“The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Read on the Internet”

The mailbag earns praise and ridicule. Let’s have some fun reading what the Remnant thinks. April 25, 2024 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( “The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Read on the Internet” SEAN RING Dear Reader, When I look into the mailbag, I don’t just seek validation and agreement. Though I must admit, they make me feel good. But when someone writes a Rude piece he read is “the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on the Internet,” I’m beyond curious. So let’s get right on it. No, It’s Not Suez! Dear Sean, Your screed about the Houthies and the US is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on the Internet. You certainly do not know what the hell you’re talking about and are taking up space in my brain when I need to be working and investing money. Stick to financing, money, and stock suggestions, and keep your stupid, uninformed, ill-educated rants about politics out of our faces, please, and thank you! Whoever you are, you forgot to sign your name. So I’ll refer to you as Nemo. Nemo, I’m all ears. The last thing I want anyone to think is that I ruined their morning cup of coffee. Just thinking about it fills me with dread. My goal every day is to make you and every other reader just one fact smarter and one story happier than you were the day before. That’s it. We call it “The Rule of One” here at Paradigm. We only write about one subject each time. I chose that subject because chokepoints really, really matter in our brave new world. I assume you’re talking about the April 5th article titled “[A Watery Grave]( where I assert the US is having a “Suez Moment” like the Brits and French had in 1956. I start the piece with a history of the Suez Crisis, complete with names and dates. I then go to the current situation, where I quote U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking saying, "We favor a diplomatic solution. We know that there is no military solution," and then link to the briefing where he actually says it. I then show that failure after failure by Joke Biden, especially after the muffed Afghanistan pullout, has wrecked the US’s reputation. Finally, I assert no one is afraid of the US or Israel anymore and that Biden was stupid to release the $6 billion to the Iranians (who are funding the Houthis) without guarantees. Nemo, I’m totally ok if you don’t think this is the US’s “Suez Crisis.” I looked up “Suez Crisis” on X and found that most point to Ukraine as being the US’s Suez Crisis. But as we’re twenty days on from my article, let me ask you this: - Is the Suez Canal open? - Are the Houthis still holding world trade hostage? - Have Egypt’s finances recovered? - Is the US closer to solving the problem? No. No. No. And… No. I leave you with this. My good friend and Managing Editor of Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets, Dave Gonigam, sent me this yesterday, completely unbidden: Credit: [@LukeGromen]( Iran Hello Sean, In your column, you say that sanctions will not work on Russia. Your charts obviously indicate that sanctions will not work because Russia has so many options in which they can engage in trade. Do you think increased sanctions will work on Iran? Iran can still trade directly with Russia & China The USA cannot block that if the trading partners simply ignore the USA. Joke Biden just applied more sanctions to Iran but "the joke is on us" since the Biden Regime overlooked Iranian oil. Jeff R. Hi Jeff! Thanks for writing. No, I don’t think sanctions work on Iran. Bloomberg explains that in excellent practical terms [here](. But if you look at Jim Rickards’ framework, you need three conditions satisfied for sanctions to work. They are: - The target country must have a small- or medium-sized economy with little robustness or resiliency to sanctions. - The target country must have limited access to alternative payment channels and few allies in any effort to obtain hard currency. - The target country must have limited hard currency reserves or gold with which to evade or wait out sanctions. Iran’s economic resilience has shocked Western observers. Of course, having besties like China and Russia helps. Thanks to Russia and China, Iran has access to alternative payment channels. And evidence suggests that Iran has the reserves to weather quite a storm, especially with all the oil they sell as Biden turns a blind eye. [Florida Man Wields Odd Device on Virginia Farm]( He traveled 1,000 miles away from home… To show you this strange device on a farm in rural Virginia. You won’t know by looking at it, but a secret company behind this strange device could hold the potential to make you rich over the coming years. [Click here to find out how.]( [Click Here To Learn More]( Origin Story From Kentucky, good morning Sean! I enjoyed your story so much that I had to write and tell you personally. I’m the son of immigrant parents from Vienna, Austria, and have also done a lot of traveling - but for different reasons… I enjoy your perspective and your writing style and wanted to say thank you, keep up the good work! Take your family out for some ice cream - I know it’s phenomenal there!! Thanks again and have a great weekend! Edwin P. Thank you for the kind words, Edwin! Much appreciated. Pam and I were just talking about getting back to Vienna. We had a fabulous time there at the Christmas markets in 2019. As for the ice cream, it’s incredible… but oh my blood sugar! Nowhere to Run Sean, Good story today. We know that our politicians and Federal agencies are all not doing their jobs and I’m glad that you keep pointing that