June 3, 2020
The Miles Franklin Newsletter
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From The Desk Of David Schectman
Drum Roll please: today’s winner of my Quote of the Day award is: Mark Zuckerberg.
“We’ve got over two billion users now, so it’s never been more important to show them only what we want them to see, while throttling to death of all content that we don’t think they should be consuming for whatever reason,” the Facebook chief said. “My days are longer than ever.”
 
The tech titan, worth $71 billion, went on to describe the weight that comes along with being the arbiter of moral fitness and objective truth, able to make or break nearly any website on the internet by lowering the organic reach of their posts or outright banning them, based upon Facebook’s opinion of the views expressed in their content.
 
“It’s hard work, dictating which worldviews are acceptable and which are not. But someone has to do it,” he said. “We can’t just let people consume whatever they want.” – Mark Zuckerberg
David's Commentary (In Blue):

I must be one of the few people with an iPhone and IPad who doesn’t use Facebook. There are members of my family who live on it. I get to post my views right here on these pages.
 
Well, perhaps Mark’s right; somebody has to do it. At least it’s not some bureaucrat in DC. I guess many of you would be happier with this if he were a Conservative Republican. 
 
We are seeing our freedom being stripped away, right before our eyes. The trend got a jumpstart right after 9/11 with the introduction of Homeland Security. Our phone calls and emails are being monitored. Our travel and spending habits are being gathered. Cameras and drones are everywhere. They are even scanning our face and taking our temperature – but thankfully, they aren’t using an anal thermometer. They have enough other ways to screw us. Soon, we shall really take a plunge down the rabbit hole as we are forced to accept a digital currency. Hey, if they want more money they don’t have to send us a tax bill, they can take it directly out of our digital bank account. Combine the digital money with the Fed’s “Negative Interest Rates” and we will be punished for saving and forced to spend and invest. And, waiting in the wings is Bill Gates vaccination for all. If you refuse to take it you won’t be able to get on an airplane or perhaps get your passport renewed. Zuckerberg is the least of our worries, he’s just a symbol of the times. Here’s a better symbol of the times: Got gold?
 
Since the onset of the Coronavirus there has been an 86% increase in the use of psychotropic drugs. And this is a walk in the park compared to what’s coming. How will all of these unemployed people deal with the new reality? You don’t want to know. Pass me a Xanax.
 
Are you getting bored with the media’s constant non-stop coverage of the riots and the protests of the police brutality? Don’t worry, Americans have a short attention span and before you know it, the media will move on to something new to cover. If they have to wait a few weeks, they always have Donald Trump to write about. Unfortunately, he gives them more than enough juicy copy with his daily Tweets. Is it just me, or is Tweeting “un-Presidential?” 
 
Geeze, I just ate an entire bag of Skinny Pop Popcorn as I wrote the above. Just having to write this stuff is like sitting in a movie theater and watching a Si-Fi flick like Alien or Prometheus or The Thing. I really loved all three of them. Popcorn is still around but the movie theaters are deader than Grogan’s goat.
 
Yesterday, I watched a YouTube video from Arcadia Economics . Chris Markus interviewed Bart Chilton. Bart was commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2007 to 2014. If you have any doubt about JPMorgan’s involvement in the silver suppression topic, this is the one you need to see. It’s titled “Bart Chilton Talks About JPMorgan and Silver Manipulation (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n665orfBOqM ). Chris is affiliated with Miles Franklin and is a first-rate interviewer.
 
Not being one to miss an opportunity to point out another “conspiracy,” here’s one that centers around a mysterious death that seems to be just too coincidental to have happened when it did – Bart Chilton died unexpectedly just one week after the interview with Chris Markus (above), in which he publicly exposed JPMorgan and the other bullion banks that gorge themselves with profits from the manipulation of the silver market. (And the gold market too, but silver is the biggie) Bart was a healthy 58-year-old. He died quite unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack. Was his death just a coincidence, or was he a danger because he knew too much and was going public with it? Columbo (Peter Falk) used to say he never believed in coincidences. 
 
