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 Faculty
The faculty we have assembled for the 2009 New Orleans Investment Conference continues our long tradition of assembling the best and the brightest from the worlds of finance, economics and politics.
True to the principles of our founder, Jim Blanchard, our chosen speakers share a common belief in the power of free markets, sound money and personal freedom. They are people who have reached the pinnacles of their professions and on whom institutional and private investors willingly lavish millions of dollars in consulting and advisory fees.
And the New Orleans Investment Conference gives you unprecedented access to each and every one of them. For the price of what just one of our speakers would charge for a one-on-one consultation, you can get up close and personal with over 50 of the most successful investors on the planet.
Our 2008 Speaker Faculty
Mary Anne Aden
Mary Anne and Pamela Aden are two of the most influential and well-known investment analysts, writers, and lecturers in the world. They are the co-editors and publishers of the Aden Forecast, a monthly investment newsletter now in its 26th year famed for its precise forecast of the Precious Metals and Foreign Exchange Markets as well as the U.S. stock market, U.S. interest rates, bonds, and THE international markets.
Pamela Aden
Mary Anne and Pamela Aden are two of the most influential and well-known investment analysts, writers, and lecturers in the world. They are the co-editors and publishers of the Aden Forecast, a monthly investment newsletter famed for its precise forecast of the Precious Metals and Foreign Exchange Markets as well as the U.S. stock market, U.S. interest rates, bonds, and THE international markets.
Gary Alexander
Gary Alexander is senior executive editor for investment newsletters at Phillips Publishing, Inc. Currently, he edits John Dessauer's Investor's World and Louis Navellier's Global Growth Letter. Before joining PPI in 1989, he edited Gold Newsletter and Wealth magazine for Jim Blanchard. This is Mr. Alexander's 25th consecutive appearance at the New Orleans Conference.
Darrell Brookstein
Nanotechnology.com - The Nanotech Company, LLC
The author of Nanotech Fortunes, editor of The Best of the Nanoweek and of The Small Technology Prospector, A 32 year financial executive, Darrell has operated Broker/Dealers, Investment Advisors, Commodity Trading Advisors, as well as private equity and hedge funds. The Nanotech Company, LLC is building a leading merchant banking firm and pre-public, private placement fund for accredited investors in small & advanced technologies. Mr. Brookstein received his BA from Duke University. Visit www.nanotechnology.com.
John Browne
John Browne is the Senior Market Strategist for Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. Mr. Brown is a distinguished former member of Britain's Parliament who served on the Treasury Select Committee, as Chairman of the Conservative Small Business Committee, and as a close associate of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Among his many notable assignments, John served as a principal advisor to Mrs. Thatcher's government on issues related to the Soviet Union, and was the first to convince Thatcher of the growing stature of then Agriculture Minister Mikhail Gorbachev. As a partial result of Brown's advocacy, Thatcher famously pronounced that Gorbachev was a man the West "could do business with." A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Britain's version of West Point and retired British army major, John served as a pilot, parachutist, and communications specialist in the elite Grenadiers of the Royal Guard.
In addition to careers in British politics and the military, John has a significant background, spanning some 37 years, in finance and business. After graduating from the Harvard Business School, John joined the New York firm of Morgan Stanley & Co as an investment banker. He has also worked with such firms as Barclays Bank and Citigroup. During his career he has served on the boards of numerous banks and international corporations, with a special interest in venture capital. He is a frequent guest on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. and a former contributing editor and columnist of NewsMax Media's Financial Intelligence Report and Moneynews.com. He holds FINRA series 7 & 63 licenses.
Chuck Butler
Chuck Butler is president of EverBank World Markets and the author of the Daily Pfennig newsletter, which is delivered daily via email to market-watcher globally helping traders stay on top of the economic, currency and market happenings around the world.
Mr. Butler has worked in foreign markets and investment for the last quarter century and oversees the trading desk and operations for over 12,000 individual and corporate clients.
James Carville
James Carville is America’s best-known political consultant. His long list of electoral successes evidences a knack for steering overlooked campaigns to unexpected landslide victories and for re-making political underdogs into upset winners.
In 1991, Carville—who had already become prominent in political circles—drew national attention when he led Senator Harris Wofford from 40 points behind in the polls to an upset landslide victory over former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. With the startling and unpredicted Wofford win, Carville exposed the political vulnerability of George Bush, who enjoyed 91% approval ratings during the Gulf War.
