Jim Rickards: Brace for a Great Escape from the Dollar and a Flood of Money into Gold and Bitcoin

Best-selling author Jim Rickards talks about a great escape from the U.S. dollar in 2021 and a massive influx of money that will flow into gold and bitcoin. 

"People are getting in gold and bitcoin because they want to get out of the dollar," the Currency Wars author tells our Daniela Cambone as part of the Outlook series. 

Rickards also talks his new book, The Great New Depression, and how the first quarter of 2021 will be marked with a recession.

- Source, Stansberry Research

James Rickards: The Reasons WHY we are in a New Great Depression, Printing Money Isn't Stimulus

Jim Rickards, investment banker and economist with over thirty years' experience in capital markets, speaks of the coming new great depression, explaining why it's different from a recession and any other crisis we've experienced in our lifetimes.

Jim Rickards & Robert Kiyosaki: The Worst Economic Collapse Is Starting Now

Jim Rickards and Robert Kiyosaki want to warn you: The worst economic collapse is starting now! 

The new great depression is will be much worse and it is starting now. 

How will the economy collapse affect people? 

What is happening with the economy right now? 

Is it inflation or deflation? How to survive? Is it the great depression or just a simple economic crisis? 

Why stocks are high right now? 

Jim Rickards answers to all those questions in this 8 min video on the Robert Kiyosaki podcast.

- Source

Jim Rickards: How to Not Only Preserve Wealth But Make Money in These Challenging Times

Jim Rickards speaking at the Virtual Gold Conference in November 2020 shares what happened in the last great depression and how even in the darkest of times money can still be made.

 In his new book The New Great Depression, James pulls back the curtain to reveal the true risks to our financial system and what savvy investors can do to survive or even prosper during a time of unrivalled turbulence. 

Drawing on historical case studies, monetary theory, and behind-the-scenes access to the halls of power, Rickards shines a clarifying light on the events taking place, so investors understand what's really happening and what they can do about it. 

In this interviews Jim discusses what is the difference between a recession and a depression. 

The recession is over but the depression has only just begun. 

There is growth but it is below trend and the debt is growing exponentially what does that mean and what comes next?

- Source, Gold and Alternative Investments

Peter Schiff And Jim Rickards On Inflation, Dollar And Economic Crash

Jim Rickards: Governments Are Running Out Of Options

Covid Recovery: V, L or W

The US economy fell by 31.4% (annualized) in the second quarter.

But the expectation was that we'd have a V-shaped recovery with a sharp bounce-back in the third quarter, a reopening of closed businesses, rehiring of the unemployed and a rising stock market.

But so far, the economy is not following the script laid out for it by the politicians and experts.

The stock market did rally, but that was mainly because the stock index components are heavily weighted to companies least affected by the pandemic including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet (Google), Facebook and Microsoft.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion of new money and backstopped money markets, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, foreign central banks and other facets of capital markets with direct purchases, guarantees or currency swaps.

Even at that, stocks have been struggling since hitting new highs on September 2.

And yes, there was growth in the third-quarter (the best estimate is that the economy will grow at about a 35% annualized rate, but we won't have official figures until October 29).

The 35% third-quarter recovery was to be expected as Americans got back to work after the lockdown. That 35% rate might sound like the third quarter will basically make up for the second quarter, but it won't.

The 35% gain is applied to the lower level of output resulting from the 31.4% loss. If you take 100 as a starting place, reduce it by 31.4% you get to a new level of 68.6. If you increase that level by 35% you get back to 92.6.

That still leaves you 7.4 percentage points in the hole, not counting the 5% drop in the first quarter. When you apply 7.4% to a $22 trillion economy, that means you still have $1.6 trillion of lost output on an annualized basis even after the 35% third-quarter recovery.

The V-shaped recovery looks more like an "L" with flattish growth beyond the third-quarter. Things will not necessarily get much better from there, and progress is very much in doubt.

The lockdown continues in many places. The virus has not gone away, and the caseload and fatalities continue to grow.

A second wave of layoffs has now begun as companies that were able to hang on thanks to Payroll Protection Plan loans find that the money has run out, and their businesses are still closed. They are now being forced to let go of workers who might have survived the first layoffs in March and April.

So the letter to describe the recovery isn't a "V" or even an "L" but possibly a "W," with another recession right around the corner.

Beyond the second wave of layoffs, there is a persistent problem of the long-term unemployed whose businesses are shut down or dead in the water with no prospect of any return of demand.

This is a combination of factors the economy has not seen since the 1930s. It's worse than a technical recession, it's a depression, and its effects will be felt for years, or even decades, to come.

The US will not regain 2019 output levels until at least 2022, and growth going forward will be even worse than the weakest-ever growth of the 2009–2020 recovery.

The post-2009 recovery produced only 2.2% growth. It was an L-shaped recovery. It was a real recovery, yet the output gap between the former trend and the new trend was never closed.

The US economy suffered over $4 trillion of lost wealth based on the difference between the former strong trend and the new weaker trend.

That lost wealth was a serious problem for the US before the New Great Depression. Now the prospect is for even lower growth than the weak post-2009 recovery.

The US economy would have to grow 10% a year in 2021 and 2022 to return to 2019 levels of output.

First, is 10% growth even a reality? Past history says no.

Since 1943, US annual real growth in GDP has never exceeded 10%. In fact, post-1980 recoveries averaged 3.2% growth. And since 1984, growth has never exceeded 5%.

So 10% is a very optimistic forecast to begin with. Here's the problem:

Using 100 as a yardstick for 2019 output and assuming unrealistic back-to-back years of 10% real growth in 2021 and 2022, one still does not get back to 2019 output levels.

It would take the highest annual real growth in over 40 years, sustained for two consecutive years, to get close to 2019 output levels.

It's far more realistic to assume real growth will be less than 10% per year. That puts the economy well into 2023 before reaching output levels last achieved in 2019.

Another "L"-shaped Recovery

The new recovery, far from the 10% growth discussed in the example above, may only produce 1.8% growth, even worse than the 2.2% growth before the pandemic.

It's another L-shaped recovery, the second in a row. Now the bottom of the L is even closer to a flat line, and the output gap compared with the long-term trend is even greater.

All of this economic devastation was not caused directly by the virus. It was caused by the policy response to the virus, specifically the extreme lockdowns ordered by many state governors.

Was it all worth it? The likely answer is "no."

Many top scientists agree that lockdowns don't work. The virus will spread with or without a lockdown. Some measures make sense such as washing hands, keeping social distance and wearing masks in crowded spaces.

But there's no evidence masks do any good at all when the wearer is alone, outdoors or at a reasonable distance from others.

We could have followed these basic rules and gotten 90% of the benefit of a lockdown at only 10% of the cost.

Those supporting lockdowns have ignored the costs of increased suicides, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and the depression and anxiety that result from lack of social interaction. There was never a good reason to close every bar, restaurant, salon, boutique and public space.

Even the World Health Organization is coming out against lockdowns. Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's special envoy on Covid-19, says:
"We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method...We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we'd rather not do it."
We destroyed the world's greatest economy for no good reason.

- Source, James Rickards

Jim Rickards: Gold and Silver Have Never Looked Better

Jim Rickards lent his insight on what he thinks is the Fed’s need to keep lending rates low for quite a while, stating one thing as “certain”:

"That will destroy traditional fixed-income investments. The institutional investors who rely on those assets the most — pension funds, insurance companies, university endowments — will inevitably turn to gold as an alternative."

If institutional investors will eventually turn to gold, then now is a good time for you to consider whether or not following their lead would be a good idea.

