April Blog Archives 2019

4.29.19 - 5G More Susceptible to Cyberattacks

Gold last traded at $1,281 an ounce. Silver at $14.84 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices eased back Monday on profit-taking and a flat dollar. U.S. stocks traded slightly higher as investors braced for a busy week of corporate earnings reports and economic data.

Love Of Gold Stems From Need To Diversify -Bank Chief/Kitco
"Russian gold buying spree is fueled by the need to diversify in order to anticipate and protect the country from economic and geopolitical risks, according to the Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina. 'You see we try to diversify our international reserves composition. Because we estimate all the possible risks, economic and geopolitical risks,' Nabiullina told CNBC on Friday. Russia has been one of the most active gold purchasers in 2018 and the beginning of 2019. During the first quarter of 2019, Russia acquired 56 tons of the precious metal....'We try to understand the long-term dynamics of different types of currencies and the needs of our economy for using this currency and the process of taking this decision about the structure of these reserves,' Nabiullina noted....Analysts have suggested that Russia is buying up gold to diversify against the U.S. dollar. Russia's share of U.S. dollars in its reserves fell from 46% to 22% last year, noted analysts at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch."

Brace Yourself: The Next Epic Collapse Could Be Weeks Away -Giambruno/Casey Research
"There wasn't a group of people more wrong about the 2008 financial crisis than those at the Federal Reserve. Mere months before the disaster hit in earnest, the nation's highest economic and financial officials were vocal that there was nothing to worry about...Today there are clear indicators of a coming crisis... in the auto sector... the housing sector... and in the economy as a whole. Despite this, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently said, 'I don’t see a recession [in 2019].'....Some people think the Fed saved the day by pushing pause on its rate hikes. After all, it claims it's doing this as a precaution 'in light of global economic and financial developments.' But I don’t buy it. In fact, this whole charade proves to me that a crash is already underway - as the Fed inadvertently admitted we're on the cusp of big problems. After all, why would the Fed stop tightening monetary policy if it thinks there's no chance of a recession?....After nearly six years of 0% interest rates, the U.S. economy is hooked on easy money. It can't even tolerate a modest reduction in the Fed's balance sheet and 2.25% interest rates, which are still far below historical averages....In the weeks ahead, we will see shockwaves spread out, not only through the car and housing industries, but the economy overall. That’s why now is a good time to take a close look at your portfolio. Look at every position you own, and ask yourself: Would I be comfortable holding this through a recession… or even a crisis?"

GDP: Fake News -Rickards/Daily Reckoning
"The first-quarter GDP number was 3.2%, it came in far above estimates. Consensus was about 2.3%. It was also the highest Q1 GDP print since 2015. But there's probably less here than meets the eye. About half the GDP gain came from a surge in inventories and a sharp reduction in the trade deficit, neither of which is sustainable. They are likely one-time boosts. The economy has been growing since June 2009, making this the second-longest economic expansion on record. However, it has also been the weakest economic expansion on record...I expect lower GDP in the quarters ahead, returning to the same punk levels we've seen for nine years. For the year, economists believe GDP will expand 2.4%, down from last year's 2.9% gain....What about the possibility of recession?....The group that 'officially' decides when the U.S. economy is in a recession is called the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) based in Cambridge, Massachusetts...the NBER might not identify the start date of a recession until nine months or a year after the recession began. By that method, the U.S. could be in a recession next month and we would not know about it until a year from now when the data were all in....If the economy improves ahead of the election, Trump has an excellent chance. If it falls into recession, the Democratic candidate will probably win, whoever it is. In that case, get ready for class warfare, much higher taxes and even more government spending than today. Got gold?"

The Terrifying Potential of the 5G Network -New Yorker
“Two words explain the difference between our current wireless networks and 5G: speed and latency. 5G - if you believe the hype - is expected to be up to a hundred times faster....One estimate projects that 5G will pump twelve trillion dollars into the global economy by 2035, and add twenty-two million new jobs in the United States alone. This 5G world, we are told, will usher in a fourth industrial revolution. A totally connected world will also be especially susceptible to cyberattacks....Ransomware, malware, crypto-jacking, identity theft, and data breaches have become so common that more Americans are afraid of cybercrime than they are of becoming a victim of violent crime. Adding more devices to the online universe is destined to create more opportunities for disruption. '5G is not just for refrigerators,' according to Robert Spalding, the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council. 'It's farm implements, it's airplanes, it's all kinds of different things that can actually kill people or that allow someone to reach into the network and direct those things to do what they want them to do. It's a completely different threat that we've never experienced before.'....According to James Baker, the former F.B.I. general counsel who runs the national-security program at the R Street Institute, 'There's a concern that those devices that are connected to the 5G network are not going to be very secure from a cyber perspective. That presents a huge vulnerability for the system, because those devices can be turned into bots, for example, and you can have a massive botnet that can be used to attack different parts of the network.'....In February, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, took both the F.C.C. and F.D.A. to task for pushing ahead with 5G without assessing its health risks. 'We’re kind of flying blind here,' he concluded. A system built on millions of cell relays, antennas, and sensors also offers previously unthinkable surveillance potential....'What is existential to democracy is allowing totalitarian regimes - or any government - full knowledge of everything you do at all times,' says Spalding. 'Because the tendency is always going to be to want to regulate how you think, how you act, what you do.'"

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Gold last traded at $1,279 an ounce. Silver at $14.91 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices rose Wednesday on bargain-hunting despite a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks traded mixed as investors digested another batch of corporate earnings.

Here's an easy way to tell if your bank is actually safe -Black/Sovereign Man
"Most people simply assume that their bank is in good financial condition… that, since the bank is regulated and insured by the government, our money must be safe. Sometimes that's an incredibly dangerous assumption to make. Even in the US, we've seen how quickly banks' idiotic decisions can unravel. Back in September 2008, the entire US financial system came crashing down, practically overnight, just like in Cyprus. A big part of the reason is that banks have very little incentive to act conservatively and responsibly with your money....Banks make money by putting YOUR money at risk. But they don't share the reward. They pay you some pitiful interest rate like 0.02%. And then keep all the rest for themselves....Now, in fairness, not all banks are created equal. Some are in much better shape than others...You can actually figure this out for yourself by taking a look at your bank's balance sheet. Most big banks are public and have to post their financial statements online....A strong bank has a substantial 'net equity' or 'capital' position as a percentage of its assets. This is known as a bank's 'solvency ratio', and it should be -well- into the double digits. A lot of banks have solvency ratios of 5% or less. This means that if the bank's investments lose more than 5% of their value, the bank will be wiped out....In the US we have dishonest banks with questionable balance sheets, an insolvent central bank, an undercapitalized deposit insurance fund, and a bankrupt federal government....Fortunately the world is a big place, and there are better options out there."

'Political Risk' Emerges as Factor For U.S. Investors -New York Sun
"'Political risk' used to be something American investors worried about in connection with foreign countries. It had to do with assessing the likelihood that a dictator would seize power and decide to nationalize the oil industry or the banks. Or that a war would break out and close shipping lanes. Increasingly, though - and especially headed into the 2020 presidential election - political risk is looming over the American domestic economy and financial markets....The bigger concern is the chance that a Democrat will spook the stock markets by appearing likely to defeat President Trump. In a worst-case scenario for Mr. Trump, this could even be a self-fulfilling prophecy: the stock market declines in anticipation of his potentially losing, and the decline then undercuts one of Mr. Trump's best reelection selling points, the strong economy....For investors, though, a American tax increase has an effect similar to a third-world dictator seizing a previously profitable private enterprise. It amounts to the government taking property away from the people who had previously thought they owned it. That does not inspire confidence. Instead, it erodes it. Ideally, property rights are fixed and based on a predictable rule of law....Beyond the overall threat posed by tax increases, the Democrats also could endanger specific sectors of the economy...Until Election Day, investors who entirely ignore American political risk do so at their own peril."

A February 2019 Harvard-Harris poll found that 64% of registered voters believe the Democratic Party now supports socialism, not capitalism. As America's wealth is transferred from the productive free market to an anti-productive, ever-bigger government; investors must rethink how and where to put their savings. Learn more about this important topic by reading Swiss America's latest free White Paper, Protecting Your Wealth In Today's America.

How to Talk With an Aging Parent About Long-Term Care -Dr. Agronin/Wall Street Journal
"Many people view the possibility of needing long-term care as a fate worse than death, and try to deny, resist, postpone or denigrate the idea. This resistance can be fierce, even in the face of significant physical or mental changes that compromise safety and require close monitoring and assistance...So how can you compassionately navigate the emotions and broach the topic in a way that engages your loved one in a discussion, and yet moves quickly to a practical solution? Here are some ways to frame the conversation and keep things constructive. It's like talking about insurance...for the unexpected or unwanted occurrences in life....Emphasize autonomy and choice...Center your discussion around the person's strengths and aspirations, and focus on the potential options and choices that they have....Focus on transitions...that start with home-based services and becomes more structured over time....There is value in the act of talking itself. A calm and measured discussion shows your concern and support....Involve professionals if needed...involve mental health specialists who can assess the person's mental state and decision-making capacity....Armed with options, research and reassurance that much of what's most important can be preserved, your initiative can give your loved one a more healthful, secure and fulfilling future."

'The Second Mountain': The Importance of Connection -Freedman/Washington Post
"David Brooks, one of the most influential columnists of our time, tells a compelling redemption story. He takes us on his journey up the first mountain of outward success and professional achievement, down to the valley of midlife divorce and doubt, then on to a second mountaintop, this one characterized by commitment and community, love and connection. The personal transformation leading to the second mountain, Brooks observes, connects in essential and timely ways with our predicament as a nation. 'The foundational layer of American society - the network of relationships and commitments and trust that the state and the market and everything else relies upon - is failing,' he writes. 'And the results are as bloody as any war.' The consequences of our rampant individualism - tribalism and social isolation reflected in an epidemic of suicide, addiction and despair - have reached crisis proportions, he writes. But personal renewal, second-mountain-style, can do more than save our souls. It can rescue us from societal collapse...For Brooks, social transformation follows personal transformation. He finds these paragons of 'deep relationality' - what Father Gregory Boyle calls 'radical kinship' - in every community....'The Second Mountain' is an ambitious volume, part sermon, part self-help guide and part sociological treatise, replete with quotes and stories from Tolstoy, Moses, Orwell and others....As it turns out, Brooks and his second-half compatriots could be the very force to take us to the second mountain - and into the promised land."