Having wounded the sitting President in 1991, Carville finished the job the following year when he guided William Jefferson Clinton to the Presidency in 1992. In 1993, Carville was honored as Campaign Manager of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants for his leadership of Clinton’s fearsome and intense “War Room” at campaign headquarters in Little Rock.
James Carville is also an author, actor, producer, talk-show host, speaker and restaurateur. Author James Carville, (with co-author and wife Mary Matalin, former Assistant to President Bush and Counselor to Vice-President Cheney), first wrote All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, which spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
In the fall of 2003, actor James Carville and wife Mary Matalin put a fresh and critically-acclaimed spin on political consulting and on television in the HBO series “K Street,” a political drama based on the working lives of Washington political consultants. In addition, Carville can be seen regularly on television as a CNN commentator and contributor. Most recently, Carville is hosting XM radio’s “60/20” weekly sports show. Carville also co-produced the remake of the 1949 Oscar award-winning movie “All The King’s Men,” with a cast that included such acting luminaries as Sean Penn, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Patricia Clarkson, Kate Winslet and James Gandolfini.
Doug Casey
Doug Casey is a world-renowned investor and author, whose book Crisis Investing was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for 29 consecutive weeks.
He has been a featured guest on hundreds of radio and TV shows and has been the topic of numerous features in periodicals such as Time, Forbes, People, and the Washington Post. Mr. Casey is a graduate of Georgetown University. His firm, Casey Research, LLC, publishes a variety of publications and web sites with a combined weekly audience in excess of 200,000 individuals, largely high net worth investors with an interest in resource-development and international real estate. A new publication, the Casey Energy Speculator, launched in June, 2005. Mr. Casey has lived in seven countries and visited over 150, most of them several times. His main sport is polo, but he has been also active in skydiving, martial arts, scuba, auto racing, and competitive shooting in the past.
Rich Checkan
Rich Checkan is Vice President of Asset Strategies International, Inc. (ASI), a Maryland corporation established in 1982. ASI works in the areas of precious metals, foreign currencies and overseas wealth protection. ASI specializes in helping individuals globalize assets utilizing the international precious metal and foreign currency markets.
ASI publishes Information Line, a newsletter sent bimonthly to 16,500 worldwide readers. Financial newsletter editors oftentimes quote IL’s views on methods of diversifying assets globally.
David Coffin
David, the “geology side” of HRA, has been active in prospecting, resource calculation, and feasibility studies for resource companies for 29 years. He attended the Haileybury School of Mines, authored numerous qualifying reports for resource companies, and managed and designed field programs for over 15 years. His experience is so vast that scores of companies try and lure him to look at their projects. Why? Because they know if their project has Dave’s seal of approval, a lot of serious market players and other analysts will take notice. David was also one of the first (along with Eric) to call the current cycle as the secular trend others have only recently recognized. They made that call back in 2001. David is a regular speaker at Cambridge House, the PDAC, the New Orleans Gold Show and other American conferences, and has been interviewed numerous times on radio and TV and in third party news articles for his opinions on the gold sector and resource stocks in general. David logs literally hundreds of thousands of miles every year, visiting exploration sites on six continents in order to bring back the real goods for HRA subscribers.
Brent Cook
Brent Cook, a renowned Exploration Analyst and Geologist, is the author of the Exploration Insights, a mining and exploration investment letter. He has over twenty-five years of experience providing economic and geologic evaluations to major mining companies, resource funds and investors. He has worked in over 50 countries on virtually every mineral deposit type. He was principal Mining and Exploration Analyst to Global Resource Investments through 2003 where he provided analysis to retail brokers and two in-house funds. His newsletter selectively covers junior mining and exploration investment opportunities.
Adrian Day
Adrian Day is a British-born writer and money manager who has made a name for himself searching out unusual opportunities. Mr. Day was a pioneer promoting the benefits of global investing, with two books on the subject. A graduate of the London School of Economics; he is the president of his own money management firm, Adrian Day Asset Management, where he specializes in global diversification and gold equities for individual and institutional clients. Mr. Day is also editor of a premium fax/e-mail service, Adrian Day's Global Analyst.