Holding assets such as physical gold and silver can help provide a hedge against uncertain economic conditions.

- Source, WBAP

What Record Coronavirus Cases, Swooning Stocks Mean for After Election Day

The latest COVID-19 spectacle features a new rise in cases that has generated yet another wave of economic uncertainty in the markets.

According to a CNBC piece, stocks have dropped this week due to concerns over a rise in coronavirus cases and how it may affect the economy.

The recent trend of falling stocks actually started a couple weeks ago on October 12.

Further the Dow Jones has been on a roller coaster ride since August. As usual, since this is an election year, mainstream media coverage is driving at least some of the uncertainty.

But some of the uncertainty also seems to come from local governments’ response to the latest rise in cases. According to the same CNBC piece:

The recent uptick in COVID cases has led some countries to reinstate certain social distancing measures. In the U.S., the state of Illinois has ordered Chicago to shut down indoor dining. In Europe, German officials agreed to a four-week partial lockdown, while the French government imposed new nationwide restrictions until Dec. 1.

“I think there’s going to be a call for lockdowns the likes of which we’ve seen in Chicago,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday.

That’s where we are today. But after election day, the coronavirus plus at least three other factors could come together to create even more uncertainty.

Fed, Deficit & Unemployment Add to Potential Post-Election Chaos

Another CNBC article shines a light on the possibility that the Fed might be running out of ammo to help the economy:

Federal Reserve officials have been pressing Congress to provide more fiscal help to the U.S. economy, and with good reason: The central bank is running out of ways it can help.

And Congress delaying CARES-related stimulus talks until after the election might also contribute to the uncertainty. But according to the same article: “Chairman Jerome Powell and other officials rarely miss an opportunity to egg on Congress for more aid.”

That sure seems like politicians could be playing political games rather than looking for solutions to improve the economic wellbeing of the country.

And after December, unless new stimulus is issued, 13.5 million people will lose certain unemployment benefits mandated by the CARES Act.

If consumers don’t even have the money to spend on necessary items, even big retailers like Amazon could take a hit.

But while response to rising coronavirus cases continues, all of this monetary stimulus is brewing another potential post-election catastrophe — a major deficit crisis.

According to Agora Financial, “The official budget deficit totaled $3.1 trillion — ‘more than triple last year’s shortfall of $984 billion and double the previous record of $1.4 trillion in 2009.'”

Jim Rickards thinks that the debt-to-GDP ratio “will soon reach 135%,” and ended his dire outlook with the following potential outcome:

The only ways out of this debt death spiral are default, inflation or confiscatory tax rates that hurt growth even more. In anticipation of these outcomes, citizens spend less and save more. That kills consumption and growth. In short, Congress will not be able to borrow and spend their way out of the new depression.

No matter how you look at it, government stimulus to the coronavirus seems to have created enough economic uncertainty to last well into 2021.

- Source, WBAP

Jim Rickards First Take: Life Under Biden, the Next Four Years

It’s becoming increasingly evident that Joe Biden is likely to win the election.

He’s now taken the lead in Pennsylvania, which Trump needs to win reelection. Biden’s also taken the lead in Georgia, while holding onto leads in Nevada and Arizona. It’s not over yet, but everything would have to break right for Trump if he’s to win.

He’s also issued a number of legal challenges, but they’re unlikely to overturn the results in any state.

Were there instances of voter fraud in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan? It’s highly likely, but it would be very difficult to prove in court that they substantially impacted the outcome.

So it appears right now that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, unless Trump can somehow run the table or succeed in the courts.

An Historic Turning Point Election

This was a historic, turning-point election. Turning-point elections are the most historic because they put the country on a different path: Party Politics in 1800, Populism in 1828, Civil War in 1860, Liberalism in 1932, and Conservatism in 1980.

Every 100 years, America gets a president who shakes the establishment and cleans out the Washington sewers. In the 1800s it was Andrew Jackson. In the 1900s it was Teddy Roosevelt. In the 2000s, it’s Donald Trump.

There is no doubt that Trump and Biden would lead America in almost opposite directions with profound consequences for the future of the country and for future elections.

If Trump had won, we would have gotten more of the same, which is saying a lot. Trump would offer more tax cuts (or at least preserve the tax cuts we’ve received). He’d offer less regulation, a major accomplishment of his first term. Trump would continue the trade war with China and expand it in ways that would move jobs back to the United States (or at least get them out of China into friendlier countries such as Vietnam and India).

He would also curtail Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property and cut off Chinese tech investment in the United States. Trump has also stopped foreign installation of sensitive 5G telecommunications systems from Huawei and ZTE, which are hidden arms of the Chinese military.

Trump built alliances to constrain Chinese expansion efforts. His main breakthrough was the Quad Alliance of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India that effectively surrounds and can interdict China’s sea lanes to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Trump also made great strides toward Middle East peace with the first two Israeli-Arab peace treaties in twenty-five years – one with the UAE and one with Bahrain. Other peace treaties with Israel may have followed. Finally, Trump was imposing crippling sanctions on Iran that would have forced it to negotiate in good faith on its nuclear program or crush its economy in ways that would also impede its efforts at terrorism and nuclear weapons.

With Trump, what you see is what you get: Lower taxes, less regulation, more jobs, no new wars, peace in the Middle East, and peace through strength in confronting Iran and China.

With four more years, Trump could have accomplished his goals and perhaps be ranked among the ten most significant presidents of all time.

The Scenario Under a Biden Administration

Biden is another matter entirely. First of all, Biden is running for president in name only. He has never been that bright. He has accomplished little in his almost fifty years in public service. He is physically frail and clearly suffering acute cognitive decline.

If Joe Biden does win, he’ll be 78 years old when sworn in and 82 years old at the end of his first term. Both marks are the oldest in U.S. history for a president. Some individuals are still sharp in their late 70s. Biden is not one of them.

The result is that Biden will never be president de facto. With Trump out of the picture, Democrats wouldn’t need him anymore. Steps would be taken at some point to remove him from office on the grounds of mental incapacity under the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Nancy Pelosi recently proposed legislation to set up a commission to do just that as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

But while he remains in office, who will be the real president in a Biden administration? There are three camps contending for power:

The first camp is the Biden family led by Joe Biden’s wife Dr. Jill Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden’s brothers Jim Biden and Frank Biden. These are the individuals who have been enriched through association with Joe Biden by using or selling access to Biden’s power to win lucrative investment management roles, consulting engagements, construction contracts and other remunerative pursuits.

The Biden family will want to keep Joe in power (with Jill Biden pulling the strings) in order to keep their shakedown operation intact and avoid scrutiny.

The second camp is led by Kamala Harris and those who control her, including the Obama crew and the Resistance. If Biden is removed under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Harris becomes Acting President. If Biden resigns under threat of removal, Harris becomes the president.

She would be a front for the Obamas and Valerie Jarrett who would operate through a cabinet consisting of Obama family retainers including Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Sally Yates and Eric Holder.

The third camp is led by the extreme left wing of the party including Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (and The Squad), Elizabeth Warren and radical organizations such as BLM. This group is already embedded in the Biden campaign as part of a deal whereby Bernie Sanders agreed to end his primary campaign and endorse Joe Biden in exchange for Biden adopting most of the Sanders platform.

The most likely outcome is that the Obama crew and the Bernie Bros will join forces and run the Biden family off the road. The Bidens will be allowed to keep their Chinese and Russian money and will not face any scrutiny or prosecution in exchange for going away quietly.

The Obama crew will take charge of foreign policy (to preserve Obama’s deals on Iran, the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership), while the Bernie Bros will get domestic policy including much higher taxes, free healthcare, free tuition, forgiveness of student loans, guaranteed basic income, Modern Monetary Theory and the Green New Deal.

