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“By March 19, 2019 Donald Trump Could ‘Reboot’ the U.S. Dollar” sez Jim Rickards

Ad says: "When the President Signs This Secret Money Deal, One Investment (NOT GOLD) Could Soar by as Much as 1,000%, Creating Huge Windfalls for Investors Positioned Correctly Ahead of Time..." Rickards sees $10,000 gold, what's the "Dollar Reboot Composite" and what does he think you should do to prepare?


I continue to get lots of questions about this Jim Rickards ad from Agora, and the ad itself has been (clumsily) updated a few times since we covered it back in November of 2017 (the latest “by March 19, 2019” ad even suggests that Yellen is still President of the Federal Reserve, and the date under the signature is still July, 2017), so I’m (lightly) updating my coverage here…

I’ll cut to the chase at the start and say that no, President Trump did not nominate a “gold bug” to run the Federal Reserve, and the US did not cooperate with the world’s other major economies to form a new gold standard on January 1, 2018… and I’d bet you whatever you want that they won’t do it on November 8, 2018 or on March 19, 2019 either (those are all ‘critical deadlines’ that were hyped in previous versions of the ad).

So that’s a long way of saying that most of the article below was first published on November 7, 2017, when I first covered this ad. It has been lightly updated, with some additional sarcasm applied to cover the interim 15 months or so… indeed, I’d say it has been more carefully updated than the ad itself, which seems to have been updated solely through the use of a “find and replace” change for the dates and still refers to Janet Yellen as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, but, well, that’s just a little extra snarkiness from me — no charge.

This ad is so ridiculous I resisted spending time with it for a while… but the questions are piling up again, so let’s dig in and see what Jim Rickards is peddling. Be warned, I’ll probably use too many words and may do a bit of ranting.

The basic premise is the same one he has used for years now in his ads — the dollar is going to weaken (or collapse) and be replaced by some variation of the gold standard, because that’s the only way to solve the US dollar’s problems and reset the global economic balance (and deal with our massive debt). He used to refer to this idea as “Reagan Gold,” since Ronald Reagan was a proponent of returning to the gold standard but was reportedly talked out of it by his advisors… and the fearmongering for a while was focused on the Yuan supplanting the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency” … now it’s “Trump’s Reboot” that features as the ad headline.

I’ll go out on a limb and let you know my bias up front: I think that’s ridiculous. The notion that any government will willingly give up control of its money supply and be restrained by a gold backing of any sort is laughable. The cat is out of the bag, we’re not going to be able to catch it and stuff it back in.

I do agree that “fiat currencies” (that’s “all currencies,” in case you’re wondering — there are no asset-backed currencies currently) are going to lose value over time, and that we might see that accelerate into real inflation at some point, but I can’t see Donald Trump or Xi Jinping deciding that fixing the currency to some arbitrary amount of gold and giving up the ability to print and borrow from the future is a good idea. Those who have control don’t easily surrender it — candidates are happy to talk about the gold standard and a return to monetary discipline, but once they’re actually in office no one wants discipline if they’re told that it will hurt their ability to increase military spending, or provide tax cuts, or constrain their options in whatever way they care about.

If gold is used to somehow back a formal currency again, I suspect it would be by China in an effort to competitively leverage the yuan into prominence, as the US did with the dollar in the first half of the 20th century… and I suspect it wouldn’t work for long, because China is going to have to go on a deficit spending spree to keep its own population mollified in the next few decades, too, as their country ages and increases its consumption.

US debt and consumption and Chinese industrialization and manufacturing will no longer be the twin pillars of the global economy in the decades to come, most likely, but I don’t expect that the world will give up on its addiction to growth (which is partially fueled by inflation, and currency devaluation, because that makes people feel that they’re making progress), or that countries will surrender their ability to undercut their neighbors by devaluing their currencies — the world monetary order will probably evolve in some way none of us can predict, but it’s hard to imagine Germany and Japan and China lining up behind the US to support US consumption or monetary leadership again, as they have in the past, or even just to prop up their US customers.

So that long-winded screed is where I’m coming from… now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s see what Rickards is actually recommending….

“I believe President Trump will host an international monetary summit at his ‘Winter White House’ in Florida, the historic Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Using his stature as leader of the free world, he’ll bring the financial leaders of the globe together.

“This would include delegates from the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, the UK and the International Monetary Fund.

“Then, they’ll agree to simultaneously revalue all of their currencies against gold until the price reached $10,000 per ounce. (If you’re skeptical, I’ll give you ironclad proof that this could happen in a second.)

“The Federal Reserve board will then call a special board meeting… vote on the new policy… walk outside and announce to the world that effective immediately, the price of gold is $10,000 per ounce.

“The Fed will make the $10,000 price stick by using the Treasury’s gold in Fort Knox and the major U.S. bank gold dealers to conduct ‘open market operations’ in gold.”

And dammit, he plays unfair by saying he’s going to use math! People hate math!

“For mathematical reasons I’ll explain in just a second, gold will need to be $10,000. No more, no less.”

And, of course, you’ll get rich from this if you own the right assets:

“This will immediately put an end to the currency wars and the debt-based dollar system.

“It will be a one-time “reboot” period that will put the world on solid footing for economic growth for decades to come.

“The immediate adjustment would create a massive windfall for gold bullion holders and owners of gold mining shares (though that’s not the true opportunity here).”

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You can’t create value out of nothing, of course, not on a grand scale, so if this does turn out to happen it would not be because gold suddenly becomes four or five times more valuable… it would be because the value of the US dollar is slashed versus gold. So yes, the gold price would go up dramatically in dollar terms — but in that case, there would also likely be massive stock market inflation in US$ terms. Everything would go up in dollar terms, but the dollar would collapse (as it arguably should… but who would vote for that?)

