and with countries like Estonia joining the EU, the once elite club is starting to look more and more like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler — well past its glory days and on the brink of sudden cardiac arrest.
So if you thought that things like credit collapses, inflation, higher taxes, and unemployment were problems that were inherently American in nature, you couldn’t have been more far from the truth.
The gradual erosion of currency value is a problem that spans the globe today — a predictable and natural side effect of advanced economies like the United States and the EU taking on record-setting amounts of debt to fuel unsustainable growth expectations.
The end result to this — as it is with all unnatural spurts of expansion — is recession.
For the last three years, fortunes built on this unrealized expansion have been dissolving, turning right back to the worthless paper on which they were founded in the first place.
Unfortunately, the citizens on the street — the people who work, pay their bills, and buy the things they need to live day to day — are the ones who pay the ultimate price.
Devalued savings accounts… soaring food and gas prices… unemployment…
It’s the sort of crisis that crosses boarders and socio-economic boundaries like a World War. And ultimately, everyone is affected.
However, World Wars and recessions, as damaging as they are, also have a funny way of benefiting a small percentage of those involved…
The U.S. economy was virtually built on the industrial appetites fueled by near destruction of Europe in the WWII. America’s infrastructure, fed by unprecedented government spending, was created in the years following the 1929 Stock Market collapse.
And this time will be no different.
While much of the world writhes in a near universal currency devaluation, a select group of people will profit immensely. These will be the people who store their wealth not in unstable currencies of government bonds; but in the one commodity that holds value better than anything else…
The one commodity that — even without profitable applications, or sudden, fad-like explosions in demand (such as lithium or rare earth metals of recent years) — will be as valuable tomorrow as it was today.
I’m talking, of course, about precious metals.
Specifically, gold.
For thousands of years, gold has been the world’s most famous and most sought-after precious metal. And today, its popularity is soaring on the back of deepening world-wide recession.
In fact according to most authorities on the subject, the recent jump in price is only the first step in gold’s historic rise.
“Believe it or not, $3,000-an-ounce gold may yet prove to be a conservative forecast. If the gold price to world GDP ratio were ever to scale up to the peak three decades ago, it would an imply an ultimate peak of $5,300 an ounce,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist of Gluskin Scheff and Associates.
So if you want to know ahead of time who is going to come out of this economic dark age better than they went in, just look for somebody who’s heavily invested in gold at today’s prices.
It’s as sure a shot as there is in this inherently uncertain economic world.
But there’s an even more elite group out there — a group that won’t just double or triple their investments as the worldwide hard asset markets go bullish for the next several years…
This group of investors will multiply their fortunes by factors of 10 or more by positioning themselves on the very cutting edge of the gold industry.
If you’ve been reading my articles for the last couple of weeks, you’ve heard me talking about gold exploration before. It’s the most prospective way to invest in gold today, and will often return several-fold on your investment within just a few months of hold time.
Here are just a few stocks that I’ve personally tracked over the last three years, and each of them made thousands for investors:
- Animas Resources – up 410% in 10 months
- Romios Gold – up 610% in 5 months
- AUEX Ventures – up 295% in 5 months
- Terraco Gold – up 333% in 3.5 months
- Miranda Gold – up 221% in 2 months
- Midway Gold – up 461% in 4 months
- Paramount gold – up 583% in 7 months
- Starcore International Ventures – up 366% in 2 months
- Evolving Gold Corp – up 410% in 1 month
- Southern Arc Minerals – up 770% in 3 weeks
But even these sorts of numbers are tame by comparison to what’s possible today.
Because with the credit crisis reaching farther and deeper, gold exploration is on the cusp of an industrial boom the likes of which we haven’t seen since the rushes of the mid 19th century, or the American oil mania of the early 20th.
The key is to find which company will lead the charge.
With my newest discovery — a Nevada-based mining exploration outfit — I’ve done just that.
It’s a relatively tiny company ($19 million market cap, trading for around 21 cents today), but with a geological analysis virtually guaranteeing an annual production rate of 36,000 ounces, investors are expecting minimal profits of 150% per year for the next eight years — even if gold prices themselves don’t go up another cent.
With a 3900 acre site located in the western flank of the White Pine Mountains (about 40 miles west of Ely, Nevada), however, these projections are most likely severely underestimated.
I say this based on historic productivity in this region — evidenced by this list of neighboring mining operations:
Chimney Creek Mine – annual gold production: 222,500 ounces
Crofoot Mine – annual gold production: 82,000 ounces
Sleeper Mine – annual gold production: 256,000 ounces
Fortitude Complex – annual gold production: 254,500 ounces
McCoy/Cove Mine – annual gold production: 214,000 ounces
Barrick Goldstrike – annual gold production: 207,000 ounces
Newmont Gold Operations – annual gold production: 1,467,800 ounces
This 21 cent stock has the potential to blow up, making up to nine times more than initial estimates — and banking investors as much as 1350% per year. That translates to a total return of 10,800% in the next eight years.
And this is all before you even consider that this company has a very unique business model, even for the fast-moving mining exploration industry.
With geological reports and ground-penetrating radar technology more accurate than ever, this company has put its production schedule into overdrive by skipping the traditionally expensive and time-consuming drill test phase.
Sound crazy? Well, just a decade ago the experts would have probably agreed with you.
But five years back, another mining company made this same unorthodox decision. And what resulted in the 18 months that followed was this:
This company is called Rochester Resources, and if you’d been lucky enough to sink just $1,000 on July 18th, 2005, you would have had over $70k by December!
But that was in 2006, when the economy was still growing. As a result, it was an investment we had no reason to research and write to you about.
Today, things are different. And with gold moving towards $3000 and beyond, my new mining exploration company is likely to break even Rochester’s record growth.
So stay ahead of the inflation, and ahead of the curve.
I know I will.
For a full report on this company, complete with name and ticker symbol, click here.
Remember that it takes financial instability of the magnitude we are now experiencing today to cause stocks to move like this.
Which means that, for anybody who has cash lying around in the bank right now, there are only two options: Make a move and get richer than ever… Or go broke.
To your wealth,
Brian Hicks
