The folks at Euro Pacific Capital, the brokerage firm run by Peter Schiff, tend to follow his Austrian economics-derived philosophy pretty closely — and they recommend the kinds of investments that many of my readers also tend to be interested in: foreign stocks that pay above average dividends in strong currencies and provide income that’s in some way sheltered from inflation … or really, In Schiff’s case, dollar devaluation.

And while I hesitate to see the kind of bleak immediate future that Schiff and Porter Stansberry and their ilk preach about, I do think the U.S. has no choice but to gradually monetize our government debt and, therefore, continue to devalue the dollar over time. That doesn’t mean that all investments will be devalued, of course — just that the unit of measurement changes, so assets that have actual value should be worth more of those devalued dollars in the future. I wouldn’t want to be a long-term saver in dollars, which is why I put most of my savings into stocks, foreign currency CDs, and precious metals (in that order), but I also think the dollar will hold on as the reserve currency a lot longer than many of the newsletter touters believe. I do wish the Feds would have spent more effort rolling debt over into 30 year bonds over the last few years, instead of the short-term debt that fuels the government now … but, in the typically short-sighted decisionmaking that the Treasury shares with homeowners who got teaser-rate adjustable mortgages, we may have to refinance huge chunks of the debt at unfortunate interest rates in the next few years. So, on the odd chance that you might care what I think, I agree in principle with a lot of what Schiff says about the future downward trend for the dollar … even if I think the future will be far less linear than he projects, and the dislocation far less abrupt.

So every once in a while, when they send out their Global Investor Newsletter (you can see the latest issue here, FYI) and hint at a couple investments that they can’t specifically name for you, I like to get into the specifics. I imagine they’d also tell you the names of these picks if you call up and ask one of their brokers … but then again, to do that you ...