I ran across this free book on Amazon that explains the complicated rules and laws about buying silver and gold. Did I say it was free?

I don't agree with everything the author says in some of his other books, but when he covers the laws and rules in this book you can't argue with the law.

Here is the link to the book on Amazon (Free Gold and Silver Investing Guide to Rules)

Check to see if the information is still up to date and how it does or doesn't apply to you were you live.

Happy investing!
Scott Hogue

What can you do now to live longer? Something simple and inexpensive? Something that would lower your risk for diabetes, cancer and heart attacks? Something that would be healthy for your kidneys?

Drink more water.

No kidding.

A number of studies compared the health and longevity to people that drank 4 or more glasses of water a day for their liquid refreshment. The results were amazing. Lower cancer rates, fewer cases of diabetes, fewer heart attacks and as you might expect, better kidney health. One study even showed a lower incidence of Alzheimer's in people that drank more water.

​One study showed a decrease in some cancer occurrences by 50%. Cut your cancer rate in half with water? Evidently so. 

You don't have to drown yourself with gallon jugs, just replacing a few sodas or syrupy beverages a day will help according to the studies.

Cool, refreshing, Ice Water!

Have one on me,
Scott Hogue 

The focus here is to provide you with useful information that will help you, encourage you and even entertain you in this new world we are living in.

This is the first in the series of new blogs and a new project. I have been so shadow banned on social media that I will be sharing the useful and interesting information I find along with my comments and strategies here. I will also have a little humor along the way.

I used to post on Facebook and get 300-400 likes, now it is down to 1 or 2 if any. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I found it difficult if not almost impossible to find my own posts. It is time to move on and since I have used this website and platform in the past for coaching and helping clients, I just thought it was a good place to start.

So who should be interested in this project? People that want to improve their health, their finances, their attitude and their day. In other words, humans.

Today I will start with a freebie for my readers and those interested in personal finance, the economy and where all of this Covid change is taking us. Ray Dalio, the billionaire investor is putting his newest book, "The Changing World Order" up for free on LinkedIn a chapter at a time. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has a lot of things right and I think the book is well worth a read and the price is right at free. 

Here is a link to the Introduction (Introduction) and chapter one (Chapter One). 
You can go to his LinkedIn page to find the rest.

See you soon,
​Scott Hogue

If you believe we went to the moon, I am ok with that. If you don't believe we went to the moon, I am ok with that too. Whether we went to the moon or not is one of those peculiar issues where a reasonable person can find plenty of evidence to take either side.  Then there is Apollo 13.

Apollo 13 launched April 11th, 1970 with tens of thousands of eye witnesses as was usual for any "moon shot."  Apollo 13 landed April 17th, 1970 with the world watching. We had plenty of eyewitnesses for that and a record television audience. What happened in between held the world spell bound. I think any reasonable person would say there was an Apollo 13 mission and it was epic.

At 55 hours, 54 minutes and 53 seconds into the mission, during a routine stirring of the contents of one of the oxygen tanks in the service module, there was an explosion. The side of the service module literally blew out.

The service module was the supply container, main power supply and the main steering device for the command module, the pointed tip of the rocket where the three men stayed while traveling to the moon and back. Without it the men couldn't live in the command module for long. The service module had oxygen and fuel cells for electricity. The command module had only batteries and a small oxygen supply intended for the short earth descent.

When they realized that the service module was dying, that is losing all power and oxygen, the men powered up the lunar module for a "lifeboat." The LEM or Lunar Excursion Module had been designed to support two men on the moon for two days, it now had to support three men for four days if the astronauts were going to come home alive. Critical information was entered into the landing module's computer as it was powered up and then something really scary was done. Something that had never been done before. Something that many people had thought would be certain death for the crew if it ever happened. They shut down the command module.

Why did they take this dangerous action? Because the batteries on the command module would never last until the time for earth reentry and landing. If they wanted it to work during the earth reentry and landing, they had to shut it down now. There had never been a plan to restart the command module in space. This wasn't just a restart, it would be a cold restart. The command module would become very cold in space with the power shut off. Batteries get weaker when they are cold. Electronics can act funny and even just stop when they are cold. I remember how my first liquid crystal watch would go blank when I was outside in cold weather. Something like that is what the technicians were afraid would happen to the command module computer. No one knew if it would work, but it had to work for the men to come home alive. They had no choice.