Marc Faber
Originally from Zurich, Marc Faber has lived in Hong Kong since 1973. A doctoral graduate at the age of 24, Dr. Faber worked for White Weld & Company from 1970 to 1978. From 1978 to 1990, he was the managing director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK) Ltd. In 1990, he set up his own business; Marc Faber Limited, which acts as an investment advisor, fund manager and broker/dealer. Marc Faber, Managing Director of Marc Faber Limited and the Publisher of "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report". His widely read newsletter, "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report," highlights unusual investment opportunities. Dr. Faber is the author of several books, including "Tomorrow's Gold - Asia's Age of Discovery," which was on Amazon's best-seller list for several weeks. A book about Dr. Faber, "Riding The Millennial Storm," by Nury Vittachi, was published in 1998. A regular speaker at various investment seminars, Dr. Faber is known for his "contrarian" investment approach. He is also associated with a variety of funds.
A Republican candidate for president in 1996 and 2000, Mr. Forbes serves as the Chairman and CEO of Forbes Inc. and the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine. Since Mr. Forbes assumed the CEO position in 1990, the company has launched a variety of new publications and businesses.
They include: ForbesLife, ForbesLife Executive Woman, Forbes Asia, and Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Polish and Turkish editions of the magazine. Forbes also publishes the Gilder Technology Report, as well as a number of investment newsletters.
Dennis Flood
Dennis Flood, PhD, is a co-founder of and technical consultant to Natcore Technology, Inc. He is also President and CEO of North Coast Initiatives, Ltd., a consulting firm providing management and technical services to the photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion industry. Dr. Flood has more than 30 years of experience in developing solar cell and array technology, including service as Chief of the Photovoltaic and Space Environments Branch at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lead Agency programs in advanced photovoltaic systems development. Dr. Flood presently serves as Chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photovoltaic Devices Technical Committee and serves on the International Advisory Committees of the European, the U.S, the Japan/Asia and the World Photovoltaic Conference organizing committees. Dr. Flood has advised leading research and development organizations as well as solar cell companies and investment analysts.
Steve Forbes
In 1996, Forbes entered the new media arena with the launch of Forbes.com. Now receiving more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, it has become a leading destination site for senior business decision-makers and investors. In 2005 and 2006, Forbes launched ForbesAutos.com and ForbesTraveler.com, respectively.
The company’s flagship publication, Forbes, is the nation’s leading business magazine, with a circulation of more than 900,000. Forbes combined with Forbes Asia and the company’s eight local-language editions together reach a worldwide audience of over five million readers.
Mr. Forbes writes editorials for each issue of Forbes under the heading of “Fact and Comment.” A widely respected economic prognosticator, he is the only writer to have won the highly prestigious Crystal Owl Award four times. The prize was formerly given by U.S. Steel Corporation to the financial journalist whose economic forecasts for the coming year proved most accurate.
In both the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, Mr. Forbes' platform featured a flat tax, medical savings accounts, a new Social Security system for working Americans, parental choice of schools for their children, term limits and a strong national defense. Mr. Forbes continues to energetically promote this agenda.
Mr. Forbes serves on the boards of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is on the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center and on the Board of Visitors for the School of Public Policy of Pepperdine University. He served on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University for ten years.
Dennis Gartman
Dennis Gartman, the editor and publisher of the Gartman Letter, has been in the markets since 1974. Born in Akron, Ohio, Gartman received his BA from the University of Akron and MA from North Carolina State University. After finishing his graduate work in the mid 1970s, he worked as an economist for Cotton, Inc. analyzing cotton supply and demand in the US textile industry. From there he went to NCNB where he traded foreign exchange and money market instruments.
In 1977, Mr. Gartman became the Chief Financial Futures Analyst for A.G. Becker and Company in Chicago, where he also served as an independent member of the Chicago Board of Trade, trading in treasury bond, treasury note and GNMA futures contracts. In 1985, Mr. Gartman moved to Virginia to run the futures brokerage operation for the Virginia National Bank, and in 1987 began producing The Gartman Letter on a full-time basis. He continues to do so to this day."