I think the problem, at least in Trump’s view and in the view of most recent Presidents, if they were being honest behind closed doors, is not that the US economy needs a stronger backing to the dollar… it’s that the US needs a weaker dollar to help deter imports and encourage exports and make it more feasible to service the mounting federal debt and meet other financial obligations. Rickards cites a Stratfor article about Trump’s interest in a new global monetary accord to reset exchange rates (with or without gold being involved), like the Plaza Accord of the 1980s or the Bretton Woods Accord after World War Two, and that’s worth a read if you want a broader perspective.

I’m not an internationally renowned economist, I haven’t written any books about monetary policy… that’s just my opinion and assessment. I might be wrong, I’d just urge you to keep an open mind to the many different possibilities that exist — the same story about the end of the US dollar has been peddled with vigor by newsletter and TV pundits since the financial crisis (well, really since the 1970s, off and on), and the return to some sort of gold standard, and wealth for those who choose the right gold-related investment, is the common thread that runs through most of those pitches in recent years.

So far, those predicting the collapse of the dollar have all been very, very wrong — or, at the least, absurdly hyperbolic. The dollar is collapsing… it’s just happening very, very slowly.

Unsustainable debt in the 1980s became catastrophic deficits in the 1990s and the end of the world in the 2000s and the rise of the Yuan and Euro to crush the US$ in the 2010s, and we’ll soon find out what the predicted calamity is for the 2020s… sometimes some of the predictions of doom will be right, at least for short periods of time, but taking all of them seriously and being frightened out of the market for any big chunk of the last thirty or forty years could easily have been catastrophic for your portfolio.

So yes, read the doomsayers, sure, but don’t believe everything you read — for the past thirty-plus years it has been pretty easy to build a logical argument for the collapse of the US dollar (or of the United States in general), and for the past 30 years that has been the wrong argument to follow. That doesn’t mean it will always be wrong… but it means making a big bet on the timing is foolhardy.

And this is the risk of so many investment teasers that sound smart and logical. Logical-sounding arguments are easy to build in complex systems, especially when the writer is (or sounds like) a well-informed expert in areas that the reader doesn’t understand fully… and even more so when the people who are reading that argument already have an ideological axe to grind (as most of us do in this poisoned partisan environment, where “winning” is better than being intelligent or correct).

In general, if you find yourself nodding at these kinds of ads and saying to yourself “that’s what I’ve been telling everyone all along!” … you’re being played.

Newsletter ads use political figures as attention-getters — they know that if you love Reagan or Trump or Obama or Clinton (or loathe them), using those names will get your attention, and if you agree with the ad’s premise (that Obama destroyed the economy and Trump is heroically trying to save it by switching to a gold standard, in this case), then you’re almost on the hook — that’s how they use the tribalism of the American voter to get you to type in your credit card number (this guy agrees with me, he must be smart! Us smart guys gotta stick together! We’re the only thing keeping the world from falling apart! Thanks for letting me send you $79, Mr. Rickards, please send me the ad for your $2,000 service next!)

It works the other way, too — it’s just not as clean, and not as lucrative, because the core of the modern newsletter business is built on appealing to the people who are most likely to be active investors and have extra money, which, on average, is a 60-year-old white man who leans conservative. That’s not true of every newsletter, of course, nor of every subscriber, but I think age and wealth are the most reliable demographic indicators for “might want to subscribe to a newsletter,” and they’re also the most reliable demographic indicators for “conservative politics” … and if you can appeal to someone’s instincts and form a bond with them, you’re halfway to a sale. All you have to do after that, is convince them that you’ve got the secret to make them rich.

So let’s move on to that, shall we?

“By January 1 November 8 March 19, President Trump Could Have Total Control Over the Federal Reserve. The First Time for Any President Since 1914

“Actually, January 1 November 8, 2018 March 19, could end up being a conservative date.

“Everything I’m explaining could conceivably happen much sooner than I’m explaining here…”

Yes, President Trump has the opportunity to fill more seats on the Federal Reserve, though he picked his new chair in Jay Powell ages ago now, got him approved, and then spent much of last year complaining about Powell raising interest rates and hinting that he wanted to fire him (the ad still says that Rickards thinks a “total gold bug” has the inside track to be the next Fed Chair after Janet Yellen, but that obviously didn’t happen).

They didn’t even bother to update the ad, other than using that new “subscribe now!” March 19, 2019 date — Rickards’ ad still refers to Janet Yellen as a Fed Governor, though she retired more than a year ago when Powell was sworn in to replace her. So take those dates with a HUGE amount of skepticism, they’re designed to spur action on the subscription, not to predict the future — Rickards probably wouldn’t be right in predicting the future with any specificity anyway, of course, because he’s a human being, but this date is almost certainly coming from the marketers. They sent out essentially the ad back in November of 2017 with a January 1 2018 “deadline”, then again in March of 2018 with a March 21 deadline (also failing to update for Jay Powell succeeding Yellen as Fed Chair), and now I’m getting the latest version again with a March 2019 date. It’s all marketing hooey.

Presidential candidates hate the Fed, Presidents love the Fed, and Powell is very much a moderate Fed insider and has followed Janet Yellen’s path pretty precisely in raising rates over the past year, and then becoming dovish as soon as it appeared the global economy and trade wars might be slowing things down at home, with no sign of inflation ramping up… and the Fed’s policies and leadership have not been particularly partisan, we’ve seen the same easy money and dollar devaluation policies hold pretty strong sway under both “Republican” and “Democratic” Fed Governors for decades now.