Our friends at GATA and LeMetropole Café, Chris Powell and Bill Murphy, worked with Bart Chilton, urging him to get the CFTC to investigate the obvious manipulation taking place in the gold and silver pits at the Comex. They have been un-mercilessly ridiculed and laughed at and ignored by the mainstream press. Just about anybody outside of our small gold and silver universe for their insistence that the gold and silver markets are manipulated - Bart Chilton vindicated them. 
 
Listen to the interview ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n665orfBOqM ).  Bart Chilton discusses how he had enough solid evidence of illegal market manipulation, including taped recordings, to send these crooks to jail. After a several year-long investigation, into the blatant manipulation of the silver market by JPMorgan and others, he presented all the evidence to the Department of Justice. That’s as far as it got. He was told that the (very high) standards for a guilty verdict were not met. Subsequently the “standards” were re-written and Chilton said that if he presented his case today people would go to jail. But it can’t happen retroactively. Here it is. The smoking-gun. I mean, this is the man, the head of the CFTC, who gathered all the proof. This is exactly what Ted Butler has been saying for years too. And I present it on these pages all the time. So, for all you “deniers” out there who say we are crazy when we discuss the manipulation of silver, it’s time for an awakening.
 
So why aren’t the gold and silver prices higher now than they are? The answer is simple. The Comex is rigged, and not in your favor. But that doesn’t mean the price capping can go on forever. It’s just taking longer than it should. 
 
A month ago, I wrote It’s going to be a long hot summer.  Just wait until the welfare checks and government assistance checks run out. There are now over 60 million people who are unemployed (or have yet to file or have stopped looking for work). What will they do? I can’t help but remember the lyrics from Janis Joplin’s song, Me and Bobby McGee , “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” And they don’t even have their freedom. 
 
Just like Covid-19 was the unexpected Black Swan, the pin that pierced the credit bubble, so too the brutal, caught on camera murder of George Floyd was the pin that popped the everyone is happy and satisfied in America bubble. And it popped not only in Minneapolis, but all over the country and around the globe. 
 
The degree of anger and despair and hopelessness was as much of a surprise as the Coronavirus. This should not be a surprise. It just came a month or two earlier than I expected. You can’t have a peaceful society where 10% of Americans own over 84% of the stocks (wealth) and those on the bottom of our “cast system” particularly people of color, can barely make ends meet, and have no way out, or a path to move up the economic ladder. 
If you think it’s bad now, wait until the fall when the money runs out. Unless, that is, Nancy Pelosi gets her way and we give everyone a minimum income (for doing nothing). Where do these nitwits come from? Better yet, why do the Liberals in California keep electing her to office? This is the essence of politics now; just vote for the person who promises to give you the most. A chicken or three in every pot.
 
Some of us are more concerned with voting for a politician who will allow us to keep what we already have. They traditionally are called Republicans and Libertarians. They are hard to find though. 
The Daily Cut
 
Over the weekend, the divisions in America were on naked display.

The killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by a police officer set off a wave of violence that’s left at least one cop dead in Oakland, California.

According to the Associated Press, a police officer was shot near the Las Vegas Strip.

Meanwhile, four cops were hit by gunfire in St. Louis, Missouri, as they stood next to a police line.

And in New York, video captured a car mowing down a cop, who suffered serious injuries.

This is still a long way from the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which kicked off the war between the North and the South in 1861.

But Doug (Casey) was spot-on when he warned of a coming “conflagration” – which literally means “a great fire.” (Flagrare means “to blaze” in Latin.)

Over the weekend, rioters set cities ablaze around the country. One of the abiding images of the mayhem was the fires burning outside the White House.

Here’s the thing – social disorder is like a virus...  

It doesn’t last forever... but it doesn’t disappear overnight, either.

This was true of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s... when the twin evils of fascism and communism were on the rise.

And it was true of America in the late 1960s... when civil rights protests and protests against the war in Vietnam set the country ablaze.

That’s yet another reason (to add to a  long list ) I’m so keen you protect your wealth by buying gold.

We don’t call gold “disaster insurance” for nothing...

Longtime readers know all about gold’s role in your portfolio.