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Gold last traded at $1,273 an ounce. Silver at $14.77 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices eased back Tuesday on a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks rose as investors cheered stronger-than-expected quarterly profits from some U.S. companies.

Social Security Costs to Exceed Income in 2020, Trustees Say -Wall Street Journal
"Social Security's costs are expected to exceed its income in 2020 for the first time since 1982....By 2035, the trust funds for both programs will be depleted, and Social Security will no longer be able to pay its full scheduled benefits unless Congress steps in to shore up the program, according to the report....'Both Social Security and Medicare face long-term financing shortfalls under currently scheduled benefits and financing,' the trustees wrote, urging lawmakers to take action sooner rather than later to give policy makers enough time to phase in changes. Without changes, by 2035 Social Security recipients will get only about three-quarters of their scheduled benefits. The costs of both programs are projected to soar as a share of the economy over the coming years, as a wave of retiring baby boomers increases the number of program beneficiaries, and lower birthrates over the past few decades hold back employment growth and economic output...Both programs together account for 45% of federal spending....The report also said Medicare's hospital-insurance fund would be depleted in 2026, unchanged from last year's report, as lower payroll-tax collections and reduced income from the taxation of Social Security benefits weighed on the trust fund’s income."

Why you need to own gold -Moneyweek
"'Deficits don't matter.' That's the rallying cry for those who support the idea of modern monetary theory (MMT). It's a simple enough idea. The government can spend as much money as it wants - whether to fund the healthcare service; pay for policing, firemen and teachers; or to build aircraft carriers, roads and railways. The only time it needs to worry about the quantity of money it is spending is when inflation increases. Every consumer is familiar with inflation, but economists just don't seem to see it. When we look at what we are spending on rent, cars, petrol, insurance, train tickets, Sky, Netflix, Microsoft, food and schooling, we can see prices rising....As the saying goes: 'there is many a slip between cup and lip'. If you really want to know where the recent surge in populism has sprung from, it's down to this gap between the experience of regular people and the perception of the academics who make policy decisions...That's what we are now seeing with the debates over MMT....When a government spends money it doesn't have, for what are often vanity projects or appeasement payments to workers who feel disenfranchised, that is directly inflationary....When real rates are negative...That is when money really starts to move into precious metals and gold in particular. Politicians globally have now observed that experiments with money printing and deficit spending have not yet led to the collapse of the financial system, or galloping inflation. So they are starting to promise huge spending programs to capture the imaginations and votes of those who are dissatisfied with the status quo. They know as well as the rest of us that the politician who makes the biggest promises usually wins the election. As a result, the base case has to be that we are heading for negative real rates, and gold is going to take off. If you don't already own some - either to hedge against inflation or against financial mismanagement - it's time to think about allocating some of your capital to the yellow metal."

What if America Tried Capitalism? -Bonner/Bonner And Partners
"We've seen over the last few days that socialism - in all its forms - doesn't work very well. You soon run out of other people's money...But today, we turn our attention to those who say we need to 'reform' capitalism to save it....The first thing we notice is that anyone who says he wants to 'reform' or 'improve' capitalism must not know what it is. Capitalism doesn't allow you to pick winners and losers. There is no way to improve it. It is a free spirit... wandering around, with no knowable destination... going where it wilst, at its own speed, in its own way...Which is precisely what so aggravates the world improvers. AOC and Bernie Sanders whoop for socialism because they think capitalism has failed....America's economy is not really capitalist. It is a form of late, degenerate state-controlled, crony-manipulated, empire-addled, pseudo-capitalist claptrap. A quarter of the economy is directly run by the feds. Another quarter - including medical care and education - is guided and approved by them. And the remainder is chock-a-block with rules and regulations... We don't know what America would look like if capitalism were permitted. But it would certainly be a whole lot richer. Especially the working stiffs....It was not capitalism that boosted stock prices close to 150% of GDP while wages flattened. Normally, the stock market is worth about 80% of GDP....Where did that money come from? The feds were lending fake money at fake rates, so the corporations could earn fake profits and buy back their own shares with free money. The result? A huge shift of wealth from the middle classes of Main Street to the upper classes of Wall Street, Washington, and cronies everywhere."

What 'Free Money' Means to Me -American Spectator
"Officials in Stockton, Calif., a hard-pressed agricultural and industrial city 75 miles northeast of San Jose, are enjoying the glow of media attention from their ongoing, first-in-America program to provide residents with a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. The city's no-strings-attached stipend garnered widespread bemusement when it was rolled out in February, but it is back in the news again as some recipients burnish their new role as 'storytellers.' After more than 100 lower-income Stockton residents start receiving $500 monthly payments for 18 months, 25 of them will be telling the public about what it has meant for them to have more cash. Those stories will be disseminated by the program's backers. Academic researchers will provide data by 2021 that no doubt confirms people who receive extra money can buy extra stuff. Apparently, if city officials come up with a sufficiently asinine idea, and then promote the heck out of it, they can be portrayed as progressive beacons leading the way to a brighter future....Universal Basic Income is one of those ideas that has percolated among academics for decades. Those on the Left see it as a way to boost the economic situation of the poor, bolstered by the progressive belief that poverty is only about a lack of money rather a lack of skills, proper work habits, or life choices....'This concept of universal basic income is a surrender to a kind of grim Dickensian view of the future, frankly, in which people are robbed on the dignity of work,' said Barry Broad, who heads the California Employment Training Panel to the LA Times. Another called the Stockton program public relations, which is exactly what it is. Amen on both counts. I regularly spend time in Stockton. It's a nice, historic, formerly bankrupt city that needs fewer newsworthy ideas and more of the basics: better public services, less wasteful spending, lower taxes, and a regulatory climate that promotes business development and job creation. Then the city's poor can get better jobs, improve their lot, and have too little time to tell their sob stories."

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Gold last traded at $1,277 an ounce. Silver at $14.97 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices traded steady Monday on safe-haven buying and a weaker dollar. U.S. stocks traded mixed as Wall Street braced for the busiest week of the earnings season.

Oil hits 2019 high on U.S. plan to tighten squeeze on Iran -Reuters
"Oil topped $74 a barrel on Monday, the highest since November, as the United States announced a further clampdown on Iranian oil exports, raising concern of tighter global supplies. The United States on Monday said it will eliminate in May all waivers granted to eight economies allowing them to buy Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions, as it ratcheted up pressure to choke off Iran's oil income. 'This does bring a lot more uncertainty in terms of global supplies,' said Olivier Jakob, analyst at Petromatrix. 'It is a bullish surprise for the market.'....Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday reiterated that Washington's goal was to bring down exports of Iranian oil to zero and added the United States had no plans to give any grace period beyond May 1 for countries to comply....An end to the exemptions would hit Asian buyers hardest. Iran's biggest oil customers are China and India, both of which have been lobbying for an extension to the sanction waivers."

Iran Threatens To Close Strait Of Hormuz If US Blocks Its Oil Exports -Zero Hedge
"Tehran has gone on the offensive and on Monday a senior Iranian military official said the Islamic Republic will close the Strait of Hormuz if it's prevented from using it, the state-run Fars news agency reported. 'The Strait of Hormuz based on international law is a waterway and if we are prevented from using it, we will close it,' Reuters reported, citing Alireza Tangsiri, head of the revolutionary guards navy force....To be sure, this is not the first time Iran has made such a threat: back in December Iran warned it would close the global oil chokepoint, when it said that 'if someday, the United States decides to block Iran's oil (exports), no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf.'....The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway carrying a third of the world's traded oil that Iranian officials have threatened to block in retaliation for sanctions targeting the country's nuclear program. The U.S. has said it would move to stop any Iranian attempt to block the waterway...Whether or not Russia and China back Iran could mean the difference between a localized conflict and World War III."

Prepare To Add To Gold Positions -Forbes
"Gold prices appear to be heading higher...May has been a reasonably strong month. And, gold tends to rise from June through September. Let us attempt to confirm this seasonal cycle with dynamic cycles. Both the weekly and the monthly cycles are bottoming in the last week of April. All three of the monthly buy signals have led to higher prices in the past twelve months. Five of eight weekly buy signals have been successful in the last year....The gold open interest put/call ratio is reflecting excessive bearishness, which is a plus for the bulls. The first objectives are in the $1303-$1307 area."

Bernie Sanders Could Win This Time -Rove/Wall Street Journal
"Despite any suggestions to the contrary, Sen. Bernie Sanders's televised Fox News town hall last Monday did not come out of Bizarro World...Mr. Sanders waded into an hourlong conversation with Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum before an audience in Bethlehem, Pa. The pugnacious Vermont socialist was rewarded with around 2.6 million viewers - nearly twice as many as his February CNN town hall drew - making his appearance the most-watched election event so far this cycle....The senator from Vermont distinguished himself by focusing on his vision, not simply bashing the president. 'If we spend all of our time attacking Trump,' he said, 'Democrats are going to lose.'....Mr. Sanders's 2016 experience seems to have taught him how to smooth socialism's rough edges. 'Democratic socialism to me,' he told the crowd, 'is creating a government and an economy and a society which works for all,' not only the top 1%....He may describe socialism in benign terms, but he regularly drops his guard...For example, the senator said 'Medicare is a government-run program' but also claimed 'we are not talking about government-run health care' when discussing his Medicare for All proposal. He casually dismissed concerns about abolishing private health insurance for nearly 177 million Americans by suggesting that lots of people lose their insurance under the current system when 'they get fired or they quit and they go to another employer.' Now all of us can be so lucky....If he is the Democratic nominee, Mr. Trump's task will be to convince Americans that a socialist turn would be a ruinous change. Based on Monday's town hall, that won't be as easy as Republicans may think. Mr. Sanders is a real contender."

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Gold last traded at $1,276 an ounce. Silver at $14.95 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices traded steady Thursday despite a stronger dollar. U.S. stocks traded mixed as 'Medicare for All' proposals resulted in steep health-care sector losses for a third straight day.

