If Reagan were alive today, he'd reject Donald Trump and his trade war against the whole world, including and especially against our friends and allies in Canada.
Reagan's full remarks from April 1987, excerpted by Doug Ford in the ad, are shown below.
... Spot gold was down 5.5% to a one-week low of $4,115.26 per ounce as of 01:45 a.m. EDT (1745 GMT), its steepest fall since August 2020. ... Spot silver dropped 7.6% to $48.49 per ounce. ...
Story here.
Trump is a disgrace.
His administration can't end soon enough.
... Spot gold was down 2.2% to $4,228.89 per ounce, after scaling an all-time high of $4,378.69 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver fell 4.1% to $51.99 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $54.47 ...
-- CNBC
. . . Spot gold was gained [sic] 0.4% per ounce to $4,343.63 per ounce Thursday evening, after bullion touched a record high of $4,330.42 [what?!]. ... Spot silver rose 1.8% to $54.04 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $54.15 earlier in the session. ...
Updated:
Trump administration will set price floors across range of industries to combat China, Bessent says
... “When you are facing a nonmarket economy like China, then you have to exercise industrial policy,” Bessent told Sara Eisen at CNBC’s Invest in America Forum in Washington, D.C.
“So we’re going to set price floors and the forward buying to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and we’re going to do it across a range of industries,” the Treasury secretary said, without naming specific industries the administration was looking at beyond rare earths. ...
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the Treasury secretary said when asked about additional equity stakes. “When we get an announcement like this week with China on the rare earths, you realize we have to be self-sufficient, or we have to be sufficient with our allies.”
The Trump administration will not take stakes in nonstrategic industries, Bessent said. “We do have to be very careful not to overreach,” he said. ...
Gold extended its rally to a fresh record high on Thursday ... Earlier in the session, bullion touched a record high of $4,241.77, climbing for a fifth consecutive session. ...
More.
J. P. Morgan explains gold's rise as having something to do, in part, with "waning confidence in fiat currencies." 😏
Why should anything pegged to fiat be more confidence inspiring, especially involving PayPal?
People who've been permanently banned by PayPal this morning are probably saying, "Couldn't have happened to a finer company".
This event should be good for fiat, and really good for gold, which won't suddenly be minted by anyone to the tune of $300 trillion, at least not until Elon Musk lassoes one of them thar asteroids.
PayPal’s crypto partner mints a whopping $300 trillion worth of stablecoins in ‘technical error’
Paxos, the blockchain partner of PayPal, mistakenly minted $300 trillion worth of the online payment giant’s stablecoin on Wednesday in what the company called a “technical error.” ...
Transactions on Etherscan showed that the mistake had been fixed after about 20 minutes.
PYUSD is advertised as a dollar-pegged stablecoin that is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents. Therefore, PayPal says the tokens are always redeemable for U.S. dollars on a 1:1 basis.
However, the technical error highlights that the dollar peg is guaranteed by PayPal and its independent third-party attestation reports, rather than intrinsically tied to the minting of a stablecoin. ...
... Spot gold rose 1.3% to $4,193.39 per ounce after hitting an all-time high of $4,217.95 earlier. ... Silver climbed 1.7% to $52.31, following Tuesday’s record high of $53.6. ...
More.
Updated:
Walmart is deploying millions of ambient Internet of Things battery-free sensors throughout its massive supply chain in the U.S.
The retail giant is using technology from Wiliot in what the IoT vendor is calling the first large-scale deployment of ambient IoT in the retail sector and one of the largest such implementations to date.
Ambient IoT is a class of IoT devices mainly powered by harvesting ambient energy from radio waves, light, motion, heat, or other viable ambient energy sources. It’s an evolution of legacy IoT and radio frequency identification technologies that promise lower costs and high scalability.
Walmart will be using the IoT sensors to track pallets nationwide by the end of 2026. “Expansion to other global markets is under consideration, but the immediate focus is the U.S. rollout,” Cathey said.
The company will now have real-time insights into inventory management, knowing exactly where merchandise is located and whether it’s owned by the retailer, at any moment, and covering an estimated 90 million pallets of inventory when at full scale.
The ambient IoT sensors Walmart uses capture signals about temperature, location, humidity, and dwell time. These signals are linked with the company’s advanced artificial intelligence systems, enabling the company to dramatically improve supply chain efficiency, inventory accuracy, and cold chain compliance.
“We expect to be active in about 500 Walmart locations by the end of the year, with plans for national expansion in 2026,” said Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart. The rollout will cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and more than 40 distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain data that feeds into Walmart’s AI systems, he said.
“This data provides proof of delivery, improves replenishment decisions, and lets us know where our items are in real time,” Cathey said. “By combining continuous sensing with AI, we’re moving from probabilistic predictions to precision decision-making.”
What makes the addition of ambient IoT sensors significant is it provides a new stream of data into AI systems, enabling them to be even more effective in giving Walmart greater visibility into supply chain operations.
The technology initiative is already making a significant impact by eliminating some manual tasks and providing automated alerts, Cathey said. “Associates no longer need to perform time-consuming checks to locate items,” he said. “Automated alerts now flag this information in real time, allowing associates to act faster and dedicate more time to serving customers.”