Brian Hicks
Known as the original "Bull on America", Brian Hicks has shown investors how to profit from America's new information-based economy for the past 14 years. In the same way that quantum mechanics radically transformed the world of physics, Brian's new investing theory personally throws traditional economic thought out the window. Specifically, Brian's incredibly bullish on the fact that as we go deeper into an information age, America's future will be driven from innovation itself – rather than tangible assets. Thirsty for his next blockbuster, his successful theory for finding tomorrow's winning stocks has landed him frequent appearances on the screens of CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox News. Along with his television spots, he's headlined several investment seminars as well as countless talk radio shows. A seasoned future trend seeker, Brian holds a Political Science degree from University of Baltimore, as well as graduate level work in Political Theory and Modern Studies. In addition to being the managing editor of The $20 Trillion Report, Brian writes a weekly column for Wealth Daily concerning high profit opportunities in the currently tumultuous geopolitical environment.
Steven Hochberg
Steven Hochberg is a close associate of Robert Prechter and chief market analyst for Prechter's company Elliott Wave International in Gainesville, Georgia. The Elliott Wave Principle is one of the world's most recognized technical tools for forecasting market behavior, and Elliott Wave International is the world's largest provider of Elliott Wave analysis.
Mr. Hochberg is recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on the Wave Principle and its application to market forecasting. He began his career with Merrill Lynch & Co. and joined Elliott Wave International in 1994, where he quickly established a stellar reputation providing analysis to large institutional traders and hedge funds. Mr. Hochberg is a sought after speaker and has been widely quoted in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Barron's and Bloomberg news. He has also been interviewed numerous times for his market views by CNBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg Television and Canada's ROB TV. Mr. Hochberg was the featured interview for the November 2001 issue of Stocks and Commodities magazine and the October 2002 issue of Chartpoint magazine."
Frank Holmes
Frank Holmes is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of U.S. Global Investors, Inc. The company is a registered investment adviser that manages approximately $4.8 billion in 13 no-load mutual funds and for other advisory clients.
Mr. Holmes, a Toronto native, bought a controlling interest in U.S. Global Investors in 1989 after an accomplished career in Canada’s capital markets.
The company’s Global Resources Fund (PSPFX) is the 2005 and 2006 Lipper Fund Award winner in the natural resources category. U.S. Global’s World Precious Minerals Fund (UNWPX) and China Region Opportunity Fund (USCOX) also won Lipper recognition in their categories in 2006.
The Global Resources Fund is also Morningstar’s top performer among all domestic stock funds in the five-year period ending December 31, 2006. Also, the World Precious Minerals Fund is Morningstar’s top performer among all international stock funds for the five-year period ending December 31, 2006.
Mr. Holmes is a sought-after speaker at national and international investment conferences. He is also a regular commentator on the financial television networks CNBC and Bloomberg, and has been profiled by Fortune, Barron’s, The Financial Times and other publications.
Byron King
Byron King works for Agora Financial, LLC, where he edits Outstanding Investments and Energy & Scarcity Investor. Both newsletters are focused on energy, natural resources and infrastructure investments. Until the recent market meltdown, Outstanding Investments spent five continuous years in the ranks of the top five investment publications, as evauated by the respected Hulbert Digest. Now amidst the ruins of the market crash, Byron is identifying a new set of rising Phoenixes for his readers.
Byron has a unique background for his current line of work. Byron practiced law for many years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his efforts were focused on litigation, bankruptcy and other oft- contentious matters involving people and money. Byron is also Agora's resident geologist. He is an honors graduate of Harvard University, holds a degree in the geology and has worked in the exploration and development department of a major international oil company. Byron also served for many years in both the active and reserve components on the U.S. Navy.
So Byron flew jets, worked as a geologist, and has been a lawyer.
Now he puts it all together for his 60,000+ readers. In addition to his geology degree from Harvard, Byron holds advanced degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and the U.S. Naval War College.
Brien Lundin
Brien Lundin serves as president of Jefferson Financial and editor of Gold Newsletter. Mr. Lundin draws on 20 years of experience in investment analysis and publishing to deliver profitable advice to his readers and clients. In each edition of Gold Newsletter, Mr. Lundin covers not only resource stocks, but also the entire world of investing, from small-caps of every type to macroeconomics and geopolitical issues that ultimately affect every investor.