In the lunar module the men soon became cold and wet. They had problems with excessive carbon dioxide levels in the air. They were crowded into a very confined space, three men in a space that was cramped for two. But they patiently waited for the return to earth and the reboot of the command module that would take them the last leg of the way.

On earth technicians used a mock up of the command module to work out a procedure to restart the one in space. It wasn't going well. The start up procedure drew too much power and overloaded an electrical supply bus. That wasn't the only problem, but it seemed to be the most impossible one to overcome of all the impossible problems.

Finally, they figured out how to restart a command module after it had been shutdown in the middle of a mission on earth, but there was no guarantee it would work in the cold environment of space. It did work and the crew came home. After the event was over, every minute, every second and every action and possibility was examined and reexamined of the mission. It was discovered that if the command module had been shut down only a little longer, it was highly unlikely it could have been restarted in space. There was a  point of no return for a cold command module that was shut down.

So what does that have to do with the economy? In the big picture, more than you might think.

We shut  down the economy, just flipped the switch and sent everyone home. Now the economy is getting cold. In the history of mankind, no civilization has ever shutdown an economy like we just shutdown an economy. I think it is fair to argue that we did it based on misleading information and that the deaths and suffering from the shutdown will surpass the deaths and suffering from the virus, but it makes little difference now, we have already done it.

I am not saying that a lot of people didn't die from the virus, they surely did. They had mass graves in countries and Japan had a rain where they were covered in soot from whatever they were burning in China. A lot of people think it was the dead that had died from the virus. The best explanation of why it wasn't so bad here is that it mutated. Scientists have said they now have identified 40 different variations of the virus. The flu changes from year to year, evidently this changed as it went from country to country.

Whether they should have shutdown our economy is a moot point. They did.

It reminds me of something my grandfather would say. He told me how he had to suffer through a lot of things in life because he had no choice. I would ask him how he made it through some tragedy or trial he faced during the Great Depression or some loss he had suffered personally or in business and he would say, "I was like the blue jay." 

​He had told me the story of a young boy that caught a bird, a blue jay and he started pulling the feathers off of it to see what it looked like underneath. An old man saw him and said, "Son, quit pulling those feathers off of that bird, he can't stand that!" The boy looked up after pulling the last feather off and replied, "I have already  done it, he will just have to stand it."

When things happened to my grandfather and he had no choice in the matter, he was the blue jay, he had to stand it. Today, we are the blue jay. Our leaders pulled the feathers off of our economy.

As I am writing this the official figures show 30 million people in the United States are laid off. We saw over 6 million people laid off from work in one week. During the Great Depression the peak was less than 700 thousand. In ways you could say that number is ten times worse than the Great Depression. That is not the worst of it. We are seeing surveys that show for every ten people laid off and have filed for unemployment, there may be 3 or 4 that haven't filed or don't qualify for unemployment from their job and maybe 4 or 5 small business owners with no income. The actual number out of work may be closer to 60 million or even more. The truth is we just don't know, we don't have good numbers with any history behind them.

Recently I saw a study that said 26% to 28% of the restaurants will not reopen. I spoke with a woman working Walmart this week. Her family owns a restaurant. She works at Walmart for the family's health insurance. She said there was no way they could reopen. They didn't have the money for the food and supplies to replace what they had lost, they knew that fewer people would be coming in to eat since the social distancing rules have become popular, the people outside of the family that worked there were getting more money to stay at home than work now. She said it was hopeless and they had lost everything. This was another business that was closed forever and they could not pass it on to their children.

I saw another study that predicted that of the restaurants that did manage to reopen and that is if the restrictions were lifted quickly, 18% to 22% probably wouldn't make it 90 days. Food shortages, labor shortages, fewer customers and higher operating costs.

Hotels, motels, movie theaters, shopping malls, department stores, concert halls, sports complexes and franchises, hair salons and barbershops, the list goes on and on.

There are currently about 20 meat processing plants that are shut down. This week farmers plowed under millions of pounds of potatoes that were rotting, dumped thousands of gallons of milk they couldn't get processed, killed 200,000 hogs in just one state and destroyed them and then crushed hundreds of thousands of eggs that had no cartons to fill.

In San Diego, almost half of the residents went to a food bank to get food this week and the Mormons sent out 400,000 pounds of food from their food banks to feed the hungry, much of it going to Washington D.C. We are talking about hunger in Washington D.C.

