Note: Casey Research founder Doug Casey answered dozens of investment questions during the recent Casey Research Summit. We transcribed five of Doug’s best answers, and we’re sharing them with you below. What you’re about to read is Doug speaking to a live audience. His responses are unrehearsed.

•  When asked about the implications of cheap oil…

Doug Casey: I always look on the bright side, and the bright side of low oil prices is that most of the countries that produce oil are just horrible places. Low oil prices will help to bankrupt the governments of these places, and that will, hopefully, set the stage for things to get better.

Look at the countries that produce a lot of oil: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria…they’re all just horrible. It’s no accident. Easy wealth, owned by the state, is a formula for disaster.

Hopefully the oil price will bring on the collapse of the Saudi regime, one of the U.S.’s longtime puppets. It’s amazing how the U.S. has gone around and destroyed all kinds of regimes – most of which, frankly, were abusive and corrupt and needed killing – but the Saudis are one of the worst of them. Hopefully low oil prices and their ridiculous spending habits will bring down that terminally corrupt theocracy. Among others…

Another good thing about cheap oil is it should show anybody that’s got half a brain that Russia and Putin are non-entities. They’ve got a decent military, but all they can do is export oil. It’s like a primitive, third-world country with a first-world military. Well, kind of a first-world military.

So low oil prices are a very good thing. I don’t know how long they’ll stay low. But they’re going lower for the time being. Production is stable to up, but consumption is headed down with a slowing economy.

And I’m all for oil going even lower. I hope it goes down to $10 a barrel. At that point you can buy it reflexively and make a huge killing. But I’m still short oil at the moment.