Incidentally, the tea leaves that Rickards is reading to determine Trump’s plans are also hopelessly out of date — it’s probably completely worthless to waste time trying to figure out what President Trump’s opinion on something will be a few months from now, given how quickly his “gut” changes, but this is the Tweet Rickards cites:

@realDonaldTrump: “The Fed continues to flood the market with US dollars. Wrong move.”

Which is a real Tweet, but what he doesn’t quote is that it’s from 2011, well before Trump ever even started campaigning for the Presidency. Reading Trump’s incredible barrage on twitter over the past decade is a lot like reading tea leaves — it can give you evidence of just about whatever sentiment you want to find.

More recently, of course, President Trump has been complaining about rising interest rates and tightening from the Fed (the reverse of that “flood”), and about the weakness of the Chinese Yuan and the strength of the US Dollar — which has been strong compared to other major currencies partly because the US economy is relatively strong and attracting global investment dollars, and partly because higher interest rates make it more appealing to park your money in US bonds instead of zero-yield (or negative yield) European or Japanese bonds. Money goes where its treated best, and it can move right on to the next thing very quickly if that calculus changes.

And President Trump does still have two vacant seats to fill on the Federal Reserve, though that doesn’t seem to be a priority and I don’t think anyone other than Jim Rickards thinks he’s itching to get new nominees in there who will push for a new gold standard. There have been two or three vacancies on the seven-member board since late in Obama’s presidency, and the two nominees Trump had before the Senate were essentially left to languish (one, Marvin Goodfriend, was controversial), and were not renominated this year, with, according to Larry Kudlow, no urgency to name new nominees… and, of course, we’d likely see a tighter battle for any controversial nominee to any post these days because the House has changed leadership and seemingly half of the democrats in the Senate have launched nomination campaigns for the 2020 presidential election (only the Senate has to confirm nominees, to be clear, but the tenor on Capital Hill in general has surely changed).

Remember that math we threatened? Here’s where Rickards re-introduces it:

“If they choose more than $10,000 per ounce, we’ll have severe inflation.

“And if they choose less than $10,000 per ounce, we’ll have severe deflation.

“It needs to be $10,000 per ounce.

“That’s a mathematical certainty….

“($26.5 trillion x 40%) ÷ 1 billion oz. of gold = $10,000 per ounce.”

$26.5 trillion is what Rickards things “Global M1” is, the total money supply. I don’t know where he gets that — the US M1 is, as reported by the Fed, about $3.7 trillion, and I’ve seen “global money supply” numbers that range from $20-40 trillion, though that only counts actual paper (and coin) currency and “demand deposits” (checking accounts, pretty much) so it excludes a vast amount of what most people would consider “money” (CDs, money market accounts, etc., probably totaling about 3-4X that amount). More broadly, the total value of all the money plus non-physical deposits and money market accounts and similar cash equivalents is probably in the $80-100 trillion neighborhood.

The 40% is the “gold backing” percentage that he thinks will be implemented (since that’s in the original Federal Reserve authorization legislation), and the one billion ounces is roughly how much gold currently exists in the world (above ground). That’s fine, and we know what numbers he’s working with — but to say that this equation has only one possible set of inputs and one possible answer as a “mathematical certainty” is to ignore that any possible “reboot” of the world’s monetary relationships would be the result of a negotiation performed by human beings. It also somehow sets this theoretical standard for all the gold and all the world’s money, not just US gold and US money.

Rickards is arguing that gold is critical and is the only “real” money… but he also says that arbitrarily increasing the gold price by more than 600% and fixing the gold price won’t cause deflation or inflation? If gold is going to go up, then the value of the dollar has to go down… right? There have to be two sides to the equation.

But anyway, if the gold price is set by the US government in some new “Mar a Lago Accord” and gold is suddenly worth $10,000 an ounce, that dramatically increases the value of gold producers in dollar terms. Even if this doesn’t create massive asset inflation throughout the rest of the economy, it probably leads to every country nationalizing its gold mines, if we’re being honest… but let’s pretend that doesn’t happen – Barrick Gold produces 5.5 million ounces a year or so, which would mean that their revenue goes from $8 billion to $55 billion, and their gross margin goes from about 35% to 90%. That level of cash trickles down quickly through the mining economy, every single possible gold deposit is subject to a bidding war of epic proportions, environmental restrictions are lifted (or cash is thrown at solving environmental problems at particular mines), labor and mining costs go up dramatically as everyone pushes to produce more… it would be bedlam, particularly because the price would be set in that narrow band, it wouldn’t be allowed to fall back down as production dramatically increases. Even the bitcoin miners might give up and become actual miners.

Like I said, the genie doesn’t go back into the bottle easily. Or the cat back into the bag, or whatever metaphor I threw at you earlier. When you talk about a gold standard, you’re really talking about starting with a massive revaluation of the dollar followed, if the standard has any meaning and requires the Fed to stop printing money or the Treasury to begin paying higher rates to borrow, by massive government spending cuts that would swallow the economy whole.

And there sure as heck isn’t any way that the world’s serfs would stand by and say, “OK, let’s go to a gold standard — but first, make sure all the people who have gold make some windfall profits, OK? Great!”

That doesn’t mean adding discipline to the government budget or to the Federal Reserve would be a bad thing in the long run — in fact, my sentiment is that it would be good… eventually. I just don’t see any politicians lining up to set a massive change in motion when the bad stuff would happen immediately and the good stuff would come 5-10 years or more down the road, when they’ve already been vilified and tossed from office.

