The Peter Schiff Show Podcast

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Dow jumps 300 points U.S. stocks finished out the week on a strong note; in fact we broke a 3-week losing streak. This was the first time in 4 weeks that the major averages finished higher on the week. When I recorded my podcast earlier in the week, the week was off to a rough start. But we had a turnaround.  In fact, today the Dow Jones was up 319 points on the day - about a 1.2% gain. The NASDAQ was up even more; 106 points, that's 1.34%.  The Russell 2000, even better, up 1.8%.  The Dow Transports were the stars of the day.  They were up 2.23% - 224 points.  Look at stocks like Apple, rising almost 3% to a new all-time record high. Rumors and News Driving the Market There was a lot of news driving the market today. Initially, we got rumors of some type of Brexit deal that potentially was imminent. Of course, there have been all sorts of rumors that have never panned out regarding a Brexit deal. But this morning, there was a rumor that really was causing a lot of buying in the European markets and that spilled over into the U.S. futures, which helped the U.S. market.  And of course there was a lot of brewing optimism over some kind of impending trade deal with China, although that news didn't come out until very close to the close. U.S. Consumer Sentiment Climbs to 3-Month High in October But, earlier in the day, we got the Consumer Sentiment number for October, and the markets are already higher by the time we got this release, which comes out at 10am; the market opens at 9:30. The prior month was 93.2, and the consensus was for a slight drop in consumer sentiment to 92.  After all, there are a lot of reasons for consumers to be less optimistic now than they were back then. But the consumer… surprise - ended up being more optimistic. The number came out at 96 and that sent the price of stocks much higher.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Another Weak Day in the Equity Market We had another weak day in the equity market, so the 4th quarter is starting off on a particularly sour note. The Dow, down 314 points today. Technically speaking, closing right near the lows: down 1.2%. NASDAQ had a much worse day, down 132 points - that's 1.67%.  Russell 2000, similarly beat up: 1.7%, down 25 points.  The Transports really took it on the chin. They down 1.85%. 185 points down on the Transports. The money losing stocks, the recent IPO's continue to get beat up. The real debacle du jour was Smile Direct. That one was down another 15% today: down $2 - it closed at $11.34 right off the new low of $11.20.  Remember, this stock came public less than 2 weeks ago and it was $23 a share.  The highest it actually traded was $21.10. Now we're down better than 50% from the IPO. Fed: QE but not QE But I really don't want to spend a lot of time talking about the markets today.  In fact, I only want to talk about one thing, and that's the Fed and the return to Quantitative Easing . I wasn't even going to do a podcast today; Yom Kippur starts in a couple of hours so I was just going to skip it. In fact, I wasn't even going to do one tomorrow - I was probably going to wait until Thursday. But then I was watching this press conference with Jerome Powell where basically the Fed came out and said they were doing QE, except they said they weren't doing QE. "Increasing Securities Holdings to Maintain an Appropriate Level of Reserves" There's an old saying: "Never believe something until it's been officially denied. Jerome Powell went out of his way today in his statement and in the Q and A that followed to emphatically say that the Fed is not doing QE. This is an exact quote from Powell: "This is not QE.  In no sense is this QE."  Except, in every sense it's QE, because it's exactly QE.  There's also an old saying," If it walks like a duck, it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck." Well, this looks like QE, it smells like QE, it quacks like QE, it walks like it… it is QE! What is the difference between QE and what the Fed is now doing? I wish someone would really ask that question.  In his prepared remarks, this is what Powell said: “As we indicated in our March statement on balance sheet normalization, at some point, we will begin increasing our securities holdings to maintain an appropriate level of reserves,” he said. “That time is now upon us.” Already? In March they said that "at some point"?  Did anybody back then think "some point" meant "NOW"?