A “Blue Wave” Could Have Meant The End of Republican Power in U.S. Politics

One initiative all Democrats can agree on is radical change in U.S. governance to ensure that Republicans never take power again. This agenda means ending the Senate filibuster so the Senate can operate with a simple majority instead of the 60 votes needed today. Democrats would add Puerto Rico and D.C. as states to ensure four new Senate seats that will likely all be Democrats.

Next, Democrats would pack the Supreme Court with six new liberal Justices to wipe out the recently achieved conservative majority after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. Once these changes are in place, Democrats could take further steps to eliminate the Electoral College, which means that California and New York alone will choose all future presidents.

If these governance changes were in place, the Bernie Bros’ agenda could be implemented with ease and without fear of opposition from the courts.

But, it looks like this entire agenda will be stopped in its tracks. To ram it through, Democrats would have had to take control of the Senate. With the White House, Senate and House of Representatives controlled by Democrats, Republicans would be powerless to stop them.

But, it appears that the Republicans are going to retain control of the Senate. If that holds, the Democrats’ more radical legislation will never make it out of the Senate.

One of the reasons the stock market rallied so much after the election is because it expects gridlock in Washington, meaning no punitive taxes or other policies harmful to markets.

So if Biden holds on and Republicans hold onto the Senate, you can expect a lot of bickering and a lot of gridlock. And that might not be the worst thing.

- Source, Jim Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Jim Rickards: Your Election Chaos Portfolio Plan

Once the votes are in, the die will be cast for the next four years, perhaps longer.

Trump or Biden? The difference could not be more clear, and the stakes could not be higher for you and your investments.

Again, this is the most consequential election of our lifetime.

If that sounds like an overstatement, it's not. If Trump wins, he may actually be able to finish his task of cleaning out Deep State actors, reducing regulation and taxes, securing US energy independence, facilitating peace in the Middle East and finally bringing US troops home from multi-decade wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Biden wins, brace yourself for higher taxes, the end of fracking, the Green New Deal, free tuition, free healthcare and free child care (of course, none of this is truly "free," it's just paid for with more debt financed by higher taxes or more money printing).

In a Trump administration, the decoupling from China will continue, and China's ability to spy on the US and steal our best ideas will be curtailed. If Biden wins, it will be back to business as usual with China stealing US jobs, stealing US intellectual property and cheating on their obligations to the World Trade Organization and the IMF.

This list of policy differences goes on, but those differences are not even the most important distinction between Trump or Biden in the White House. The main difference is that the country will set out on two entirely different paths depending on the outcome.

In that sense, this will be the most consequential election since 1860, when a vote for Lincoln pointed toward a possible Civil War because the South had already made its intentions clear if Lincoln won.

Today, the Rebels are not Southern secessionists. They are home-grown neo-Marxists, anarchists, thugs and goon squads who are rioting and looting daily in scores of US cities.

If Trump wins, you can expect to find US cities in flames within 24 hours of the election results. If Biden wins, the neo-Marxists will have a seat at the table in the form of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they insist on full implementation of their agenda.

This includes higher taxes, higher spending, more regulation and permanent changes to US governance in the form of an end to the Electoral College, a packed Supreme Court (by expanding the number of justices), single-party rule in the Senate (by ending the filibuster) and more.

Think that's bad? It gets worse. The two paths involving riots or left-wing governance depend on someone winning. What if there is no winner?

Millions of votes are being cast in the form of mail-in ballots. State counting systems have broken down lately when they had to count a few hundred thousand ballots in close races. What happens when the ballots are in the tens of millions?

Secretaries of State in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will be ordered by Democratic governors not to certify the results. Armies of lawyers will descend on courthouses demanding extending voting hours, impoundment of mail-in ballots and

counting of all ballots regardless of postmarks, timely mailing, timely receipt and other formalities. Other lawyers will push back.

Neither side will concede. The outcome could be uncertain for weeks. The riots will continue in the meantime.

And if Biden does win, it's entirely possible he won't be President for more than a few months. His cognitive decline, probably the result of Alzheimer's Disease or some other form of dementia, is already apparent to observers. I realize he performed well during his debate with Trump, but Alzheimer's does not progress in a straight line.

The type of cognitive decline Biden is suffering is not a continuous downhill slide. It's what's called a "step function." That means the mental ability drops suddenly, then stabilizes or plateaus for a while, then drops again. It never improves, but it can appear stable for a time until the next sudden drop comes.

It will be relatively simple to remove Biden from office under the 25th Amendment and install Kamala Harris as Acting President. This could be followed by a formal resignation by Biden, at which point Harris would become President.

This was hinted at on September 12 when Kamala Harris made reference to a coming "Harris Administration" and again on September 15 when Joe Biden referred to the "Harris-Biden administration" at a campaign event.

These are not mere slips of the tongue, but rather a preview of the fact that a vote for Biden is really a vote for President Harris. Kamala Harris does not have the cognitive challenges of Joe Biden, but she is a malleable blank slate who will be easily handled by the radicals whom she supports.

Compared to disputed election results and the removal of Joe Biden (if he wins) coming so soon after the removal of Donald Trump (through mail-in ballot fraud), maybe a 39.6% capital gains tax doesn't seem so bad. Actually, it should. It will tank the stock market as savvy investors get out ahead of the 2021 tax law change by selling stocks in late 2020.

All of these issues – taxes, regulation, foreign affairs, social unrest – are now playing out against the backdrop of the process to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. That vacancy emerged when Justice Ginsburg passed away on the evening of September 18.

Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a judicial conservative who once clerked for Antonin Scalia. Those who oppose her fear she's a threat to abortion rights and other causes supported by progressives.

A Supreme Court Justice confirmation fight is an intense political battle at the best of times. This has been true since the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. The Senate rejected the Bork nomination, but that confirmation process set the standard for personal attacks and the extreme political invective that has been with us ever since.

This personal attack process was on full display in the confirmation hearing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the summer and fall of 2018. Many members of the Senate Judiciary

Committee who engaged in the Kavanaugh attacks, including Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Presidential candidates Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, are still on that committee.

There is every reason to expect that this new confirmation process will be just as bitter and divisive as those for Bork and Kavanaugh. In the broader context, this is just another wild card in what has already been an unpredictable and contentious electoral year.

Uncertainty will reign until Election Day. Investors understand this. What is not as well understood is that uncertainty will continue to reign after Election Day.

If Trump wins, the Resistance will not take it well. They will challenge the outcome in court, deny the legitimacy of a Trump victory, and extreme elements in the Resistance will burn American cities.

If Biden wins, his behind-the-scenes handlers will come to the fore with demands for high taxes, more regulation, the Green New Deal and other elements of the Socialist and globalist agendas.

Markets are not fully priced for any of this. They're not priced for anti-Trump chaos, and they're not priced for the Bernie Bros' hidden agenda that will be foisted on Biden.

Although markets may not be prepared, you should be. A reduced exposure to equities, an increased allocation to Treasury notes and cash, and a 10% portfolio allocation to gold will offer true diversification, high returns and be robust to the turmoil that is in store.

- Source, James Rickards

Jim Rickards on the US Election: It’s Much Closer than You Think and Why the Polls Are Wrong

Shae Russell and Jim Rickards discuss who will win the US election and what impact it can have on stock markets. 

Jim believes that the election is ‘closer than you think’ and explains why the polls could be wrong like they were in 2016. 

Jim predicts that Trump is likely to win the US presidential election this time around too.

