"Donald Trump is a racist, bigot, sexist, xenophobe, anti-Semitic and Islamophobe -- did I miss anything?....Yup: he is also deplorable. The left and the media launch these hideous kinds of attacks at Trump every day; yet, nothing could be further from the truth about the real estate mogul.

As an entertainment journalist, I've had the opportunity to cover Trump for over a decade, and in all my years covering him I've never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for president. Keep in mind, I got paid a lot of money to dig up dirt on celebrities like Trump for a living, so a scandalous story on the famous billionaire could've potentially sold a lot of magazines and would've been a Yuge feather in my cap.

Instead, I found that he doesn't drink alcohol or do drugs. He's a hardworking businessman.

On top of that, he's one of the most generous celebrities in the world, with a heart filled with more gold than his $100 million New York penthouse.

Since the media has failed so miserably at reporting the truth about Trump, I decided to put together some of the acts of kindness he's committed over three decades which have gone virtually unnoticed or fallen on deaf ears.

Continue here.

COVID-1984: The medical cures with no media bite

"I have no qualifications in medicine whatsoever, so I have zero opinion to offer on plagues and cures. What I am copiously qualified to comment upon is the media reaction to COVID-19, and whether this is a reasonable reflection of reality. This is important, since our present situation includes huge curtailment of our normal freedoms of movement and commerce. Are those constraints proportionate, or overreach?

In particular, is the mass media performing its function of holding power (to put us under virtual house arrest) to account? There is a strong case to be made that not only in the answer “no”, but the media is actively promoting agendas that go against the public interest. For the purposes of this article, “the media” includes the major social media platforms, since they also frequently engage in (unlawful) editorialising and censorship.

We now know that the models originally used to justify lockdown policies do not reflect the real world experience: overly pessimistic inputs were exponentially compounded, resulting in paranoid forecasts. That is because COVID-19 seems to be a highly contagious condition (or maybe not), but not a particularly lethal one — when in comparison to total infections. Most people are asymptomatic, and those under 50 years of age nearly always recover."

"Where are the investigations into why the numbers dying from flu have dried up? Why is the CDC even stopping publishing flu data? Why are deaths from causes unrelated to COVID-19 seemingly dropping? Are people being given the right cause of death? What are the effects of a $40k (and up) financial incentive to ventilate someone (to death)? Why is hospitalisation data being deleted? Why are there 6x the cases and 12x the deaths in comparable Democrat cities versus Republican ones? Why are the NIH and CDC changing their tune on HCQ safety? Why does the WHO say there are no COVID-19 therapies when there visibly are? Why is the CDC sending out test kits that are themselves infected?
​
We are experiencing a lockdown of the free flow of knowledge, as well as of people. As a result, the public is unable to resist tyrannical policies imposed under the cover of public safety. COVID-19 is George Orwell’s “1984” — playing out in reality. Time to end this medical mafia media Party."

Click here to continue.

"With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs, ands and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics.
 
The crisis now will hit the politicians and political Doctor Fauci who gullibly accepted and trumpeted what statistician William Briggs calls “the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time.”
 
An egregious statistical horror story of millions of projected deaths, suffused with incense and lugubrious accents from Imperial College of London to Harvard School of Public Health, prompted the pols to impose a vandalistic lockdown on the economy. It would have been an outrage even if the assumptions were not wildly astronomically wrong."

Continue reading George Gilder’s essay at:
​ https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/04/25/this_pandemic_is_over_lets_stop_the_economic_suicide_and_get_back_to_work_490025.html
 
George Gilder is the author numerous books, including Wealth and Poverty, Knowledge and Power, and Telecosm. 

COVID-19: The Pin that Punctured the Credit Balloon

"Gold is on the cusp of breaking out to all-time highs in U.S. dollars and has already done so in virtually every other currency. Gold mining stocks continue to lag the metal and, in our opinion, represent a compelling investment opportunity at this moment. The COVID-19 pandemic panic was merely the black swan that punctured a financial market asset bubble that took almost a decade to inflate.

Think of the pandemic as the pin that punctured the credit balloon. In a few months, the pandemic will ease (hopefully) with the formulation of a COVID-19 vaccine, widespread testing and other responses that will surely come from the healthcare industry. However, the fiscal and monetary policy damage committed by all governments to save the world has created a debt hangover that will linger for years. Economic growth will rebound but only to subpar levels once extreme health-related restrictions are lifted and “stimulus” kicks in.

The requisites for robust economic growth most likely to misfire are investment confidence and bank lending. Both have been severely compromised. Whether this landscape evolves into a long stretch of deflation or combusts into untamed inflation remains to be seen. What seems quite apparent is that traditional Keynesian stimulus measures are in their endgame. They will most likely deliver only steadily diminishing returns. Starkly opposite economic outcomes are possible from this policy morass; both would be positive for gold but negative for real returns on fixed income or equities."

Click here to continue.

John Hathaway, CFASenior Portfolio Manager
50 Years of Investment Experience
​
John Hathaway joined Sprott Asset Management in January 2020. Mr. Hathaway is a Portfolio Manager of Sprott Hathaway Special Situations Strategy and Co-Portfolio Manager of the Sprott Gold Equity Fund. Previously, Mr. Hathaway joined Tocqueville Asset Management L.P. in 1997 where he was a Co-Portfolio Manager of the Tocqueville Gold Fund as well as other investment vehicles in the Tocqueville Gold Equity Strategy. He was also the Portfolio Manager of private funds. Prior to joining Tocqueville, Mr. Hathaway co-founded and managed Hudson Capital Advisors followed by seven years with Oak Hall Advisors as the Chief Investment Officer in 1986. In 1976, he joined the investment advisory firm David J. Greene and Company, where he became a Partner. Mr. Hathaway began his career in 1970 as an Equity Analyst with Spencer Trask & Co. Mr. Hathaway earned a B.A. from Harvard College and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Mr. Hathaway was also the Chairman of Tocqueville Management Corporation, the General Partner of Tocqueville. He also holds the CFA® designation.

​We hope you enjoy a very Happy Easter with family and friends!

If you missed the President’s Easter blessing, I recommend it.

Video: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-trump-delivers-easter-message-from-oval-office

Text: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-easter-blessing-bishop-harry-jackson/

Grant Williams convenes a Gold panel discussion with Ned Naylor-Leyland, Simon Mikhailovich, David Fergusson, Egon von Greyerz and Ronni Stoferle discuss the economic environment, what policy action means for gold, the possibility of inflation and the landscape for investing in precious metal mining stocks...

Click here for the series.

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THE ALLEGORY OF THE HAWK AND SERPENT

HOW TO BUILD A PORTFOLIO THAT LASTS 100 YEARS
​
"I want you to imagine that you have the opportunity to grant your family great wealth and prosperity for 100 years subject to one important choice. You must decide what assets to invest in and maintain that allocation for an entire century without ever changing it. The future of your children’s children depends on your choice. What do you do? 

The Allegory of the Hawk and the Serpent is a philosophic map to understanding the generational cycle of wealth creation, destruction, and rebirth to guide your investment decisions and protect your prosperity. To download the full article published in January 2020, click here."

See RealVision interview of Danielle DeMartino-Booth with Artemis Capital CIO, Chris Cole, click here.

By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hell followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.
– Revelation 6:8


SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – This morning…
… Italy has blocked internal travel…
… three out of four U.S. small businesses say sales are down because of the C virus…
… James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, says U.S. GDP could be cut in half, worse than the Great Depression…
… the bond market staggers as issuers – including the federal government – desperately try to raise money…
… and the “rescue” package in Congress has grown to $2 trillion.
You can follow the news as well as we can. So this week, here at the Diary, let’s lift a few rocks to look at what slimy creatures are underneath the news. 
We hope to see what is really going on. And then we’ll squint… and try to see what the world looks like AFTER the crisis is past.
Bear with us… There’s a lot of ground to cover.

First, for perspective…

Pale Horse

​In 1918, a pale horse appeared – the Spanish flu. A few months later, some 675,000 Americans were dead. That would be equivalent to about 1.2 million people today.
They coughed and sneezed… their lungs filled… their fevers rose… and they died.
Cities and local communities coped as best they could. But there was no panic.
No state of emergency was proclaimed, neither by any state nor by the national government.
No “shelter in place” orders were given. No face masks were distributed. No testing programs were put in place. No stores were closed. Nobody failed to show up for work (unless he was sick).
The only major public health initiative – undertaken in some cities but not others – was that schools closed early for the summer.
What the authorities didn’t do for citizens’ health, they also didn’t do for their money.
No “stimulus” was given. No deficit was run. No interest rates were cut. No emergency spending… no helicopter money… no bailouts.
With no rescue from the federales, the economy must have totally collapsed… right? Nope. That’s not what happened at all.
We’ll get back to that in a moment. But first… You’re probably more interested in 2020 than in the events of 100 years ago, right?
What’s going on now? What does it mean? What comes next? How do you protect yourself?
Is there a way to profit from it… to take advantage of the madness of crowds and the jackass policies of government?

Massive Rescue

The stock market has never fallen so fast, so hard… Nor has the government (including its central bank) ever undertaken such a massive “rescue.” What’s behind it?
Here at the Diary, we’ve been watching the wild, hothouse growth for at least 20 years, wondering how it would end.
Not trusting our own hunches and guesses, our researchers developed a Doom Index to try to give us a better idea of when the fruit was ripe.
In April of last year, the Doom Index hit “8” – indicating that it was heavy on the vine.
For the next eight months, it waited to be plucked. Then, along came the C virus.
The coronavirus was a surprise to everyone. But it didn’t cause the rot we see today; it merely set it off.
We can see that by looking back again at the last time a major virus hit the U.S., 100 years ago.
The Spanish flu killed hundreds of thousands of people back then. But stores remained open. Steel furnaces ran hot. Restaurants served meals. And people went to work as normal.
Unemployment grew, mostly because of the soldiers coming back from the war in Europe. But by the end of 1919, when it was all said and done, it had risen to only 4%. (Less by some estimates.)
Otherwise, things continued as usual. U.S. debt went down. And the stock market went up!
Today, with a total of 470 people dead, the U.S. is in such a tizzy, you’d think a whole cavalry of riders, white as chalk, had appeared on the White House lawn, commanded by the devil himself.
“Emergency war powers” are being invoked to fight a “war” on a molecule so small, it takes an electron microscope to see it.