But if you’re new to the conversation, gold’s a way to protect your wealth during times of uncertainty in the world – like right now.

That’s because it has a track record stretching back thousands of years as a store of wealth.

Gold also doesn’t rely on someone’s promise to pay for its value, like a stock or a bond. That means it doesn’t matter who goes bust in a crisis. Gold still holds its value.

It’s all in the next chart. It shows the price of an ounce of gold going back to when gold started to trade freely versus the dollar in 1971.
As you can see, gold rose 1,956% between 1971 and 1980. That was during the 1970s – a decade marked by economic crisis.

Then it rose 156% between 2008 and 2011... during the worst of the last major crisis.

So... if you don’t own some gold already, what are you waiting for?
So why is the stock market rising day after day as the economy is in the worst shape in nearly a century - and the streets are burning in cities across America? El-Erian knows why. The trillions of dollars the Fed and Treasury unleased to stabilize the economy was really meant to stabilize the stock market, not to save the small businessman. They have issued a “Put” on the stock market so investors think they can’t lose. If you can’t lose, then you buy stocks - even if they are overvalued and the economy is a disaster. Methinks that they will be in for a surprise. I think I read recently that the insiders are selling as the small investors line up to buy stocks now. That’s what usually happens.
 
"...you end up not only  undermining the system itself   but you undermine the credibility of an institution that is  critical to the well-being of this and future generations .."
Here are the runners-up for my Quote of the Day award.
The price of gold peaked at $1,900 an ounce in September 2011. Nine years and many radical monetary-policy experiments later, it trades at $1,702. That it ought to move higher, and will move higher, is the theme of this analysis. 
 
If we’re repeating ourselves, it’s in the noble cause of protecting the wealth of the readers of Grant’s.  The sheer brute force of pandemic public policy is tilting the balance of financial risk. History can’t exactly predict the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented jag of money creation  (never mind the humane reasons why those dollars were set afloat).  But as to the perishability of paper money, the record is unarguable. – Jim Grant
 
This is a perfect environment for gold to take center stage.  Fanatical debasement of money by all of the world’s central banks, super-low interest rates and gold mine operation and extraction issues (to a large extent related to the pandemic) should create a fertile ground for this most basic of all money and stores of value to reach its fair value, which we believe is literally multiples of its current price. In recent months, gold has gone up in price to some degree, but we think that it is one of the most undervalued investable assets existing today...
 
[It] is the answer to the question: Is there an asset or asset class which is undervalued, under owned, would preserve its value in a severe inflation, and is not adversely affected by Covid-19 or the destruction of business value that is being caused by the virus? – Paul Singer
How bad are things? Bad! And it’s not just us so-called “doom and gloomers” saying it this time. Here are a few headlines from the Drudge report a couple of days ago. This is really bad.
It’s not just the Drudge Report. The Hedge has plenty to say about the civil unrest too. Here are three articles that take a different slant on the unrest. It was planned to destabilize our society….
 
"This is absolutely  no longer about George Floyd   or addressing inequities anymore. This is an organized  attack designed to destabilize civil society ..."
 
 
Harrington: "...and we have   seen things like white supremacy... an organized cell of terror."
 
Trump: "It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!"
 
 
"certain anarchist groups"   were making preparations for   "violent interactions with police" before protests in the city even began...
Chris Martenson discusses our long hot summer. I like his analysis a lot, and if you haven’t checked out his views on Covid-19 at Peak Prosperity , you should.
Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
 
As The World Burns

Personal safety & security are quickly becoming more important in this era of growing social rage
 
Decades of unfairness are now boiling over in the United States in the form of protests, riots, burning buildings and violence.

Minneapolis is on fire – literally – and the unrest has spread to numerous other major cities.

Last year (2019) The Yellow Vest protesters in France dealt with enormous amount of police violence and intimidation as they put life and limb on the line to try and wrest better economic and living conditions for themselves.

The people of Hong Kong are back out in force again now that the Coronavirus threat has abated, seeking greater autonomy and control over their own lives. Last year (2019) Chileans also protested, seeking better wages and living conditions.

While the specific demands of each of these movements are unique, they all share common causes.