- Source, The Daily Reckoning

Jim Rickards Says Brace Yourself for the New Great Depression, Strong Hands Watching Gold

In a liquidity crisis, everybody sells everything, explains best-selling Currency Wars author Jim Rickards. "But if you're losing money in stocks, people sell gold to make the margin calls," he says on why we may see dips in the gold price. 

"So, gold does go down, but strong hands are watching and they come in and buy." Rickards is forecasting a major bullish forecast for gold. With prices closer to $15,000 an ounce, the yellow metal is currently trading around $1,900 an ounce. 

The author also speaks of the coming new great depression, which he says has risks of an increase in urban riots. "Everything that is happening now I forecasted," says Rickards.

- Source, Stansberry Research

James Rickards: Investing During A Time Of Mass Delusion & Epic Distortions

James Rickards attempts to navigate the upside down world that we now find ourselves living in, where the Mainstream Media is nothing more than glorified tabloids and everything is not as it sees.

This is a time of mass delusion and epic distortions, when the truth is stretched to its breaking point, in an effort to fit ones agenda.

How is one to invest in a time period such as this? James Rickards explains this, plus much more.

Jim Rickards on How the Pandemic Has Sparked a Multi Generational Shift

In this interview with Jim Rickards during the 2020 Sprott conference, Jim talks about how the pandemic has created a multi-generational shift in the economy. 

He believes the pandemic is not going away and talks about the impacts on the economy, the technical recession, and in fact he thinks we are in a depression which is worse than a recession.

- Source, The Daily Reckoning Australia

James Rickards: The Previous Gold Standard Explained

Some people who should know better who have their own reasons for disparaging the role of gold, and other people who don’t know better they’ve just heard this repeated so many times that they believe it to be true without ever really studying it.

Now the thing that did contribute to the Great Depression was the fact that the UK, prior to 1914 there had been a very successful gold standard from a global standard and a national gold standard from about 1870 to 1914 with different countries joining along the way. That was disrupted by World War I. After World War I in the mid-1920s, countries were looking for a way to go back to the gold standard, but they made a couple of mistakes.

Instead of going with a pure gold standard, they went with what was called the gold exchange standard. They said international standards can be gold, but it can also be dollars, pounds sterling, or French francs at the time. This obviously was a mix or a hybrid system in which gold played a role, but so did the currencies, which meant that the system as a whole is subjected to blunders and abuses by discretionary monetary policies.

So when I look at the Great Depression, the causes of the Great Depression, it had very little to do with gold and everything to do with really poor discretionary monetary policy, particularly by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which eased in the late ’20s when it should’ve tightened, and then tightened in 1929 and 1930 when it should’ve eased. So kind of like the Fed today getting everything wrong along the way.

Now, going specifically to the point, there were two mistakes. One was in 1925 when the UK went back to gold, they went back at the wrong price. I say they, this was Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, picked the pre-1914 price, which was $20 an ounce. Obviously, they expressed it in pounds sterling, but the dollar equivalent was about $20 an ounce. The problem was the UK had doubled the money supply to fight World War I. They printed money to fight World War I, that’s what countries do. Actually, it was John Maynard Keynes who advised Churchill, Keynes did not really favour gold standard, but he said if you’re going to go to a gold standard, you have to get the price right. Keynes favored a much higher price. He said, “If you go back to the gold standard at the old lower price, you’re going to have to reduce the money supply to maintain the parody.” That is contractionary and depressionary, and that blunder did contribute to the Great Depression.

Gold didn’t cause the Great Depression, but getting the price of gold wrong did contribute to the Great Depression. That wasn’t a problem with gold. That was a problem with the politically determined price, and again, what is really discretionary monetary policy rather than gold per say. And Keynes was right, you should’ve had a much higher price. A gold price of $40 an ounce instead of $20 an ounce in 1925 might have avoided the Great Depression completely. We’ll never know, but that could make a very plausible case for that.

Now as far as the gold standard inhibiting or hindering the ability of the Federal Reserve to fight the Great Depression, that is completely false, and the source on that is none other than Ben Bernanke. And I spoke to Ben Bernanke about this personally. Before he became chairman of the Fed or even the Board of Governors for the Fed, he made his academic reputation mostly at Princeton University doing research on the Great Depression, following in the footsteps of Milton Freedman and Anna Schwartz and some others who were the great pioneers of studying the Depression through the lens of monetary economics.

Bernanke wrote a book on it, which I read when I was researching my book The Death of Money and the book before that Currency Wars. And what he revealed is at the time, the law allowed the money supply to be two-and-a-half times the amount of gold. So take the amount of gold that the Fed had, priced in dollars, what was that, multiply the ounces by $20 an ounce, take that number, multiply is by 2.5, and that was the upper limit on the money supply. So the money supply could not legally be greater than that.

Well in fact, the money supply during the Great Depression was never more than one times the gold. In other words, it had 100% ratio. It could’ve been 250%, which means that gold was never a constraint on the money supply. The Fed could have doubled the money supply in the early 1930s without having to worry about gold. So you can’t blame gold for the continuation of the Great Depression. You have to blame the money supply.

In fact, the real problem was that banks didn’t want to lend, and people didn’t want to borrow. This, by the way, is the same problem we have today. Banks don’t want to lend, people don’t want to borrow. Velocity’s increasing, and you can’t seem to get the inflation the Fed wants, and you can’t seem to get the economy moving. That was exactly the situation in 1930. And that’s what Bernanke showed in his book.

So I met him recently, and had a very nice conversation with him. I said, “Mr. Chairman, I’ve read your book to say that gold was not a constraint on the money supply during the Great Depression. Do I understand that correctly?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes, you do.” So in other words, here’s Bernanke confirming to me face-to-face that gold did not constrain the money supply of the United States during the Great Depression. So anyone who says that is true has their facts wrong. Anyone who says that gold caused the Great Depression has his facts wrong because as I say, it was political decisions and discretionary monetary policy, not gold that caused the Great Depression.Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
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- Source, International Finance

Jim Rickards: This is Why Gold is Going to Hit $5000 Soon

Jim Rickards discusses recent events, the reckless actions of the Federal Reserve and why gold bullion is destined to move higher.

Are targets such as $5,000 per oz realistic, or is Jim Rickards just being hyperbolic? He soundly believes in his estimates and explains exactly how he got to these numbers.

Reckless money printing is not going to stop anytime soon and in fact is speeding up as you read this.

A global reckoning is coming.

- Video Source

James Rickards Reveals All About Secret Societies and Conspiracies

James Rickards: How I View Gold, How I View Money

I actually view it as money, and I’ll expand on that a little bit.

Although, how I view it is one thing, but how the world views it is another. In other words, you want to take into account different ways people look at gold and think about gold.

If you’re going to own it or going to store wealth in it, again I think it’s a pure form of money, but not everyone agrees with that. It’s important to understand how other people think about it.

On that note, I call gold a chameleon. Sometimes gold trades like a commodity. Sometimes it trades like an investment, and sometimes it trades like money. It’s like a chameleon. You put a chameleon on a green leaf, it turns green. You put it on a tree trunk, it turns brown. It adapts to its circumstances. Gold is often thought of as a commodity. It does trade on commodity exchanges, I understand that, and it tends to be included in commodity industries. The common understanding is gold is a commodity in commodity trade.

I really don’t think that’s correct. The reason is that the definition of a commodity, it’s a generic substance, it could be agricultural or a mineral or come from various sources, but it’s sort of a generic undifferentiated substance that’s input into something else. Copper is a commodity, we use it for pipes. Lumber is a commodity, we use it for construction. Iron ore is a commodity, we use it for making steel. Gold actually isn’t good for anything except money.