out. What interests me today though, is it not the same BS wherever you are, in your case Italy and the EU. Is there any place that one can hide from all of this nonsense? James T. It’s a great question, James. My philosophy remains the same: get to a country you love that has a great tax deal. Society, as we know it, is unsavable, so it’s all about you and your family getting the best deal you can. My family and I have a great deal here and we’ve made loads of friends (luckily). The government becomes less of a nuisance when you have more cash at your disposal and a great network to rely on. One For Byron I read the article on the truckers' protest and found it to be remarkably accurate. Canada is a federation of provinces with a national government with certain restricted powers and provinces with lawmaking powers over the areas they encompass. Increasingly over the past decades, the federal government has been trying to increase its influence to ensure power and capital flow to central Canada. There exists a division of political power both east and west of central Canada. There are sharp divisions of interests (and taxation). The so-called Truckers protest was a general show of dissent, not an organized protest. It was very much opposed to Liberal socialism which is prevalent throughout the country. Natural trade routes are north-south so the west of Canada has much in common interests with the American west as opposed to central Canada interests. It is necessary to recognize that Canadian politics is very different from American politics….but both are trending towards socialism. John M. Thanks for writing in, John. I’ll pass this on to Byron. Donnie Baseball and Trading Sean, Interesting read today, you pointing out <$10 trades for “essentially” the same thing is really interesting/helpful to me. Keep ‘em comin’. If you mention Mattingly, you might know that he coached a AAA team in Joliet, Illinois, for a year or two. Jim T. Thanks for writing in again, Jim! I’ll do my best to keep on keeping on. I was unaware that Donnie Baseball coached in Illinois. Thanks for that! Vesuvius The last time I was in Naples was Christmas Eve in 1980. I remember the damage from the recent earthquake. God forbid that Vesuvius lets loose anytime soon. Your photo reminds me a little of Mt. Rainier, which looms in the distance over the poor devils in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington (except for the lack of snow). Folks I know who have summited Rainier say that up there you can smell the brimstone. Like the big V, it's not dead, only sleeping, and woe to those who get in the way of the inevitable pyroclastic flows. RJS Hi RJS! Thanks for writing in. It amazes me how Neapolitans just go about their day with that huge volcano in the background. Wrap Up What a great mailbag! Feel free to write in any time you like. Until then, keep well. All the best, Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening X (formerly Twitter): [@seaniechaos]( Rate this email Like Dislike Thanks for rating this content! Looks like something went wrong. Please try to rate again. In Case You Missed It… King: What Rising Gold Means to You SEAN RING The Financial Times proclaims in a banner headline, “Gold is back,” and its “surge may herald a whole new world.” According to a recent report from Citibank, gold will “shine bright like a diamond” in an odd mix of mineralogical and metallurgical metaphors. Grammar aside, Citi analysts expect the price of gold to increase to over $3,000 per ounce by the end of 2025. With similar bullishness, soothsayers at Goldman Sachs predict $2,700 gold by year’s end, well above the recent mid-April high of just over $2,400. I could continue and list other fist-pounding forecasts for gold by big-name news sites and investment houses that augur higher prices for our favorite metal. Another way to say it (except they’re not actually coming out and saying it) is relative to precious metals, the dollar is rapidly declining in value and will continue to do so. Here’s something else: it’s not just that we have all these bullish predictions of higher gold prices. It’s that precious metals are even being mentioned in mainstream media, and the recent upward price moves are front-page news. I’ll expand on all of this in just a moment. Meanwhile, here at Paradigm Press, we’ve covered gold and silver for many years. We often write about the value of precious metals and how to invest in them either as physical metals or via mines and royalty plays. If you’re a long-time subscriber, you're already well ahead of current thinking. If you bought physical metal in the past couple of years, you’re in tall cotton just now. Or, if you’re new to the franchise, you’ve come to the right place for solid insight, analysis, and investment ideas. Newfound Interest After Many Years This newfound media and institutional interest in gold, in particular, comes after years of neglect toward the yellow metal. Indeed, the collective mainstream of economic, banking, investment, and academic establishments has long treated gold harshly. Even when gold has its periodic good days, the world’s monetary and banking bigshots view the substance as just another pet rock, an irrelevant artifact of a long-lost gilded age (figuratively, if not literally). In Washington, D.C., within the Treasury and Federal Reserve Buildings, gold is an annoying adjunct to the finely tuned, highly integrated world monetary system. And no serious government official ever wants to speak about what’s inside the vaults at Fort Knox. But considering the recent pro-gold headlines, it's fair to say that something has changed. Doubtless, part of the new attitude