Charting A Clear Course Through The Fog No one really knows where the Trump economy will head. But we recently heard from some of the world’s best investment experts — and their advice is going to prove invaluable no matter what Trump will do. Dear John, As I noted a couple of weeks ago, no one has any idea of what the future holds under President Trump. I’m writing you now to show you that there are some trends that are irreversible…and for which you’ll need to prepare no matter how the new administration shapes up. The “Dream Team” Of Experts I’ve just gone through the transcripts from our recent New Orleans Investment Conference. This is a huge compendium of intelligence — the full transcripts of our General Session presentations runs about 300 pages in length. So you can imagine how busy I’ve been over the last week or so! Our conference was held just a few days before the presidential election, and with just a few exceptions, just about everyone expected Hillary Clinton to win. So, frankly, I was worried that much of the predictions, strategies and specific advice that our speakers offered up would seem outdated. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the precise opposite was true: Because our experts focused on over-arching issues like central bank irrelevance, rising interest rates, the huge and still growing debt burden…and what all of this means for stocks and metals…their presentations are still incredibly valuable. Now, I’ve been impressed with what President-Elect Trump has done so far to engender confidence in the economy and the markets. I really like his cabinet selections so far, and feel that his basic economic policies (outside of his protectionist trade streak) will help re-ignite economic growth. But the fact remains that over $4 trillion in money creation by the Fed…combined with an over-valued stock market and rising interest rates…create problems that are insurmountable by any president or Congress. We’re already seeing rising inflation pressures, and some significant degree of currency depreciation is inevitable. Addressing The Real Problems Our roster of experts at New Orleans 2016 addressed these issues in full. They offered predictions that would be accurate regardless of who won the election, and specific investment recommendations that weren’t dependent upon the results. As I say, I just went through the written transcripts, and found a number of valuable nuggets that I thought I’d share with you… • Peter Boockvar: “As central banks lose control of assets, lose control of interest rates, and lose control of the faith and credibility that investors have had in them over the past couple of years, gold is going to be a main beneficiary. “And I hear all the time, “Well, if rates go up, that’s bad for gold.” Well, anybody who lived through the mid-2000s saw the Fed funds rate go from one to five in a quarter and the gold price double. Well, you shouldn’t be intimidated by higher interest rates. Anybody who lived through the late 1970s and saw a rise in interest rates and a rise in gold should understand that a rise in interest rates, depending on why it’s happening, is not bearish for gold.” • Doug Casey: “Trump is going to win the election and I think in the popular vote by a landslide. Now, you haven’t heard that anywhere, so, and the polls say he’s way behind, but these polls are done by exactly the same people that live inside the beltway. They tilt everything. They are like the media, so don’t believe the polls. “The question is why will he win? I will give you two reasons, number one, the average standard of living of the average American has been going down for a couple decades now and it’s coming to a head, so people are protesting. Number two more important, the average American knows that American culture is dying right before their very eyes, with safe spaces and transgenderism and all this kind of thing. And they don’t like that.” • Brent Cook: “High margin deposits are going to be extremely valuable. I didn’t spend much time on this but the point being if they’re not finding, we’re not finding deposits, production is going down. The mining companies aren’t looking for them. The very few deposits that work, that make money meaning they are economic are going to be extremely valuable going into I think next year and the year after. So that’s all we want to do. And I think the time is right. I think buying over this next six months or so selectively is a good idea.” • Dennis Gartman: “…I think the Euro is a doomed currency. I think we’re going at least to par, and maybe lower, because the monetary authorities are, in fact, increasing their supply and they have no choice. Eventually, Europe — the European Monetary Union and the European Political Union have to break apart….” “… It is interesting — for those of you who don’t understand that fact — that gold in Euro terms over the course of the past several years is up, where gold in dollar terms over the course of the past several years is down. If you think — and I think you should go home with the understanding