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Rickards On The Resurgence Of Silver

Rickards On The Resurgence Of Silver

Authored by Jim Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Most investors who focus on precious metals and commodities know that gold had a great year in 2020, up 24.6%. However, not as many know that silver did..

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Rickards On The Resurgence Of Silver

Authored by Jim Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Most investors who focus on precious metals and commodities know that gold had a great year in 2020, up 24.6%. However, not as many know that silver did even better! Silver was up 47.4% in 2020, rising from $17.80 per ounce on January 2, 2020, to $26.35 per ounce on December 31, 2020.

Silver didn’t just outperform gold in 2020; it also outperformed every other major asset class, including U.S. small cap stocks (up 18.5%), U.S. stocks (up 15.5%), U.S. corporate bonds (up 9.7%) and U.S. Treasuries (up 3.6%). Many other asset classes declined in price in 2020, including commodities, the U.S. dollar, real estate and crude oil.

Silver backed off a little in early 2021 (it’s now trading around $25.25 per ounce), but it has held onto almost all of its 2020 gains. Of course, the question for investors is: Where do we go from here?

Your correspondent with a pallet of 1,000 ounce (about 62.5 pounds) silver ingots in a vault in Switzerland. The walls of the vault are draped with brown paper in order to avoid revealing security details or possible clues to the location. The silver is pure bullion: 99.99% silver. The date the bar was poured, serial number, purity and name of the refiner are all clearly shown stamped on the ingots. At current market prices, one of the silver ingots is worth $25,000. By way of contrast, the small gold bar (seen in the photo near my left hand) is worth about $65,000.

For reasons explained below, investors should expect continued strong outperformance by silver both in bullion form and in the form of shares in well-run silver mining companies.

Before turning to the fundamentals that will send silver prices higher, it’s useful to clear away some of the fog and outright myths surrounding the role of silver in the monetary system and the relationship between the price of silver and the price of gold.

Silver-to-gold comparisons are apples-to-oranges despite the fact that both silver and gold are elements and precious metals.

Let us begin by looking at a simple fact: while silver and gold are both precious metals, silver is a commodity, and gold is not. This statement surprises many readers, but it’s true. The difference turns on the definition of a commodity.

A commodity is a generic and fungible input used with other inputs in manufacturing or other processing activity. Copper is a commodity used in wires. Coal is a commodity used to make steel. Corn is a commodity used in food processing.

Silver is a commodity used in many industrial processes, including water purification, tableware, solar panels, electrical contacts, X-Ray film, mirrors and medical instruments. It’s the best electrical conductor of any metal. It is also used in automobile emission control equipment. All of these industrial and scientific applications qualify silver as a commodity input.

Gold is not good for much of anything except as money. Yes, I know that gold is mined from the ground like other commodities, and it is traded on commodity exchanges, but it’s not a commodity.

There are some specialized applications such as coatings for space helmets and ultra-thin wires made from “five nines” gold, but that’s about it. Jewelry is just bullion that you can wear; it’s not a generic input. Gold is only good as money. Still, it’s the best form of money.

Of course, silver also performs as a precious metal (along with gold, platinum and palladium), and it has long been used as a form of money in coins and bars. The U.S. dollar itself was based on the older Spanish dollar, also known as a piece of eight (in Spanish: Real de a Ocho).

And, that history points to the difficulty of valuing silver and forecasting its price. Silver is both a form of money and an industrial commodity. Its monetary price responds to the same factors as gold, including inflation, interest rates, flight to safety and the exchange value of the dollar.

At the same time, silver (but not gold) responds to the business cycle, since more or less silver may be needed for industrial processes as the economy is either in expansion or contraction.

Of course, it is possible to forecast silver prices by taking account of both the precious metals factors and the business cycle factors. The point is that silver price vectors often diverge from gold price vectors because gold is a pure play on money while silver is a dual play on money and the industrial economy.

This hybrid role for silver can often be frustrating for investors who see gold surging while silver marks time. They may be quick to allege price manipulation in the silver market. The reason is much more mundane, involving only supply and demand for industrial commodities.

Another myth about silver prices involves the infamous “sixteen-to-one” ratio of gold to silver prices. Silver advocates suggest that the price of gold should not be more than 16 times the price of silver. They base this on a misreading of history and law.

Today gold is $1,842 per ounce, and silver is $25.24 per ounce, which yields a ratio of about 73-to-1. If you believe that the appropriate ratio is 16-to-1, then the price of silver would have to be $115 per ounce, assuming gold is unchanged. The silver bulls make this case and suggest that only market manipulation is keeping silver away from that $115 per ounce target.

The entire 16-to-1 argument is nonsense. It’s a popular talking point among some silver aficionados, but it has no economic significance whatsoever.

With that said, there’s no doubt that the price of silver is influenced to some extent by the price of gold. While the two do not move in lockstep, and while there is no necessary ratio between the two prices, it is the case that the factors that drive gold prices higher (inflation, low interest rates, flight to quality) will also drive silver prices higher.

Given silver’s recent outperformance and the tailwinds provided by the surging price of gold, what are the prospects for silver prices in the months ahead?