Gold is probably the best form of money, but it’s not really good for anything else. People don’t run around the world and dig up gold because they want to coat space helmets on astronauts or make ultra-thin wires. Gold is used for that, but that’s a very small portion of the application. People point to jewelry and say, “There’s a different application,” but I think of jewelry as wearable wealth. No better example than an Indian bride for example where they might have four or five pounds of 18 karat gold necklaces around their necks, and it’s very stunning and maybe attractive, but they consider it to be their wealth. So it’s really just a wearable form of wealth.

So I don’t really differentiate between jewelry and bullion in terms of the monetary gold. So I don’t think of gold as a commodity for that reason. It’s not really input into any process or industrial process, but nevertheless we have to understand that it does sometimes trade like a commodity.

As far as being an investment is concerned, that’s the most common usage. People say, “Well, I’m investing in gold,” or, “I’m putting part of my investment toward bullion gold.” Again, I don’t really think of gold as an investment. I understand that it’s priced in dollars, and the dollar value can go up, and that will give you some return, but to me that’s more a function of the dollar than it is a function of gold. In other words, if the dollar gets weaker, sure the dollar price of gold is going to go up or as has happened recently, if the dollar gets stronger, then the dollar price of gold may go down.

So if you’re privileging the dollar as the measure of all things, then it looks like gold is going up and down, but the way I think of it is I think of gold by weight. An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. If I have an ounce of gold today, and I put it in a drawer, and I come back a year from now and take it out, I still have an ounce of gold. In other words it didn’t go up or down. The dollar price may have changed, but to me that’s the function of the dollar, not a function of gold. I don’t really think of it as an investment.

That goes to one of the point I make in my book. One of the criticisms of gold, and I don’t think it is a criticism, it’s just a fact is that gold has no yield. You hear it from Warren Buffet, you hear it from others, and that’s true, but I kind of shrug and say, “Well yeah, but gold is not supposed to have a yield because it’s money.” Just reach into your wallet or your purse and pull out a dollar bill and hold it up in front of you, and ask yourself what’s the yield? Well there is no yield. The dollar bill doesn’t have any yield. It’s just a dollar bill, the way a gold coin is a gold coin.

If you want yield, you have to take some risks. You can put the money, put that dollar in the bank, and the bank might pay you a quarter of 1% or something, not very much, but now it’s not money anymore. People think of their money in a bank deposit as money, but it really isn’t money. It’s an unsecured liability of an occasionally insolvent financial institution. The risk may be low, I’m not saying the risk is high or you ought to pull all your money out of the bank, but I am saying that there’s some risk, and that’s why you get a return. Of course, you can take more risk in the stock market or the bonds market and get higher returns. The point is, to get a return you have to take risk. Gold doesn’t have any risk. It’s just gold, and it doesn’t have any return. It’s not supposed to. I don’t really think of it as an investment.

So that brings me to the third part of the chameleon characteristic, which is money. And that’s what gold is. Gold is money. It has no risk. It has no yield. It is the store of wealth. Classic definition, medium of exchange, unit of account. And that’s important.

So the way I think of gold right now, I think of it as money. I think it’s in competition with the dollar, the euro, the yen, the Swiss franc, and other forms of money, bitcoin for that matter, they’re all forms of money. And they’re competing for the subjective preference of people who need money and want to store wealth and I think gold’s doing very well in that context.Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
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- Source, International Finance

James Rickards: The U.S. Might Seek to Confiscate China's Dollar Reserves

James Rickards, famous CIA-affiliated author, recently released on Twitter that the United States might seek to confiscate or restrict China’s ability to use their $1.2 Trillion of Dollar reserves, in retaliation for intentionally spreading the virus worldwide. 

The economic damage to the American economy, and the loss of American lives has been blamed in part on a lack of transparency from China about the true nature and origins of the virus. 

Others do not share the same confidence that it is clearly known where the virus came from, nor are they certain that it was shared with the intent to cause harm. 

Half of the American political apparatus seems to be blaming the current administration, while the other half lays the blame primarily upon China. 

In any event, this concern about losing access to these reserves might be contributing to China’s desire to use them to make purchases sooner rather than later.

While that may be a concern unique to China, there are other concerns that should weigh heavily on us all. 

With the Federal Reserve’s stated goal of increasing inflation and letting it run for an extended period, we don’t need theories from a famous author to recognize the risks associated with holding Dollars. 

The Chinese don’t either. We should consider following their lead when it comes to what to do with our own Dollar reserves. 

For those who feel it is inappropriate for Americans to take cues from a foreign power about what to do with their own currency, we need look no further than large American banks and investment managers. 

Major players such as Warren Buffet, Ray Dalio, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Bank of America, Ohio Pension Fund, and many others have been allocating Billions to precious metals bullion and securities.Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
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- Source, US Gold Bureau

The Luckiest Country on Earth

GOD looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America, said Germany’s Iron Chancellor — Otto von Bismarck.

Of these, we conclude God looks most jealously after the United States of America.

America absorbs more divine favor than the most foolish fool… or the drunkest drunkard.

In quiet moments we often marvel. We marvel, that is, that we are so fortunate as to reside in this Eden, this El Dorado, this Elysium.

Consider:

God filled two oceans — one Atlantic, one Pacific — to moat it off from marauders.

Against its land borders north and south He dropped two bantamweights.

He blessed it with rich, fertile soil. Vast tracts of bountiful land. An extended capillary system of internal waterways. Natural harbors from which to send things out… and to take things in.

What other nation has enjoyed such natural, God-granted riches?

God’s Less Favored Nations
England or Japan may have its points. Yet each is an island nation lacking critical resources.

Germany is squeezed between the French and Russian vice.

Its flat geography and absence of natural barriers render it eternally vulnerable to invasion from either direction.

France — meantime — is eternally vulnerable to Germany.

Russia too is massively vulnerable to uninvited visitors… as history documents richly. And despite its immense bulk it is boxed in by winter ice that chokes its coasts.

What of China?

The Celestial Kingdom

China believes it is the Celestial Kingdom, uniquely favored by God. Yet we are not half-convinced it is true.

Its Great Wall was required to be great for a reason.

And off its coast lurks a chain of fortresses that bottle it in — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines — all of which ally with God’s chosen nation.

But let us extend our investigation beneath the equator. How about Brazil?

“Brazil is the country of the future,” runs the old saw — and “always will be.”

Large hunks of it are lawless jungle. It lacks arable land. Its primary cities are isolated dots.

The list of second- and third-raters runs on.

No… God has sat America on Earth’s throne.

Has He given it a Baltimore… and a Cleveland?

Has He peopled its capital with rogues, rascals, cadges, chiselers, grifters and swindlers?

Well friends, maybe He has. Yet even God Almighty must be granted space for error.

He has nonetheless showered America with such immense natural extravagance… only Americans themselves could make a botch of the place.

And it appears they are determined to do precisely that…

Was It Worth It?

The free and the brave have frozen their economy to dodge a bug that murders under 1% of its victims.

This mass incarceration has no parallel in all of history.

The damage is heavy. Perhaps mighty.

Second-quarter GDP came collapsing down at a negative 32.9% annualized rate. Millions and millions were heaved from their jobs.

No quarter of the Great Depression could even approach it.

2019 Economic Levels in 2025

Our own Jim Rickards, meantime, projects the United States economy will not attain 2019 levels until 2025.


The reality is, the economy’s in very bad shape. The idea that we’re going to bounce back out of this with all this pent up demand is nonsense. The data is already indicating we’re in a recovery, yes. But if you fall into a 50 foot hole and climb 10 feet up, you’re still 40 feet in the hole.