Farmers are trying to decide if with food rotting in the fields and storehouses, should they  plant another crop or wait it out a year? In some states you can't even buy seed and fertilizer.

The smaller oil companies are already filing for bankruptcy. With demand so low with the stay at home orders and countries trying to pump and sell as much oil as possible to keep their economy afloat, the prices have dropped so fast and so low, that a week ago when there was oil to be delivered and no one to buy it and no place to store it, they actually paid people to take it away. There are hundreds of oil tankers around the world sitting in the ocean with nowhere to drop their oil.

We have car carrier ships with new cars that are waiting off shore until they can dump the cars onto a lot somewhere. With no one buying new cars the dealer's lots filled up, then the local factory and storage lots filled up, then the carrier ships had nowhere to unload and the factories shutdown.

We are seeing the inventory for power transformers dropping. These are the power transformers that are vital in getting power to your house. We aren't making them and with spring storms and the usual failures, we are digging into our supply.

Pharmacies are running out of medicines. This week I heard of a pharmacist that had to call the doctor three times to find a medicine they actually could get to fill a patient's prescription.

Friday I placed an order at the drive through of a restaurant and the clerk took my money. In a minute she came back and said, "The other clerk sold the last one, I am sorry, is there anything else I could get you?"

It isn't just a toilet paper shortage we are seeing.

We are seeing economists talking about "Economic Deaths" deaths caused by a downturn in the economy. Elderly already suffering from poor nutrition, poor housing and poor health care for example. They shutdown the hospitals for just about anything that wasn't virus related. We have seen the only pandemic where healthcare workers were laid off and couldn't work. People aren't getting the surgeries and treatments they need and in time that can be fatal and we are hearing reports that for some it probably already is.

Suicides, drug overdoses, child and spousal abuse, hunger, there are many things that come with poverty. Losing homes is next. The latest number says 7% of home mortgages are behind on payments and we haven't seen the peak of the economic downturn. People will lose their homes, I don't know how many, but it will be too many for sure.

So what am I saying? I am saying we are at that point Apollo 13 was when it was practically impossible to reboot the command module and it would have been impossible if they had  waited any longer.

We are at that point where we can reboot the economy, like the Apollo 13 mission rebooted the command module, if we hurry and there will be difficulties and hardship and even some deaths, but it won't be a disaster we can't recover from, a disaster for sure, but one we can recover from...if we hurry.

For goodness sakes, let the healthcare workers go back to work. Let the farmers plant and figure out a way to move food to places where it is needed. For goodness sakes, restart the meat processing plants with regular disinfecting and revised hygiene rules.

If you are at risk or uncomfortable with going out, then stay in if you can. If you aren't afraid or at risk, then go get a haircut so the stylist can put some food on their table.

​Mission Control, we are ready to reboot!

Best and be blest,
​Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

For years you have been limited by the Federal Reserve to 6 electronic saving account withdrawals on most savings accounts per month. They call it rule D. That just changed. We are told there are now no withdrawal limits on these savings accounts, but that is from the Federal Reserve and not the banks. Your bank could still charge fees or have limits, so you want to check with them.

Why is this important? Several reasons and they may not really affect you. First, a savings account pays some interest and most checking accounts don't. Even if they do, by the time you buy checks if you have an account like most people where you pay for your checks, well, you are in the hole unless you have a ridiculous amount of money just sitting in a ultra-low interest checking account.

So you can actually see your balance increase if you have money in a savings account. It won't keep up with inflation, but if you can't make money or just break even, losing the least you can is still better than a poke in the eye and the other options.

Insurance companies and a growing number of other companies will draft your bill from your savings account now. That means you had a maximum of 6 bills you could pay a month directly from withdrawal from your savings account. If you used your 6 withdrawals for bills, transfers to your savings or any combination, you would have to physically go in to the bank and fill out a transfer for any withdrawals over 6. Now you don't.

Why did that have this rule in the first place? Well, without going into a lot of detail, it was supposed to make the banking system more stable and prevent the banks from having to keep more money on hand to keep from running out.

Why did they remove this rule now? The first reason is that the Federal Reserve hates checks, they even hate currency and anything they can do to get rid of checks and currency is a big thing for them. The Federal Reserve, in league with the Government in general and the IRS in particular want digital currency. Currency they can track and tax and take away and even turn off without the hardship and trouble of a court order, trial, due process or even a tax return.