Right now, my models are telling me that silver is set to have another strong year to follow the surge of 2020. The basis for this can be seen in Chart 1 below.

Chart 1 – Price of silver measured in dollars per ounce – January 2019 – January 2021

In 2020, silver followed the same pattern as gold and stocks. It began the year with a slight gain, crashed during the worst of the pandemic panic, rallied back to new highs and then held those gains while trading in a fairly narrow range. The high for silver was $29.15 per ounce on August 10, 2020, just a few days after gold hit its high for the year.

What are the factors affecting the price of silver going forward?

We should expect geopolitical stress as North Korea, China, Russia and Iran are all expected to test the resolve of the new Biden administration. This does not mean war will result, but it does mean we can expect hot spots to become tenser.

This list of hot spots includes the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, Ukraine and the Korean peninsula. Our enemies will probe in all directions to see if Biden will stand firm or give ground. This expected tension is bullish for the prices of precious metals.

Interest rates will remain at zero (for short term rates) and 1% or less (for long-term rates) through all of 2021. That’s bullish for silver because silver competes with interest-bearing instruments for investor dollars. Lower interest rates tilt that competition in favor of silver.

The dollar should remain weak due to zero interest rates and weak economic growth. Don’t believe the narrative about a V-shaped recovery and pent-up demand. The economy is locking down again because the pandemic is worse now than it was last spring. Small business is being destroyed, and unemployment is rising. With credit losses emerging, silver becomes a safe-haven.

Finally, the Biden administration and its Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, have embraced Modern Monetary Theory in all but name. This means a $3 trillion deficit in fiscal 2021 on top of the $4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2020. The Federal Reserve has chipped in with $4 trillion of money printing in the past year. Even if inflation does not emerge immediately, inflationary expectations are on the rise. That’s also bullish for silver.

All of these factors – geopolitics, interest rates, exchange rates and inflation – are set to boost the price of silver in 2021.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/29/2021 - 13:20

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Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in…

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Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in New Mexico confirmed that a resident died from the plague in the United States’ first fatal case in several years.

A bubonic plague smear, prepared from a lymph removed from an adenopathic lymph node, or bubo, of a plague patient, demonstrates the presence of the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the plague in this undated photo. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Getty Images)

The New Mexico Department of Health, in a statement, said that a man in Lincoln County “succumbed to the plague.” The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized before his death, officials said.

They further noted that it is the first human case of plague in New Mexico since 2021 and also the first death since 2020, according to the statement. No other details were provided, including how the disease spread to the man.

The agency is now doing outreach in Lincoln County, while “an environmental assessment will also be conducted in the community to look for ongoing risk,” the statement continued.

This tragic incident serves as a clear reminder of the threat posed by this ancient disease and emphasizes the need for heightened community awareness and proactive measures to prevent its spread,” the agency said.

A bacterial disease that spreads via rodents, it is generally spread to people through the bites of infected fleas. The plague, known as the black death or the bubonic plague, can spread by contact with infected animals such as rodents, pets, or wildlife.

The New Mexico Health Department statement said that pets such as dogs and cats that roam and hunt can bring infected fleas back into homes and put residents at risk.

Officials warned people in the area to “avoid sick or dead rodents and rabbits, and their nests and burrows” and to “prevent pets from roaming and hunting.”

“Talk to your veterinarian about using an appropriate flea control product on your pets as not all products are safe for cats, dogs or your children” and “have sick pets examined promptly by a veterinarian,” it added.

“See your doctor about any unexplained illness involving a sudden and severe fever, the statement continued, adding that locals should clean areas around their home that could house rodents like wood piles, junk piles, old vehicles, and brush piles.

The plague, which is spread by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, famously caused the deaths of an estimated hundreds of millions of Europeans in the 14th and 15th centuries following the Mongol invasions. In that pandemic, the bacteria spread via fleas on black rats, which historians say was not known by the people at the time.

Other outbreaks of the plague, such as the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, are also believed to have killed about one-fifth of the population of the Byzantine Empire, according to historical records and accounts. In 2013, researchers said the Justinian plague was also caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria.

But in the United States, it is considered a rare disease and usually occurs only in several countries worldwide. Generally, according to the Mayo Clinic, the bacteria affects only a few people in U.S. rural areas in Western states.

Recent cases have occurred mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Countries with frequent plague cases include Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Peru, the clinic says. There were multiple cases of plague reported in Inner Mongolia, China, in recent years, too.

Symptoms

Symptoms of a bubonic plague infection include headache, chills, fever, and weakness. Health officials say it can usually cause a painful swelling of lymph nodes in the groin, armpit, or neck areas. The swelling usually occurs within about two to eight days.

The disease can generally be treated with antibiotics, but it is usually deadly when not treated, the Mayo Clinic website says.

“Plague is considered a potential bioweapon. The U.S. government has plans and treatments in place if the disease is used as a weapon,” the website also says.

