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“Trump to Finish what Reagan Started? [As early as October 30th]” — What’s being teased by James Rickards now?

We're teased that "By October 30, 2019 Donald Trump Could 'Reboot' the U.S. Dollar" in a new "Mar-a-Lago Monetary Accord" ... what's Rickards talking about?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, October 29, 2019

This week I’m seeing a new wave 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 last version with the “by March 19, 2019” deadline even suggested that Yellen was still President of the Federal Reserve, and the date under the signature was still July, 2017), but this latest ad is a little more updated — and we’re about at the two-year anniversary of this prediction from Rickards, so I thought I’d check it again and see what we find.

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 as was originally teased… and they didn’t do it on November 8, 2018 or on March 19, 2019 either (those were ‘critical deadlines’ that were hyped in previous versions of the ad). And the U.S. dollar will not be “rebooted” tomorrow, on October 30, 2019. This is just an ad that has been proven to work for the publisher, and it appeals to enough readers to drive subscriptions, so they’re continuing to re-use it.

The ad is, frankly, so ridiculous that I resisted spending time with it for a while, which is why I wrote about it in November of 2017, not in the Summer of that year when we first started seeing a variation of that “Trump Reboot” theme… at this point, I have no idea whether or not Rickards even believes any of this stuff, but he’s sure committed to saying it over and over. Be warned, I’m updating the whole piece here but I’m also pulling much of this from my previous articles on this topic, and I’ll probably use too many words and may do a bit of ranting. The ad that readers sent to me this week still has a “March, 2019” date under Rickards’ signature, but is updated from when I last looked at it back in March (which is good, since back in March he was still saying that Janet Yellen was running the Fed, a little over a year after she had been succeeded by Jerome Powell).

The basic premise is the same one he Rickards 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 self-proclaimed 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” … but for the past couple years, 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, or at least they used to be happy to talk about that back when there was any interest in “fiscal discipline” among politicians of either party, 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 health care benefits, 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 and underwrite US consumption or monetary leadership again, as they have in the past, or even just to prop up their US customers. That felt unlikely in the early years of the Trump presidency, and it feels dramatically less likely now.

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.”

By the way, did you notice the language there? “Ironclad proof that this could happen?” That’s probably just the lawyer who presumably reviews their promos stepping on the copywriter’s toes — I bet Rickards or the copywriter wanted to say “I have proof that this will happen!” and the lawyer responded, “uh, not so fast… reword this so people will believe your BS, but we’re actually just saying ‘this might happen.'”

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.

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“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).”

You can’t create immediate 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 nominal 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 Cold-War 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 with compelling narrative weight 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 thoughtful or correct).

In general, pleaser remember that 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.

The first rule of marketing a newsletter is not, sadly, “have good investment ideas”… it’s “GET ATTENTION QUICK.” 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!)

This kind of marketing works on both sides of the aisle, to be clear — it’s just that for investment newsletter marketing it’s not as clean, and not as lucrative, on the Democratic side right now… and that’s mostly just 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 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 or protect their wealth.

So let’s move on to that, shall we?

“By January 1 November 8 March 19 October 30, President Trump Could Have Total Control Over the Federal Reserve. The First Time for Any President Since 1914

“Actually, January 1 2018 November 8 March 19 October 30, could end up being a conservative date.

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

Sorry for any confusion, I left those crossed-out dates in there to remind us that Rickards has been predicting this exact same outcome since the Fall of 2017, updating the deadlines every few months.

Yes, President Trump still 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 the past 18 months complaining about Powell raising interest rates or, more recently, not cutting fast enough, and hinting that he wanted to fire him (the ad originally said that Rickards thought a “total gold bug” had the inside track to be the next Fed Chair after Janet Yellen, but that obviously didn’t happen).

Presidential candidates hate the Fed, Presidents usually love the Fed (though Trump perhaps likes it best as a foil or punching bag), and Powell is very much a moderate Fed insider and has followed Janet Yellen’s path pretty precisely in raising rates, 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 effective 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 note 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 can give you evidence of just about whatever sentiment you want to find.