The second reason is with the economy  rolling backwards and unbelievable things happening to people financially, people couldn't get to their savings money electronically and banks didn't want people coming in physically because of the virus restrictions. There are a lot of bank branches that are just plain closed now.

The Federal Reserve is trying to create enough currency and inject it into the financial system that the stock market doesn't crash (again), that banks don't close and that interest rates for the government and their friends stay low. Every dollar you can take out of your savings account and put into circulation is another dollar they don't have to "print" toward that goal.

Besides, it would look bad if people needed currency for food and their bills, but couldn't get their own currency because of a rule and the Federal Reserve doesn't like to look bad.

With there being no limit now, at least imposed by the Federal Reserve, you may start seeing debit cards for savings accounts. Many  debit cards already will work at ATM machines to access your savings.

Check with your bank for any rules, fees or restrictions they may have.

Best and be blest,
​Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

What is Hot Money?
Hot money is a term used in financial and investing circles for money that is flowing into some area, some asset class, some investment. When money flows into some investment it makes the price go up and if you guess right you can sell for more than you paid for that investment. 

Hot Money is how we get Bubbles. Financial Bubbles are when Hot Money flows into something and inflates the price of that investment. Remember the Housing Bubble? Hot Money. Remember the Tech Bubble? Hot Money. Remember the Dutch Tulip Bulb Bubble? (Try saying that three times fast) Tulips were Hot Money too.

Hot Money investments are based on the "Greater Fool" theory. The growth in value of those investments is not really based on growth in the market, demand, innovation or increasing market share, it is based on the hope that there is a "Greater Fool or Bigger Fool" than you that will give more for the investment than you did and the sooner the better. Once a Hot Money investor gets out of the Hot Money investment, they are looking for the "Next Big Thing."

Some money is "Hotter" than other "Hot" money. A Bubble may take a decade to develop or a few years or months or in some cases a few hours in what are "Flash Bubbles." The nature of Hot Money makes a Bubble and Bubbles burst and deflate. So now you know about Hot Money.

So where is the Hot Money today? Well, there is some money going into deflated oil stocks and hard assets thinking when they turn us loose and we drive again they will go up. You have some money going into Gold, from people thinking with all of this crazy stimulus it will go up before the end of the year and keep going up for a fair ride. You actually have some people putting money into China thinking they are getting a bargain and that China will bounce back. Of course you have some money going into the stock market, some sectors more than others thinking it will bounce back. I could go on, commodities, silver, I hear there are people looking into depressed real estate and farming, but as far as I can tell, the really Hot Money is on the sidelines. When they shut down people, they shut down the economy and with it, for the first time in my lifetime, they shut down Hot Money.

Oh, Hot Money will come back, just wait, but it is hard to tell where. No one expected Tulip Bulbs to be "The Next Big Thing" until they were. If I had to guess based on some educated guessing there will be more than one "Hot Money Market" and probably several won't be so hot.

Commodities that are necessary in one way or another for basic living will have to heat up. We are going to have a lot of people living pretty basic, we already have them. Anything that has to do with a vaccine will be pretty hot and the companies creating them and licensing them and administering them will be very hot when and if we get an effective one. Don't hold your breath, we have been working on AIDS for over 40 years and still no vaccine.

Financial Services is already showing signs of life. Somebody has to cash those stimulus checks and people are going to be running them through checking accounts. Debt counseling will come back when the payments hit the fan and you have to start paying your bills again without a job. But the closest thing to Hot Money these days  is anything to do with Government Contracts. I can't say what I know or how I know it, but you don't have to be a Psychic to know the government is spending money and more today than before the virus.

Money is always flowing to some extent from government. Just yesterday the Supreme Court ruled the government has to pay the insurance companies for the losses they had with Obamacare. Investors talk about the trend to see where things are going and to be invested in rising trends. Government spending certainly is trending up and has for several lifetimes now. We are probably looking at the hockey stick part of the chart developing.

You have to figure out some way to benefit during this time. If you are not on the opportunity side of this you will be on the depression side of it. Higher taxes, higher inflation, scarce healthcare resources, increased rent and basic living expenses, failing pensions, IRA's, 401K's, you don't want to be crushed by what is coming.

If you want to talk about your financial situation, then fill out the contact form at www.eastbrookfinancialservices.com that is Eastbrook Financial Services and I will get back with you.

Best and be blest,

Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

You may have seen it in the news, farmers plowing under their crops of potatoes, but you can't buy french fries and even potatoes in many stores. Why? It comes down to ignorance or just plain evil, you could say apathy, but with people hungry, I call that evil.

Here is the situation. Lots of people usually eat lots of meals that come from restaurants, either inside or carry out. That means a lot of our food is distributed through the restaurant food distribution system or supply chain. Now they have practically shutdown that outlet for food. Oh, I know you can still do carry out at a lot of places, but even with that, most people aren't getting out because of the stay at home orders and that means the restaurant food supply chain is down to a trickle.

So why don't we just bring that food into the stores and sell it? Because it would be against the law in most cases. Frozen french fry bags for restaurants aren't labeled for public consumer resale. You know, calories, nutrition, all of that stuff that was popular to put on everything a few years back. Eggs for restaurants often don't even say eggs on the cartons. I have seen five pound containers of sour cream that only said sour cream on them, selling them to you or me would probably be a felony.

So the farmers are having to plow their potatoes back under the ground to get rid of them or even haul them off with dump trucks, because it is time (actually a little late) to plant new crops and old potatoes rotting next to new potatoes growing would attract bugs and disease.

One state alone has planned to kill and destroy 200,000 hogs this week because the processing plants can't process them. Eggs are being dumped in huge numbers, milk is being poured out and in some areas almost half of the population is having to go to food banks to get food.

What do you call that? Ignorance or just plain Evil?
​
It doesn't matter how many government stimulus checks you get, if there is no food you will go hungry. Farmers are having second thoughts about planting this year and in many cases the government has just shut them down. No workers, no seed and fertilizer, no choice.

Flattening the curve is looking a lot like flattening the businesses and America runs on business, right down to ham and eggs and yes, those french fries you used to take for granted.

Best and be blest,

Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

You may have noticed that the Stock Market is only down 16% now from its all time high. Isn't that interesting?

When we have 26 million people laid off, with more adding to that number every week, when we have a pandemic with lock downs and no end in sight, when they are pouring out milk, crushing  eggs, killing hogs and burying potatoes when you can't buy frozen french fries in the store, not to mention a lot of other things and did I mention that oil was so low that they were paying people to carry it off recently and I am not kidding, why is the stock market so high? If you lived through the tech boom bust or the mortgage great crash of 2008 where only a fraction of the people were directly involved in the crash, you would think with just about everyone out of work, stores either empty or shut down and even Neiman Marcus declaring bankruptcy there would be blood in the streets and even maybe a 50% drop with no upturn until things started turning up. So why not?

The answer is, wait for it, the market is rigged!

Unless you are willing to believe that Amazon shipping toilet paper has offset all of the downward forces in the market except for 16%, then you should be able to see it as clear as day, the whole thing is  rigged.

People still look at the stock market as being kind of like Walmart, that people go into the market and buy things based on the worth of those things to them. Just like items in a store, the man or woman on the street thinks companies with stock for sale in the market were priced on value, so like a television or cell phone has more value that say, a carrot, carrots are cheap and televisions are more expensive and a company that has real value, sells real products people want and has a real business model should be worth more. I have news for you, it doesn't work that way and it hasn't for a long time.

Companies that have never, ever made a profit can double in price over a year's quarter.
Companies that don't even have a product on the market can do about the same. Let me ask you a question, how would you fill in the rest of this sentence? "What goes up, must ________?" If you said "come down" you are a winner. These stocks that shoot up, often free fall down. They have no real value to hold them up, like I don't know, some sales of their products.

The government is pumping out money  so fast it would make drunken sailors blush and the Federal Reserve has actually said they would inject up to an infinite amount of money into the system, (system means the big banks and their business buddies) to support the system, (stop just a minute to think about a central bank that actually says it will print an infinite amount of money to keep things afloat when printing more money makes it more worthless) so no wonder the market isn't down more. The fed has put a put on it or in other words, promised to bail out Wall Street one way or another, if it takes flooding the planet with money and I guess Mars and Venus too.

The market has been rigged for a long time, if you have watched it, you know that, but now it is so plain that anyone should be able to see it and the usual  denials won't hold water.