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 The Weakest First Two Days of Any Quarter Since 2008 Before I get into what happened with today's nonfarm payroll number and the 372.68 rally in the Dow that it helped spark, I want to back and talk about what happened on Wednesday and Thursday, which were the 2 days following my Tuesday podcast, from the first day of the 4th quarter of the year. On Wednesday, the market sold off sharply, in fact at one point we were down better than 600 points on the day. We managed to close down just under 500 - 494 points.  At that point, the first 2 days of the 4th quarter of 2019 were the weakest first 2 days of any quarter - not just a 4th quarter - but of any quarter going all the way back to 2008, which was the year the market imploded because of the '08 financial crisis. Weakness in Private Sector Jobs One of the data points that came out on Wednesday that may have been a contributing factor - but probably not - was the ADP employment number, which is an early look at the official numbers that came out today.  This is just the private sector, which is certainly weaker than the government sector, and I'm going to get into that when I discuss today's numbers later in the podcast. But, the estimate was for 152,000 jobs created in the private sector and we only got 135,000.  But, not only that, there was a downward revision to the prior month, from 195,000 to 157,000.  So, this was additional evidence of economic weakness that was weighing on the market. IPO's Cancelled Due to Insufficient Investor Demand Also, again we had the follow over from what I had pointed out on my podcast not only on Tuesday, but on Friday the prior week regarding the weakness in the newly publicly traded companies - money losing companies - the fact that some of these companies had to cancel their IPO's due to insufficient investor demand. All of that was weighing on the market and helped produce that sharp decline. ISM Non-Manufacturing Down A Lot - Not Just a Little Bit And when we got into the market on Thursday, the market had opened initially a little bit higher.  But then as soon as we got the ISM non-manufacturing number (remember, we had gotten a very weak manufacturing number and was part of the reason we had the big decline earlier in the weak) but now we got the ISM non-manufacturing number and this number was forecast to come in at 55.5.  This would have been a reduction in the 56.4 that we had for August.  But instead of going down a little bit, the number went down a lot - all the way down to 52.6.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 First Day of Q4 2019 Today was the first trading day of the 4th quarter of 2019.  And if today's action was a harbinger of things to come, it is going to be one difficult quarter for the bulls on Wall Street. In fact, when they rang the opening bell this morning, everybody was happy, the stock market was up, the dollar was up, gold was down again.  In fact, gold has had a pretty big correction since my last podcast. When You Live in Glass White Houses… Yesterday, gold saw a $25 decline; again, with a stronger dollar and a stronger stock market.  For some reason, I think investors were a little bit more optimistic over the last few days after my last podcast Donald Trump talked about - or there were some rumors that he was thinking about maybe de-listing Chinese companies from U.S exchanges, making it illegal or something for Americans to invest in China - which I thought was a very dangerous road for the President to go down. Remember, when you live in glass White Houses, you don't want to throw stones. Chinese Still Big U.S. Investors The United States benefits from a lot of direct investment from overseas, particularly China.  Chinese invest a lot in U.S. businesses; they're big buyers of U.S real estate, and, of course, they're still big holders of U.S. Treasuries. If the United States says, "Well, Americans can't invest in China." what happens if the Chinese return the favor?  I think we have a lot more to lose than they do. I think the following day or maybe over the weekend the President kind of backtracked away from that trial balloon and they said, "No, we're not considering that." So probably that was good news and a relief for the market that that wasn't going to happen.  