If you’re going to switch to a currency that is backed by something, and want to fix problems and deter governmental debt excess, rather than reward speculators, I would assume that it would have to be at something approximating the current price… either it’s backed by some combination of natural resources, or by a smaller percentage of gold, or whatever — the important thing would not be fixing the problems we already have and letting the gold price “catch up” to where things would be if we had stayed on the gold standard all along, it would be preventing the future problems that are coming because of the unsustainable debt-fueled system, and allowing for stability in the future. Even that seems unlikely to me, in a world where “muddle through” is everyone’s mantra and the absence of global leadership is palpable, but it’s at least imaginable.

More from Rickards…

“From the year 1450 to roughly 1925, from Portugal to the British Empire, the world’s superpowers have risen and fallen on the strength and acceptance of their currencies.

“Based on centuries of data analyzed by the president of world markets at a multibillion-dollar bank, the average lifespan for a world reserve currency like the U.S. dollar is a little bit more than 90 years.

“And get this: The dollar has been the world reserve’s currency for 91 years!

“The clock is ticking and Donald Trump knows it.”

Well, if you consider that the dollar was really “gold” until Nixon removed us from the gold standard, you could argue that Bretton Woods fixed agreements and gold were really the reserve currency until then… so it’s only been the “fiat dollar” that’s been the reserve currency for 45 years or so. And for probably half that time or more, it was largely because the US military was the protector of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves (solidifying the “petro dollar” rule and forcing everyone to use dollars to buy oil) and defender of Western Europe’s borders… and, frankly, because no other currency was big enough or trusted enough to handle the role. The US being the only “superpower” in the world for 20+ years and a massive consumer market, despite the more recent re-emergence of China and Russia, clearly has had a huge impact on currencies as well.

Rickards also cites a Wall Street Journal article about the only solution to debt and trade problems being “monetary policy” and resetting America’s economy — it wasn’t actually an article, it was an opinion piece, but its’ worth a read and you can see it here.

Dammit, I got off track again. What’s this investment he’s talking up?

He finally gets to sounding a bit more rational…

“DO NOT PUT 100% OF YOUR WEALTH INTO GOLD.

“I need to emphasize that because people often misunderstand me and think I recommend putting everything you own in gold.

“I don’t.

“Instead I recommend you take five very simple steps immediately to prepare for this massive monetary shift that’s coming.

“Don’t get me wrong, I support a dollar reboot by President Trump.

“But we need to be honest with ourselves.

“Just because we may agree with President Trump’s move… doesn’t mean that it will happen with 100% certainty or that the transition will be smooth.”

That’s an understatement, that a sudden 80%+ devaluation of the dollar might not be “smooth” (that’s just the flip side to saying that gold would rise 600% — the dollar would fall 85% in gold terms)… but what are his five steps?

“Step #1: Position Yourself for 1,000% Gains in the ‘Dollar Reboot Composite’

“I may be the only person who you’ll hear about this from. I call it the ‘Dollar Reboot Composite’ because it’s the perfect play for this new monetary event.

“This little-known investment is not a coin or bar of gold, silver, platinum or palladium.

“But it IS a physical precious metal investment.

“It’s not a stock, bond, option, ETF, miner, currency or anything else you’ve ever heard of. If you try to find it on Google Finance or Yahoo Finance, you won’t.

“You CANNOT buy it in your brokerage account.

“And your local bullion dealer WILL NOT know about it either.”

That could be pretty much anything in the “allocated storage” category, but I expect he’s talking up the “PMC Ounce” — which is just a way of creating a managed asset out of precious metals and selling it like a “token” that’s part gold, part silver, part platinum and part palladium. In fact, the folks behind the PMC Ounce have trumpeted the fact that Rickards has recommended their product, though I don’t know if they’re being truthful or not – that promo piece is here.

I suppose it’s easy and convenient, though I don’t know what their premiums and discounts are to buy and sell “PMC Ounces” compared to the cost to buy and sell gold or silver coins or bars. The chart on their website indincates that PMC has outperformed gold, silver and platinum over the past ten years, mostly, it seems, because of the leverage of silver during its huge run… but certainly it’s close to the performance of gold. When Rickards first cited this idea about a year ago, the PMC Ounce was worth $87.33, and it’s about half gold ($44.69 gold, $15.92 silver, $17.47 palladiium, $9.25 platinum) — the proportions are based on weight, so by weight the theoretical construct of the PMC Ounce is 93.75% silver, 3.5% gold, 1.75% palladium and 1% platinum.

I don’t know anything bad about PMC Ounce and the folks who run it, the Neptune Global Bullion Exchange, and I’m happy enough buying gold and silver coins in the proportions I like without dealing with another online storage account so I probably won’t investigate this further, but if you find those folks to be trustworthy in providing allocated storage of those precious metals in the quantities assessed by the PMC formula, the main questions to ask would be what kind of premium you pay to buy those precious metals, and what you pay in terms of a discount to sell them and “withdraw” your money.

For smaller purchases (anything below $70,000 or so), my quick look at their website indicates that the current “premium” you pay to buy a PMC Ounce is a pretty steep 5.5%, so presumably that (and the discount you get when you sell, which they don’t disclose as clearly) is where their profit comes from… so hopefully they don’t also charge a management or storage fee, though I didn’t research further. All providers of precious metals for either delivery or storage charge a premium over the “spot” price, though it’s not always that high — for silver the lowest premium is probably in the 3% range for coins and bars, for gold it’s slightly lower, with generic coins (like Krugerrands) often available at about a 2% markup. And unless you’re selling them yourself on ebay, you’ll probably also have to take a similar discount cut to sell them back to a dealer.