Ian Mc Avity
Ian McAvity, editor of Deliberations on World Markets since 1972, is a globally recognized technical analyst who covers the major world stock markets, currencies and gold. He has been an Advisor and Director of Central Fund of Canada Ltd., the Amex-listed gold and silver bullion fund since 1983, and a trustee of Amex-listed Central Gold-Trust since its launch in 2003. At the conference, he will graphically update his big-picture expectations for stocks, gold and the dollar.
Greg McCoach
Greg McCoach is an entrepreneur, who has successfully started and run several businesses the past 22 years. For the last 7 of these years he has been involved with the precious metals industry as a bullion dealer, investor, and newsletter writer. Mr. McCoach's years of business experience and extensive personal contacts in the mining industry provide unique insights that have generated an impressive track record for The Mining Speculator since its inception in 2001. He also spreads his vast knowledge of the precious metals markets in a weekly column for Gold World. Greg is also the President of AmeriGold, a gold bullion dealer.
Robert Meier
Robert Meier has been a regular conference speaker since 1976, and a Gold Newsletter contributing editor since 1979. Bob founded the RMB Group in 1984. RMB specializes in "big move" option strategies in commodities, securities, ETFs -- and operates a separate foreign exchange (FX) trading desk, RMB FX Trader Assist.
RMB annually issues about 70 trade recommendations via their respected "Options Alert" publication, and are well-known for their Auto Trade service. Auto Trade saves clients time, trouble and helps eliminate the risk they will miss trade recommendations from newsletters and alert services by automatically making trades on behalf of the client.
Stephen Moore
The founder and former president of the Club for Growth, Stephen Moore is one of today’s most widely followed economists. Currently a senior economics writer and member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, he splits his time between Washington and New York, focusing on economic issues, including budget, tax and monetary policy.
Moore has been a frequent contributor to the major media, including the Journal and CNBC, over the years. He is the founder and former president of the Club for Growth, which raises money for political candidates who favor free-market economic policies, and has also served as president of the Free Enterprise Fund.
Over the years Moore has served as a senior economist on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, as a budget expert for the Heritage Foundation, and as a senior economics fellow at the Cato Institute, where he published dozens of studies on federal and state tax and budget policy. He was a consultant to the National Economic Commission in l987, and research director for President Reagan's Commission on Privatization.
Stephen is the author of five books, most recently, “Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Is Making America Richer.” He graduated from the University of Illinois and holds a masters degree in economics from George Mason University.
Bill Murphy
Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), has an extensive commodities and futures background with some of the world’s most well-known Wall Street firms. However, those firms probably wish they’d never heard of him. That’s because Mr. Murphy has since compiled a vast body of evidence implicating some of them in what he says is a scheme to manipulate the price of gold. He is a graduate of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University and was a starting wide receiver for the Boston Patriots in 1968.
Chris Powell
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, where he has worked for 40 years. His political columns are published in a dozen newspapers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. He and LeMetropoleCafe.com proprietor Bill Murphy founded the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee in 1999 to expose manipulation of the gold market.
James Powell
Jim Powell has an extensive background in both the sciences and finance which has made his analysis of growth stocks and investment trends highly valued for over 25 years. He is best known to investors for his many years as the editor and research director of the popular newsletters High Tech Investor and ValuTALK. In addition, Jim is the author of two hardcover books, The Down Jones Irwin Guide to High Tech Investing and Super Investment trends.
Jim Powell currently stays in touch with the investing public through his monthly newsletter, Growth Stock Alert. Jim has been a frequent contributor to these investment conferences; his first attendance was in 1983 when he took part in Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Panel.
Robert Prechter Jr.
Robert R. Prechter, Jr., CMT, is founder and president of Elliott Wave International. He has been publishing market commentary since 1976. In 1989, Financial News Network (now CNBC) named him "Guru of the Decade."
Bob has written 13 books, most notably, Socionomics - The Science of History and Social Prediction. His recent title, Conquer the Crash, was a New York Times best-seller. In 1999, Bob received the CSTA's first annual A.J. Frost Memorial Award. In 2003, Traders Library granted him its Hall of Fame award. Recently Prechter has made presentations on his socionomic theory to university audiences.
Lawrence Roulston
Lawrence Roulston, editor of Resource Opportunities, is a geologist with engineering and business training, and more than 20 years of hands-on experience in the resource industry as a consultant and independent mining analyst. He is renowned as a guest speaker at industry conferences and events, and can be heard on popular business radio and television programs. Mr. Roulston's years of hands-on experience and extensive personal contacts in the industry provide unique insights that have generated an impressive track record for Resource Opportunities.