Our analysis at Peak Prosperity is this: the days of constant exponential growth on a finite planet are drawing to a close. All of the systems that govern the sharing of resources among humans – political, economic and especially financial – are designed to concentrate, not share, wealth.

Taken together, we have an economic pie that is no longer growing but is subject to a set of laws and financial predation that guarantee the wealthy get more than their fair share of what remains.

This leads to increasingly visible, palpable unfairness.
Primates hate that:

In today’s world, it’s grapes for the elites and cucumbers for the rest of us (if we’re even that lucky).

That’s been the model for a long time, but lately it’s been both accelerating and exposed for all to see.

Team Elite™ is busy gorging on grapes. It has granted itself $trillions of freshly printed dollars from the US Federal Reserve in order to prop up ‘their fair share of things’ like bonds, stocks, and derivatives.

That leads to these sorts of jarring headline juxtapositions:

Without any question whatsoever, the Federal Reserve has been printing up money like crazy and stuffing it into every crevice of the US financial markets in a bid to…well, drive up financial asset prices.

They’ve been extremely tone deaf the entire way while pretending that their aim isn’t to make the rich richer, or deliver fatter profits to banks. Of course, both of those things are indeed happening as a direct result of the Fed’s policies and anybody with eyes can see that — yet the media refuses to acknowledge this.

Really, it’s extremely easy to identify. Here’s what ‘grapes for the wealthy!’ looks like — see that $3 trillion spike since April?
All of that printing leads to some stocks now being at their priciest ratio to earnings ever:
That means that those holding them are being rewarded like never before. And don’t forget that  the richest 10% of Americans own over 84%  of all stocks

We also see the same price-goosing with bonds. Corporate bonds are now once again approaching historically low yields which means, in the see-saw language of bonds, they are almost as pricey as they’ve ever been. In history:
Who received the benefits of that gigantic cluster of grapes that the Fed has lavished upon the bond markets?

Well, the owners of all those bonds of course, and the major corporations now able to borrow at rock bottom costs even as small and medium sized enterprises are being wiped out.

As I often say, the Fed doesn’t actually create wealth, it redistributes wealth. While doing that it is both directly and indirectly picking winners and losers.

The above chart of corporate bond yields says the Fed is picking large corporations and the wealthy elite over small companies and Main Street folks.

Of course, there are no grapes quite as sweet as the ‘special interest’ varietals that are served to only the wealthiest of real estate investors:
The only thing that could make this worse would be for some White House official to condescendingly insult all us regular people by referring to us in non-human terms.

I have dozens more such examples. But I trust you get the point: the vast unfairness of the US system is now exposed for all to see. And that inequity has become even  more  predatory in our hour of need during the Covid-19 pandemic. Which is why social frustration and angst are now in the process of boiling over.

The reason why is as old as civilization itself, showing up ever since the first group of humans organized themselves into a cultural pyramid:
People often ask me why I shake my angry monkey-fist at the Federal Reserve so often. It’s because of the above quote. I’m the sort that prefers to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. The Federal Reserve seems to be institutionally ignorant of the above fatal ailment.

What the Fed is doing is wholly unnecessary and manifestly unfair. It will lead to tears yet, regrettably, it is completely avoidable. Grapes for Wall Street, and cucumbers (or worse) for everyone else. It’s just how they’re wired. They literally cannot help themselves,. So, things are certain to get worse before they get better.

It All Boils Over

The institutional failures of the Federal Reserve aside, there are also the obvious failures of management (I can’t bring myself to call them ‘leadership’ anymore) at our major health institutions, politicians who are far quicker to the rescue of major corporations than constituents, politicized and even falsified ‘science’ coming from formerly respected institutions, the list goes on and on.

Every one of these breaches of public trust undermines our collective safety and security.

Beyond some incalculable level the foundation gives way.

The lowest level of management in this story are the police. For decades many police departments have been heavily militarized and trained often by Israelis who’ve done a remarkable job embedding the mindset of occupying forces into US policing.

Toss in some unresolved racial biases and animosity, civil asset forfeiture, no-knock raids for petty reasons that routinely result in innocent lives being violently taken, and you’ve got a tinder pile waiting for a spark.