So that’s one — the PMC Ounce. Take it or leave it. It is now worth about $94 as of March 6, 2019, so it’s up a bit since I first covered this ad on November 7, 2017, almost entirely because the value of palladium has risen by about 40% since then (gold is up a hair, silver down a little, platinum down more than 10%).

What else?

“Step #2: Get 10% of Your Assets in Precious Metals, the Correct Way

“I recommend that every single American immediately put 10% of their investable assets into gold and silver…

“Donald Trump himself owns hundreds of ounces worth of physical gold.

“So does Trump’s budget chief — along with nearly $1 million in gold investments.

“But it pains me to see everyday Americans make simple mistakes when buying gold… or get suckered into buying collectible gold coins.”

He provides a chart to tell you what that means, so this isn’t a “secret” step — basically, if you do the math he’s suggesting you put 10% of your money into physical precious metals, with 90% of that gold and 10% silver, starting with US Gold and Silver Eagle coins until you get up to a big enough number that you need to buy gold bullion bars. His “special report” will include his parameters and guidelines for how to calculate, buy, and store those goodies… but you can also certainly research that and make your own call.

For those who ask, I have most recently been using APMEX for buying and selling precious metal products online and find them reliable, and their prices and service competitive (I don’t have a business relationship of any kind with them, and I can’t promise that they won’t screw up, I’m just sharing my personal experience). And you can keep your coins wherever you want — a safe, a self-storage facility like Porter Stansberry was recommending for a while, a coffee can buried in the yard, a safe deposit box, whatever makes you comfortable (just don’t tell me where it is… but do tell your spouse or write it down somewhere or leave a treasure map or something so it isn’t lost if you get hit by a bus).

Next?

“Step #3: Develop Donald Trump’s Ultimate Hard Asset Strategy

“Donald Trump’s financial disclosures show that he owns a very peculiar mixture of assets…

“On one line item, he has a $100,000-$250,000 asset that, though a drop in the bucket compared to his billions in net worth, says a lot about what Donald Trump believes could happen in the economy.

“It could rise roughly eightfold in the coming months…

“And end up being his best performing asset in 2017, because he didn’t need to sell before taking the oath of office….

“It’s the strategy of a prominent industrialist and investor with diverse holdings in Germany and abroad during the 1920s….

“He was an ultra-wealthy investor whose opinion was eagerly sought on important political matters, who exercised powerful behind-the-scenes influence and who seemed to make all the right moves when it came to playing markets.

“He was known as the “Inflation King” because he was able to protect and grow his wealth despite Germany’s massive hyperinflation in the 1920s.

“I believe you need to know his strategy by heart and apply it to your own finances.”

Well, Donald Trump’s ultimate hard asset is, of course, leveraged real estate — if you borrow lots of money to buy and build properties, then the properties (at least theoretically) hold their value but the debt is devalued as the currency depreciates. If you take it beyond just real estate you can compare it to Warren Buffett buying up valuable assets and hoarding them (railroads, power plants, etc.). That’s largely what fueled the rise of that “inflation king,” Hugo Stinnes, whose story Rickards has told in free articles in the past — you can get a good sense of that from this free Rickards piece from 2015, for example.

What does that mean? Well, it’s a good reminder that strong companies with valuable assets that society will need in the future will always probably be the best real defense against inflation. Railroads and power utilities can raise prices, farmers can raise prices… though the most successful ones, of course, will be the owners of truly unique assets or intellectual property that can be price makers and lead the inflation charge (like Coca Cola in years past, for example, which people have happily paid a premium for over the past century), instead of price takers in a commoditized industry (like farmers who sell Buffett’s hated broccoli, one stalk of which is akin to another).

Strong companies with products that are in demand tend to “win” in inflation, just like they win the rest of the time — it’s not just about “hard assets” like gold coins or diamonds that you can hide in your shoe, though those certainly come into play in the panic scenarios… like being anything other than blonde, blue-eyed and conformist in 1930s Germany.

Other folks will extoll the virtues of farmland, as well, or of collectibles like valuable art — if you can afford to own a farm on the side, or you’ve got a Rembrandt in the closet, then you’ve already wasted way too much time reading my blather… go have some fun with your money.

And then Rickards throws out some more red meat for partisans with step 4…

“Step #4: Become a Shareholder in the ‘Deplorables-Only Gold Fund’

“I’ve uncovered and developed a brand-new gold investment opportunity just for Americans like you.

“It also has nothing to do with owning physical gold.

“Or tiny penny-stock junior gold miners for that matter.

“And it’s not an ETF.

“Instead it’s something totally proprietary, tailored to my exact specifications to make the perfect gold speculation.”

I suspect that what Rickards is talking about here is some sort of customized basket of gold mining stocks through Motif Investing — as he did for his “New World Money” argument that the SDR would replace the US Dollar, which meant he thought you should build a portfolio of currencies that mimic the SDR (someone else has put up a motif for that here, if you’re curious).

I don’t know how far I’d go in assuming that Jim Rickards can put together the ideal gold stock portfolio for you, though he might be better at it than I am, but you can pretty easily access solid ETFs of gold stocks — I like the idea of the Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM), which weights based on the “quality” of producers and also overweights the royalty companies… but it’s worth noting that this “smart” index has done substantially worse in recent years than the plain old GDX ETF that’s market-cap weighted. For that matter, most of the precious metals equity mutual funds, like Tocqueville Gold and First Eagle Gold, have also done worse than the GDX ETF in recent years (partly because they tend to hold some cash and some gold — ETFs are always fully invested).