We’re not going to see 2019 levels of output until 2023 at the earliest. We’re not going to see 2019 low levels of unemployment until probably 2025. We’re not getting back there for three or four or maybe five years. So we’re looking at a long, slow recovery.

And that’s if things don’t get worse from here. But they could, especially if we get a deadly second wave (of the coronavirus).

We’ve climbed 10 feet out of the hole. Unfortunately, we could find ourselves right back at the bottom before too long.

Are Americans willing to sink 10 feet down again?

- Source, The Daily Reckoning

The New Red Peril Represents a Golden Opportunity

Contrary to much politically motivated, media-fueled paranoia about Russia, the former Soviet Union – with a shrinking population and a GDP smaller than the market capitalization of Apple – poses no serious threat to U.S. economic preeminence.

China, by contrast, is a rising superpower that could in time topple the U.S. dollar’s world reserve status. That could also signal the end of U.S. geopolitical hegemony.

The Chinese Communist Party is playing a long game. Even as conflicts with the administration of President Donald Trump escalate on multiple fronts, Chinese officials are looking ahead to a post-Trump world order.

President Trump said in a Fox News interview Sunday, “If Biden is elected, China will own our country.”

Trumpian hyperbole? Perhaps.

But China evidently does have an actual stake in the Biden campaign.

According to a recent report from the U.S. government’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, “We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win reelection. China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China.”

In other words, China may be actively trying to sway the election for Biden.

It’s not difficult to imagine why Beijing would like to see Trump defeated. No modern U.S. President has been more openly critical of the regime or engaged in more direct actions to thwart some of its economic objectives.

Hopes of an amicable resolution to the trade war were dashed after the Wuhan coronavirus spread to American cities.

Since then, the Trump administration has moved to ban the Chinese-controlled smartphone app TikTok and de-list Chinese companies from stock exchanges. The U.S. closed China’s consulate in Houston, and China retaliated by kicking out some U.S. diplomats and journalists.

So far, however, China has continued to retain more than $1 trillion in holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. (At the same time, though, China has been stockpiling huge amounts of gold.)

The world’s second largest economy still relies heavily on U.S. dollars for banking and trade with other countries. That dollar reliance will change in the years ahead if China gets its way.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission recently noted in a Communist Party publication, "In an international monetary system dominated by the U.S. dollar, the unprecedented, unlimited quantitative easing policy of the U.S. actually consumes the creditworthiness of the dollar and erodes the foundation of global financial stability.”

It added, "The world may once again be pushed to the verge of a global financial crisis."

Chinese authorities need only sit back and wait for the U.S. dollar to steadily lose credibility on the world stage. The U.S. government is running a record-high budget deficit on top of what was already the world’s biggest debt load.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is running Quantitative Easing on full blast with a vow to increase the rate of inflation (i.e., currency depreciation).

Neither Trump nor Biden offer any plausible solution to America’s financial predicament. Americans face a future of more borrowing and more printing… until America’s pain-free ability to do so expires along with the Federal Reserve Note’s privileged status.

Famed economist Nouriel Roubini wrote in a column Monday, “If the coming decades bring what many have already called the ‘Chinese century, the dollar may well fade as the yuan (also known as the renminbi) rises. Weaponization of the dollar via trade, financial, and technology sanctions could hasten the transition.”

Beijing is developing a digital yuan that could help accelerate international use. It’s unlikely, however, that a global “yuan standard” will emerge immediately to replace King dollar.

China has credibility issues of its own, including human rights abuses, opaque capital markets, and unreliable economic data.

The ultimate alternative to a fiat currency standard for both individuals and nations is gold.

While neither China nor the United States is likely to declare a return to a gold standard, global markets could effectively impose one by revaluing the price of gold to reflect what would be required to back currencies.

For example, geopolitical and economic forecaster Jim Rickards sees gold rising in the years ahead to reflect a price, in terms of Federal Reserve Notes, that would be necessary to back all the currency in circulation. Based on current money supply figures, he sees gold needing to go to at least $15,000/oz.

Rickards’ $15,000/oz target may seem at first glance to be outlandish. But is it any more outlandish than the Dow Jones Industrials trading at over 28,000 right now? Or Apple shares commanding a $2 trillion market value? Or total stock market capitalization being 170% of GDP?

An excessively inflated stock market is but a symptom of underlying monetary excesses. When the party on Wall Street finally comes to an end, investors may come to realize that in this environment cash isn’t king – whether in the form of dollars or yuan.

Gold and silver are.

- Source, FX Street

Rickards: Central Banks Driving the Price of Gold

James Rickards needs little introduction. His latest piece for The Daily Reckoning is an excellent ‘bigger picture’ look at gold and particularly after last night’s Fed announcement which was almost exactly what we reported yesterday.

- Source

Jim Rickards Discusses COVID-19, the Resulting Economic Depression and US Elections

In this edition of the Insider, group publisher James Woodburn talks to financial expert and economist Jim Rickards about his thoughts on COVID-19 and the long-term impact on the global economy. 

They go into the details of how COVID-19 spread, the government response of lockdown as well as what the central bank monetary policy and growing money supply means for the future of the global economy. 

Jim also provides his thoughts on US-China relations and what's in store. In his words "The Recession May Be Over, But the Depression has Years to Run..."

- Source, The Daily Reckoning Australia

Jim Rickards: Americans Are Getting Out of Dodge

I want to discuss some of the permanent changes that the national economy is going through. It has to do with what you might call the Great American Exodus. There’s a massive migration out of the big cities. Millions of Americans are fleeing the cities for the suburbs or the country from coast to coast.

There’s hard data to support that claim.

For example, let’s say you want to rent a U-Haul trailer from New York City to the Catskill Mountains, which are not that far away. Or you want to rent a U-Haul trailer from Los Angeles to, maybe Sedona, Arizona.

It’ll cost you much, much more than if you were going the other way. If you went from Sedona to LA, or the Catskills to New York, the price is only about one quarter as much. In other words, you have to pay a 400% premium to get the trailer going out of town, but U-Haul will practically pay you to bring it back in.

And there are shortages. If you’re moving out of your apartment to a house or another apartment outside of the city, try getting movers. I’ve done this recently myself, and know others who have. It was very hard to book moving companies or something as simple as a U-Haul trailer.

So the mass exodus out of cities is a real phenomenon, backed by solid evidence.

This is a shift we probably haven’t seen since the 1930s, when people left the Dust Bowl and moved out to California, looking for jobs in the agricultural industry. That was a mass migration. We’re seeing another one now, except this one’s going in the opposite direction.

And that’s a big problem for the economy because cities are centers of economic activity that contribute a lot to GDP. There are three primary reasons for the exodus.

The first is simple demographics. People talk about millennials as if they’re kids just out of college. But, the oldest millennial is turning 40 in two years. So they’re not kids anymore. They’re often adults with jobs and families, and a lot of obligations.

Many of them have been living in cities since cities are generally interesting places to live and offer the greatest opportunity. But there’s a natural tendency for people in that demographic, who might have enjoyed the city in their twenties and thirties, to say it’s time to move out to the suburbs when they reach a certain age.

And that’s happening now. So that’s the first factor contributing to the mass migration from cities. The others are far more serious…

The most obvious is the pandemic. Look at New York City. Clearly it was ground zero for the pandemic in the United States. Something like one-third of all U.S. coronavirus fatalities took place in New York City or its immediate surroundings. That’s a highly compressed area.

And people realize that the density of the population, living on top of each other in crowded apartment buildings and offices, taking crowded public transportation, going to concerts and Broadway shows, etc., is like living in a Petri dish.