George Floyd was that spark. A particularly callous officer with a long string of unpunished claims of excessive force and violence lodged against him, knelt on George’s neck until he was dead while 3 other officers stood by and casually watched. Against the backdrop outlined above, this was one flagrant abuse too many.

Editorially, the person now being vetted as a possible VP for the Biden campaign, Amy Klobuchar was the prosecutor in Minneapolis for many years who could have delivered justice to the lower classes. Let’s check her record:

Sadly, this is a record that can be found in hundreds of other cities. It’s neither an uncommon nor a defensible record. As a reminder, in the aftermath of the Michael Brown killing and riots in Ferguson MO (2014) the justice department came in and discovered that in a city of 20,000 mostly poor people there were 16,000 outstanding arrest warrants. Think about that for a second.

Many for infractions like ‘impeding pedestrian flow’ (a.k.a. standing on the sidewalk). The humans were little more that ATM livestock for the police and court machinery to exploit.
And so, with the killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis exploded.

There’s More Unrest On The Way. Get Prepared.

Welcome everyone to these turbulent times.

We all want to live in a just, fair, and safe world. Some people are born into peaceful times. Others aren’t so lucky. History goes through its turnings.

Well, here we are, smack in the middle of a whopper of a  fourth turning . So, let’s make the most of it.

I take the safety and security of myself and the people around me very seriously. Because it’s my responsibility I train, and I plan, and I think things through.

My home is in a town I judge to be very safe, and I’m not the fearful sort, so I really have to push myself to prioritize the other steps. Which I am doing because it has to be done.

The calm days are over. There’s a new future coming, one that promises to be a lot more interesting as the old Chinese saying goes.

I wish I believed that the worst of the social unrest was behind us. I don’t. Given the actions of the Fed and Plutarch’s quote, and the total lack of any pushback from the media on these matters, I am anticipating grapes for the elites and worse-than-cucumbers for everyone else for many years to come.

Which means it’s time for you to more seriously consider your approach to personal security, especially if you live in or near a city. I certainly am.

As a true mark of the turning, a growing number of my friends who would never have considered owning a gun before are now thinking about doing so. All sorts of formerly ‘hard’ decisions suddenly become up for grabs when folks start feeling more physically vulnerable.

But personal security is far more than ‘owning a gun.’ It’s a mindset as well as a behavior set. And above all, it’s about avoiding trouble in the first place.

It includes taking sensible steps to protect your home from being an easy target for crime. It means having a plan and well-practiced skills in place to keep yourself and your loved ones safe from violence. It means aligning with neighbors to watch each other’s backs. It means practicing with whatever tools or systems you adopt so that they are second nature to you if you ever have to use them.

For those without extensive experience and training (which I assume is just about everyone reading this), the best presentation I’ve ever seen covering the practical essentials you need to know to maximize your odds of staying safe is  this video  from Peak Prosperity member Tom C., a 19-year veteran inner city police sergeant, given at our most recent annual seminar:

Here’s a brief 3-minute clip from it in which Tom is fielding Q&A on the audience’s top concerns:

Tom’s full seminar presentation is 48 minutes long and addresses key safety & security issues including how to reduce your threat risk profile, situational awareness, what to do (both mindset and actions) if in danger, how to create “layers” of defenses, as well as good home security options. Peak Prosperity’s premium members can  watch it in full here .

Not a premium member yet?  Enroll now  to get access to the video.
Greg Hunter interviews John Rubino. Commercial real estate will be a blood bath. He expects them to bail out everyone. The Fed and government to continue until after the election .
Greg Hunter’s    USAWatchdog.com

Everyone needs be looking past the Coronavirus crisis and at what governments are trying to do to counter the economic destruction and massive unemployment. Is the financial cure worse than the disease? Financial writer John Rubino says look at commercial real estate as an omen of what is to come. Rubino explains, “Sooner or later you’ve got to pay your bills, and if you don’t have anybody paying your bills to you, then you go bankrupt. Commercial real estate could just be a blood bath, which take us back to all the bailouts. You can’t let a big sector go bust in this world because suddenly everything is too big to fail. There is not a major sector out there that can be allowed to go bust. Not the airlines, not commercial real estate, certainly not the banks, you name it and it has to be bailed out. That’s where the really crazy stuff starts. When people figure out we are basically bailing out everybody from home owners to student loan holders, to car loan holders and right down the line, and then we get state and local governments with this gigantic multi-trillion dollar problem . . . and the amount of debt is off the charts to bail all of these guys out, that is when the real fun starts.”