Check out my podcast, "What it Means to be an American", Episode 265 Earthquake Hits Puerto Rico Last night, I was lying in bed, I wasn't asleep yet; I just finished watching television; my wife and I were still awake, and next thing we know, the house starts shaking. And it kept on shaking.  I couldn't believe I was in an earthquake. This was a decent-sized earthquake - it was over 6.0 on the Richter scale. The earthquake occurred in the ocean, but not too far from Puerto Rico.  I think it rattled a lot of the islands here in the Caribbean. I haven't felt an earthquake since I lived in California. To be honest, I never even considered earthquakes here in Puerto Rico.  I knew about hurricanes, but I really didn't think we would be hit by an earthquake - and we did.  Fortunately, it didn't do any actual damage; in fact, I don't think anything in Puerto Rico was damaged.  Of course, the big risk when you get earthquakes in the ocean is tsunamis - but that didn't happen.  In the meantime, I've got a tropical storm overhead as I am recording this podcast.  Tropical Storm Karen has arrived in Puerto Rico later than expected.  It was supposed to come this morning but it didn't get here until this afternoon, although "Karen" doesn't sound particularly menacing, and it's living up to its name. It's really just a little rain, not too much wind; so that's not bad. Disaster in the Cryptocurrency Markets The real disaster is not here in Puerto Rico with earthquakes and tropical storms; it's the disaster that is unfolding in the cryptocurrency markets.  We are seeing some real carnage - a real bloodbath over there. I think this is just getting started, because we've finally really broken down on the Bitcoin chart, although the biggest declines today are in the alt coins. Bitcoin is down about 13% right now. But this about the high that Bitcoin is been in the last half hour. We're trading up around $8500.  We did get as low as $8000; I think we maybe ticked below it briefly.  That means from the nearly $14000 high that's a better than 40% drop in the price of Bitcoin from that peak, which, by any definition constitutes a bear market.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 These two videos were referenced in today's podcast: How government programs drive up college tuitions Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide Fed Proving Me Right As I surmised, when I recorded my podcast on Wednesday, it seems pretty clear that the Federal Reserve has already returned to quantitative easing.  And that didn't take long, because they just ended QT (quantitative tightening) and they've already begun QE. - Although, the Fed is not going to admit that that's what they're doing. Apart from proving me right, which was one of my forecasts from the very beginning, even before the Fed was talking about ending QE, I said they could never end it before they even started it. Monetary Roach Motel I had forecast what the Fed was going to do before they did it. And when they announced quantitative easing, not only did I say it was a mistake, but I said the Fed was checking us into a monetary roach motel from which we could never check out.  It was the delusion that we could check out - the Fed was able to convince the markets that it was a temporary policy and that they would only be doing it in an emergency, then they would unwind the policy and shrink their balance sheet and the market believed them. QE Plus Zero Interest Rates Equals Bigger Problem I didn't believe them, and I was warning everybody that the Fed was either lying or didn't know what they were talking about or foolish, but the markets bought into this nonsense.  So, clearly, if the Fed were going to go back to quantitative easing, they would basically be admitting that the policy was a failure. Because the policy was intended to be temporary, not permanent. If they have to do it again, then it proves that it wasn't temporary.  Again, what I said, by doing quantitative easing in conjunction with lowering interest rates to zero, they were simply taking a debt problem and making it much bigger by encouraging even more debt. So once you load up with debt, once you encourage everybody to lever up, then you can't pull the rug out from under them.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 No Surprises from the Fed: Quarter Point Reduction A lot has actually happened since I recorded my last podcast on Friday. I want to start with what happened today and then work backwards.  First of all the big news of the day is the Federal Reserve did exactly what the markets expected and reduced interest rates by a quarter point. Fed: "Mid-Course Correction"? This is the second quarter point reduction since the Fed reversed course on monetary policy and started what it once called a 'mid-course correction".  The markets didn't really like that, so the Fed kind of walked that back. Although, in the press conference today, Powell was asked about the "mid-course correction" and he kind of dodged it a little bit, but still maintained the pretense that all is well in the economy. But anyway, the Fed delivered the quarter point cut #2.  It is now targeting the Fed Funds Rate at between 1.75% and 2%. Short Term Interest Rates Back Below 2% So we now have short-term interest rates back below 2% - certainly on the way to zero, maybe even lower, we'll see.  Jerome Powell was specifically asked about negative interest rates during the Q&A session following the announcement.  He basically said the Fed is not really thinking about negative interest rates, or don't think they're going to be doing  negative interest rates, but of course we'll see what happens when we get to zero, and the problems are not solved. The Fed may well do negative interest rates; they may well not want to let that cat out of the bag just yet. Bullard:  "Interest Rates are Too High" At one point there was some anticipation that the Fed would do 50 basis points but by the time we actually got the announcement this morning, I don't think anybody was really looking for 50 basis points. Although, in the decision to reduce rates, Jim Bullard actually dissented and said that he wanted a 50 basis point rate cut, rather than the 25, but there were 2 other dissenters who didn't want any cuts at all.