This is an easy industry to overthink — if gold goes way up, 99% of the gold stocks and all of the gold mining mutual funds and ETFs will likely do phenomenally well. If it goes down, they’ll do very badly and the weakest of them will go bankrupt — Gold is now flat since I covered an earlier variation of this Rickards “reboot” in November of 2017, and the average big gold miner is down about 5%, but timing matters and the miners tend to be quite levered… when gold was down 6-8% last fall, the miners were down 25%.

And, well, I’m sick of gold… those are the main recommendations teased in the pitch, along with “get a copy of Rickards’ book” (The New Case for Gold, you can get it pretty much anywhere if you like, including your library). Nothing too crazy, other than the notion that gold “mathematically has to” go to $10,000 but you should only have 10% of your portfolio in gold.

So I’ll turn it over to you, the few of my dear readers who could sit through that much of my blatheration without falling asleep. Like the PMC Ounce, or particular gold miners or gold funds? Think Rickards has a gift for choosing mining stocks? Do you see a new global currency agreement backed by gold, and gold prices at $10,000? If so, what other side effects do you think might show up from that radical change? Have any made-up dates of your own you’d like to recommend, since Rickards apparently can’t even keep his dates straight when he updates his ads? Let us know with a comment below. I’ve left the original comments from last year at the end, in case you want to see what anyone else had to say.

And yes, as always, we’re collecting investor opinions about the newsletters they’ve subscribed to — so if you’ve ever tried Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence, please click here to share your thoughts with your fellow readers. Thank you!

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RetiredEconProf
Member
RetiredEconProf
March 6, 2019 5:16 pm

People who advocate a return to the gold standard are one of four things: 1) They simply do not understand basic economics; 2) They are happy with freezing the money supply and thus stifling economic growth in perpetuity; 3) They are hucksters who realize that phony sensationalism will always entice some members of an endless supply of dupes into buying overpriced subscriptions to shady newsletters; or 4) They are masochists who have finally grown weary of steadily losing money playing three card Monte with card sharks and want to put their money in a different “sure thing.” Or perhaps all of the above.
Among other reasons to dismiss a return to the gold standard is the impossibility of calculating the “right” price of gold that will be appropriate until the evening of Armageddon.
Investing a small part of one’s portfolio in gold or other metals as a hedge against inflation is quite sensible.

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pnerjr
June 29, 2023 9:57 pm

Prof… if you’re still in the Game please chime in and share your take on Nomi and others points of view of FedNow Dollar D-Day scenarios.

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fwsecvir22
Irregular
fwsecvir22
March 6, 2019 7:45 pm

A few years ago, I subscribed to “Strategic Intelligence” for several years in advance, and I’m glad I did. I haven’t yet followed Jim Rickards’s stock or gold recommendations; nor, have I yet followed his colleagues’ recommendations (Byron King & Nomi Prins). But I think their monthly economic/financial/technical analyses of countries other than the U.S. are quite informative (especially China). It’s nice to read something that hasn’t gone through the globalist-run MSM filter. Travis Johnson describes a typical subscriber to this newsletter as an affluent, conservative, 60-something, white male—which I am. So $40 (or even $79) per year is not even chicken feed or pocket change to affluent people like me.

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marvinzilenga
marvinzilenga
March 6, 2019 9:17 pm

Porter Stansberry/Agora/Rickards have been playing this tune for years. SOS. All about selling subscriptions.

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L. Graciano
L. Graciano
March 6, 2019 11:46 pm

I subscribed to Strategic Intelligence and feel the “intelligence” does not apply to the investment ideas put forth. Almost everything touted proved to be a loser. My advice is to steer clear of Strategic Intelligence.

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J. Basenev
Guest
J. Basenev
March 7, 2019 1:24 pm

I have been listening to Riccard’s strange but not true predictions for a long time, nothing from his predictions have come true yet. He was predicting the SDRs for quiet some time also predicting Gold price $10,000/oz. And these have not come true. At one point he was asking to collect Chinese Yuan,after which it has slided to its lowest level.
How long can we take his predictions, which are close to Fairy Tales! and Mermaid floats
I am dismissing most of his claims.

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Williams
Guest
Williams
September 7, 2019 11:03 am
Reply to  J. Basenev

He predicted the mortgage crisis, the Trump win and Brexit. He never said gold would rise to 10,000 tomorrow. Given a reset involving gold, his estimate is perfectly reasonable.

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Carbon Bigfoot
Guest
Carbon Bigfoot
March 7, 2019 5:49 pm

Travis I didn’t fall asleep and actually read all the words instead of skipping paragraphs like I usually do. It was FDR who first suspended the gold standard in 1933 except for foreign exchange payments. It was Charles de Gaulle that forced Nixon’s hand by insisting that any foreign money exchange between the US and France be paid in gold not in paper. At the time of Bretton Woods the US controlled 2/3 of the world’s gold ( I think it was 25 tons ).
I think at the time of the Fort Knox “Audit” in the 70s it was half that. Last I heard it was 5 tons. I don’t believe there is any thanks to 2008 Financial Crisis.
If it weren’t for World Central Banks manipulation gold’s real value should be approaching $10K.
I know the Swiss sold off much of their reserves in the 90s but I thought the CHF is still backed by 40% gold.

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RetiredEconProf
Member
RetiredEconProf
March 8, 2019 12:31 am

More than the number of dollars per se, the price of gold is determined by investors’ and speculators’ estimates of future global inflation, currency depreciation, and political unrest. Variations in the price of gold are far more a function of psychology and confidence in economic stability than of the quantity of dollars. Hence, the current disconnect between record U.S. trade deficits and the price of gold as well as the dollar’s exchange rate.
Also,Carbon Bigfoot misspoke when he said that de Gaulle insisted than any bilateral exchange with the U S. be paid in gold. Rather, when France had a global balance of payments surplus, it converted its newly accumulated dollars into U.S. gold. De Gaulle’s intention was to undermine what he called the U.S.’s “exorbitant privilege” of being able to run open-ended balance of payments deficits thanks to the extraordinary international role of the dollar. This lasted until the U.S. dropped its untenable commitment to exchange unwanted dollars of central banks into gold.