How long will the bailouts go on? Rubino says, “We are heading into a Presidential election, which means we cannot let anything major fail. If you are the Trump Administration and Congress, you can’t let something big fail because it’s a crisis right before you need to get re-elected. So, you’ve got to bail people out. That’s what California, Illinois and Chicago, New York, Kentucky and all the bankrupt and badly run states have been hoping for all along. They have been hoping there would be a big crisis that would bail them out of their horrendous mismanagement of the past 20 or 30 years. There was no way that Illinois was not going to go bankrupt in normal times . . . or Chicago. . . . Now, they can go to the federal government and say we need a trillion dollars right now or we are going to lay off all the cops and all the teachers, and they think they have a pretty good chance of getting the bailout because the alternative is poison for the people running for office . . . . If you are the Trump Administration or Congress, I don’t see how you stop bailing people out before the election.”
Here is another excellent commentary from one of the few stock brokers who “gets it.”
Mike Savage
 
Nothing Is As It Seems

Nothing is what it seems. It seems to me that this one statement explains the world we are currently experiencing. When you have “leaders” with no morals you wind up in a situation like we are seeing now. This is not a “D” or “R” thing. I believe that the whole lot of them have been selling us down the river for decades.

Some of the “leaders” can’t help but spewing out the truth now and then like:

“Don’t let a crisis go to waste, it’s an opportunity to do things you once thought were impossible” (Rahm Emanuel-Obama Administration, ex Chicago Mayor)
Just like right now I guess with the economy shut down and people cowering in fear over a virus that was successfully overcome in Sweden without any lockdowns. Shh- make sure the sheeple don’t hear THAT story.

Or how about Neil Ferguson, an advisor to the British government whose input started the lockdowns going globally, meeting up with his married lover 2 days after testing positive for the Coronavirus. Those meetings went on for the next week or so and her family also contracted the virus. If this clown was even remotely concerned about the severity of this disease can you imagine acting like this? Obviously, he was spreading fear but had NONE with regards to his own health. 

“I appear on National TV and I have to look good” Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago as it was revealed she got a haircut which the millions of others in Illinois are forbidden to get because of her and the governor’s illegal lockdown orders. I say illegal because the governor was sued by a downstate legislator and the court determined that Pritzker (governor) had no right to extend his 30-day emergency declaration. Hmm!

“We had 3.5% unemployment prior to the Coronavirus” Yes, if you conveniently leave out 95 million people who could be working but have been discouraged and gave up looking for a decent job. The REAL unemployment rate prior to this was 20% (John Williams -Shadow Government Statistics) Right now, we are to believe the rate is 14% or so while 36 MILLION more people lost jobs in the last 8 weeks. The real unemployment rate may be nearing 50%. How can I say that?

The BLS and WolfStreet .com report that there are 260 million working-age people in the USA. 127 million (or 49%) are not working. This is probably the easiest way to understand the numbers without the financial chicanery taking place to make the numbers appear better. However, it actually gets worse. 19 million of those who are employed are employed in government positions so there is no actual contribution to the economy from these people. Also, of the 127 million workers 23 million are only working part-time. I don’t know of many part-time jobs that can support a person let alone a family.

“JP Morgan didn’t need help in 2008 and has a fortress balance sheet”. According to a GAO audit the bank received over $1.4 TRILLION in “no help” after the 2008 crisis. There is a lot of speculation that the carnage in the repo market originated with this firm. Just prior to the first interventions three JPM traders were indicted for turning its precious metals trading desk into a criminal enterprise under the RICO statute.