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Dow 200 Points from Record High It was pretty quiet today in the equity markets; the Dow Jones managed to inch up 37 points, closing at 27,219 but, you know, how we're less than 200 points away from a new all-time record high in the Dow Jones. Long on Bonds? Bad Friday 13th! But the real action today was in the bond market. If you're suspicious on this Friday the 13th, and you were looking for bad luck, that's where you would have found it, if you were long the bond market.  Now, I've been talking about this bond market bubble for a long time - it's been inflating for a long time. Whether or not it's actually popped, well, we'll have to wait a little longer to find out.  But the carnage in the bond market that I mentioned on my last podcast has continued, with bonds continuing to suffer. Biggest Single Day Decline on 10-Year Treasury In fact, today was the biggest single day decline of the entire move.  The yield on the 10-year Treasury up to 1.903%.  Now, of course, it's still a very, very low yield, but when you consider that a week ago, we were as low as 1.429%.  That is a huge increase, percentage-wise, in the yield on the 10-year bond, which means a big drop in prices. Risk in Bonds if Interest Rates Go Up I'm not sure the percentage decline; maybe 5 or 6% was the drop, which, in the stock market, that's not a big deal.  Stock prices could drip 5% in a week - no big deal. But when the price of a bond drops by 5% in a week, especially a Treasury bond - people think about Treasury bonds as being risk-free - well, there's actually a lot of risk.  Especially when you're buying a bond with such a low coupon. There's a lot of risk if interest rates go up, then the value of that bond is going to go down.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Millions of Americans were Affected by the Terrorist Attack on 9/11 Today is the 18- year anniversary of the tragic events that surrounded the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in 2001.  I do not wish to make light of the suffering of the individuals who died tragically, not only the people who lost their lives on the ground, but also the ones aboard the airplane that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. And, of course, thousands of families were profoundly affected by those events, and they're still affected by those events today. Loss of Liberty and Freedom So, what I am about to say is not to minimize their suffering, but there are 300 million or so Americans who were not personally affected by those events, other than the fact that we certainly empathize with our fellow citizens who did have to endure the tragedy on a more personal level.  But on a broader level, the biggest loss, historically, from those events is not just the loss of lives and the family members who lost loved ones, but all Americans who lost individual liberty and freedom. Self-Inflicted Loss That is the real tragedy, historic tragedy of 9/11. The tremendous loss of individual liberty and freedom. America today is a far less free society than it was prior to those attacks 18 years ago. And that means that the terrorists won. They didn't win based on the damage that they inflicted.  They won based on the damage that we inflicted on ourselves. The self-inflicted wounds are much greater on a national scale than the terrorists' direct acts. And it's not just the 300 million Americans who are alive today. It's all the Americans yet to be born who are going to be born into a society that is far less free than America would have been but for these attacks.

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 The Numbers Really Look Bad in Private Payrolls Where the  numbers really start  to get bad is when you look at the private payrolls.  There, they were expecting 150,000 private sector jobs created. The private sector jobs are far more important than the government jobs.  The private sector jobs are self-sustaining. The tax payers are on the hook for paying the salaries of the government workers and the private sector employees, by and large are actually productive.  They're making our lives better. Manufacturing is Very Weak They were looking for 150,000 private sector jobs; we got just 96,000 jobs. AND, they revised last month's private payrolls down from 148,000 to 131,000.  Manufacturing - very weak: they were looking for 8,000 jobs - instead, we added just 3,000 manufacturing jobs in August and last month, July, they originally said that we created 16,000 manufacturing jobs and we only created 4,000 manufacturing jobs. 34,000 Jobs Created in Category "Government" Now if you actually look at the breakdown of all the jobs that were created, 34,000 jobs were created in the category of "government".  So, of all the different job categories, the one that added the most was government - 34,000 jobs. I think about 20,000 of these people were temporary hires associated with the 2020 Census. Where's the money coming from to pay for these government jobs?  It's being borrowed. We're borrowing more money to hire more government workers.  Of course, ultimately the taxpayers are on the hook for paying all these salaries, for paying interest on the money  borrowed, to pay all these salaries. Slowest Job Growth in Private Sector Creation in 8 Years In fact, if you look at the private sector job creation so far in the Trump Presidency, this year, 2019, is on track to have the slowest growth in private sector job creation in 8 years. Trump is out there talking about how this is the greatest economy ever - he's the greatest jobs president ever.  We've got the manufacturing sector, the weakest it's been in 10 years, we have the slowest growth in private sector payrolls in 8 years - this is a disaster!

Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Silver DID Join Gold's Party Back in mid-July I titled my podcast, "Is Silver Finally Joining Gold's Party?". Well, I think we know the answer to that question. Since I recorded that podcast about a month and a half ago, the price of silver is up another 15%.  In fact, it's up better than 30% since the end of May. Silver having a sterling performance today. As I am recording this podcast, it's about an hour after the close of the U.S. market, we're up almost 90 cents an ounce. We're at 19.22. Gold Still Meeting Resistance at $1,550 Gold, not quite having as strong a day as silver; gold isn't making a new high.  It's up $19.50 on the day: $1548.  Still having some problems with the $1550 resistance area. GLD, the exchange-traded ETF did make a new high for this move, but the spot market did not register a new high - but I think that's just a matter of days - if not hours - before that happens. Silver is Leading the Charge Because silver is leading the charge. It's leading gold higher; pretty much the way I said.  A week ago, I titled my podcast, "Hi Ho Silver, Away" and that prompted a number of people to comment that somehow I had just capped the silver rally by getting too optimistic on silver.  Well, that was a week ago.  We just hit $18.00, we're now over $19.00, and I said on that podcast, I thought we would have a pretty quick move up to about $20, and once we take out $20, I think this thing could really, really take off. Overdue Move Down in the Dollar What is going to be the catalyst, I think, for a much bigger move up in both gold and silver is going to be the long overdue move down in the dollar. Paradoxically, when the dollar starts its decline, it is even possible that gold and silver take a bit of a breather, or maybe pull back a little bit, in terms of dollars, but pull back even more in terms of other currencies. Remember, as strong as gold has been in dollars, it has been even stronger in other currencies.

  Don’t miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Let's Debunk Andy Yang's Platform I decided to take a little time out on my Labor Day to record a podcast debunking Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang. I've been getting a lot of emails about Yang; especially since he did the Joe Rogan Podcast about six months ago.  He said a lot of things that certain people find appealing, so I've been asked to comment on him and I've seen other notes about Andy Yang and I wanted to talk about him because, number one, he is rising in the polls. He's now in sixth place among the Democratic candidates; he's polling at about 3% ant that puts him ahead of established politicians like Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, so he's gaining in popularity and I think the trend is going to continue. Yang Rising in the Polls The next Democratic Debate is coming up in about a week and a half and they're no longer going to have two debates; they've narrowed it down to just ten candidates and Andy Yang is one of those 10.  I think as there are fewer candidates in the race, Yang is going to get more and more attention from the media and I think he is going to rise in the polls. Attractive Among a Bunch of Democratic Socialists To me, he is like the Bernie Sanders of this campaign. Sanders, and "Feeling the Bern"… he was popular in the 2016 campaign, mainly because he was the only alternative to Hillary Clinton, who was extremely unpopular.  So, given that matchup and there was only two choices, it made it very easy for Sanders to gain a lot of support.  He's having a much harder time galvanizing that support this time because people have a lot of alternatives. If you want a Democratic Socialist, there's a bunch of them to choose from. Clearly a Smart Guy… But But a guy like like Andy Yang, a younger guy, and clearly a smart guy.  I had not watched his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience until just yesterday.  I decided to watch it, and that's the motivation for doing this podcast. Once I heard him talk about his ideas, I spent a lot of time on his website looking at a lot of things he didn't discuss with Joe Rogan.  One thing is certainly clear to me: he's a smart guy.  Clearly, if you gave an IQ test to all of the Democratic candidates, Yang would win.