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the last time that plague deaths were reported in the United States was in 2020 when two people died.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 21:40

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Congress’ failure so far to deliver on promise of tens of billions in new research spending threatens America’s long-term economic competitiveness

A deal that avoided a shutdown also slashed spending for the National Science Foundation, putting it billions below a congressional target intended to…

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Science is again on the chopping block on Capitol Hill. AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

Federal spending on fundamental scientific research is pivotal to America’s long-term economic competitiveness and growth. But less than two years after agreeing the U.S. needed to invest tens of billions of dollars more in basic research than it had been, Congress is already seriously scaling back its plans.

A package of funding bills recently passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden on March 9, 2024, cuts the current fiscal year budget for the National Science Foundation, America’s premier basic science research agency, by over 8% relative to last year. That puts the NSF’s current allocation US$6.6 billion below targets Congress set in 2022.

And the president’s budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released on March 11, doesn’t look much better. Even assuming his request for the NSF is fully funded, it would still, based on my calculations, leave the agency a total of $15 billion behind the plan Congress laid out to help the U.S. keep up with countries such as China that are rapidly increasing their science budgets.

I am a sociologist who studies how research universities contribute to the public good. I’m also the executive director of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, a national university consortium whose members share data that helps us understand, explain and work to amplify those benefits.

Our data shows how underfunding basic research, especially in high-priority areas, poses a real threat to the United States’ role as a leader in critical technology areas, forestalls innovation and makes it harder to recruit the skilled workers that high-tech companies need to succeed.

A promised investment

Less than two years ago, in August 2022, university researchers like me had reason to celebrate.

Congress had just passed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. The science part of the law promised one of the biggest federal investments in the National Science Foundation in its 74-year history.

The CHIPS act authorized US$81 billion for the agency, promised to double its budget by 2027 and directed it to “address societal, national, and geostrategic challenges for the benefit of all Americans” by investing in research.

But there was one very big snag. The money still has to be appropriated by Congress every year. Lawmakers haven’t been good at doing that recently. As lawmakers struggle to keep the lights on, fundamental research is quickly becoming a casualty of political dysfunction.

Research’s critical impact

That’s bad because fundamental research matters in more ways than you might expect.

For instance, the basic discoveries that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible stretch back to the early 1960s. Such research investments contribute to the health, wealth and well-being of society, support jobs and regional economies and are vital to the U.S. economy and national security.

Lagging research investment will hurt U.S. leadership in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced communications, clean energy and biotechnology. Less support means less new research work gets done, fewer new researchers are trained and important new discoveries are made elsewhere.

But disrupting federal research funding also directly affects people’s jobs, lives and the economy.

Businesses nationwide thrive by selling the goods and services – everything from pipettes and biological specimens to notebooks and plane tickets – that are necessary for research. Those vendors include high-tech startups, manufacturers, contractors and even Main Street businesses like your local hardware store. They employ your neighbors and friends and contribute to the economic health of your hometown and the nation.

Nearly a third of the $10 billion in federal research funds that 26 of the universities in our consortium used in 2022 directly supported U.S. employers, including:

  • A Detroit welding shop that sells gases many labs use in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Department of Energy.

  • A Dallas-based construction company that is building an advanced vaccine and drug development facility paid for by the Department of Health and Human Services.

  • More than a dozen Utah businesses, including surveyors, engineers and construction and trucking companies, working on a Department of Energy project to develop breakthroughs in geothermal energy.

When Congress shortchanges basic research, it also damages businesses like these and people you might not usually associate with academic science and engineering. Construction and manufacturing companies earn more than $2 billion each year from federally funded research done by our consortium’s members.

A lag or cut in federal research funding would harm U.S. competitiveness in critical advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Hispanolistic/E+ via Getty Images

Jobs and innovation

Disrupting or decreasing research funding also slows the flow of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – talent from universities to American businesses. Highly trained people are essential to corporate innovation and to U.S. leadership in key fields, such as AI, where companies depend on hiring to secure research expertise.

In 2022, federal research grants paid wages for about 122,500 people at universities that shared data with my institute. More than half of them were students or trainees. Our data shows that they go on to many types of jobs but are particularly important for leading tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Intel.

That same data lets me estimate that over 300,000 people who worked at U.S. universities in 2022 were paid by federal research funds. Threats to federal research investments put academic jobs at risk. They also hurt private sector innovation because even the most successful companies need to hire people with expert research skills. Most people learn those skills by working on university research projects, and most of those projects are federally funded.

High stakes

If Congress doesn’t move to fund fundamental science research to meet CHIPS and Science Act targets – and make up for the $11.6 billion it’s already behind schedule – the long-term consequences for American competitiveness could be serious.

Over time, companies would see fewer skilled job candidates, and academic and corporate researchers would produce fewer discoveries. Fewer high-tech startups would mean slower economic growth. America would become less competitive in the age of AI. This would turn one of the fears that led lawmakers to pass the CHIPS and Science Act into a reality.

Ultimately, it’s up to lawmakers to decide whether to fulfill their promise to invest more in the research that supports jobs across the economy and in American innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. So far, that promise is looking pretty fragile.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 16, 2024.

Jason Owen-Smith receives research support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wellcome Leap.

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