that the Euro is going to consistently weaken — you should go home with the notion, ‘Let me buy gold in Euro terms.’” • James Grant: “...I know people talk about gold in all manner of ways. They talk about the supply of it and the demand for. They talk about money in relation to M2 or they talk about the jiggery-pokery going on or not going on in the futures market and the bullion banks and they talk about gold lending and the like. I listen to this but it doesn’t resonate with me. I think it’s simpler. “I think that the gold price is the reciprocal of the world’s trust in the institution of managed currencies and the people who dream up those ideas and in the people who administer those ideas, who implement them. “So it’s, one, divided by trust, and the more trust the lower the gold price. The less trust, the higher the gold price, the higher gold price indicating a search for an alternative, a search for an alternative to settled pseudoscience. So I’m very bullish on gold. I have been. I owned it. I own the metal.” • Mike Larson: “…You have seen during the economic expansion/easy credit cycle, people didn’t really want gold in 2013, 2014 and early 2015. But that has flipped because people can see that there is more uncertainty, more chaos, there are more market issues coming up now than we had for the previous six or seven years. “So that’s helping to drive gold demand. When it comes to gold, you want to be buyers on pull backs. I think investing in physical metal over some of these negative-yielding sovereign and corporate bonds is definitely a wise investment. And I think, again, the volatility we have seen, in my opinion, is just getting started. I think we are going to see much more stock market volatility heading into 2017 because again, if I am right about where we are in the economic and credit cycle, this is the period where bad things start to happen.” • P.J. O’Rourke: “Not one of the enumerable presidential candidates whose interminable campaigns we have had to endure over the past two years has had a single word to say about the most important issues facing our nation — not a word. Not a word about national debt, the Federal deficit, or the infinite and infinitely expanding size and scope of government. “And I’ll give you an example of government spending, one that’s been around forever — Social Security. There is no money in the Social Security trust fund. And there never was. Because money is a government IOU. And the government can’t create a trust fund by creating its own IOUs, any more than I was able to create a trust fund for myself by writing “I get a chunk of money when I turn 21” on a piece of paper. “Well, Social Security is just such a piece of paper, except it says I get a chunk of money when I turn 65. The government promises. Consult American Indians for a further discussion of government promises.” • Stephen Moore: “…When I met with Donald Trump, the first thing I said to him was, ‘Donald, I don’t know if I love you, but I sure love your voters.’ “…There’s tens of millions of people around the country in towns like York, Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids, Michigan….These are towns that have been decimated, literally, by the last 20 years. These are people — I mean, I thought Trump’s strongest case that he made was at the convention when he said — ‘To all the people out there in middle America who believe that no one is listening to you and no one is attentive to your real economic concerns —‘ and cultural, I think there’s a cultural element to this too. He said, ‘I will be your voice.’ “These people are screaming for a voice. I think they need to. I think the demise of the Democratic party is that they have completely ignored working class America.” Much, Much More — Plus Specific Recommendations There are some great insights there, and I hope you’ve enjoyed them. But the excerpts above just barely scratch the surface of the invaluable advice presented at our recent New Orleans Conference. As I said, the full transcripts run about 300 pages. In fact, I just edited a “highlights” article of excerpts that runs over 33,000 words in length! (It’s going to appear in our year-end, double-length issue of Gold Newsletter that will be published in a few days.) And they run the gamut — from not only the political implications going forward, also but unhedged forecasts on the economy, along with specific stock recommendations that are on the verge of big breakouts. To get the full value of the intelligence shared at New Orleans 2016, you’ll have to purchase the entire transcript (which will be available for purchase in a few days), or get it at no cost by purchasing one of our sets of audio or video recordings. You can learn more about how to do so HERE. In the meantime, stay tuned. The upcoming Fed meeting and expected quarter-point rate hike should form a launching pad for gold and mining shares — just as it did last year. We’ll keep you up to date, as always. All the best, Brien Lundin Editor, Gold Newsletter CEO, the New Orleans Investment Conference |