It’s obviously a lot easier to catch a virus in a crowded subway car than on a country road. So people are saying, “Give me space, and I think my health prospects are a lot better,” and that’s actually correct.

The third factor driving Americans out of cities is the riots.

Do not understate the damage of these riots. I don’t want to veer off into the social aspects or politics of the riots. Everyone’s got their own opinions. And peaceful protest is our constitutional right, which should be supported. If you’re peaceful, you have every right to protest against injustice.

But no one has a right to loot stores and start fires. We shouldn’t have to debate that.

But that’s what happened in large cities throughout America. Minneapolis obviously saw a lot of violence. But New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, Denver, Portland, Oregon and many other cities suffered similar damage.

And with many calls to defund the police, people who might enjoy city life can see the writing on the wall. Crime rates are already spiking in New York, for example, which will probably get worse. And the NYPD has seen a 400% increase in retirement applications since the riots.

Cities have always been a trade-off. You had high taxes, lots of city noise, crowded conditions and certain levels of crime. But many put up with all those costs and annoyances in exchange for a very lively cultural and intellectual environment, more interesting jobs, interesting people, museums, great restaurants, movies, live shows, Broadway in the case of New York, etc.

But now the trade-offs don’t seem worth it for many. The cultural aspects are gone. Museums are closed. Restaurants are closed. Movie theaters are closed, etc. And crime is going up. So you’ve got all the costs and then some, but none of the benefits. And that’s why people are leaving.

So when you combine demographics, a pandemic that makes city living unattractive and riots, you get a major generational shift that we haven’t seen since the 1930s.

Now, you cannot underestimate the economic impact of this. The cities are where most 80% or more of the population, economic output, job creation, and R&D are centered. And who’s leaving the cities?

It’s the people who can have the option to leave. It’s the talent. It’s the money. It’s the energy. It’s the people that you most want in your cities who have the ability to leave.

And of course, now we have this whole work from home model. So a lot of corporations are saying, we don’t need 10 floors on 53rd and Park Avenue. We can do two floors of shared conference facilities, with a shared receptionist. So the commercial real estate market faces some strong headwinds.

The bottom line is, we’re looking at a substantial drag on economic recovery based on this migration out of the cities. It’s a big story that’s not getting nearly enough coverage.

And this is going to continue. This is something that only happens every two or three generations. You probably have to go back to the baby boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s for something comparable.

But there’s one sector of the economy that is doing well. That’s residential housing because it’s getting hard to find a house in many places. People are even bidding on houses without ever having seen the property.

If you’re looking to invest, you might want to look at suburban real estate and housing.

- Source, Jim Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Jim Rickards: Just How Secure Is Biden’s Lead Truly?

The drumbeat of polls showing Biden with a big lead over Trump is unrelenting. The RealClear Politics poll (actually an average of many different polls; a good statistical technique) shows Biden with an 8.6-point lead over Trump (49.3% for Biden versus 40.7% for Trump).

Of course, national polls don’t mean much because the U.S. does not have national elections, we have state-by-state votes for Electoral College electors.

But a lead of over 8-points is significant; even adjusting for skew and other biases, that puts Biden firmly in the lead. At the level of swing states (where it really does matter), Biden also dominates. His lead is 6-points in Wisconsin, 6.4-points in Florida, and 7-points in Pennsylvania.

That last number is critical. It’s hard to see how Trump retains the White House if he does not win Pennsylvania. So, is it all over but the shouting? Should we just hand the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to Joe Biden?

I’ll reveal the answer shortly. But first let’s look at the bigger picture…

There has never been any mystery about the Republican nominee for president — it’s Donald Trump, case closed. But the identity of the Democratic nominee was contested between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders during the primary season as other contenders dropped out one by one.

Finally Sanders stepped aside and Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, although curiously, Biden never did win a simple majority of the delegates — the nominating process and primaries were brushed aside by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But no one cared because the competition dropped out and released their delegates to support Biden. Now, the world awaits Biden’s decision on who his Vice Presidential candidate will be.

An announcement is expected in a few days.

The candidate will definitely be a woman (Biden pre-announced this), but the identity is still unknown. Elizabeth Warren appears to be the frontrunner, and she would be acceptable to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, which seems to be calling the shots.

But whoever it is, the VP pick will probably be president within a year if Biden wins. That’s because Biden’s cognitive impairment will render him unfit for office early in his administration. Biden is already surrounded by Sanders’s handlers. Some Obama retreads will make up the Biden cabinet.

Under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a majority of the cabinet and the VP can declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office.” In that case, the Vice President becomes Acting President.

At that point, the takeover of the White House by the radical wing of the party will be complete. It’s already well underway…

For example, the Democratic primary election was recently held in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Challenger Jamaal Brown defeated incumbent Representative Eliot Engel in a close race.

The district is safe for Democrats, so Jamaal Brown will likely be elected to Congress in November to replace Engel. The initial reaction of most readers might be, “Who cares?” If you don’t live in that district, you’re not directly affected, and even if you do live there, you’re just swapping one liberal Democrat for another so what’s the big deal?

Actually, it’s a highly significant development. Here’s why:

Engle was not just another member of Congress. He had been in power for 32-years and was Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Engle was not in the running for House Majority Leader or Speaker, but he was definitely in the leadership ranks and was one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington.

Normally, when either party has a long-time incumbent in a safe seat, you just put that seat in your pocket and spend time and effort on other races where you can flip a seat from the other party or defend an endangered incumbent.

Why the challenge for Engel?

The answer is that Jamaal Brown is a radical progressive and will fit in nicely with “The Squad” of radicals led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). By the way, AOC got her seat in New York’s 14th District in 2018 by defeating another long-time incumbent, Joe Crowley, who had been in Congress for twenty years and was being mentioned as a possible Speaker of the House.

What’s happening is that Democrats in safe seats are not being challenged by Republicans but are being challenged in primary elections by radicals in their own party.

These challenges are funded by far-left groups such as the George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (through hundreds of sub-accounts) and other outside money. This serves a dual purpose.

When the radicals win, the ranks of The Squad are expanded and AOC’s power grows. Even where no challenge is underway, regular Democrats kowtow to Soros and The Squad to avoid attracting primary opponents themselves.

So, whether by direct challenge or passive subservience, the radicals are taking over the Democratic Party from the inside and The Squad’s agenda is becoming the Party’s agenda.

Keep an eye on these internal party challenges. Once the radicals have enough power they will come for your portfolio in the form of tax increases, regulatory burdens and social justice agendas.

But getting back to Biden’s solid lead in polling, should we just cede the election to him — and his VP candidate who’d probably be in power within a year?

Not so fast. For over 80 years, pollsters have asked two key questions in election polling. The first is, “Who are you voting for?”

That’s the intention question. The second question is, “Who do you expect to win?” That’s the expectation question.

The answer to the intention question gets all the headlines. Those are the polling results we describe above. The answer to the expectation question gets buried and is scarcely discussed.

But guess what? In cases where the intention and expectation questions have different answers, (in effect, “I’m voting for A, but I expect B to win”), the expectation answer had the correct result 78% of the time.

The intention question had the correct result only 22% of the time.

And, Trump is leading the expectation question right now 55% to 45% for Biden. So, Trump actually is ahead in the polls. You just have to be looking at the right polls. That’s key. So don’t write Trump off just yet.

But let’s say for now that Biden does win. Does that mean that the riots we’ve been seeing across the country would end?

It would be nice to think that the violence would wind down. But that probably won’t be the case. It’s true that there is less violence now than in early June. That’s partly due to Biden signing on to the radical agenda and his big lead in the polls.