Recorded August 30, 2019 Don't miss my upcoming appearances: The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5 The Dallas Money Show October 13-14 and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4 Waiting for Hurricane Dorian When I recorded my last podcast on Tuesday evening, we were getting ready for Hurricane Dorian, which was supposed to pass by the south coast 0f Puerto Rico on Wednesday.  But when I woke up on Wednesday morning, the meteorologists had the hurricane pretty much coming right over my house. It had changed course and had moved north, and it was supposed to come right through Puerto Rico, rather than just go by it to the South. But then the hurricane kept moving north, and it ended up missing Puerto Rico completely.  We were here, the kids were home from school, everybody was battened down waiting for what at that time was maybe a strong tropical storm… maybe a category 1 hurricane. Puerto Rico Spared from Hurricane But we didn't even get a rain drop. Not even a gust of wind, as the hurricane just missed Puerto Rico to the north. I think it did go by the U.S. and British Virgin Islands - didn't really do much damage, there, because the store hadn't intensified but Puerto Rico's gain will be Florida's loss. The storm did not go over Puerto Rico, and initially it was supposed to go over the Dominican Republic, and the mountains there, it's a much bigger island, and it would have really beaten up the storm, but because the storm was really uninterrupted, and it has been over water the entire time, now it looks like it will be a category 4 when it hits somewhere along the Florida coast. It looks like a pretty powerful storm. Broken Window Theory You're going to hear, as is always the case, economists are going to be saying, "Oh, well, this is good for GDP." Whenever there's a hurricane, people say, "Oh, look!  We have to spend all this money repairing and rebuilding everything that was destroyed."  But that is not good for the economy. If you haven't heard the "Broken Window Theory", Henry Hazlitt does a very good job of explaining that and refuting the Keynesian idea that disasters are somehow good for the economy.

Recorded August 27, 2019 Real Significant Action in the Market: Gold and Silver The real significant action today was in the gold & silver market. I wanted to mention today that on Friday, the U.S . dollar sold and then today we're back at 98. So the dollar is not weakening against other foreign currencies. In fact, most people are still talking about the strong dollar. Even Donald Trump talks about the fact that we have a strong dollar.  Now, Trump is bothered by the fact that we have a strong dollar, and he wishes it wasn't as strong, but he keeps talking about the strong dollar and everybody acknowledges that the dollar is strong. Silver is a Great Buy The problem is: the dollar is not strong. The price of gold going up shows you that the dollar is not strong. Gold was up $16 an  ounce: we closed at $1542.50. This is the highest close in over 6 years for the price of gold; but the real star today was silver. Silver was up 53 cents - $18.17. It's been a while now since silver was above $18. If you have been listening to my podcasts, you know that I have been pounding the table on silver. I've been telling people that silver is the key; it is really cheap relative to gold. In fact, it was better than 90:1. You needed more than 90 ounces of silver to buy a single ounce of gold. That was an all-time record low for the price of silver. Now we're at 85.  The ratio has moved back in silver's favor, but you still need 85 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold. That is historically extremely cheap. In fact, the only time it was cheaper was when it was 90. So it's still a great buy. Cash in some Gold to buy Silver I have been telling people, even at SchiffGold - we have actually been calling clients who we know own gold and have them sell us back their gold and buy silver, because you can get so much silver for your gold right now that it is a real bargain. Silver has never been this cheap, and so if you have gold and don't have any silver, it makes sense to buy some silver with your gold. Even after today's move, I would still say that that trade makes sense.    

Recorded August 23, 2019 A Bad Day for Everybody Except the Democratic Candidates If you are one of the Democrats running for President, today was a pretty good day for you. But it was a bad day for just about everybody else; I guess other than gold investors, which I clearly am, but I'm also an American and I hate to see bad things happening to my country, even though I know bad things are going to happen.  I would just rather be among those who profit from these events than suffer additional monetary loss in addition to the losses you endure as an American citizen as a result of the ensuing chaos and loss of liberties. President Trump Lost It on Twitter Today, President Trump really kind of lost it. On Twitter.  Real time.  Maybe what Trump needs is somebody to be his official Twitter filter. Maybe there should be a policy where when Trump wants to tweet, there is like a one or two hour cooling off period where the tweets get reviewed, maybe edited, maybe someone gets to talk a little sense into him before he tweets.  But today's tweet storm probably really indicates that the White House, I think, is in disarray. I think the President realizes that the air is coming out of this big, fat, ugly bubble.  That he's not going to get out of Dodge. CBO Revised Up Budget Deficit Estimate Again He's trying to pretend that the economy is in great shape, yet we're hearing rumors that we need a payroll tax cut, we need stimulus for the economy.  Why would you stimulate an economy that's doing great? If we have the greatest economy in the history of America, why does it need even more fiscal stimulus? After all, we already have the most fiscal stimulus ever. We have the largest budget deficits in history.  In fact the Congressional Budget Office this week came out and revised up again their estimates for the deficit.