Gold & Silver "Will Survive The Whole System Burning Down" -Holter/Zero Hedge
"Financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter is 'not worried at all' about the current price smash down for precious metals. Holter says, 'We live in a world where all liabilities are more than all liabilities in history...If you see a house burn down, the only thing left is the foundation. That's the only thing left because the foundation doesn't burn. That's what gold and silver are, and that's what’s going to be left when this house of financial cards burns down.'....'The entire system is a liability. So, some people are getting some of their money out of the system into real money (gold and silver) which is no one else's liability...The biggest thing is there is too much debt in the system. Everybody owes everybody, and all you need is one link in the chain to break. All you need is one entity that cannot make good on what they promised.'"

The Fed and the Professor Standard -Cain/Wall Street Journal
"Real income for America's bottom 90% reached an all-time high in 1999, and at the time Pew Research found that 81% of Americans agreed that free enterprise was a major reason for the country's success in the 20th century. By June 2015, however, Gallup reported 47% would vote for a socialist. What happened? Real income for the bottom 90%, as measured for the World Top Incomes Database, declined after 1999 and never rebounded. Two terms each of Republican and Democratic administrations failed to end this stagnation, which says all you need to know about why Donald Trump was elected president. Now wages are rising at robust rates - above 3% a year - thanks to cuts in taxes and regulation, with the largest wage increases going to low-wage workers....The Fed still operates on the 'professor standard,' enshrined with Bill Clinton's nominations of pure academics. Their textbooks say strong economic growth, particularly strong wage growth, causes inflation, which Fed policy should temper. Both the Bush and Obama administrations perpetuated the professor standard, and both presided over income stagnation. Ending that stagnation is one goal that unites the political spectrum...The professor standard doesn't work, and the Fed needs new voices to argue for an approach that does....The prosperity of the 1980s and 1990s gave way to stagnation precisely because dollar stability gave way to volatility. Blame the professor standard....The best way to achieve full employment, price stability, economic growth strong enough to solve our fiscal problems, and sustained income growth for the striving majority is for the Fed to stabilize the dollar. The professor standard will not challenge itself - that much has been proved. That's why my voice is needed at the Fed."

Trump's Fed Picks Have Fond Memories of the Gold Standard -Bloomberg
"Both of President Donald Trump's apparent picks for open seats on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stephen Moore and Herman Cain, are interested in fixing the price of the dollar in quantities of gold - bringing back a system that President Richard Nixon abandoned in 1971....While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump told GQ, 'Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We'd have a standard on which to base our money.' Moore was an adviser to Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign and is a distinguished visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He hasn't been formally nominated to the Fed board, but National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow said on April 2 that the administration is 'fully behind' him...Bloomberg News and other news media reported on Thursday that Trump intends to nominate Herman Cain, former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza, for another open seat at the Fed. Cain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He promoted a 9-9-9 plan, which would have replaced much of today's tax code with 9 percent taxes on sales, individual income, and corporate income....Trump's new picks for the Fed are a win for Austrian School followers and others who think Nixon made a big mistake by taking the dollar off the gold standard."

The Irony of Mueller-Report Profiteering -The Atlantic
"When the Justice Department releases Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report this morning...it will be placed in the public domain. That means you'll be able to download the report for free to read on your computer or smartphone, to print out, or to email to your friends who don't know where to find it. That’s not stopping Barnes & Noble, the bookseller, from offering its own version of the Mueller report as a free download on its Nook tablet-and-app ebook platform. 'We've received strong demand from our customers for this report,' Tim Mantel, the company's chief merchandising officer said in a statement, 'and want to make it as easy as possible for them to access it for free as soon as possible.' Barnes & Noble is also selling a print edition of the report, with an introduction by the famed constitutional-law expert Alan Dershowitz. The paperback costs $9.20. If Dershowitz isn't your bag, don't worry, there will be other options. The Washington Post's edition, for sale on Amazon for $10.50, promises 'exclusive analysis' by the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning staff, a prospect that the book's publisher, Scribner, claims will make the edition 'the most complete and authoritative available.'....This isn’t anything new. The Post also added its analysis to an edition of Kenneth Starr's report on the Bill Clinton investigation in 1998....And then, of course, there's what comes next: Once the report is released, anyone is free to use it for any purpose, including commercial use. That means you can do whatever else you want with the report - no copyright restrictions prevent you from making motivational posters, screen-printing T-shirts, or embroidering baseball caps with excerpts.... If the government produces raw materials that citizens can exploit for profit if they choose, then why not take advantage of the opportunity?....But the spirit of the free ebook download risks advancing that the government is not a civic organization that serves its people and asks nothing in return, but just another resource to mine for profit."

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Gold last traded at $1,276 an ounce. Silver at $14.93 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices steadied near 4-month lows Wednesday on a weaker dollar. U.S. stocks struggled as sharp losses in the health-care sector offset strong quarterly earnings results.

Gold buying frenzy by global central banks to push bullion prices higher -RT
"Gold prices could reach $1,400 per ounce in 2019 due to the US Federal Reserve’s less aggressive stance on interest rates, bullion purchases by central banks and lingering global uncertainties, market analysts explain. 'I think that we expect gold to continue to trade pretty much within that range for the coming months,' said Martin Huxley, global head of precious metals at financial services firm INTL FCStone. 'But over the second half of the year we expect it then to grind higher, and potentially it could test 1,400 towards the end of the year,' he told CNBC, referring to gold's price per ounce in relation to the dollar. According to Huxley, the Federal Reserve's signal that there will be no more interest rate hikes this year has helped boost the outlook for gold and other metals. 'The view is that there won't be any interest rate rises this year, which again will be supportive for the precious metals sector,' he said....Central banks have been accumulating gold at levels not seen in 50 years, as part of a broader diversification of reserves away from currencies including the US dollar."

Banks Studying Crypto for Cashless Society -Blockchain Reporter
"Advances in technology are causing a paradigm shift in the banking industry with those that are taking advantage of the trends becoming immensely successful. As a result, central banks all over the world from Canada to Ireland are exploring the possibility of issuing digital currencies in the future. A member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, Benoit Coeure told an IMF-World Bank meeting last week there was an ongoing broad movement in most parts of the world to eliminate the use of printed currency. In a world where only a small percentage of transactions are conducted in cash, only the United States doesn't seem to join the trend, as more people there write checks than use digital payments. Globally, however, digital Payments are becoming the norm at a stunning pace. According to a report by the South China Morning Post, governments and central banks are agreeing on the importance of gradually eliminating cash. They claim the absence of cash could help in reducing crime and terrorism and expedite monetary policy besides helping the global economy....The bottom line is that the war on cash is all about control, banks and governments have for ages been able to control the masses while the monetary authorities claim their motive is to reduce crime, terrorism, drug dealing, counterfeiting, etc."

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There's no safe place to hide from the consequences of the biggest bubble yet -Marketwatch
"Today the United States sits in the midst of the largest wealth bubble in post-World War II history, as measured by household net worth (or wealth) relative to gross domestic product...Only two other postwar bubbles come close, with peaks in 1999 and 2006, just prior to the tech stock crash and the Great Recession. No one should ignore the risk that this bubble will burst, as did the previous two, with declines in the value of stocks DJIA, homes, and other assets accompanied by recession, unemployment, and disruption in the plans and lives of many Americans. We're not off the hook, however, should the bubble fail to burst or should peak valuations decline only gradually....Even without a sudden crash, there likely would be a gradual reversal of the extraordinary period of 'bonus appreciation' that, since the mid-1990s, entailed gains of more than $20 trillion in household net worth....I suspect that the best of macro policy makers will soon discover that this modern, roller-coaster version of a Tower of Babel cannot reach ever heavenward.... I can't tell you what are the best investments, but certainly keep aside enough safe and relatively risk-free investments both as protection against a crash and as a source of investment funds later."

IMF Cuts Global Growth Outlook to Lowest Pace Since Crisis -Bloomberg
"The International Monetary Fund cut its outlook for global growth to the lowest since the financial crisis amid a bleaker outlook in most major advanced economies and signs that higher tariffs are weighing on trade. The world economy will grow 3.3 percent this year, down from the 3.5 percent the IMF had forecast for 2019 in January, the fund said Tuesday in its latest World Economic Outlook. The 2019 growth rate would be the weakest since 2009, when the world economy shrank. It’s the third time the IMF has downgraded its outlook in six months. 'This is a delicate moment' for the global economy, Gita Gopinath, who recently became the IMF's chief economist, said at a press briefing in Washington....The fund cut its forecast for U.S. growth to 2.3 percent this year, down 0.2 percentage point since the IMF's last global outlook in January. The downgrade reflects the impact of the partial government shutdown that ended in January, as well as lower-than-expected public spending....The IMF slashed its outlook for the euro area to 1.3 percent this year, down 0.3 point from three months ago."

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Gold last traded at $1,277 an ounce. Silver at $14.91 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices fell Tuesday on profit-taking and a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks traded higher as investors were encouraged by upbeat corporate earnings.

Russia Is Stocking Up on Gold as Putin Ditches U.S. Dollars -Bloomberg
"Vladimir Putin's quest to break Russia's reliance on the U.S. dollar has set off a literal gold rush. Within the span of a decade, the country quadrupled its bullion reserves, and 2018 marked the most ambitious year yet. And the pace is keeping up so far this year. Data from the central bank show that holdings rose by 1 million ounces in February, the most since November. The data shows that Russia is making rapid progress in its effort to diversify away from American assets. Analysts, who have coined the term de-dollarization, speculate about the global economic impacts if more countries adopt a similar philosophy and what it could mean for the dollar’s desirability compared with other assets, such as gold or the Chinese yuan. French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with CNN in November that European corporations and entities are too dependent on the U.S. currency, calling it 'an issue of sovereignty.'....Central bank buying has helped 'strengthen gold from a weak hand to a strong hand' and supported gold prices in recent years, according to Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, managing partner at Liechtenstein-based asset manager Incrementum AG. Bullion has risen more than 20 percent since the start of 2016."