is how people “talk their book,” as the saying goes. We’re in an era when large sums of money are obviously moving into gold. Central banks, large institutional investors, wealthy individuals, and others are buying gold, and individuals are even buying, as we see with the news that Costco has sold over $200 million of gold ingots to retail customers every month lately. Something is happening, yes? Thus, big media and banking houses like Citi, Goldman, etc., must position themselves along the pathway of the funds to take a few cuts along the way. Hey, it’s business. “Barbarous Relic?” Smile When You Say That… Still, for all the current rah-rah about gold, there’s that legacy of past disdain toward the metal. It’s best summed up in dismissive comments that we’ve probably all heard on occasion, along the lines that gold is a “barbarous relic.” That’s actually a misquote of economist John Maynard Keynes, who in 1923 wrote that “in truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic” (see A Tract on Monetary Reform, ch. 3.) So to be accurate, per Keynes, the gold standard is a barbarous relic, not gold itself. Even on that point, though, Keynes was wrong. Over the past century, history demonstrates how an unbacked, unanchored currency (aka fiat money, issued with naught but political backing) tends to lose value (lose most of its value, actually) over time due to government overspending and long-term inflation. Along these lines, consider the true value of an ounce of gold. And no, it’s not necessarily reflected in the daily price quote in terms of dollars, yen, pounds, euros, etc. It’s better to look at the value of gold as inherent in the metal itself, the idea of “gold is money,” which is what intelligent people used to think. Begin with the immutable fact that an ounce of gold is always worth an ounce of gold. More specifically, let’s look at this beautiful U.S. gold coin from 1923, from back when Lord Keynes made his famous comment. It’s a $20-face value St. Gaudens “Liberty” from that era, weighing just over an ounce (1.179 oz., to be exact): 1923 U.S. St. Gaudens $20 gold coin. Courtesy USACoinbook.com. This coin was standard-issue U.S. currency in the time of Keynes, produced and distributed by the U.S. Mint, and widely used in circulation both at retail and in banking. You could spend it in the U.S. or across the world, anywhere, anytime, no questions asked. People everywhere would take your gold. And back in 1923, this gold coin was worth the grand sum of… $20! Although, to be sure, $20 in 1923 was quite different from $20 today, and that’s among the keys to understanding here. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, at a site called “[CPI Inflation Calculator]( $20 from 1923 requires almost $370 today to offer the same purchasing power as a century ago. In other words, per our federal government, that $20 from 1923 has lost over 94% of its purchasing power over time due to inflation. And how about a different method of comparing value then-versus-now? Because over the past 101 years, this 1923 gold coin has gained in dollar value to where it's advertised today on, say, eBay in the range of $2,600 to well over $3,000, depending on quality, or what’s called “mint state.” Aside from nicks, dings, scratches, or perhaps a bit of tarnish over time, nothing else about the 1923 coin has changed. The coin contains .9675 troy ounces of gold, and overall, the composition is 90% gold and 10% copper, the latter added by the mint to harden the alloy. Over 100 years later, it’s the same piece of metal. That old 1923 coin has just shy of an ounce of gold, making the metal worth about $2,300 today. Do the math; divide by $20 to get 115, which is more than the 94% decline per the U.S. government statistic. The difference between the two numbers reflects the vagaries of calculating the government CPI versus an exact market price for gold. So, we’re back to the idea of holding gold in hand over the long haul versus trusting the government’s currency. And still, some people say that gold is a barbarous relic, eh? Yeah, right, professor. We should all have such barbarous relics in our pockets or strongboxes. What’s Driving the Gold Move? Okay, enough history and theory. Let’s now address some reasons why gold has recently been rapidly rising in dollar terms. Again, we return to the earlier point that gold is gold; the metal doesn’t change. But what does move is the relative value of dollars in which gold is priced. That is, at one point last fall, an ounce of gold posted a price of about $1,850, and in the second week of April 2024, that same ounce traded at over $2,350, a move of over 27% in about six months. Clearly, the dollar is falling from favor relative to gold. What happened? Perhaps we’ve reached a tipping point of so-called “full faith” in the U.S. government and its currency. Just consider the U.S. national debt of well over $34 trillion, which accumulated in the past two decades under Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. People everywhere have watched this debt monster grow, and now, at this point — the early innings of a looming monetary transformation — smart money is ditching dollars and moving into gold. It’s a de-risk and safety trade in many respects. U.S. government, quarter-century national debt blowout. Courtesy St. Louis Fed (FRED). So, there’s all this national debt, plus the fact that it’s growing like gangbusters. In fact, current growth in the debt is in the range of a trillion dollars every three months or so, courtesy of the Biden administration/Congressional spending machine. And yes, it’s bipartisan. This brings us to a related issue: the interest payable on