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condolawyer
March 8, 2019 7:36 pm

I don’t think. Israel holds any

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Paul
Irregular
Paul
March 7, 2019 9:22 pm

Has anyone else heard of the late “money artist” J.S.G. Boggs, who turned his well-done drawings of money into profitable conceptual art? Lawrence Weschler wrote an article (New Yorker or Atlantic) and later a book about him. The Secret Service never returned the stuff they confiscated from him, but he was never charged with counterfeiting by the USA. He was acquitted of counterfeiting charges in England and Australia. He never claimed that his money drawings were anything other than his own products.

What was most interesting about Boggs to me was that he raised questions about why people accepted money, and what else they would accept as a medium of exchange. One reason U.S. currency is accepted by any particular person is that so many other people accept it, and one reason behind that is the overall viability and money history of the USA.

Precious metal has an even longer history of acceptance, but except for its physical uses (electronics, jewelry, photography, etc.), its acceptance is also a social thing.

I wonder how much the switch from film to digital photography affected the silver market.

Right now, the price ratio of gold to silver is relatively high. I once traded some gold for silver when the ratio was high in the past, and then didn’t notice, years later, when the ratio had gone the other way. If you do this at the right times, you end up each time with more metal than before.

I think of precious metal as a way to diversify, and to hedge against the dollar.

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big tuna
March 8, 2019 1:03 pm

I’m not a very smart person but I understand the concern of the new monetary policy where deficits don’t matter. Our entire government appears to be on an interest only increasing principal unlimited line of credit. In theory I should go out and borrow as much as I can get and never plan on paying down the principal. Any time I hear the old rules don’t apply anymore I know a comeuppance is coming, the problem this time around is the treasury doesn’t have any dry powder left for bailout (by the way I’m still waiting for my first bailout money, foolishly i kept paying my mortgage). At least with gold standard or any standard for a currency there is some rationality. What happened to the idea of paying of the debt by minting 1 trillion dollar coins… crazy huh

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RetiredEconProf
Member
RetiredEconProf
March 8, 2019 4:48 pm
Reply to  big tuna

It’s not that the old rules are no longer valid, it’s that they are being ignored for the time being. Budget deficits make sense when a weak economy needs fiscal stimulation. Given the fact that the U.S. economy has grown rapidly over an extended period of time and that we are at or very close to full employment, large budget deficits are no longer make sense. We should be slowly reducing the budget deficit. Instead, we are playing with fire by allowing the budget deficits to soar with no end in sight. This won’t last, but it could continue for a while, as long as the U.S. economic outlook is less bad than those of other major countries.
If I could absolutely predict timing like the self-annointed pushers of expensive newsletters think they can, I would make an unfathomable fortune by shorting every financial instrument in sight. In the meantime, Big Tuna, let’s just enjoy the American economy’s (temporary) ability to defy gravity.

FRANK8MORRISS
Member
March 30, 2019 8:36 pm

I can say this GOLD will do nothing until 2023.

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4lllls
Guest
4lllls
March 30, 2019 10:51 pm
Reply to  FRANK8MORRISS

How do you know this. Please explain.

4lllls
Guest
4lllls
March 30, 2019 10:44 pm

I can’t stand rickards and his bragging. With all the bs he says no wonder no one believes him. Why would govt ask him for input when he is wrong most of the time. He Is a braggart and I don’t believe a thing he says.

saint stephen
July 7, 2019 3:31 pm
Reply to  4lllls

Richards is like the boy who cried wolf so often no one believed him when the wolf was actually at the door.

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777stock777
Irregular
777stock777
April 9, 2019 12:51 am

In my mind gold should be a lot higher. So what, it seldom behaves as I think it should.

So I have learned to seek mines that are in good shape financially and discovering new jewelry, that are doing well no matter the price of gold going up or not. That is ones that will do well while being gold agnostic.

KL is/was one. Chart it relative to financials and note it has beaten the pants off banks and most everything the past few years.

Wesdome seemingly coming along with new jewelry as well.

Wish I had a few others. Any ideas?

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N13
Guest
N13
April 9, 2019 11:17 pm

When is this going to happen? I still haven’t seen anything to suggest a real date for when it goes down.

aldosov
June 17, 2019 10:34 am
Reply to  N13

This teaser states June 19th!
https://pro.manwardpress.com/p/EVENTTO89MWLLTMTDMTDLT
/MMWLV608/?a=13&o=129645&s=152346&u=113590&l=2258352&r=MC2&vid=2vUFtr&g=0&h=true

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Marc Abramsky
Guest
August 25, 2019 11:47 am

Well, it’s August of 2019. Now the date is Sept 19, 2019, but could occur much sooner (translation in online marketing is “hurry, don’t delay”). I am glad the Gumshoe is around to filter this horseshit for people. I despise this garbage. If you really want to play a low risk to high reward then buy Silver for crying out loud. I bought at 6.00 in 2008. It went to 50. I am buying at 14.00 now. To catch up to gold it should be at 26.00 at the moment. If gold goes to 10,000 then silver should be 500 at least wouldn’t you say based on historical data?

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rail rider
November 9, 2019 8:16 pm

Rickards…..Stansbery…..financial collapse…….and the mention of Jubilee; Jubilee is a term I had never heard, so I thought I would share what I found (those of you who have a grasp, some a very good grasp of the financial market should probably stop here, as it you will find it very remedial.) I subscribe to Gumshoe because Travis and his followers inadvertently educate me so well. Thanks to all of you!