The Next World Reserve Currency Will Not Be A National Currency -Steemit/Corbit Report
"We've all seen some version of the following Reserve Currency chart. It purports to show the changeover in world reserve currencies from one era to the next...The implication is obvious: No empire lasts forever, and sooner or later that empire will fall, and with it the world reserve status of its currency....The other implication of this chart stands out like a sore thumb: The American Empire's time is running out, and the dollar is going to go down with it...So here's the real question: If the dollar is going to go down, what will replace it?....Throughout much of the past several hundred years, the real reserve currency was gold. It is anyone's guess what the next world reserve currency will look like, but one thing is for certain: it will either include gold as part of its backing or it will be tradable for gold at a rate that reflects gold's current value. This is the reason that some of the biggest detractors of the dollar's world reserve status - perhaps most notably Russia and China - have been hoarding gold like crazy in recent years....There are already groups seeking to tokenize the world's resources to create a new blockchain-based currency called the 'Earth Dollar.' The Earth Dollar Alliance describes the Earth Dollar as 'the world's first anti-inflationary asset-backed stablecoin and community currency, backed by 3.63 trillion Swiss Francs, 3.22 trillion Euros of Natural Capital Assets of the Earth, where our collective wealth can increase by protecting and restoring the Earth.'....It's doubtful that the Earth Dollar is the currency that the banksters have in mind...But there is no doubt that the banksters are considering a move to some sort of centrally-administered blockchain currency as the backbone for the world banking system....It's entirely possible that if the dollar was to die a sudden death, gold could be used as an international settlement currency...But two things are certain: The international bankster oligarchy loves their inflation too much to nail any future world system to a cross of gold. and; The international bankster oligarchy wants to replace the current nation state system with a global system of control (with them in the positions of power, of course). So if the banksters get their way, it is very unlikely that a national currency will be the bedrock of the international order ever again."

How the U.S. Dollar Could Lose Its "King" Status -Lombardi Letter
"The U.S. dollar, as it stands, remains the king of currency. However, its status could be challenged in the coming years. Don’t take the greenback for granted, as it may lose a lot of value. In fact, a scenario not unlike a collapse could be possible....The U.S. dollar is king because there's a global demand for it. But right now, that demand is being challenged. One of the biggest rivals of the U.S. dollar currently is the Chinese yuan....At the end of 2017, central banks held $123.5 billion worth of the Chinese yuan. At the end of 2018, it was $202.8 billion. That means that in a matter of a few quarters, the yuan holdings at central banks increased over 64%....The greenback's value is highly dependent on what the U.S. government does. Unfortunately, as it stands, the government continues to spend without remorse....The Federal Reserve's behavior is suggesting that it wants the U.S. dollar to go lower...Long-term, I think the value of the U.S. dollar could be much lower in the next five years than it is currently."

Notre Dame: A Tragic Loss for the Church and the World -National Review
"I never got to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. And now I never will. Although they’re already saying it’ll be rebuilt someday - and it's hard to imagine that such a beautiful place could be left forever in ruins - it can never be rebuilt to what it was just this morning. It's nearly unbearable to think about how much has been lost. A cathedral that withstood the bloodshed of revolution and the ravages of two world wars, tumbling in clouds of dark smoke, seemingly impossible to stop. This is a disaster for Paris and for France, for French history, and for French Catholics. It is a grave loss for the history of Western civilization, and for future generations....Though Notre Dame de Paris is a testament to world history, to art, to architecture, and to centuries of civilization, above all she is - was - a place of inestimable beauty dedicated to God. The cathedral's Gothic arches pointed heavenward not for their own sake, not to glorify their creator, but to direct the eye to God....Watching this holy place slowly collapse at the start of Holy Week - which will culminate in the commemoration of Jesus's passion, death, and resurrection - is of undeniable significance. Notre Dame has fallen, the way everything in the earthly city must. She will not rise from these ashes as she was. Catholics take comfort in the belief that our Church will stand firm."

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Gold last traded at $1,291 an ounce. Silver at $14.79 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices traded mixed Monday on a flat dollar. U.S. stocks fell as investors digested mixed quarterly numbers from big banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

Funds Increase Bullish Position In Gold -Kitco
"Large speculators upped their bullish positioning in gold...during the most recent reporting week for data compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission....Net long or short positioning in the CFTC data reflect the difference between the total number of bullish (long) and bearish (short) contracts. Traders monitor the data to gauge the general mood of speculators....'Funds were probably looking at the Federal Reserve being more accommodative,' said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst with Price Futures Group. That would prompt expectations for a softer U.S. dollar and as a result, help prop up gold, he continued. Following a corrective U.S. dollar trend, stronger gold prices … 'prompted money managers to load up,' said TD Securities."

No Fix for Recession Without a Financial Crisis -Charles Hughes Smith Blog
"The saying 'never let a crisis go to waste' embodies several truths worth pondering as the stock market nears new highs. One truth is that extreme policies that would raise objections in typical times can be swept into law in the 'we have to do something' panic of a crisis....A second truth is that crises and solutions are generally symmetric: a moderate era enables moderate solutions, crisis eras demand extreme solutions. The Federal Reserve and other central banks are ready for bubble-related financial crises: they have the extreme tools of zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP), negative-interest rate policy (NIRP), unlimited credit lines, unlimited liquidity, the purchase of trillions of dollars of assets, etc. But what if the current speculative credit bubbles in junk bonds, stocks and other assets don't crash into crisis? What if they deflate slowly, losing value steadily but with the occasional blip up to signal 'the Fed has our back' and all is well? A slow, steady decline is precisely what we can expect in an era of credit exhaustion....As expanding credit no longer generates real-world growth, growth slows. This erosion is so gradual, it doesn't qualify as a crisis, and therefore central banks can't unleash crisis-era fixes. There are no extreme 'fixes' to secular declines in sales, profits, employment, tax revenues and asset prices....The Fed and other central banks are trapped in more ways than one."

Alan Greenspan says economy will fade ‘very dramatically’ because of entitlement burden -CNBC
"Economic growth won’t last as the U.S. labors under the burden of growing entitlement programs and weakness around the world, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC....'I think the real problem is over the long run, we’ve got this significant continued drain coming from entitlements, which are basically draining capital investment dollar for dollar,' he told CNBC's Sara Eisen during a 'Squawk on the Street' interview. 'Without any major change in entitlements, entitlements are going to rise. Why? Because the population is aging. There's no way to reverse that, and the politics of it are awful, as you well know,' Greenspan added....The economy 'is going to begin to fade out because Europe is not doing well and we still have a problem where there's a very substantial fiscal problem associated with entitlements.'"

The Real History of the American Income Tax -Magness/LewRockwell.com
"The 70 percent income tax scheme of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the closely related wealth tax proposal of Sen. Elizabeth Warren would take federal taxation into historically unprecedented territory....To advocates of these policies such as economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, they simply seek to restore an allegedly lost progressive legacy of high income taxation from the early and middle twentieth century....The federal income tax came into being after the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, but its purpose had little to do with 'correcting' income inequality. Rather, the income tax's origins trace to an obscure debate over another issue that's seen a resurgence of attention in recent years, the protective tariff. The story of the 16th Amendment begins in early 1909 after President Taft called upon Congress to revise the existing tariff schedule of the U.S. Tariffs at the time were technically a revenue generator. Before the income tax, import taxes actually provided the largest share of the federal government’s revenue stream....By 1909, battling directly over tariffs meant certain failure. Shortly after Sen. Aldrich brought his tariff bill to the Senate floor in April 1909, Democratic Sen. Joseph Weldon Bailey of Texas decided on a bold alternative strategy. Rather than attack the tariff head-on and ensuring their defeat...He proposed a parallel federal income tax, aiming to partially 'swap' this new source of tax intake for the revenue stream that came from tariff assessments....In order to peel enough votes away from Bailey's competing income tax bill, Aldrich had to offer a consolation prize. In exchange for other senators' abandoning the Bailey plan, he would permit a constitutional amendment to come to the floor in its place, thereby resolving the obstacles to income taxation caused by the 1896 Supreme Court ruling and avoiding the need for another future court challenge on the subject. From these obscure origins in turn-of-the-century tariff politics, the 16th Amendment was born....Income tax history provides many lessons on both the effects and perils of high tax rates. Foremost among these is a tendency to incentivize tax avoidance behavior by the wealthiest earners."

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Gold last traded at $1,290 an ounce. Silver at $14.99 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices traded mixed Friday despite a weaker dollar. Stocks rose after positive corporate news that included strong bank earnings and Disney unveiling a new streaming service.

Gold Has Been Rallying. Now It’s Silver’s Turn. -Barrons
Silver has been a lackluster performer this year, but as investors' appetite for gold improves, silver might share in the yellow metal's prosperity. 'It is difficult to be pessimistic about silver at these levels,' with prices that don't provide an incentive to boost supply, says Maria Smirnova, senior portfolio manager at Toronto-based Sprott Asset Management....'We expect silver to outperform gold,' says Smirnova,. 'Silver has lacked retail investment demand, so a sustained rally in gold will lead to the speculators coming and buying silver.'....The World Silver Survey found that global investment in silver bars and coins grew 20% last year, with bar demand alone up 53%. The study also revealed a third consecutive annual decline in global production of the metal. It fell 2% in 2018, to 855.7 million ounces. 'Silver is cheap, at $15 [an ounce] as it is not encouraging new supply,' says Smirnova."

Read Swiss America's 2019 Silver Report to discover the reasons why silver may present the opportunity of a lifetime.

Modern Monetary Theory flunks the smell test -Baum/Marketwatch
"Perhaps you've heard or read something recently about Modern Monetary Theory...that is sweeping the nation, aided and abetted by progressive members of Congress in their push to guarantee free everything. Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, is based on the notion that deficits don't impose any constraints on countries that borrow in their own currency, such as the U.S. or Japan. MMTers believe that the government can spend money on public priorities, such as keeping everyone employed, without raising revenue; that the only limit on government spending is inflation; and that interest rates should be permanently set at zero....Instead of the Federal Reserve acting to stimulate or curtail economic growth by lowering or raising interest rates, MMT delegates that role to the federal government....MMTers seem to gloss over the issue of how the government's spending initiatives would be financed...MMTers assume that the Fed will accommodate the spending by printing money....Why, oh why would anyone assign the most important economic-management function to the political class? The economy is too important to be left to the politicians."

Prepare for $80 oil this summer, RBC warns -CNBC
"International oil prices will average $75 a barrel in 2019, and consumers may find themselves contending with bouts of $80 crude this summer, RBC Capital Markets said. The global investment bank revised its oil price forecast higher Thursday, pointing to a cocktail of market conditions. Those include steep OPEC supply cuts, robust demand, geopolitical risk and investor positioning that leaves crude futures with plenty of room to run. 'We see price risk asymmetrically skewed to the upside spurred by geopolitically infused rallies that could shoot prices toward or even beyond our high-end, bull-case scenario and test the $80/bbl mark for intermittent periods this summer,' RBC strategists Michael Tran, Helima Croft and Christopher Louney said in a research note....The global balance of supply and demand would have been looser if not for 'the ferocious degree of Chinese buying.' RBC estimates that China has stocked away 310,000 barrels per day since U.S. energy sanctions on Iran started in early November."