the debt, which has grown immensely based on the Federal Reserve's rising rates in the past two years. Currently, interest on the debt is in the range of a trillion dollars (a thousand billion bucks) every six months or so. U.S. interest paid on the national debt has accelerated recently. Courtesy St. Louis Fed (FRED). To illustrate the size of just the interest payout (i.e., excluding the deficit spending that grows the debt as well), March 31 marked the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, and in just that timeframe, the U.S. government had paid out over a trillion dollars of interest, an amount which exceeds the entire defense budget. The long and short is that the U.S. is deep in debt. That debt is growing rapidly, while interest payouts are well into the ruinous phase. The U.S. economy and tax base cannot support this. Another way to say it is that the U.S. debt position is unsustainable, and something must give, sooner or later. At some point, the U.S. will likely experience a currency crisis. Again, the smart money knows this and is moving into hard assets like gold (and silver, other minerals and metals, energy, freshwater, land, and other “real” things) to retain value over time until the economy and society emerge from this hurricane. Meanwhile, as if the gargantuan debt and interest levels are not bad enough, another hit to the strength and credibility of the dollar has been U.S. and Western sanctions on Russia due to the latter’s Ukraine special military operation. The short version is that the U.S. government has sanctioned the bejeezus out of innumerable things Russian, meaning people, companies, and even the Russian government. These sanctions included freezing about $350 billion of Russian state assets in Western banks and other facilities. In essence, Russia retains ownership but can’t move its own money around. In recent months, there has been talk in political circles of actually seizing the Russian funds and forfeiting them, perhaps to give to Ukraine or some other end state. Whatever happens in all of this, the idea that the U.S. government might seize dollar-denominated assets of another sovereign state — definitely Russia, a superpower nation with over 6,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenals — is shocking to other governments and institutions across the world. If you read up on it, you’ll see words like “brigandage,” “piracy,” “banditry,” and more, all applied to the U.S. government. In essence, Washington's signal to people, institutions, and governments across the globe is that the U.S. is a lawless state run by thieves and pirates. Thus, it’s best to de-dollarize as much as possible. One way to do that is to take dollars and buy gold. So, What's a Person to Do? It’s all pretty depressing, yes? All that debt, all that interest. Political signals from people in Washington that all but tell the world to ditch dollars and buy gold. What should you do? Well, you should buy gold, too, and silver, other minerals and metals, energy, and more. Own real things that hold value over time, in whatever denomination. You’ve seen the news and numbers, right? The gold price recently increased to over $2,400 per ounce, although there was a pullback in the following days. Silver went over the $29 per ounce level, another long-time high, again with a pullback. If you want to own physical gold and silver or add to an existing stash, it’s not too late. Right now, your emphasis ought to be on bullion versus any sort of old coins or other numismatic items. Just go for the metal, not the story of what’s engraved on the faces. Along these lines, we at Paradigm Press work with the Hard Assets Alliance, a company that’s independent of us but with which we also have a financial relationship. If not Hard Assets, many other companies will sell you basic gold and silver. You’ll find them all over the internet. Just be careful how much they mark things up over the spot price. As for mining plays, it’s fair to say that the interest in gold and silver has not (yet) really moved the equity side, although any number of the best companies have shown solid, recent price moves. Here are a few of the best names, which I follow but are not official portfolio recommendations here at the Rude: We’ve often mentioned the biggest gold miners, Barrick (GOLD) and Newmont (NEM). They tend to be Wall Street favorites because of their size and the ease and liquidity of large funds to buy in and out. Other smaller companies in the top echelons of mining, with great assets and superb technical and management teams, include Alamos Gold (AGI), Kinross Gold (KGC), and IAM Gold (IAG). These companies all have market caps of over a billion dollars and are readily tradable. Finally, I’ll mention a true up-and-comer that works in Alaska called Contango Ore (CTGO). The company is now mining gold-bearing rock and stockpiling material for Kinross to process. So it’s pre-cash flow, but due to begin gold output later this spring and into summer. Once the money hits the cash register, I expect this one to take off. Again, the takeaway from this note is that gold is moving, and you should understand why. So position yourself defensively in terms of inflation and an ongoing, evolving decline in dollar purchasing power. As I noted before, you want to come out on the other side of the hurricane with your wealth intact, and precious metals are one way to do just that. Thank you for subscribing and reading. Best wishes… Byron W. King ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2024 Paradigm Press, LLC. 1001 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. 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