More recently, of course, President Trump has been complaining that the Fed reduced the flood with their rate hikes, and that they aren’t cutting fast enough, since relatively high interest rates in the US have helped to boost the value of the dollar against all other major currencies (money goes where it’s treated best, and if more investment money flows to the US because it gets a better return here, then the dollar rises).

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 really 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 Trump has floated and/or nominated four or five people for those slots but not really pushed for any of them. His latest nominee was approved, but that was the noncontroversial Michelle Bowman, who was already on the Board and just got renominated for a full term — not at all a “shakeup” nominee. His two “new” nominees announced most recently are Judy Shelton, who is described as a “gold bug” and has been so aggressively partisan in her opinions that she would have a tough confirmation, and Christopher Waller, a longtime Fed bureaucrat who is probably noncontroversial, but I don’t think those nominations have even been sent to the Senate. And, of course, given the current impeachment fight we’d likely see a tighter battle for any controversial nominee to any post these days, let alone one with a long term like Fed Governor (which is a 14-year post).

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 overnight 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 or a global coalition of governments (stop laughing!) 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 most countries nationalizing their 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, that’s not going to happen. 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 already own gold make some windfall profits!”

[Just to go off-topic for a moment, that’s the same reason that I’d bet Fannie Mae isn’t going to make Bill Ackman richer with an abrupt revaluation as they get re-privatized. Yes, Trump’s economic folks are again floating the idea of reprivatizing Fannie Mae and letting it raise money and keep some of its profits again instead of sending the profits straight to the Treasury, since that would likely make Fannie Mae stronger and more accountable in the end… and it might well happen, but I can’t see it happening without a reset that involves the current private investors (speculators, really) in Fannie Mae losing most of their money first. I think politicians, particularly in an election year, would be taking unnecessary friendly fire if they authorize a windfall to hedge funds as part of a “reprivatization.”]

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 and maturity 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 finally removed us from the gold standard in 1971, you could argue that gold was still the “reserve currency” until then… so it’s been less than 50 years that the “fiat dollar” has been the reserve currency, without gold backing. 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. Much of the dollar’s status as “reserve currency” is just inertia and tradition and the lack of competition — no other country has financial markets that are nearly as large as America’s, and that’s not going to change quickly even though Russia and China and Iran and many other countries are working to develop alternative financial networks and systems that can bypass US political control.

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. Sorry. So… what’s this investment he’s talking up? Is it still the same one he’s been teasing for years?

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, remember your pre-Algebra and balance those equations!)… 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 two years 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. Today, the PMC Ounce is quoted at about $115, so it has performed roughly similarly to gold (silver and platinum have done worse than gold, palladium has done much better).

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.

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 gold mining ETF that’s market-cap weighted (Van Eck Vectors Gold Miners, GDX). For that matter, most of the precious metals equity mutual funds that try to pick and choose qualitatively among miners, 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 has had a good run this year, up 20% or so, so is now up about 16% since I covered an earlier version of this Rickards “Trump reboot” ad in November of 2017, and the average big gold miner is up about 22%, but timing matters and the miners tend to be quite levered… when gold was down 6-8% late last year, the miners were down 25%.

Here’s what that looks like in chart form for the past two years — the blue line is gold (the GLD ETF), orange is GDX, red is the Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM), purple is First Eagle Gold (FEGIX) and green is Tocqueville Gold (TGLDX).

GLD Total Return Price (Forward Adjusted) Chart

So you can see that gold itself is far more stable than the miners, which shouldn’t be a surprise… but that two-year period understates the leverage that miners have, here’s what the same group looks like for just the last five months, during which gold rose sharply and the miners went bonkers:

GLD Total Return Price (Forward Adjusted) Chart

And on the flip side, as a reminder that leverage works both ways, I should illustrate what it looks like when gold goes down. When gold fell 10% or so in the middle of 2018, the miners fell roughly twice as much — here’s what that looked like:

GLD Total Return Price (Forward Adjusted) Chart

And I’ve (finally) run out of things to say today… 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 always even keep his dates straight when he updates his ads? Let us know with a comment below.