Prices on the stock market have nothing to do with profitability, nothing to do with making an actual product, nothing to do with sales and revenue, it is all a Ponzi scheme. I have people ask me why I say stay out of the market unless you want to gamble since it is a big Ponzi scheme and they think they can ride the coat tails of the big guys. I tell them, remember, there are losers in these schemes that fund the winners and if you don't know the rules you will be the loser and they change the rules every day.

Here is an example, the Federal Reserve can't buy stocks by law. So what do they do? They give someone else the money and let them buy the stocks for them. So you have the law and you have the new rule. "Today we can get around the law by hiring someone to do it for us."

Did you wonder why gold and silver were down during a financial crash when commonsense would have told you they should have been up? Well, there were people betting on the market going down more and when their margin calls for these bets or market plays came in, there was a round of gold and silver selling to cover these calls. So why did they need the margin money? Because the market starting going up, even on more and more bad news and their positions weren't worth the money they had put up for collateral. So why did the market go up and not down on bad news? Because the Federal Reserve opened the doors to free money for the bankers of Wall Street.

I hoped that 2008 would have finally taught people that the stock market is no place for your retirement money, but sadly not.  We wiped out another generation of seniors. You see, just because the market goes down and then back up doesn't mean you won't lose and that is a bit more complicated than I can cover here, but I may do that soon. There are a lot of situations where you don't make as much going back up as you lost going down and from the 2008 crash it took a lot of people a decade to recover the losses and you can never get back the lost time.

With so many safe investments and so many guaranteed income vehicles, why do we still blindly "play the markets?" Hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, advertising that simply buys the opinions of the television financial advisors on the networks that receive this money and then there are the brokers that make their living off of the game and your money  whether you win or lose.

Medicare already looked like a third world program, this crash is speeding up the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, pension funds that were already under water are hitting the bottom of the deep blue sea, states are begging the federal government to bail them out since the states can't print money and that means their pension funds are broke and they can't fix them, a lot of stock market based retirement funds are down so much the owners can't get enough out to retire or to live in retirement...I keep warning people, but my megaphone is not as big as Wall Street and their partners in crime in the big casino and remember, the house always wins in time.

If you want out of this rigged casino, then give me a call and we can discuss what is right for you. You know it isn't over on Wall Street, there will be more rounds of losses just like all the times before.

Best and Be Blest,
Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

So what is going on with the Personal Financial side of the Coronavirus?

Here is just an update...Credit Card companies are tightening credit. This means if you have credit you aren't using, your limit may be lowered. If you apply for a new card, you will probably get less available credit than just a few months ago. We are hearing industry insiders say interest rates will be going up where increases are legal.

Several Mortgage Banks  have raised their minimum favored rate credit score to 700. You can also expect lower home appraisals going forward in some areas of the market. This comes together as higher down payments and tougher closing experiences, not to mention, people that were borderline qualified for best rates will now be paying higher rates where these changes take effect.

It is going to be harder in areas of the market to buy a house going forward, but house payments for many people will still be less than renting. There are hidden reasons to buy a house. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does a study on home renters vs home owners and the net worth of the owner runs from the high 20's to the low 40's in times they have more net worth. In other words, a buyer on average can have 30 times the net worth of a renter, income and other factors being equal. Why? They are still trying to figure it out, but I say it is the difference in mindset that comes with owning a home.

Gasoline prices are not following oil prices down yet. There is still a huge disconnect between negative oil prices and what we are seeing at the pump. At the pump prices are pretty stable over the last week and the last wholesale price of 12 cents a gallon was not reflected at the pump. Refiners and jobbers are trying hard to hold the line, but it will be more of when people start driving again than what they do that affects the price over the next months.

Staying with a personal note, five major meat processing plants have shut down over the last few weeks and there is no set time for them to reopen. Expect higher meat prices and area shortages going forward.

Silver is still holding about the same range in the last week with it being down about a quarter an ounce and now back up about the same. Gold went down about a week ago and is back up. The truth is you can't buy silver or gold at spot prices. There is a premium for real silver and gold vs the paper prices. The last I saw was a ten dollar or so premium over spot for real silver and about two hundred for gold.

That is probably enough for now...

Remember, when the outlook isn't good, the up look is always good!

Be Blest,
​Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA

It looks like everyone is afraid of the Coronavirus and for good reason, but let's not over do it and stop to look at the other things we should be afraid of...