Rick Rule
Rick Rule is chairman of Global Resource Investments, Ltd. Mr. Rule began his career in the securities business in 1974, and has been principally involved in natural resource security investments ever since. A leading investor specializing in mining, energy, water, forest products and agriculture, he is a popular public speaker featured at investment conferences and resource investment forums throughout the world. His firm, Global Resource Investments, provides investment advice and brokerage service to individuals, corporations and institutions worldwide.
Mr. Rule is very active in private placement investment markets, and has originated and/or participated in several hundred transactions over the past 20 years, including both debt and equity in private, pre-public and public companies. Mr. Rule's private placement investment partnerships are up 50% compounded annually.
Peter Schiff
Peter Schiff is President and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, a full service NASD-registered broker dealer which specializes in foreign securities. Mr. Schiff is a recognized expert in the domestic and foreign securities markets, as well as the currency and gold markets. He is well known to investors across the country. He speaks at all the major investment conferences, is quoted often in the all the major newspapers and magazines, including the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, LA Times, Barron’s, Business Week, etc. He is a regular feature on CNBC and Bloomberg T-V. His first book, Crash Proof, How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, will be published March 2007 by Wylie and Co.
Mark Skousen
Mark Skousen is a professional economist, investment expert, university professor, and author of over 20 books. Currently he holds the Benjamin Franklin Chair of Management at Grantham University. In 2004-05, he taught economics and finance at Columbia Business School and Columbia University. Since 1980, Skousen has been editor in chief of Forecasts & Strategies, a popular award-winning investment newsletter. He is also chairman of Investment U, one of the largest investment e-letters in the country, with 300,000 subscribers, and the editor of three trading services. He is a former analyst for the CIA, a columnist to Forbes magazine, and past president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in New York. His bestsellers include The Making of Modern Economics and Scrooge Investing. In 2006, he compiled and edited The Completed Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin (Regnery). In honor of his work in economics, finance and management, Grantham University renamed its business school, "The Mark Skousen School of Business."
Sen. Fred Thompson
One of the most respected and visible figures speaking out on the important challenges facing America today, Senator Fred Thompson’s dedication to law and passion for our nation’s founding principles led him to serve for eight years as a senator from Tennessee and to his recent presidential campaign.
Serving as Chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and as a member of the Finance Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Thompson focused on lowering taxes, strengthening national security, and cutting wasteful government spending. In the tradition of President George Washington, a leader Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory in 2002 to seek new challenges.
Prior to his election, Thompson maintained law offices in Nashville and Washington. Earlier in his career, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Tennessee. In 1973, he was appointed by Senator Howard Baker to serve as Minority Counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, where Thompson first gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office. He detailed his Watergate experience in his Watergate memoir, At That Point in Time. In 1974, after the Watergate hearings concluded, Thompson returned to the practice of law.
Senator Thompson first appeared on screen in the film Marie in 1985, portraying himself in the fact-based story of a high-profile public corruption case he handled in Tennessee. Since then, he has appeared in numerous movies and television programs, including the films No Way Out, In the Line of Fire, Die Hard II, Days of Thunder and The Hunt for Red October, and the television series China Beach, Wiseguy, and Matlock. Recently, he has become known for his portrayal of New York District Attorney Arthur Branch on the Emmy Award-winning NBC drama, Law & Order.
In 2005, Senator Thompson was named by President Bush as an advisor to Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John Roberts, helping to move his nomination through the Senate confirmation process. Thompson continued his public service as Chairman of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board.
In all this, Thompson has been a man of the times, adapting his unique abilities and leveraging today’s communications technologies to speak to the American people about issues he feels are important to the nation. Whether it’s on the radio, filling in for Paul Harvey on the ABC Network with news and commentaries, on his own “Fred Thompson Reports” commentaries and broadcasts, online blog posts or TV appearances, Senator Thompson has focused on the issues of the day viewed through the “first principles” he’s stressed throughout his career.
Senator Thompson is a native of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. He attended Memphis State University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy and political science. He received his law degree from Vanderbilt University.