JUBILEE:

http://theconversation.com/the-debt-jubilee-an-old-testament-solution-to-a-modern-financial-crisis-11816

The debt jubilee: an Old Testament solution to a modern financial crisis?

The overhang of debt in Europe and the US has made recovery from the global financial crisis particularly tenuous.
Is there a dramatic and simple way out of all this? Some argue that there is: a “debt jubilee”. Drawn from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, the concept derives from the biblical injunction for a day of rest one day out of every week, a “sabbath” day that reflects the teaching the God rested on the seventh day after creating the world in six.
There is another injunction for a sabbath year every seventh year, in which people are to not work and on the year after the seventh of those sabbatical years , i.e. the 50th, (one year after the 49th) there would be a jubilee year during which any slaves would be emancipated and everyone would return to their land and family to live off of natural providence. A clear implication of this teaching is that all obligations, including debt obligations, would be forgiven in the process.
The jubilee year is a moral and religious issue concept, not an economic one, and was not practised in actual fact. However, it has been an inspiration to the modern debt jubilee movement, which drops the religious context but makes political and economic (and to a degree moral) arguments for extinguishing all or at least some of the debts the world is currently drowning in.
The main economic justification for a modern debt jubilee is simple. With debts forgiven, governments, households and individuals could spend the money currently devoted to interest and principal repayments on consumption which would, in turn, increase economic demand and encourage economic growth, and eventually take the world economy out of constant crisis.
This would also be an ethical policy, which lifts debts incurred through financial manipulation (such as unscrupulous mortgage bankers) and undue political influence (such as taxpayer bailouts of banks that caused the crisis in the first place). It would be fairer than the current arrangement, in which current debt largely burdens poor people with repayments falling to rich and culpable individuals and institutions.
Two basic questions arise: is a debt jubilee really a new idea, and would it work?
There is some precedent for debt relief as a solution to economic crisis. Perhaps the most famous example was the campaign launched by U2 rock star Bono to provide debt relief to developing countries. Bono was a major public face of a coalition called Jubilee 2000, which managed to get the G8 group of major economies to commit to write off $100 billion in developing country debts to developed nations. The idea has similar foundations to the current debt jubilee movement, except it is much more narrow in focus.
Private markets also deal regularly with situations where a debtor can no longer repay debt, technically referred to as a default. In those cases, a debt workout may be instituted which may include a stretching out of payments, forgiveness of parts or all of the debt by lenders, or even an outside infusion of capital to the indebted party to help them keep current with payments (the major way in which the European Union (EU) is dealing with public debt crises in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain).
So private lenders often forgive debt but, unlike a jubilee, this is not out of goodwill. The intent is to get as much of the loan repaid as possible, even if this might be injurious to the borrower or the larger economy.
So there is a precedent for debt forgiveness. But would the widespread and broad application of such forgiveness as called for by the modern debt jubilee movement actually work?
The experience of developing country debt forgiveness suggests that forgiveness there did have the desired effect of freeing up resources in low-income countries which could then go to more pressing development needs. However, some resources thus freed up got wasted anyway and an argument was also made that forgiving loans frittered away by government merely encourages such recklessness in the future. This certainly could be a risk for a modern debt jubilee.
Also, a blanket debt jubilee within the developed world would be much bigger, touching the greater part of the world economic, financial and monetary system. Applied globally, a big issue is that one person’s debt is another person’s asset. While a debt jubilee would cancel the burden to the borrower, it also would eliminate the value of the debt as source of wealth to the lender.
Imagine if all Greek government debt was cancelled. The Greek economy would be better off, but all the banks who made the loans could well be wiped out.
This is the main reason why the EU is going to such great lengths to bail out Greece, rather than eliminate or allow a debt default there. There are ways to avoid this problem, especially if central banks printed special money to give to debtors specifically to pay back debt, a form of cancelling the debt without actually eliminating it as an asset to the lender. However, inflationary pressures and other monetary distortions would certainly come along with that solution.
It is also argued that defaults and bankruptcies, while painful, do clear out unproductive actors in the economy, clearing the way for more dynamic businesses to take their place, much in the way that a forest fire destroys older trees to make way for new ones. Japan’s ‘zombie economy’ is often pointed to as an example of how a debt jubilee could make the economy worse in the long run.
While Japan never instituted an actual debt jubilee, it has had almost zero interest rates for a long time, making debt repayment obligations minimal and allowing inefficient “zombie” companies to drag along, locking out more entrepreneurial potential (a concern, by the way, being expressed about current central bank policies of very low interest rates around the world). It is indeed plausible that a widespread debt jubilee might lead to the same sort of outcome on a global scale.
So is a debt jubilee the answer to our woes — a providential gift, so to speak? From an economic perspective, the answer is likely to be no — at least for a full version of it. However, there might be an argument for targeted debt forgiveness or at least lenient and well-ordered bankruptcies containing forgiveness in especially acute cases.
And in many ways, a debt jubilee is said to be more ethical or moral than current arrangements. Which may very well be true, just not necessarily always economically sound

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rail rider
November 9, 2019 9:49 pm

Does anyone actually believe a “reset” is a viable option? If so, what would it take to convince the world, and what would the mechanics of it be? Step one, step two, etc…..

Would all the countries of the World start with a “clean slate,” or would the individual countries have their debt reduced by different amounts? What effect would this have on individuals?

Travis, do you actually have a portion of your portfolio dedicated to a “doomsday” (world economic collapse?)

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