Good Profits from Bad Times

Boom in the gloom-and-doom business of investment seminars They are the rock concerts of the 1980s.

"Woodstocks for rich people," one promoter calls them. But instead of long-haired musicians, the stars of these extravaganzas are investment counselors, who generally hurl around wildly pessimistic prophecies about the future of the economy. Best-selling Author Douglas R.

Casey (Crisis Investing: Opportunities and Profits in the Coming Great Depression) last month told an Orlando, Fla., gathering of 2,100: "We are facing the greatest depression in the history of the world." And Howard J.

Ruff (How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years) predicted the destruction of the dollar: "We will look back on 20% inflation with nostalgia." Investment seminars have become regular events at vacation spots in Florida and California. This weekend some 1,600 people are expected to pay up to $445 each for a five-day marathon at Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hilton.

They will hear an all-star lineup that includes Ruff, Casey, Economist Arthur Laffer, Metals Expert James Sinclair and Television Host Louis Rukeyser. Like rock concerts, the seminars can be phenomenally profitable for both the stars and the promoters. The impresario behind this weekend's gala is Charles E. Githler III, 24, who dropped out of college in 1976 to devote his full time to real estate speculation in Florida. Githler organized his first International Investors Forum in San Francisco three years ago, attracting 1,400 people at $450 each. The superstar of seminar promoters is James U. Blanchard III, 37. He organized his first seminar in 1974 to help drum up support for his personal campaign to legalize investment in gold.

Blanchard charges more than $1,000 a person for his elegant sessions, which are held in Bermuda and other resort spots.

Last November, 4,500 people paid up to $445 each to attend his National Committee for Monetary Reform Conference. The people who attend the three-to five-day conclaves are primarily successful businessmen, doctors and attorneys. They are seeking advice on beating inflation and place great emphasis on personal contact with their investment guru. Explains Economist Eliot Janeway, who runs his own seminars: "People go for the same reason that they go to church instead of staying home and reading Scriptures. They like to hear the sermon." Speakers like Ruff and Rukeyser are paid as much as $10,000 for each appearance, but that is only part of the lure. The real attraction for many is the unparalleled opportunity to hawk their high-priced newsletters, books and cassette tapes. Notes Rukeyser: "I'm often the only one there who isn't selling anything." The standard sales pitch on the investment circuit is fear and more fear. Most speakers describe the economy as falling too fast to be rescued by any Administration. They urge audiences to put their money in tangible products, such as gold, diamonds, real estate and Persian rugs. Casey, 34, has advised audiences to leave their property in a basement safe in stead of a safe-deposit box or to speculate in the real estate of countries such as Chile and Colombia when, he says, political troubles have depressed land prices.

"Buy when blood is running in the streets," he says. Lately, however, Casey has been advising people to plunge back into the stock market, since he believes the Dow Jones index will hit 3000. Most other Cassandras on the seminar circuit disagree, and for good reason. Should Casey's optimism prove justified, it could be the undoing of the lucrative gloom-and-doom business.

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