Outgoing links is a very important part of ranking well in Google - most people think that the incoming links is all that matters - and they concern themselves with how high the "PR" is of the incoming link
Fortunately those that keep thinking that will keep scraping the bottom of the listings.
The only thing to be careful of is to watch somewhat that you are not linking to someone that is on Googles shitlist - its kinda hard to tell now a days, as the PR bar in the toolbar doesnt reflect that info very well anymore.
You just have to look at who is linking to them and the effect it has on other sites that are linking to them
Trading links is what the web was built on - and Google realizes that and it plays a huge part in the ranking of pages (NOT PR) - and as a side benefit - its a good way of building traffic while you are waiting for SE listings to happen