Happy New Year…

Here’s the final installment of how I came to work with Bill Bonner and Dan Denning in Baltimore 15 years ago (catch up on the rest here)…

It was 2002. Tech stocks had crashed. The economy was in recession. Bush had invaded Afghanistan. And a war was starting in Iraq. The Greenspan Federal Reserve would do whatever it took to prop up the economy.

Meanwhile, gold had been falling for 20 years. No one was paying attention to it. Even the central banks were dumping it.

I put all my money into gold futures, and I persuaded some friends to do the same. Then, I quit my job, said goodbye to my friends, and went to Mexico City without any money or credit cards.

I traveled from Mexico City to San Diego to Chicago to Atlanta and back to Mexico City by sleeping outside, eating scraps, and bumming rides.

I sent email newsletters about my adventures back to my friends. I called them the Dysman Diaries. (I’ve been sharing some of the stories from that trip with you over the past few days.)

Seven years later, gold had gone up 400%. (Unfortunately, I sold the futures much too early, and we made only a small profit.)

Now, for the second time in my life, I have a strong premonition that gold is about to make a major move higher.

Once again, we’ve got almost the perfect setup: a trillion-dollar budget deficit… a collection of hyper-activist central banks… a too-strong dollar… potential currency wars… a possible recession on the horizon…

As for me, I’m back on the road, living like a hobo, all in with gold, and sending zany e-letters to my friends.

Now, continuing yesterday’s hitchhiking story…

First time I hit the road, in 2004, I put Addison Wiggin (Bill’s managing editor at the time) on my Dysman Diaries email list.

He replied to one of my emails when I was in Birmingham, Alabama. He told me a position had opened at his e-letter. He invited me to Paris for an interview.

So I walked onto Interstate 10 westbound and stuck out my thumb to hitchhike.

First, I got picked up by a man drinking whiskey from a big Styrofoam cup. He was towing a big boat. We swerved all the way to Tuscaloosa.

Then, I got picked up by a long-haul trucker in an 18-wheeler. He spent 24 hours – all the way from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Brownsville, Texas – trying to seduce me. Oh… and somewhere in Louisiana, he confessed to me he’d murdered his second wife.

I doubt I will ever hitchhike again after those two rides. But I did make it to Paris.

And that’s the story of how I came to work with Bill and Dan 15 years ago.

– Tom Dyson