Winning the War on Poverty -Brooks/New York Times
"Jesus said the poor will always be among us, but there are a lot of people in Canada testing that proposition. According to recently released data, between 2015 and 2017, Canada reduced its official poverty rate by at least 20 percent. Roughly 825,000 Canadians were lifted out of poverty in those years, giving the country today its lowest poverty rate in history. How did it do it?....About 15 years ago, a disparate group of Canadians realized that a problem as complex as poverty can be addressed only through a multisector comprehensive approach...So they began building citywide and communitywide structures. They started 15 years ago with just six cities, but now they have 72 regional networks covering 344 towns. They begin by gathering, say, 100 people from a single community. A quarter have lived with poverty; the rest are from business, nonprofits and government. They spend a year learning about poverty in their area, talking with the community...First, they don't want better poor; they want fewer poor. That is to say, their focus is not on how do we give poor people food so they don't starve. It is how do we move people out of poverty. Second, they up their ambitions. How do we eradicate poverty altogether? Third, they broaden their vision. What does a vibrant community look like in which everybody's basic needs are met. After a year they come up with a town plan. Each town's poverty is different. Each town's assets are different. So each town's plan is different....The Tamarack Institute, which pioneered a lot of this work, serves as a learning community hub for all the different regional networks. Paul Born is the head of the institute...he doesn't think you can really do social change without a methodology, without creating communitywide collective impact structures. But in many American communities we're mostly scattershot. That's the problem with our distrust and polarization. We often don't build structures across difference. Transformational change rarely gets done."

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Gold last traded at $1,293 an ounce. Silver at $14.86 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices retreated Thursday on profit-taking and a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks fell as investor focused on upcoming bank earning reports and the lack of progress on a U.S.-China trade deal.

Are Russia and China Considering a Move to a Gold Standard? -Economic Policy Journal
"Russia is buying gold. A lot of gold. Within the span of a decade, the country quadrupled its reserves. Gold buying last year exceeded mine supply for the first time, so Russia is about to become a net importer of the metal...Are the Russian authorities preparing for a renewed clash with the United States and are they attempting to reduce their vulnerability to financial sanctions? Or do they fear a homegrown financial crisis? Others suspect something bigger may be at play. The sheer size of the purchases might reveal bolder motives, with Moscow preparing its first salvo in the coming battle for a monetary reset. What makes the recent moves especially significant is the fact they are being replicated in Beijing. According to official data, China raised its bullion reserves to 60.62 million ounces in March...China may actually end the year as the top buyer after Russia. Right now it looks like a close race....Perhaps Russia and China are setting up for an old-fashioned gold standard money. Whatever is going on, it is clear they both like gold - and so should you."

Trump is Right to Blow Up the Fed -The American Conservative
"Last week, President Donald Trump set the economics community aflame by suggesting that he will appoint businessman and presidential aspirant Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board. Even more than political economist Stephen Moore, the critics maintain, Cain represents a threat to the cabal that has controlled the central bank for decades. Why? Because Cain is a successful executive who founded a real business, took risks, and created jobs, things most academic economists will never ever do....Those worried about the independence of the Federal Reserve Board should reconsider. Independence from what exactly? While the Fed is meant to be independent from the executive branch on a day-to-day basis, it is certainly not independent of Congress or the law...Case in point: the dubious notion that we should seek a 2 percent rate of inflation. Anybody who cares to read the 1978 Humphrey Hawkins law will know that the Fed is directed by Congress to seek full employment and then zero inflation. Not 2 percent, but zero....Quantitative easing, to take another example, represents a vast inflation of the financial markets and housing, yet Fed officials actually appear in public and talk about the conundrum presented by 'low inflation.'....Not only are these pro-inflation policies in violation of the letter of the Humphrey Hawkins law, but they have contributed to increased volatility in the financial markets....The basic problem with the Fed today is that it has gradually fashioned a new set of rules for itself, particularly since 2008, on which Congress has never been consulted....Quantitative easing, 'Operation Twist,' and the explicit 2 percent inflation target are just three example of how the Federal Reserve Board is operating outside of its legal authority. It’s high time that President Trump put some new faces at the Fed and started asking questions about what policies it follows and why."

Stock market’s central-bank joy ride is coming to an end -Marketwatch
"Welcome to the calm before the storm....Our call of the day, from Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at broker FXTM, agrees, as he says it’s time for investors to start holding Wall Street itself responsible for further stock market gains. 'The boost provided to equity markets from the shift in central banks seems to be exhausted with the S&P 500 standing 1.7% away from an all-time high. Investors hoping for an interest rate cut may not see one coming any time soon, suggesting that they shouldn’t continue betting on monetary policy to push equities further,' he told clients Thursday. Pundits have been telling us for a while that central banks can’t keep rescuing this stock market after years of easy-money policies, though the Fed managed to do just that at the start of the year. In Wednesday’s minutes from its March meeting, the U.S. central bank showed no indication of any cuts to come, with some members even saying they’d consider a hike, depending on data....'The index has risen 15.2% so far year-to-date, and for the rally to be sustained, investors need assurance that we’re not going to hit an earnings recession. A dovish Fed won’t be enough to keep the party on,' he says. Last word goes to asset manager Guggenheim Investment, which told clients in a recent research note...stocks could get crushed due to lofty valuations and one more thing - lack of central bank firepower."

Overcoming the Democrat Matrix -Ponte/WND
"'The Matrix' depicts a future Earth in which most of humankind has lost a war with their own proudly-created artificial intelligence computers. These machines have imprisoned humans in both pods and an illusion – The Matrix, a virtual-reality dream world controlled by the machines that most people mistake for reality....Would humans prefer to be ruled by computers? Many apparently would, according to a January 2019 poll conducted by the Center for the Governance of Change at Spain’s IE University. More than one in four of the 1,600 Europeans polled said that they would like an artificial intelligence to 'make important decisions about the running of their country.'....Given the dishonest, arrogant, smug and self-serving stupidity of power-hungry human politicians and Eurocrats nowadays, we can understand why many would prefer Artificial Intelligence to no intelligence at all....Like Facebook, Google wants to become The Matrix, controlling an artificial reality where leftist views are amplified while conservative voices are silenced. These Silicon Valley tyrants pretend that objective algorithms impose political correctness fairly - but biased humans write the algorithms, which Google and Facebook refuse to let outsiders analyze. Computer scientists have discovered that artificial intelligence, even when well-intended, conjures its own biases such as racism or partisanship from the tiniest glimmers of conscious or unconscious prejudice in its human programmers. The leftists’ desire to be society’s 'Dominatrix' is the essence of the Democrat Matrix."

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Gold last traded at $1,313 an ounce. Silver at $15.24 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices rose Wednesday on safe-haven buying and a flat dollar. U.S. stocks traded mixed as investors digest company earnings and the Fed's latest meeting outlook.

Gold Critics: Please Explain What Money Is -Tamny/Real Clear Markets
"Owners of Bitcoin have endured a wild ride in recent years. While the coin could fetch $900 when 2017 began, one year later its value briefly moved above $20,000. At present, one Bitcoin exchanges for roughly $5,000....So while Bitcoin fails in the present as a dollar replacement, its volatility instructs. Who among us would comfortably enter into a transaction in which the medium of exchange facilitating the transaction is bouncing around in the most erratic of ways? Gold didn’t emerge as the primary definer of money by coincidence, but instead because its value is so remarkably stable...While roughly 2,000 metric tons of the yellow metal are mined each year, there are already around 200,000 metric tons of gold above ground. Gold is the 'constant' simply because any sales or discoveries of it are highly unlikely to alter its price in material fashion. A dollar, euro, pound, or yuan defined in terms of a gold ounce takes on characteristics of stability that give money its sole purpose as a medium of exchange....The problem is that since the early 1970s, money has floated without definition. While a dollar was exchangeable for 1/35th of an ounce of gold in August of 1971, it now buys roughly 1/1300th of an ounce. A dollar that used to purchase almost ½ of a barrel of oil now purchases 1/60th. Readers get the picture. Since the early ‘70s the dollar has exhibited volatile qualities that bring to mind Bitcoin in modern times....Gold proponents merely want to revive money’s historical purpose as a stable measure of value...Re-linking currencies to gold would imbue them with the stability that would render them most useful as money. Yet critics abound....Your move, gold critics. If stable money is problematic, please explain what money is. Better yet, please explain why money that has erratic, Bitcoin qualities is superior to money that is more of a constant measure of value."

The Insolvent Thinking of Central Bankers -Forbes/Forbes
"Despite decades of disappointing data demonstrating that central banks cannot guide the pace of economic activity in the way a thermostat does the temperature of a room, political and economic leaders still persist in pursuing this fantasy...Had central banks and their political masters sought the goal of stable currencies - and had the U.S. dollar remained fixed to gold - the material well-being of the world would probably be double what it is today. Money is a claim not for something specific, such as a coat, but for anything on sale in the marketplace...In effect, money is a receipt for the value of goods and services we produce and may wish to sell. This is why counterfeiting is illegal...When governments engage in excess money printing, the result is inflation, which is an invidious stealth tax. Central banks and governments do not create resources. They take resources from the rest of us for their own purposes. It's preposterous to think that a new round of futile bank stimulus by the ECB will lead Europe to sustainable growth....The Federal Reserve repeatedly tried to stimulate the U.S. economy during the 1970s by engaging in 'loose money,' and the result was a generation of terrible inflation and stagnation. Again, in the early 2000s, prodded by the Treasury Department, our central bank weakened the dollar, which led to the debacle of 2008–09. After the immediate panic in the fall of 2008 the Federal Reserve engaged in quantitative easing, quintupling its portfolio with Treasury bonds and packages of mortgages. Result: the worst economic recovery from a sharp downturn in American history."