The radicals see that they may get what they want (including a radical VP selection) and reason that there’s no need for violence if they can advance their agenda through a Biden White House.

But that’s at best a truce. If Biden wins, the demands will ratchet up. They always do when you’re dealing with ideologues and revolutionaries.

If Trump wins, the radicals will conclude they have nothing left to lose (and won’t wait four more years) and will unleash a new wave of violence almost immediately.

The Trump-bashing has been a steady, never-ending 24/7 spectacle for the past four years. There’s no reason why the media, the Resistance and the Democrats in Congress can’t keep it up for another four years.

The Antifa crowd will use a Trump victory as evidence that “democracy doesn’t work,” which will validate their violent tactics at least in their own minds. They’ll find plenty of supporters.

Either way, there’s more violence on the way. It might not be as immediate if Biden wins, but it would still follow.

Are markets ready for this? Is your portfolio ready? Investors should get ready; the chaos is not ending anytime soon, regardless of the election’s outcome.

Physical gold bullion is a good way to preserve your wealth and profit as it all unfolds.

- Source, James Rickards

James Rickards: Don’t Fight the Narrative

It’s widely believed that the stock market looks ahead and discounts the future. But consider this November’s presidential election…

Joe Biden has a substantial lead over President Trump in the polls. But Biden’s platform is not what you would call market friendly. For example, it calls for a 39.6% tax rate on dividends and capital gains.

But the stock market is near all-time highs again, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearing 27,000, the S&P over 3,200 and the Nasdaq actually at record highs.

What more proof do you need that stock markets are clueless when it comes to discounting future outcomes?

Now, it’s true you can’t always trust the polls. I know it well since I was one of very few analysts who predicted a Trump victory in 2016, even though he was behind in the polls.

But the same analytical tools that led me to predict a Trump win last time are showing me his chances are poorer this time.

OK, a true believer might say, but maybe the market’s anticipating a robust economic recovery. That’s why it’s rebounded so strongly.

But that argument just doesn’t hold much water.

Yes, unemployment dropped from over 13% to just over 11% last month, but that’s still the highest level since the end of World War II.

And there’s good reason to believe the unemployment rate will surge again heading into August as Payroll Protection Plan loans run out, lockdowns resume and states catch up with a backlog of claims that have not been processed yet.

Big business may be doing fine because it’s crowded into technology, finance and telecommunications, which are relatively unaffected by the pandemic.

But almost half the economy and half of all jobs are the domain of small-and-medium sized enterprises that have been decimated.

These restaurants, salons, dry cleaners, boutiques and other mainstays of neighborhoods across America are operating at half-capacity (at best) or have shut their doors permanently (at worst).

Meanwhile, a wave of bankruptcies is sweeping across the nation.

In other words, the V-shaped recovery that many analysts have been touting simply isn’t in the cards.

My own estimate is that this year may be even worse than the Great Depression.

We’re probably in for an L-shaped recovery, where the economy goes down steeply and is followed by low growth for an indefinite period of time.

But it’s full speed ahead for the stock market.

The market dip in March was the shortest bear market in history. Someone who just looked at stock charts could not be blamed for believing that the pandemic had never really happened.

So, why the strong stock market in a weak economy?

The simplest answer is that the stock market doesn’t have much to do with the economy. It’s just a casino driven by fear, greed, momentum, robots and indexation. There’s certainly something to that.

A more sophisticated answer is given by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller.

Shiller writes that stock markets are driven by “narratives” or stories market participants tell each other.

From January to mid-February, even as the coronavirus was spreading out of control, the narrative was that the virus was contained to China. Markets reached new highs.

In March and April, the narrative changed to panic as Italy shut down and the U.S. did likewise. This is when the market fell over 30% ending the record bull market of 2009-2019.

The third phase started in late April as the market rallied 40% based on massive Fed money printing and $5 trillion of new government spending. The narrative was that easy money would rescue the market.

All of these narratives were wrong in the sense that the virus was not under control in February, it did not necessitate a lockdown in April, and the money printing and spending won’t solve the problem today.

Still, the narratives prevailed. “Don’t fight the Fed” is one of the oldest sayings on Wall Street.

The new conventional wisdom might be, “Don’t fight the narrative.”

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Uncharted Waters: Bullion Soars As Gold Breaks Records & Silver Rockets Higher

James Rickards and Peter Schiff recently both made stunning predication's of $15,000 per oz gold prices. Is this truly where we are going? What will it take to get there?

Waiting on a pullback that may not come as gold enters uncharted waters and silver pushes above $28. Bullion has now entered a new phase of the bull market. 

This week we cover the prices of gold and silver as they continue to see strength across the board. We will also cover the price movements of platinum, palladium, the U.S. Dollar index, the equities sector and more.

- Source, Golden Rule Radio

James Rickards & Peter Schiff Debate: Deflation vs Inflation

Quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve has undoubtedly expanded the Fed balance sheet to record levels, but the outcome of consumer and asset prices is yet to be seen. 

Jim Rickards, best-selling author, said that the Fed has failed to deliver inflation in the past when there was monetary stimulus, while Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, argued that inflation of asset prices is the likely outcome.

- Source, Kitco News

James Rickards: Brown Weeds, Not Green Shoots

Remember “green shoots?”

That was the ubiquitous phrase used by White House officials and TV talking heads in 2009 to describe how the U.S. economy was coming back to life after the 2008 global financial crisis.

The problem was we did not get green shoots, we got brown weeds.

The economy did recover but it was the slowest recovery in U.S. history. After the green shoots theory had been discredited, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner promised a “recovery summer” in 2010.

That didn’t happen either.

The recovery did continue, but it took years for the stock market to return to the 2017 highs and even longer for unemployment to come down to levels that could be regarded as close to full employment.

Now, in the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic and market crash, the same voices are at it again.

The White House is talking about “pent-up demand” as the economy reopens and consumers flock to stores and restaurants to make up for the lost spending during the March to July pandemic lockdown.

But, the data shows that the “pent-up demand” theory is just as much of a mirage as the green shoots.

Many of the businesses that closed have failed in the meantime. They will never reopen and those lost jobs are never coming back. Even people who kept their jobs are not spending like it’s 2019.

Instead they’re saving at record levels.

Even the “reopening” of the economy is now in doubt. In some cities, the reopening was derailed by riots that left shopping districts in ruins.

In other cities, the reopening was stopped in its tracks by new outbreaks of the virus that led to new lockdowns and strict application of rules on wearing masks and social distancing.

There was a pick-up in retail sales in May, but it has disappeared as fast as it arrived because of the new outbreaks and the extension of the lockdown.

Meanwhile, if you’re trying to understand the economy, pay no attention to the stock market. The stock market is almost completely disconnected from the economy.

That’s partly because of the massive distortions caused by the Fed. But it’s also because the stock market is heavily weighted toward finance and technology.

Both sectors have been relatively unaffected by the pandemic and the resulting economic shock.

The industries that have been hurt are small-and-medium sized businesses in food, travel, resorts, bars, hotels, salons and other bricks-and-mortar or personal service establishments. Pain was also felt in mining, manufacturing and some other sectors.

These are important businesses in the economy, but they’re not nearly as important to major stock market indices as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Microsoft and other mainly digital companies.

If you want to understand the economy, look around your own community to see how many stores are still closed, how many are never reopening, and how much sales are down among the relatively few survivors.

It’s not a pretty picture, and based on the dynamics of the virus it won’t get better anytime soon.

But there’s another primary reason why the economy won’t recover anytime soon. It’s not getting much coverage in the mainstream press, but it should.

It involves a major population shift that only happens once every two or three generations. And it’s happening now.

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning