Daily Reckoning Review

Once upon a time there was this really great free daily investment newsletter called "The Daily Reckoning". Without a doubt, the most interesting contributor to this daily newsletter was Bill Bonner, owner of Agora publishing, the owner of the newsletter. For years and years, it bleated on and on about libertarianism, anti-government rhetoric and most of all, invest in gold.

Considering the last bit of advice began in the early 2000s, when gold was a quarter of what it is now, that was impressive advice to be given for free. Even better, the newsletter was beefed up daily with top-notch articles by other leading investment commentators, the names of which will be familiar to many : The Mogambo Guru, Dr Marc Faber, the evergreen Doug Casey, Addison Wiggin...hell, it even printed articles written by Brian Durrant or William Rees-Mogg from the premium weekly newsletter The Fleet Street Letter, completely negating the need to buy that over-hyped newsletter, which you can read a review of here.

All in all, if you could ignore the advertising and not allow yourself to be overseduced by their instant get-rich quick headlines for premium investment services, such as the Oxford Club, Strategic Investment and whatever other snake oil Agora tried to peddle, you really were getting a lot for your money, which of course, you were, since it was free.

All good things must come to an end though and it seems like this one has. No longer is the newsletter the equivalent of a sly choccy biscuit at the office desk with a coffee mid-afternoon. It started arriving in my mailbox around midnight and hit a new low when Bill Bonner took a 4 month sabbatical in Argentina early 2012 and left the reins in the incapable hands of Joel Bowman, some young Australian upstart who really has written some weird stuff, including proclaiming "piracy is good" but stopping short of offering all Agora content free and then the next day imploring us that we shouldn't be allowed to have too many kids, so clearly the free market only extends so far in his eyes. Now, it has somehow turned it into "The Daily Timeshare", constantly pressing us with threats of government confiscation which we can only avoid by utilising one of their advertisers in finding cheap property in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, New Zealand or wherever else might be safe. Although NZ clearly didn't work out too well for Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload, did it?

I've taken my name off the mailing list. Come back Bill, you might have been a bore in real life, or at least I imagine you probably are, but your insights were impressive. I guess all the other guest contributors have given up on it too and last I checked, the website is down and now redirects you to Moneyweek, another Agora publication.

*SIGH*