Baby boomers commit the ‘7 deadly sins’ of retirement planning -Marketwatch
"'Boomer Expectations for Retirement,' a new annual study from the Insured Retirement Institute - a trade body for the annuity industry - makes shocking reading. In a nutshell, about 11% have at least $500,000 saved for their retirement. The remainder don’t even have that. Nearly half don’t have any retirement savings at all. None....Here are an astonishing seven 'deadly sins' of retirement planning which have led so many to this dismal situation. Here are seven things not to do when planning for your retirement. 1. Not saving enough - or anything. 2. Draining your retirement savings. 3. Not calculating a retirement savings goal. 4. Underestimating health costs. 5. Ignoring long-term care costs. 6. Mishandling your retirement date. 7. Not setting affairs in order. Possibly the most astonishing revelation in the survey is buried in the footnotes: About two-thirds of boomers have taken no steps to protect themselves if they suffer diminished capacity or dementia. They haven’t spelled out their wishes for their care and end of life."

Have we learned nothing from socialism? -Washington Examiner
"Unfortunately, the dark clouds of socialism are again gathering in many countries, based on the same old promises of a utopian system guaranteeing equality and that governments are the answer to all societal problems. Politicians, who unscrupulously seek the favor of voters for their own benefit, are making the same old 'heaven on earth' promises. Sadly, there are politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and Brussels, supported by ivory tower academics, media pundits, and Hollywood luminaries who believe socialism is viable. It is critical that current generations look back at what socialism produced in the last 70 years. Where is there one successful socialist system? For a time, Scandinavian countries were able to use the production from a successful capitalist system to support a new socialistic system, but that experiment has ended because it proved to be unsustainable. Other so-called socialist systems, such as those in Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela, provide nothing but hunger and misery to their citizens, while their 'visionary' leaders live lives of luxury. Once the richest country in South America, Venezuela under socialism has become one of the poorest. The loss of individual freedoms to unnecessary government intrusion and its control over all aspects of peoples’ lives is at stake...The reality is that no socialist country has been able to sustain its lofty promises. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pointed out, 'the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.'....We must prevent a repeat of history’s failures. If we do not, we will doom our children and grandchildren to a bleak future."

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Gold last traded at $1,308 an ounce. Silver at $15.21 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices rose to 1-week highs amid dollar weakness. U.S. stocks fell for a second straight day Tuesday as investors worried about corporate earnings to be released later this week.

Gold scales fresh high as dollar wilts -Reuters
"Gold rose on Tuesday to its highest in more than a week, supported by a retreating dollar and increased buying by central banks....'Seeing something of a correction in the U.S. dollar, which has been helpful laterally. 'Gold seems to have found a floor,' said Ross Norman, chief executive at Sharps Pixley. Central banks had extended 2018’s record levels of gold buying into this year, he said. 'So every day there may be small and minor countries with modest amounts to buy, but collectively it tells you something.'....New orders for U.S.-made goods fell modestly in February after non-farm payrolls data last week signaled a slowdown in wage growth. 'The decline in wage inflation takes the pressure off the U.S. Federal Reserve and lets it remain dovish and delay rate hikes or maybe switch gears, and that’s supportive for gold,' said Ilya Spivak, senior currency strategist at DailyFX."

The Latest Attack on Capitalism by Democrats -Fox News
Swiss America chairman Craig R. Smith and Jonas Max Ferris of MaxFunds discussing recent calls for capitalist reform by billionaires as well as numerous 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Mr. Smith does not agree with statements this weekend by democratic presidential hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg that corporations are to blame for governmental abuses or that his call for "democratic capitalism" is anything but another name for socialism.

JPMorgan: The Business Cycle No Longer Exists -Zero Hedge
"The amount of mental acrobatics that Wall Street analysts have to perform to justify continued buying of stocks even as bonds scream deflation, the yield curve screams contraction, Europe and China are already one foot in a recession, and earnings are set for their first profit contraction in 3 years, is simply staggering....In order to justify JPMorgan's 3,000 price target in the S&P, in an interview with Barron's, the bank's chief U.S. equity strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas said that while many strategists and investors try to predict the end of the business current cycle, he boldly claimed that it may be time to reconsider its very existence. That's right: with the US poised to enter its longest expansion on record in June (absent a recession in the next month or so, which looks unlikely except in retrospect) and with rising concerns that the economy is now extremely 'late cycle', JPMorgan's solution is to ignore the business cycle entirely, as central banks have now effectively taken over micromanaging the global economy. 'We are all used to using the word 'cycle', Lakos-Bujas told Barron’s. 'The reality is that maybe the word 'cycle' is no longer even relevant, given that we have so much unconventional central-bank involvement.'"

Conversation with a young socialist -Boudreaux/Tribune
"Recently near my office at George Mason University I ran into a student of mine who was showing his friend around campus...The friend - call him 'Jack' — wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the famous image of Che Guevara. Inferring from my economics lectures that I’m no great admirer of Guevara...he asked me why I object to Guevara. I replied simply that 'Guevara was a socialist and I disapprove of socialism.' 'Why?' Jack asked. 'Because socialism has never delivered on its promise to enrich the masses - quite the opposite - and it always turns into tyranny. Just look at the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela. Even what we might call 'socialist-lite' countries do rather poorly.' Jack’s look turned defensive. But before he could respond, I asked what he meant by socialism. Jack admitted that he wasn’t sure...He just wants to live in a society that’s 'more just.' I asked Jack for a specific example of an injustice in America today that would disappear under socialism. 'Inequality!' he answered immediately. Opining that it is 'unjust' for one person to have multiple times more wealth than others, Jack expressed his desire for massive income redistribution. I then asked a follow-up question...'What’s your college grade point average so far?' Jack replied, '3.85.' 'Very impressive!'...I pressed on, asking if he favors grade redistribution: transferring 'A' grades from students with 'unjust' amounts of A’s to students with very few high grades. Being an intelligent young man, Jack saw where I was headed. He replied 'That’s different. I earned my good grades.' To which I replied: 'Yes. So what makes you think that very rich people such as Jeff Bezos and Lady Gaga did not earn their great wealth?'"

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Gold last traded at $1,301 an ounce. Silver at $15.21 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices rose Monday on safe-haven buying and a weaker dollar. U.S. stocks fell - pressured by declines in Boeing and General Electric - as Wall Street looks ahead to the start of the corporate earnings season.

China Is on a Big Gold-Buying Spree -Bloomberg
"China’s on a bullion-buying spree as Asia’s top economy expanded its gold reserves for a fourth straight month, adding to investors’ optimism that central banks from around the world will press on with a drive to build up holdings. Prices advanced back toward $1,300 an ounce...In tonnage terms, last month’s inflow was 11.2 tons, following the addition of 9.95 tons in February, 11.8 tons in January and 9.95 tons in December. China, the world’s top gold producer and consumer, is facing signs of a slowing economy, even as progress is being made in trade negotiations with the U.S. Last year’s bullion buying by emerging-market central banks was the most robust in a long time as countries diversified reserves, Ed Morse, Citigroup Inc.’s global head of commodities research, said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Monday. The bank’s positive on gold, targeting $1,400 by year-end....Governments worldwide added 651.5 tons of bullion in 2018, the second-highest total on record, according to the World Gold Council."

The Most Seductive Four-Letter Word on Earth -Craig R. Smith/SATC
"Promises, promises. Each passing day seems to bring yet another outlandish promise from yet another 2020 presidential candidate - usually laced with that magical, seductive four-letter word: FREE. 'Free Medicare for all,' promises Democratic Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with at least five other democratic presidential hopefuls chiming in with the same promise. 'Free college for all,' promises Socialist Bernie Sanders in his proposed College For All Act, which he claims will provide $47 billion per year to states and eliminate undergraduate tuition. 'Free Social Security for all,' promises Democratic New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, along with her pathway to free citizenship for all immigrants 'in the country now'....Clearly these promises by democratic candidates revolve around the most politically expedient, yet virtually impossible word to deliver on: FREE! The truth is, there is no such thing as a 'free for all' government program, every freebie must be paid for in one of two ways; more taxation or more borrowing. Socialism promises a lot, but delivers little. Ask any Venezuelan. Will previously prudent, capitalist investment strategies now become high-risk socialist gambles? The answers to these questions may well be decided between now and November 2020 as our nation engages in a serious debate over the merits of capitalism vs. socialism. No wonder wise American investors are hedging their future by diversifying their investment strategy to reflect the new risks socialism may bring to our savings." Full story

Wealth inequality is a national emergency -Dalio/CBS News
"One of the most successful investors of all time is somebody you probably have never heard of, despite his net worth of $18 billion. Ray Dalio predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Now he sees a prolonged period of sluggish economic growth and the threat of a confrontation between the U.S. and China. But there's a greater danger Dalio wanted to warn us about....Dalio, who grew up middle class, is alarmed about the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. He points out that over the span of a decade, America's lowest paid workers had just a 14 percent chance of rising to the middle class...I think the American dream is lost.... I want a system in which the best ideas win out. And I would describe it as tough love, and I want to get there through radical truthfulness. In other words, people say what they honestly mean And radical transparency allows people to see things for themselves....Ray Dalio has agreed to donate half his $18 billion fortune to charity to help mend the system that made him rich. With the right and left at each other's throats, Dalio warns time is running short. Capitalism needs to be reformed. It doesn't need to be abandoned. So, like anything, like a car, like anything, a plane, a school system, anything, it needs to be reformed in order to work better."

The Federal Reserve has lost control of the financial markets -Marketwatch
"If you can’t believe your own eyes based on the action in the bond market over the past six months, then allow me to provide you further proof that central banks are not in control anymore....Central banks are not even in control of their own currencies, despite strong belief to the contrary....As the Fed began to increase interest rates, many were certain that it will be a catalyst for the dollar to rally strongly....Yet, most who believe that the Fed controls this market seem to be in disbelief, as the dollar 'should' have been rallying when the Fed was tightening. You see, commonly understood economic theory suggests that reducing the available debt through the quantitative tightening (QT) process 'should have' caused the dollar to rally. But, clearly, that is not what happened....The markets have moved completely opposite the 'manipulation' attempts by central banks. They have proven themselves powerless in the face of market forces. The market will do what the market will do despite the actions of the central banks...But I can assure you that those who maintain these fallacious beliefs will feel significant financial pain when the next crash does occur, and the Fed will be powerless to stop it....The Fed will likely be forced to lower rates in 2019 unless it wants to lose all confidence in the market."