Let's start with the economy.
A report by restaurant industry insiders says that 28% of restaurants will not reopen and another report says that 17%-24% won't make it 90 days after they open back up.  That is a lot of jobs. We could lose half or more of the restaurants and since they are leaning the staff even now, we could lose over half of the restaurant jobs.

States can't print money and they don't have much coming in. Most states are in trouble with their pension funds and all kinds of debt, municipal bonds and such. The Federal Government doesn't want to bail them out, so they are talking about  legalizing state bankruptcies. Who doesn't believe that would be a revolving door it they open it? So expect states to put their hand into your pocket anyway they can. Property taxes, fees, car licenses, car tags, sales taxes, inheritance tax, just about everything.

They are using the virus to advance digital currency, that is currency they can tax every time you buy something, track you with and even shut down if they don't like what you are doing or your opinions about the government and I don't know, say vaccines, shut downs, gun laws, church attendance and just about any other popular topic today. This one really concerns me. You should see the documents that are public. It is a dictator's dream and they are already using a social score in China to oppress people.

Social Security and Medicare, you didn't forget them did you? Both were heading toward bankruptcy and if you spend more than you take in Social Security qualifies now. The strain on both of these systems will only make the problems worse. Medicaid was a disaster before and it is looking like a third world disaster now.

Retirement, or what we used to call Retirement. There are a lot of people that lost something like a third of their retirement funds. I don't know why people do this, they just stay in the stock market no matter how many times it crashes and burns people's retirement plans. Of course the "Experts" say stay in the market and this time will be different, but it never is. These means everyone moves down a level in the game. If you were about to retire well off, you won't retire so well off. If you were about to retire so-so, you will retire with big cuts in lifestyle or have to keep working. If you couldn't work due to health issues and were going to scrape by, you will be below water. And the worst...people that weren't making it before, well, probably suffering and an earlier death.

Inflation, remember Jimmy Carter and the Stagflation years? You will eventually see inflation for everything a poor person has to have to live. There will be some deflation on things the middle class used to buy, but now can't afford. You could easily argue there is no middle class now. Rent will go up and "shelter houses" will go up in price. What is a "Shelter House?" A house that is plain and basic with no frills. Food will go up in price. Things we used to get from China will go up. A lot of medicines will go up. Healthcare will go up. Insurance will go up. You don't expect the insurance companies to take a haircut over this do you? They have already lost a lot of money they had already planned on spending.

Then there is oil. People were paying companies to haul off the oil they owned. They couldn't sell it and they couldn't store it. So, instead of paying for oil, they paid you to come get it. We are looking at about a third of the oil companies going bankrupt by the end of the year, with the first filing now. These aren't the big companies you have heard about, these are the smaller companies that employee a lot of people. Mom and Pop's, midsize investment companies and regional oil development and supply companies. It could add up to maybe half of all oil jobs and then affect maybe four jobs for each  person that supplied things to those now unemployed people.

And there is War. When you have all of these international issues and governments deep in debt with popular opinion turning against them, it isn't a stable time. It was already that way before the virus. Add the virus and the fact that many governments base their economy on oil sales and oil sales have backed up like a UPS Delivery Truck and you are sowing the seeds of War. I expect more armed conflict with new start ups over the next 18 months.


And at least for this article, last but not least, food shortages...

They are killing chickens and burying them. They are pouring out milk. They are sending milk cows to slaughter. They are killing and burying hogs. We already had the African Swine fever taking out entire country's hog populations overseas. They are behind on planting this year. They have shutdown a number of food processing plants indefinitely and with weather problems this year and the last few years, companies cutting back and closing processing plants last year, we already were headed into a food crunch. Now call it a shortage, even a hunger/starvation event in some countries.

Not exactly an economic issue is civil unrest. They say if we miss 7 meals we are going to see rioting. We already see people that have lost their minds over this virus. Then there is the power grab and those fighting against it. Stimulus checks won't keep people in check if they can't buy food. 

I expect more than the normal protests and riots this election season.

So is it all doom and gloom? No, there are a lot of opportunities and most of us will make it through all of this one way or another, but think twice before you say we should extend the lock downs.  Already the virus response will kill more than the virus over a period of time. We should focus not on shutdowns, but on how do we open up safely?

Best and be blest,
Scott Hogue CCFC, CCA