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!

Disclosure: In addition to owning some physical gold and silver and shares of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, I hold call options on the GDX ETF among the investments discussed above. I will not trade in any covered investment for at least three days, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.

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jaytodd04
jaytodd04
October 29, 2019 12:55 pm

Rickards may be intelligent where currencies are involved, but he’s also a shyster, when it comes to fraudulently selling newsletters. I made the sad mistake nearly 2 yrs back, and haven’t benefited one red cent by his “timely” picks. Stay away.

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Scott R Miller
Scott R Miller
October 29, 2019 8:38 pm
Reply to  jaytodd04

My feelings and results exactly, ONLY worse. Obviously the word integrity isn’t in his vast vocabulary !

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marvinzilenga
marvinzilenga
October 30, 2019 9:37 am
Reply to  jaytodd04

Rickards is a snake oil salesman-period.

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acrume
acrume
October 30, 2019 3:29 pm
Reply to  jaytodd04

I joined a few years ago and did not have a single profitable transaction recommended by him.
He’s good at currency collecting from subscribers.

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frank_n_steyn
Irregular
October 29, 2019 1:09 pm

What these guys miss is that these things are only “worth” what someone is willing to pay for them.

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Pete Sacco
Guest
Pete Sacco
October 29, 2019 1:20 pm

I too got a good chuckle out of Rickards’ re-regurgitation. I appreciated your treatment of it, including your tangents. That said, I recently re-read George Gilder’s, “The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does” and I appreciated too his explanation of the gold standard’s intrinsic tie to time and how it sets the stage for what I believe is the inevitable evolution of crypto-currencies.

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Miles Bryant
Member
November 6, 2019 1:06 am

BTW: Check out JM Bullion for gold/silver purchases. I’ve been using them for more than two years now, never a problem, can pay easily with ACH. Most importantly they beat everyone’s else prices and have weekly sales.

Also easy to sell to them. I just sold them 10 – 1/10th
gold Eagles. (I hate gold coins that small, they don’t even “sound” right 🙂 but got them on a sale for $1300! about 4 months ago from some numismatic company wanting to sell me their collectors items) It all went smooth and I got $1560. I mailed the coins to them the day after I talked to them and made the deal, and had my money in my account in less than
a week!

BTW2… I am a long term gold/silver bull, but right now I’m short (ETF’s)
(Probably take some profits soon, as I was short at silver $19. ) But think it could go all the way to $15 (or even lower) when all is said and done. TRADING gold and silver is risky, best bet, just cost average for years until you finally get a real run.

So I’ll cost average in my gold/silver purchases and see if I can catch a
“real” bottom with ETF’s (which I tend to cost average also) sometime next year.

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DURKOP DENNIS ALLEN
Guest
DURKOP DENNIS ALLEN
October 29, 2019 1:21 pm

A natural resource fund with symbol GGN will give one some protection from hyperinflation plus a dividend yield of about 14%!

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Glen E Osness
Member
Glen E Osness
October 29, 2019 2:10 pm

The fund GGN uses a covered call strategy to generate income. At the same time, there is potential for huge gains when the next gold bull market arrives. Nice to get paid to wait unlike many other gold funds that pay little or no dividends.

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lesdoyle
October 29, 2019 1:30 pm

Instead of the PMC Ounce you can invest in GLTR an ETF which invests in gold, silver, platinum and palladium. I found it to be a good (hassle-free) way to invest in precious metals.

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Miles Bryant
Member
November 6, 2019 1:09 am
Reply to  lesdoyle

Never heard of that. I’ll check it out.