David W. Tice
David W. Tice is the founder and president of David W. Tice & Associates, LLC. The portfolio manager of the Prudent Bear Fund and the Prudent Global Income Fund, he also oversees the publication of Behind the Numbers, a provider of independent research to institutional investors.
Frank Trotter
Mr. Trotter leads EverBank Direct and is a founding partner of everbank.com, a national branchless bank that was acquired by the current EverBank in 2002, Mr. Trotter has over 20 years experience in the banking industry. He has served as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Mercantile Bank Capital Markets and Director of the International Markets Division at Mark Twain Bank, where he created the World Currency family of deposits and directed the global launch of eCash™. Mr. Trotter is a graduate of St. Olaf College and holds an M.B.A from Washington University.
Martin Truax
Martin Truax is a managing director with Morgan Keegan, Inc. After starting his career teaching investment courses at a major university, he joined what later was to become Smith Barney as a financial consultant in 1971. Mr. Truax is the author of “Building Personal Wealth”, and wrote a client newsletter at Smith Barney. With over 35 years of experience, he continues to write that letter at Morgan Keegan today. Mr. Truax primarily works with private individual investors in their investment planning and portfolio management.
James Turk
James Turk is founder and chairman of GoldMoney (www.goldmoney.com), which provides a convenient and economical way to buy and sell gold online. After graduating in 1969 from George Washington University with a B.A. degree in international economics, he has specialized in international banking, finance, and investments. He is co-author of The Coming Collapse of the Dollar (www.dollarcollapse.com)
Chris Weber
He's been called the best investor on earth, but you'll never hear him say that...he's too superstitious. A professional investor since he was 16, he lives in Monaco and writes the Weber Global Opportunity Report: www.weberglobal.net. This is an extremely rare public appearance.
John Williams
Walter J. "John" Williams earned an A.B. in economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar.
During his career as a consulting economist for clients ranging from individuals to Fortune 500 companies, Williams became — out of necessity — a specialist in government economic reporting.
One of Williams’ early clients was a large manufacturer of commercial airplanes that had developed an econometric model for predicting revenue passenger miles, which was their primary sales forecasting tool. The model was heavily dependent on the GNP (now GDP) as reported by the Department of Commerce. Suddenly, their model stopped working, and they asked me if Williams if he could fix it. He realized the GNP numbers were faulty, corrected them for his client (official reporting was similarly revised a couple of years later). The model worked again, at least for a while, until GNP methodological changes eventually made the underlying data worthless.
That began a lengthy process of exploring the history and nature of economic reporting and in interviewing key people involved in the process from the early days of government reporting through the present. For a number of years, Williams conducted surveys among business economists as to the quality of government statistics (the vast majority thought it was pretty bad), and his results led to front-page stories in the New York Times and Investors Business Daily, considerable coverage in the broadcast media, and a joint meeting with representatives of all the government's statistical agencies. Despite minor changes to the system, government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last decade or so.
Tim Wood
Tim W.Wood, CPA editor and publisher of Cycles News & Views, uses cycles and statistical analysis to apply a “Quantified Approach” to classic Dow Theory. Tim combines a unique cycles approach learned from cycles pioneer Walter Bressert, along with his extensive studies of the writings of Charles H. Dow, William Peter Hamilton, Robert Rhea and E. George Schaefer on Dow’s Theory, to develop statistical probabilities for future market action. These methods enabled him to successfully forecast, over one year in advance, the 2002 stock market decline. Throughout 2006 and 2007 Tim used his statistical analysis to warn his subscribers that the 4-year cycle low had not occurred, that the 4-year cycle was extending and that the fallout was still ahead. Tim also called the housing top using these same methods in 2005. These same methods were also used to call the low seen in the dollar earlier this year. As commodities approached their tops this past summer Tim warned that they were in parabolic advances and in mid-July issued a sell signal, based upon his Cycle Turn Indicator, right when everyone was calling for $200 oil. Tim also issued a sell signal on gold in mid-July warning his subscribers of the decline. As gold approached the September lows Tim also told his subscribers that an intermediate-term cycle low was due. Tim now sees rocky times ahead for the equity markets and has been watching the possibility of a 1930’s cyclical setup since the January cycle lows were made. Cycles News & Views provides analysis on the stock, bond, gold, crude oil and dollar markets. www.cyclesman.com
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