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Gold last traded at $1,295 an ounce. Silver at $15.08 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices traded steady Friday despite a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks rose modestly following a better-than-expected U.S. jobs report which did little to lift investor sentiment.

Trump Picks Gold Standard Advocate Herman Cain For Federal Reserve Board -Kitco
"U.S. President Donald Trump is planning to nominate Herman Cain, former Republican presidential candidate and a long-standing gold bug, for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, according to media reports. 'Trump plans to announce his selection very soon, said three people, who asked not be identified discussing the nomination because it hasn’t been announced,' Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Cain is an ardent supporter of the return to the gold standard. He spoke about it in detail during his 2012 Republican presidential nomination campaign...In a 2012 op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, Cain laid out why he supports the return to the gold standard. 'However imperfect a gold standard may be, it remains the best among all alternatives...Economic growth was stronger, unemployment rates lower, the price level more stable, and recessions less frequent and less severe than under the present system … A gold standard is to the moochers and looters in government what sunlight and garlic are to vampires,' Cain wrote."

A tax so high it might just take your breath away -Crudele/New York Post
"I’m starting to feel that the people who create our tax laws don’t only want to take away some of our money - they want it all. Consider this. New Jersey will soon have something called the rainfall tax...Jersey also allows people to gamble in casinos, at the racetrack, on their phones and wherever lottery tickets are sold, which add up to hidden taxes on people. And, if things go right, the state will also let you do all this while smoking heavily taxed marijuana....Then there’s the 'congestion pricing' tax on cars going into Manhattan, which means that theaters and restaurants will probably be losing carloads of customers who prefer to drive rather than take public transportation....That gets me to my breathtaking, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding tax to end all taxes - a carbon dioxide tax. Not a carbon tax, which is CO but rather a CO2 tax. This is the colorless, odorless gas that people exhale after they’ve taken in oxygen. It’s also the thing that plants need for photosynthesis....Now, I’m not suggesting a big tax on carbon dioxide - just a little, bitty one. Let’s say 1/100 of a cent for every discharge. People take 17,000 to 30,000 breaths a day. For slow breathers, that would only come to $1.70 a day. But if you want to breathe a lot, it’ll cost you $3....If you calculate the amount for light breathers who don’t exercise, this tax would raise $575 million a day, or $209.8 billion a year...Was I right? Isn’t this an idea that takes your breath away?"

Strong Jobs Headline Hides Broad-Based Weakness -Zero Hedge
"Despite the stronger than expected headline jobs print, which allayed fears over the unexpectedly poor February number, there was pervasive weakness everywhere...A closer look behind the headlines in today's jobs report suggests that there may have been some political 'massaging' to goalseek a goldilocks number. First, the Household Survey showed that the number of employed workers actually declined by 201K to 156.748K...The March jump was entirely due to part-time workers, which rose by 60K, while full-time workers dropped by 190K, the biggest monthly decline since August 2018....For U.S. manufacturing workers, the sum of regular and overtime hours was the lowest in 18 months. The shorter workweek trimmed average weekly earnings by 0.2% m/m, leaving year-on-year growth at 1.3%, lowest in 40 months....Today's report confirmed the crushing influence of Amazon as the retail workforce is now the smallest it has been since March 2016, and shrinking still....So where was the Growth? Here are the three key sectors: Professional technical services: +34K, mostly computer systems design (+11.5K), Healthcare: +61K, Food Services: +27K. In other words, Americans are eating themselves into obesity, at which point they need constant medical supervision. The good news: at least the American food epidemic will provide waiter/bartender and medical jobs for a long time to come."

Americans Hate Social Media but Can’t Give It Up -Wall Street Journal
"Americans have a paradoxical attachment to the social-media platforms that have transformed communication, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds, saying they regard services such as Facebook to be divisive and a threat to privacy but continue to use them daily. Across age groups and political ideologies, adults in the survey said they held a negative view of the effects of social media - even though 70% use such services at least once a day. Pollsters said they were surprised by the high and relatively uniform dissatisfaction with social media across demographic and political groups....A solid majority of respondents said social-media services such as Facebook and Twitter do more to divide Americans than bring them together....Concerns over privacy are prevalent across the country. 'That’s why I participate in very few things,' said Douglas Libby, 63, of Madison, Maine. 'I don’t have Facebook, I don’t tweet…I refuse to, just because I don’t want Uncle Sam or Big Brother looking over my shoulder.'"

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Gold last traded at $1,296 an ounce. Silver at $15.12 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices eased slightly on mild profit-taking and a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks traded mixed as investors awaited more news on a potential trade deal between China and the U.S.

Gold: Set to glimmer as investors seek refuge in safe-havens -FXStreet
"Gold is positioned to become a likely prime destination for safety in the second quarter of 2019 amid deteriorating global macroeconomic conditions and rising geopolitical risks. The yellow metal swerved back and forth in Q1...But with the narrative around slowing global growth dampening appetite for risk and the Federal Reserve solidifying its dovish policy U-turn, the outlook for Gold is looking increasingly bright. There is an expectation that the metal’s near-term performance will be heavily influenced by risk sentiment and the Dollar’s valuation. Investor risk sentiment remains strained by ongoing US-China trade developments and Brexit drama, while Dollar bulls appear to be running out of steam....Heightened concerns surrounding the health of the US economy have not only pressured the Dollar but rattled its status as a safe-haven asset. Warning lights are flashing amber over the largest economy in the world entering a possible recession after the US Treasury Yield curve inverted for the first time since 2007."

Can We Trust China to Abide by a Trade Agreement? -Fox Business
Swiss America Chairman Craig R. Smith and Veronique de Rugy of Mercatus Center discussing the latest progress on the U.S.- China trade negotiations, the impact trade tariffs have had so far, and whether or not China's currency manipulation will be addressed in the upcoming agreement.

JPMorgan: "Investors Should Start Building Hedges" -Zero Hedge
"Yesterday after the close, JPMorgan top quant Marko Kolanovic appeared on CNBC to reiterate his chronically bullish case, saying the S&P 500 could hit his year-end price target of 3,000 by the end of May (he had several caveats, noting that a U.S.-China trade deal had to be concluded coupled with Brexit that is 'not too disruptive' or is even pushed back.)....JPMorgan's 'other' quant, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou published a report in which he said that while he maintains a risk-on and pro-cyclical stance (the alternative is risking being dubbed 'fake news' by Kolanovic), we warned that 'investors should start building up hedges against the risk of a repeat of the past two weeks' yield curve inversion episode.' Picking up on what he said two weeks ago, the Greek strategist then notes that 'yield curve inversion has been generally a bad omen for growth and recession risk, though with variable lags to risky asset prices historically.' The JPM strategist also cautions that forward-looking indicators are 'still pointing to declines rather than rises.' Similarly, JPM's Forecast Revision Index for Global GDP growth also keeps declining and is now at levels last seen a year and a half ago."

Brexit: Lurching towards an explosive crisis -Evans-Pritchett/Telegraph
"So we lurch towards a permanent customs union and British infeudation as a non-voting member of the EU legal and regulatory system. This can end only in acrimony and years of bitter conflict with Europe. Sooner or later an explosive issue will arise. It will become clear why a G7 industrial democracy with 65 million people cannot subcontract swaths of policy-making to a foreign power. The constitutional arrangement is not viable. It guarantees an abrogation crisis down the road. For good measure we are now more likely to get a radical-Left government as well, one with anti-globalist reflexes, confiscatory tax and anti-wealth policies, and possibly capital controls....At every stage of Brexit talks it has been the EU’s central objective to shoehorn Britain into the customs union and therefore into legal alignment. This prevents the UK from pursuing alternative economic policies....Brussels offers nothing in return for services - 80pc of the British economy, and 44pc of total exports - where this country has a competitive advantage and a surplus that helps to offset the imbalance....For this mess of potage the UK must accept profound restrictions on self-government....The public is in any case making up its mind. The latest YouGov poll suggests that 44pc of voters already prefer a no-deal Brexit if nothing is agreed by April 12 - against 42pc for Remain. There is no popular tide in favor of accommodation....Let us accept a no-deal, reshuffle the diplomatic pack, and determine what is true and what is not true...Let us put all our efforts into a free trade deal with the US and into membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. At least we will be a self-governing democracy."

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Gold last traded at $1,295 an ounce. Silver at $15.10 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices were steady Wednesday on dollar weakness. U.S. stocks rose amid upcoming trade deal between the U.S. and China though softer payrolls and service economy data kept a lid on optimism.

The Fed Might Still Blunder Into a Recession -Bloomberg
"Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams’s insistence that recession risks are not elevated reminds me that there remains plenty of room for the Fed to make a policy error and let the economy slip into recession....The Fed has shifted from forecasting rate hikes in December to zero increases for 2019. Such a sharp reversal of expectations only happens in an economy decelerating at a pace where a recession can’t be ruled out. This by itself suggests elevated odds of a recession compared with a year ago. The inversion of the Treasury yield curve should also be a red flag. Not, however, for Williams, who says there are 'a lot of reasons to think that it has been a recession predictor for reasons in the past that kind of don’t apply today.' In other words, Williams believes this time is different. Here’s the problem: If the Fed wants to keep this expansion alive, they need to be prepared to lower rates before the data makes a hard turn south....We should be watching for signs that the Fed wants fairly conclusive evidence of economic weakness before cutting rates. By then, though, it may too late to keep the next recession at bay."

Collusion 'hunters' should become the hunted -Ponte/WND
"For more than two years now House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has claimed to have 'more than circumstantial evidence' that President Donald Trump 'colluded' with 'Russians.' Mueller spent 675 days and $25.2 million investigating this claim. His Democrat-donor investigators interviewed 500 witnesses, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants, and indicted 34 people and three companies. But Mueller found zero collusion by President Trump or his people with the Russian government. Yet Adam Schiff continues to accuse the president of collusion. And, as he has from the beginning, Schiff refuses to reveal his evidence....The Dossier was used to smear Trump, then to obtain warrants to spy on Trump associates...This almost certainly means that all information obtained directly or indirectly through use of these warrants and the Dossier, including the Mueller investigation itself, is what legal scholars call 'fruit of the poisoned tree' and must be thrown out. The Dossier was bankrolled not only by Clinton but also by the Democratic National Committee, in which Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler are card-carrying leaders and policymakers. All senior Democrat officeholders were accomplices in Russian collusion by their sinister connection to DNC funding of the Dossier. They illegitimately won House control through this Russian help. Every veteran Democrat in both House and Senate should resign immediately or be voted out because of their foreign collusion."