Carl M Welch
Member
Carl M Welch
October 29, 2019 1:55 pm

Putting on my tin hat right now. The “western” governments are controlled by the central banks. Most of these banks have been accumulating physical gold. The Federal Reserve (which controls the U.S. governments physical gold has not been, or so they say. They keep telling people that we have a lot of gold in Fort Knox but will not let that be audited. The PMC looks like a throwback to the original banking in Florence. Those bankers stored your gold and gave you a note saying that they held your gold. That was the original gold standard. The bankers quickly found out that they could loan out most of the gold because not all the owners would ask for their gold back at the same time (fractional reserve banking). Basically, the banks will do whatever they like because they know that governments can’t exist without them. The reason for holding physical gold or silver is not to get an increase in the currency value. The reason is to have some standard material with which to trade for some other real thing (food, shelter, fuel). The real question if that day comes is who will have anything to trade for. Rickards is huckster who is probably taking his newsletter profits and trading that currency for gold or silver. He’ll have the same problem shown in the previous sentence.

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Buck
Buck
October 29, 2019 2:05 pm

Wow,

That was some read. Well, thanks for holding back your laughter at what has to be some of the flimsiest and late-to-the-dinner-table logic from Mr Rickards. I can see dark ops snipers sighting in their scopes at the suggestion of the Fed being taken out of its role as the world’s lead central banker by tying its hands to gold in the way described. The suggestion from Rickards is ridiculous.

Any change coming will not happen the way Mr Rickards has suggested (for almost 3 years now). It is, quite frankly, an embarrassment that they are floating this trash back out to the public again. A devaluation of the dollar of that magnitude would wreak havoc on trillions in dollar denominated contracts held all over the world by almost every party and counter party you can imagine. And all so that Mr Rickards can establish the silliest of elementary school math exercises. Right…

Sadly, we don’t seem to have any consumer protection when it comes to these types of instruments (aka scams). They do rake in plenty of fees and probably (I’m guessing) put you in a perpetual email torture chamber.

On another point, I was pleased to see that you do some asset class diversification yourself. A reasonable level never hurts. We don’t see much attention to the idea of owning varied assets, how to select them, or what classes do how well over what periods of time.

In closing, your reviews and commentary are very much appreciated. You help by shining a flashlight of truth and reason on these subjects and that helps readers connect the dots on this type of deceptive ad campaign. Thanks again Travis!

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Angels Winstone
Irregular
Angels Winstone
October 29, 2019 4:13 pm

Hi Travis, thank you for erudite analysis, and strong healthy dose of (not so common) sense, as always! Really appreciate all the time and effort you put into your work, for our benefit.

Having listened to Jim Rickards speak, I often wonder how much this is Jim himself, and how much is Agora as you say repurposing a presumably previously successful recruitment tool.

The situation is unusual at present in that we have both a strong dollar and a rising gold price. We have high Debt, and aging Demographics – which is usually Deflationary. Yet gold is strong. We have a Repo market under daily stress, and QE 4 at $60B per month (though the Fed won’t call it that) We have speculation whether the financial plumbing of the world can continue to operate under an estimated $250T global debt, while experiencing a dollar liquidity shortage. US government debt of $22T plus unfunded liabilities of another $100T. How do you manage that when your income is negative with a $1T annual deficit? We have uncertainty everywhere including the interminable Brexit; unresolved “protests” in HK; and a war between Turkey and the Kurds. We have protests in Ethiopia, Lebanon “days away from an economic collapse” and the already collapsed Argentine peso, and Venezuela economy. Given all this…

Three questions:
1) what is your prognosis for the gold price? Rising or falling?
2) can you investigate Evolution Mining in Australia please and help me understand why a mining company – with the super low AISC of US$ 661/oz, delivering 753,000 ounces of gold a year, and net cash flow of AU$498million is so cheap at $4.12?? Oh and pays a 2.3% dividend. What am I missing?
3) You say there are many potential outcomes. Solving debt with more debt hasn’t worked in 5000 years. If not a return to the gold standard? Is it a debt jubilee? Is it move to blockchain and away from fiat currencies? What are the solutions? Love your thoughts.

Thank you!

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marvinzilenga
marvinzilenga
October 30, 2019 9:40 am

Agora is everything that is wrong with our ‘system’ today. SELL, SELL, SELL. No integrity.

