FranticFish - 7:24 am on Oct 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

Penguin doesn't devalue links... it punishes them

This was true even before Penguin. I am sure others can verify this. I myself saw a site where the owner (unknown to the SEO who was working on it) thought they'd speed things up by buying a 'directory package' of anchor text links on two key phrases. This was only a few hundred links. The site dropped out of the SERPs for those two phrases overnight.