“Gold is a barbaric relic” For banks and central banks that have been saying that for years to be buying this exact same “relic” in record amounts for the past few years should give you a clue. They are suppressing the price with words and deeds to keep the price low so they can buy it low. ALWAYS watch what they DO- not what they say. Why would entities that can get trillions with a mouse click be buying gold in record amounts? I guess what I have been saying for years is becoming apparent to most. If you can get a trillion of anything with virtually no cost it is most likely worthless. I believe the central banks and major banks are well aware of that and are just preparing for when the rest of society wakes up.

If you go to the  USDebtclock.org  you can get an eyeful. If you go back to 1913 when the Fed was formed you can see that there was $29.00 for each ounce of gold in the USA. The gold price was fixed at $20.67 until 1932 when gold was confiscated and revalued to $35.00 in 1934. There was also $2.67 for each ounce of silver. The point here is that there was a direct correlation between the dollars in circulation and the price of metals. Contrast that to today where gold sells for around $1730.00 per ounce (5-14-2020) and there are 21,784 dollars for each ounce of gold. Silver trades for less than $16.00 per ounce but there are a stunning $2627.00 for each ounce of silver. Let’s also not forget that silver hit $50.00 per ounce in 1980 and again in 2011. With all of the “printing” that has taken place since then you would think the price would be orders of magnitude higher right now. I believe it will be shortly.

This takes me back to the “leaders with no morals” because the CFTC has been aware of this price suppression scheme for quite some time but fail to do their job which is to protect investors from the thieves at the bank who rig prices.

“The markets are up because of … take your choice- China talks, vaccine success, etc.”

Forget it all. Gregory Mannarino called our economy the “casket economy” dead and buried- this morning in his podcast. I thought that was a great explanation. If it weren’t for the Fed pumping trillions into this “market” and other “markets” around the world stocks, bonds, and all other paper assets would have collapsed already.

They would likely have collapsed in a manner that would have no historical precedent. NO news from anywhere can make up for hundreds of millions of jobs lost globally, economies locked down and experiencing contractions that already have no historical precedent and we are still likely in the first inning of this game. Unemployment in the great depression reached 25%. We are a few weeks into this and we are near 50% unemployment. GDP is collapsing with no historical comparison. Tax receipts are falling more than at any time in history. Corporate profits are collapsing at the same time corporate debt is at its highest reading of all time. This is a toxic combination.

This takes me back to 2008 when I knew some hedge fund managers that won BIG betting against the market at the time. Unfortunately for them there is a winner and a loser in every trade. Many losers lost so much they couldn’t pay. This meant that the euphoria of making tens of millions was replaced with the uncertainty of getting paid at all. This is the epitome of counter-party risk. If your counterparty can’t pay you may win and still lose.

Are things more stable now than in 2008 or less stable? Is there more debt or less? Are counterparties more stretched today than they were in 2008? Are the morals of your counterparties any better than they were in 2008- or are they even worse?

There is no counterparty risk with gold and silver. There is an active price suppression scheme that likely has an expiration date in the near future. Who knows what the actual price should be! Having said all that, gold is walloping the stock markets this year even though the “markets” are being artificially propped up with an equally likely nearing expiration date. What would the “markets” be without the fake money being used to buy up virtually all paper assets?

Silver is still lagging and I am not the only one who calls silver the most undervalued asset on the planet.  

Times are not only changing- they have changed for good. Many see it- many don’t. Those who see it would be well served to take a look at how you have been investing for the past 30 years or so and see if it makes any sense in this environment. CLUE- If you think things will go back to “normal” anytime soon I believe you are sadly mistaken. If you think the “markets” will save you or the Fed has your back- good luck with that!
You really need to think about becoming your own central bank.
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About Miles Franklin

Miles Franklin was founded in January, 1990 by David MILES Schectman. David's son, Andy Schectman, our CEO, joined Miles Franklin in 1991. Miles Franklin's primary focus from 1990 through 1998 was the Swiss Annuity and we were one of the two top firms in the industry. In November, 2000, we decided to de-emphasize our focus on off-shore investing and moved primarily into gold and silver, which we felt were about to enter into a long-term bull market cycle. Our timing and our new direction proved to be the right thing to do.

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