Perfecting Social Distancing

Here in Argentina, we are under house arrest until Wednesday, when a public health nurse will come back to certify that we are virus-free.
Social distancing is no sweat for us. We’ve been practicing it all our lives. Now, we have a chance to perfect it.
And we didn’t need the feds to tell us. According to the numbers we’ve seen, a person over 70 who contracts the disease has a 1-in-10 chance of dying. Good odds. But not good enough.
In 1918, there were no epidemiologists to explain the risks of hanging out with others. Nor were there any antibiotics to fight the secondary infections. Nobody knew exactly how the virus worked, but they could see it was infectious.
Social distancing worked then… as it does now.
Governments encouraged people not to spit on the sidewalks. They were also urged to sleep with their windows open.
What they didn’t do… and didn’t need to do… was to panic into a huge program of money-printing to rescue the economy.
The economy didn’t need rescuing from a fever. It never does. It only needs rescuing from government.

Diabolical Mischief

An economy is nothing more than the agglomerated win-win deals of people going about their business of getting and spending.
They all aim to do the best they can for themselves. And they depend on market signals – prices – to tell them whether to buy, spend, sell, invest, and so forth.
In 1918, America still had a more-or-less free economy. Its price signals were still reliable. The Federal Reserve had been set up, but it had not yet flexed its muscles.
(It did however, lower bank reserve requirements, leading to a big increase in lending… and setting the economy up for a bust in 1920. More on this in a moment.)
The dollar was still backed by gold, which limited the feds’ power to print money.
The idea of bailing out a private business would have seemed outrageous. They would have said, “Any enterprise so mismanaged that it can’t withstand a crisis should be allowed to go bust.”
The idea of sending people checks, willy-nilly, would have been preposterous and impossible.
“Where in the Constitution does it give the government the power to do that?” some would have asked.
“How does it make sense to save people from their own imprudence?” others would have wondered.
“Where will the government get the money? Doesn’t all of its money have to come from the very same people it is now giving money to? What sense does that make?”
But come 2020, and nobody asks questions.
The government has so fouled the economy that you can barely take a step without needing to clean your boots. And the approach of a virus gave it the green light to bring out the Seven Princes of Hell to do their diabolical mischief.
Already underway is the biggest money-printing scheme ever seen in North America. Businesses, weakened by Fed policies, will be bailed out.
Bad managers – who used the Fed’s low interest rates to shovel billions to their shareholders and themselves – will not have to return the loot. They’ll be rescued by taxpayers. Their jobs will be saved… their fortunes revived.
Ordinary families, too, whose votes will be needed to stay in office, will be given bribes.
But what choice is there? What do you do when a deadly virus hits an economy?

Wildest Experiment

In 1918, the virus hit hard. The economy was apparently unaffected. But two years later, the Fed’s lower reserve requirements brought forth a correction… and more government inaction.
The Mises Institute explains what happened:
The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent.
Instead of "fiscal stimulus," [President] Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.
… By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.
Woodrow Wilson issued no emergency decrees during the virus crisis of 1919.
Nor did Wilson’s successor in the Oval Office, Warren Harding, promise any stimulus in 2020. Instead, Harding explained:
We must face the grim necessity… no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government…
The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals.
The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and courage.…
All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest lesson of civilization.
No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion.
​
Today, we are launched upon the wildest experiment ever undertaken in North America.
We are going to find out how far we can go – with bailouts, fake money, stock purchases, government price controls, and negative real interest rates – before the whole thing blows up.

Regards,

Bill

"Do not send your children into a bricks-and-mortar school on Monday. I do not 
need to explain. 

All across the nation, governors and local officials are shutting down all 
classroom-based schools. 

Overnight, schools are supposed to switch to an online curriculum. Better 
late than never. But they don't know what they're doing. 

Will they open next fall? Maybe not. 

Things are uncertain. They are going to get far more uncertain. 

There is an immediate solution: the Ron Paul Curriculum (RPC). It is 100% online. 

It is a self-teaching program. Videos present daily lessons. Then students 
do their daily on-site reading assignments. 

What do parents do? They grade the weekly essays. Nothing else. 

The RPC offers a 90-day summer school program for $40, plus $50 per year-long 
course. Each child should take two courses. 

Parents can preview all of the courses. The first five lessons in each course 
are free. 

http://bit.ly/LessonsRPC 

Children who still attend physical schools should start the summer school 
program now. 

If your local schools are online, your children can start the summer school 
program when the public school program ends, and they have been issued their 
grades. 

If the schools are not 100% online, sign up today. Start the RPC program now." 

Here is the link to sign up for the summer school program: 

https://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com/public/7471.cfm 
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