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L
L
October 29, 2019 7:15 pm

Trump did appoint a woman to the federal reserve who backs the gold standard. China and Russia are buying up gold like crazy. The fiat currency era will end and I believe a new currency will emerge that will be backed by gold.

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Theostrat
Member
Theostrat
October 29, 2019 9:23 pm

The US dollar back by gold not likely. Governments will not give up their printing out of thin air. However there is a way to pay off the US debt. Phase out the Federal reserve, which is a central bank that the Constitution forbids, by issuing treasury notes interest free whenever a Federal Reserve note comes due. President Jackson tried to get rid of the Fed and the Fed collapsed the economy on him. President Lincoln issued the greenback and was murdered. Like wise for JFK attempt. So unless Trump has a death wish I think the Fed is not going away either. Bitcoin is the way to go. Governments can not control it.

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rocko107
October 30, 2019 10:57 am

SPOXF is an OTC I bought about a year ago when looking to get into some Gold for diversification. Bought for both income(pays a decent dividend..about 4.5% at what I bought it at, and 3.86 as of today) and appreciation. It’s well managed(by my eye).

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Uruboros
Guest
Uruboros
October 30, 2019 3:39 pm

“Central banks had been dumping gold since the 1960s in an effort to suppress the price and to get out of a noninterest-bearing asset and into bonds and other assets that produce returns.”…also a recent snippet from Mr. Rickards, that I see has been central to the US private investment dilemma in recent memory. There is no US government incentive to return to the value of Gold….big money continues to short gold….interesing how it hangs at magic $1500/oz.

So my question, for several years now….what happens when the toner in the xerox machine runs out ?

The perspective of those that live in the opposite time zone is to have something tangible to exchange….gold, in particular, being habitual and convenient….China and Russia are definitely there already….we are in for interesting times…

Sending gratitude and appreciation…

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Fred Haering Glibal Investor
Member
Fred Haering Glibal Investor
October 30, 2019 3:40 pm

Agreed with ALL- though Richards is indeed clever, his hyperbole succeeds in being tiresome reading. Though occasionally Rickards does state something new, in general he succeeds in over-speculating while claiming to be the world’s greatest insider and in the know. In general, like all knowledge, Rickards opinions are simply such. Predicting most factors in our ever-expanding & complex world economy, particularly with a deepening dependence on tecinimic & financial trading instruments and such tech as Artificial Intelligence… well, the author herein, who actually surpasses Rickards in incisiveness and moderating of assertions, does have it correctly! Whatever happens to the precious metals sector anymore is virtually unpredictable. We are living in entirely new times with currency & interest rates manipulation. Globalisation combined with technology is rapidly creating a new world financial order… we can barely evaluate tge events if the day, let alone predict the outcomes of tomorrow. Yes, these are indeed harrowing times!

laketangler
October 30, 2019 6:14 pm

As a newbie to investing in 1982 I subscribed to several newsletters in the hope that the “experts” could aid my endeavors in building my fortune. It took me about 5 years to learn the parameters of a self-directed investment portfolio. Meanwhile the litany of “experts” cost me about 14% of my investable assets. Although I no longer subscribe to the newsletters I started with, I do check in with a few of them from time to time to compare their results to mine. I can humbly say that my results greatly exceed the average they have achieved. I have a mental list of the worst “gurus” out there, and the top two are Jim Rickards and Dr. Kent Moores. Other than BUY PRECIOUS METALS on dips, their recommendations are not worth the paper they are printed on. Long on hyperbole and poorly researched speculation, while short on positive results. STAY AWAY and save your money. Do your own research and read Stock Gumshoe. Thanks Travis.

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rail rider
October 30, 2019 6:45 pm

A “guest” asked a question which I found very interesting; I can’t reply to a guest, so I will simply reiterate: ” can you investigate Evolution Mining in Australia please and help me understand why a mining company – with the super low AISC of US$ 661/oz, delivering 753,000 ounces of gold a year, and net cash flow of AU$498million is so cheap at $4.12?? Oh and pays a 2.3% dividend. What am I missing” and ask the “Detective Extraordinaire” if Evolution Mining is worth looking at….or not.