Investors Brace for Hit to Profits as Costs Rise -Wall Street Journal
"Investors are concerned that rising wages and energy costs will eat into corporate profits, threatening the decadelong bull market in stocks. Economists expect to see a strong month of wage growth when the Labor Department releases the March jobs report Friday. At the same time, energy prices have jumped...U.S. crude-oil futures prices rose 32% in the three months through March, logging their biggest one-quarter percentage gain since 2009. These costs threaten to push down corporate profitability, some investors say, creating another hurdle for the stock market just as a slowdown in the European and Chinese economies is chipping away at U.S. growth....Wages are back on the radar of small businesses. The share of owners who said labor costs were their biggest problem rose to 10% in February, the highest level since 1986."

Sales Of Gold And Silver Should Not Be Taxed -Forbes/Forbes
"When you exchange a $20 bill for two $10 bills, you don't pay sales tax on the transaction, even though, theoretically, you are 'buying' the tens. The notion is utterly preposterous. Yet if you purchase a gold coin that was created by the U.S. Mint and is legally usable for commercial transactions, in some states you have to pay sales tax on that coin. Uncle Sam also says people who buy and sell such coins are liable for capital gains taxes. Of course, you would never buy a silver dollar from the mint for, say, $35 and then use it to pay for a $1 candy bar, but the point is that such coins are legal tender. That's why the White House should follow the recommendation of the American Principles Project, an organization that, among other things, advocates sound money: 'President Trump should direct the U.S. Treasury Department to issue a rule ending taxation on U.S.-minted gold coins.' While we're at it, let's add silver ones as well. It's only a matter of time before Washington undermines the value of the dollar again, and people should be able to hedge themselves against such deprecation. And someday soon, Congress should allow Americans to use alternative currencies for domestic commercial transactions if they so wish."

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Gold last traded at $1,295 an ounce. Silver at $15.06 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices rose Tuesday on bargain-hunting despite a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks fell as a decline in consumer staples and Walgreens' shares dampened sentiment.

Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks? -Brown/TruthDig
"'If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound, Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound, And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands, In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.' - 'Mary Poppins,' 1964 - When 'Mary Poppins' was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks' advice to his son was sound. The banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years. Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually - that’s one-tenth of 1% - and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that...That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve...That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world—parking them, rather than lending them out. The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as 'lender of last resort,' cannot go bankrupt....The Fed, while declaring its 'independence,' is obviously not a neutral arbiter. It is working for the banks....A movement is also afoot to establish state- and city-owned banks that would have the ability to lend for infrastructure and other local needs. Local governments cannot get a risk-free 2.4% rate from the Fed for their demand deposits, but city- or state-owned banks could."

The Fed Was Technically Insolvent Last Year. Why Didn’t Anyone Care? -Grant/Barrons
"In finance today, comfort trumps propriety. As necks are tieless, so are earnings 'adjusted.' As shirts are untucked, so are balance sheets encumbered. In the 21st century way of doing business, freedom of action is the beau ideal. Neither clothing nor rules should constrain it. Has anyone noticed that the Federal Reserve is solvent again? Unlikely, as few realized that it was technically insolvent. At the Sept. 30 reporting date, cumulative unrealized losses in the system’s open market account totaled $66.4 billion, almost twice the $39.1 billion of capital available to absorb that hypothetical loss. These are matters of form, not function, you will hear...Does any of this matter? It used to. A currency once derived its strength from the integrity of the balance sheet of the bank that issued it - the more liquid that institution’s assets, the more plentiful its capital, the more confident the market could be in the ability of the money-holding public to exchange its currency for gold, and vice versa. That was the classical, white-tie gold standard...Succeeding it is the paper-money, or blue-jeans, standard. The paper dollar owes its value to the say-so of the government alone. Since 2008, the blue-jeans standard has given way to a kind of knee-ripped jeans standard - quantitative easing, ultralow interest rates, along with the rest of the bag of worldwide radical monetary-policy tricks. Under the gold standard, people adjusted their affairs to the fixed value of the dollar. Under the paper system, the Fed adjusts the unfixed value of the dollar to the perceived needs of the people. This is a profound transformation, but it long ago lost its shock value....It’s a long way down, once things start slipping. Classically structured central banks start to look like Lehman Brothers, investment bankers like DJs, and cash flows like revenues. As for the quality of the money in which every investor keeps score, it, too, is slipping. Strangely, it’s what modern central bankers say they want."

Henry Hazlitt's Long-Term Economic Thinking -American Spectator
"Henry Hazlitt is considered to be one of the best financial journalists of the 20th century. 'He was a giant in financial journalism,' as Jim Grant pointed out in his 2014 Mises Institute lecture entitled 'Hazlitt, My Hero.' Aside from his journalism, Hazlitt was a prolific writer who summed-up economics in 'one lesson' in 1946. Economics in One Lesson was based, in part, on Frederic Bastiat’s essay, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, and delves into the importance of aspects of the economy that are never spoken about, because they never happen. Hazlitt goes one step further, summing up economics not simply as a series of transactions with hidden implications, but in terms of long-term effects outliving the short-term effects of every economic principle or policy....In his book, The Foundations of Morality, Hazlitt defines morality as 'not the subordination of the ‘individual’ to ‘society,’ but the subordination of immediate objectives to long-term ones.' As in his understanding of economics, he realized that the long-term interests of the individual would serve the long-term interests of society....Hazlitt’s most important lesson on morality: High integrity is required for the sustainability of an enterprise over the long term....'Modern capitalism is not an inevitable or inescapable system, but one that has been chosen by the men and women who live under it. It is a system of freedom.' (Foundations of Morality, 321.)....We need an Army of 'Hazlitts' today: men and women of courage and wisdom, who are unafraid to speak and write the truth."

Gold Quotes Every Precious Metals Investor Should Know -Daily Reckoning
"Gold is the everyman’s way to save. It holds its value over the long term. As such, it’s a hedge against the ever-falling value of the dollar. Within the hallowed pages of the DR, gold is the once and future money. As an homage to the yellow metal, we present you with quotes worth their weight in gold. We hope you enjoy them...'For more than two thousand years gold’s natural qualities made it man’s universal medium of exchange. In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of all paper.' - Hans F. Sennholz...'Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state.' - William F. Rickenbacker...'With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.' - F.A. Hayek... 'The fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same.'- Dr. Franz Pick... 'The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity of money in the hands of politicians.' - Henry Hazlitt... 'If ever there was an area in which to do the exact opposite of that which government and the media urge you to do, that area is the purchasing of gold.' - Robert Ringer... 'We are in a world of irredeemable paper money, which I call I.O.U Nothing money - a state of affairs unprecedented in history.' - John Exeter... 'Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.' - Daniel Webster"

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Gold last traded at $1,294 an ounce. Silver at $15.09 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices were steady Monday on bargain-hunting and a flat dollar. U.S. stocks rose as upbeat manufacturing data out of the U.S. and China eased worries of a possible global economic slowdown.

Global gold demand will rise to four-year high in 2019 -Reuters
"Global demand for gold in 2019 will rise to the highest in four years as higher consumption by jewelers offsets a fall in purchases by central banks, an industry report said on Monday. The world will consume 4,370 tonnes of gold this year, the most since 2015 and up slightly from 4,364 tonnes in 2018, consultancy Metals Focus said....Helping gold prices to rise would be the end of interest rate rises by the U.S. Federal Reserve, along with political and economic uncertainty around the world...Gold is traditionally seen as a safe place to invest during periods of uncertainty."

Is The Stock Market As Confused As You Are About A Recession? -Roberts/Zero Hedge
"Let’s be clear here; no one wants the party to end. So, despite a struggling stock market over the last year, slowing economic growth, and a collapsing yield curve, there are still plenty of articles suggesting you should just ignore it all and remain invested....The Fed tends to stop hiking interest rates when they realize they have caused problems within the economy, like a sudden downward shift in housing, autos, and asset prices. Sound familiar? The problem with all of the mainstream claims that there is 'no recession in sight' is those claims are based on analysis of unrevised and lagging economic data....Take a look at the chart below. The green dots mark the peak of the market PRIOR to the onset of a recession. In 8 of 9 instances the S&P 500 peaked and turned lower prior to the recognition of a recession."

"Being optimistic about the economy and the markets currently is far more entertaining than doom and gloom. However, it is the honest assessment of the data, along with the underlying trends, which are useful in protecting one’s wealth longer-term. The market, and the yield curve, are trying to tell you something very important."

Federal Spending Hits Highest Level Since Bank Bailout and Obama Stimulus -CNS News
"The federal government spent $1,822,712,000,000 in the first five months of fiscal 2019, the most it has spent in the first five months of any fiscal year since 2009, which was the fiscal year that outgoing President George W. Bush signed a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry and incoming President Barack Obama signed a $787-billion law to stimulate an economy then in recession. At the same time that federal spending was hitting this ten-year high, federal tax revenues in the first five months of the fiscal year were hitting a four-year low of $1,278,482,000,000....The last time the Treasury spent more than that in the first five months of a fiscal year was fiscal 2009."

The Two Americas Have Grown Much Fiercer -Noonan/Wall Street Journal
"The past few years the character of our political divisions has changed...People are proud of their bitterness now. Old America used to accept our splits as part of the price of being us - numerous, varied, ornery. Current America, with its moderating institutions (churches) going down and its dividing institutions (the internet) rising, sees our polarization not as something to be healed but a reason for being, something to get up for....I will never forget seeing, on the cover of Time magazine, in October 1972, an essay by Lance Morrow that was ostensibly about the last days of the race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern but really about something bigger....He concluded with the observation that within the two Americas he saw 'one common denominator,' the sophistication of the people, their earnest desire, left, right and center, to find and support the best thing for America. It was written with a respect and warmth toward the American people that is not so common now....Nothing can be moderate or incremental, everything must be sweeping and definitive. It is all so maximalist, and bullying. In that environment people start to think that giving an inch is giving a yard. And so they won’t budge....There are the people who cannot consider God and religion and have to put that energy somewhere. America isn’t making fewer of the lonely, angry and unaffiliated, it’s making more every day. So I am worried...it grieves me."

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