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SageNot
Guest
SageNot
October 31, 2019 10:51 pm

Geez Travis, where is all that gold coming from? The dollar & all the other currencies will nose dive w/o ’nuff gold t/b used, PERIOD!!! Recession, or how about depression for the weaker currencies w/b upon us before the 2020 election!!! When Richard’s is wrong, he’s awful as you must know!!!

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Worldlyview
Member
Worldlyview
November 1, 2019 2:43 am

I once again suggest that Rickards, at best, is a total economic illiterate. As much as I feel unqualified to critique Travis, I feel that he devoted too much effort and too many words to denounce Rickards’s latest drivel. All I think that needs to be said is that when Rickards proclaims that gold “needs to be $10,000 per ounce…That’s a mathematical certainty…,” he should be dismissed as having zero credibility. The claim that anything more or less than exactly $10,000 would be disastrous and presumably would be the right number in perpetuity is laughable. I think this claim is at best as credible as asserting that hundreds of Abominable Snowmen will start coming out of hiding because of climate change–and will open a chain of ice cream stores. I assume, sadly, that some newsletter people continue to recycle their discredited but expensive nonsense because there is always a new cohort of suckers that will buy in. Finally, a digression on economics. The recent U.S. experience provides empirical proof that no precise, automatic, or perpetual link exists between: 1) currency depreciation and more exports/fewer imports; 2) soaring trade deficits and a weakening currency; or 3) a ballooning federal deficit and inflation.

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starman
Member
starman
November 3, 2019 3:14 am

Travis, Rumor has it that China has been stockpiling gold quietly up to possibly 30,000 tons!

https://www.gold-eagle.com/could-china-actually-have-30000-tonnes-gold-reserves

Now seeing how China is the most active and developed in digital payments, wouldn’t one think they could be preparing to be the first country to tie a new digital currency to this massive gold reserve they’ve been accumulating? OR could China potentially be preparing to anchor the Yuan to their gold deposits? Either way would lead to a gold bull market. With the current evolution of both either could potentially happen within the next three years. Travis, your thoughts? If so what would be the best gold play? Eventually the US government would have to come out with their own digital currency, i.e. a Fedcoin?

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starman
Member
starman
November 3, 2019 12:54 pm

Good point, but if that’s the case then the theory of backing a large portion of their gold deposits to a new digital currency seems more likely seeing how practically no one takes cash any longer and credit cards are practically non-existent in China. Hence Facebook’s eagerness with Libra. Also note that with Ali-Pay, We-Chat and Union Pay it seems that all Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them. “Experts even estimate that mobile commerce in China will reach about $1.5 trillion in sales in 2019, representing a quarter of the country’s overall retail market.” https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ A digital commerce platform as big as this and still growing can no longer be ignored by foreign banks. Between Facebook, Amazon and Paypal it seems they will have the head start on the US market if the trend continues in this direction. So the big question is could their gold stockpiling be to back a new digital currency one day in China? If so one would think other nations would follow en suite and this would simply give more reason to hedge with more gold.

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Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
November 3, 2019 8:35 pm
Reply to  starman

Consider an alternative hypothesis: China is build ing up gold reserves for diversification rather than to back a new Yuan. Dollar reserves are still their main reliance, but the percentage is shrinking as Euros and other developed world currencies with broad acceptability are edging upward. Gold is just one more partial alternative to the dollar. Gold also has a hedge value against the possibility of China being hit with economic sanctions by the US and cooperating allies, as Russia, Iran, N Korea etc have recently been targeted. Physical gold, unlike currencies in the form of bank accounts, can potentially be used in time of need to avoid sanctions and buy necessities anonymously on the international markets while evading sanctions enforced by the various international banking exchanges because they are afraid of the US.

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cmoreoke
Guest
cmoreoke
November 3, 2019 11:51 am

outstanding!

vbz53w
vbz53w
November 3, 2019 12:08 pm

Doubtful that Rickards wrote any of that . It must be all done by copywriters.

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