The enhanced visibility into the supply chain is also helping to resolve inventory discrepancies, allowing improved customer experiences.
While Cathey did not disclose specific figures such as cost savings, Walmart is anticipating gains from higher supply chain efficiency, improved inventory accuracy, reduced manual tasks for associates, and the ability to get items on shelves more quickly. “Customers [will] benefit from better product availability and consistency,” he said.
“AI system performance is predicated on its training data. The better the data, the better the AI performance,” said Julien Bellanger, president of Wiliot. “Supply chain AI has long been fueled by inherently out-of-date data — or forecasted data that represents projections rather than reality.”
Ambient IoT is changing this model, Bellanger said, by fueling AI with data that reflects what’s actually happening throughout the supply chain.
“We have been here before; Walmart was an early adopter of RFID back in 2004 when it was supposed to provide much the same functionality,” said Bill Ray, distinguished vice president, analyst and chief of research at research firm Gartner. “However, this time the cost of the tags is much lower, and that will be a tipping point.”
Ray says it’s important to note that the value of such IoT systems is already known. “The business models have been well studied and evaluated, when RFID was first touted as the solution to supply chain problems,” he said. “RFID has had an enormous impact, but the cost of the tags prevented the transformation it had promised. The industry has been able to integrate the new, lower-cost tags into the same value models, and come up with positive answers.”
Gartner has been tracking Wiliot for a long time. “The question was never if the technology could deliver on its promise. The question was if Wiliot could reliably scale production without compromising tag performance or price, and if it could integrate with existing supply chain systems. This announcement tells us that Walmart is convinced it can, now Wiliot will have to prove it,” Ray said.
“Ambient IoT just works,” Cathey said. “It doesn’t require wanding or scanning. It lets our associates do what they do, and they can focus on doing their jobs safely and efficiently while providing continuous, real-time visibility into our supply chain.”
Ambient IoT got a boost earlier this year when a new business alliance was created to develop and promote an open, multi-standard ecosystem for ambient IoT manufacturers, suppliers, integrators, operators, users, and customers, based on next-generation, battery-free ambient IoT standards.
By focusing on advanced communication technologies, the alliance is seeking to overcome the limitations of traditional battery-powered IoT devices, promoting more sustainable and efficient products.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/15/walmart-deploying-millions-of-internet-iot-sensors-across-us.html
... Spot gold rose 0.5% to $4,128.49 per ounce, as of 0805 GMT, after hitting a record high of $4,179.48 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver fell 0.1% to $52.27, after hitting a record high of $53.60 ...
More.
Updated:
401(k) plans saw ‘flight’ to cash, bonds in September, analysis finds
... Bond funds captured 39% of fund inflows, while 25% of net investor money flowed to stable value and 18% to money market funds, Alight found. ... The shift to bonds may indicate investors are rebalancing to keep their asset allocations from getting too stock-heavy, Austin said.
VBTLX was up 1.05% in September vs. 1.93% in the 3-months ended September 30th. The fund was up 6.10% year to date on September 30th.
Gold, silver hit record highs as Trump threatens fresh China tariffs
... Spot gold was up 1.64% to a record $4,083.42 per ounce. ... Spot silver jumped 2.22% to $51.39/oz, after hitting $51.70/oz, driven by similar factors as gold alongside tightness in the spot market. ...
Bank of America on Monday raised its price forecasts for precious metals, lifting its 2026 outlook for gold to $5,000 an ounce and for silver to $65/oz. BofA is the first major bank to raise its gold price forecast to $5,000/oz for 2026.
On a technical basis, gold’s and silver’s Relative Strength Index stands at 80 and 83, respectively, indicating the metals are overbought. ...
Imagine Joe Biden is president today.
All eyes would be on progressive policy standard-bearer and VP Kamala Harris at this point in Joe Biden's second term, had he run and won, because of his illness headlined below.
Progressives would have been sitting in the catbird seat for the foreseeable future, advancing their agenda on climate change, renewable energy, higher taxes on the rich, and higher spending on healthcare.
The Democrat failure to stick together in 2024 was a crack-up worthy of 1968, the damage from which Democrats did not recover until 1992.
Just 270,000 votes across four states were the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in 2024, and that was for the disloyal Kamala Harris.
Progressives have proven themselves unworthy of the name Democrat by their actions in usurping Joe Biden's presidency, and Kamala Harris proved it by her words in her memoir when she framed Biden's decision to run for re-election as entirely personal and therefore reckless, when 14+ million Democrat primary voters for Joe Biden thought otherwise.
14 million primary voters, ignored. That's what progressives stand for. They respect democracy no more than does Mad King Ludwig.
... Spot gold, which hit a record high of $4,059.05 on Wednesday, was up 0.5% to $3,992.97 per ounce as of 0919 GMT - a gain of 2.7% so far this week. U.S. gold futures for December delivery rose 0.8% to $4,005.30. ... Silver rose 3.7% to $50.95 per ounce a day after touching a record high of $51.22. It has gained 76% so far this year. ...
More.
By comparison, Total Stock Market Index VTSAX is up 14.83% ytd through yesterday.
Total Bond Market Index VBTLX is up 6.4%.
... The [gold] rally has been driven by a cocktail of factors, including . . . a weak dollar. ... -- CNBC
Would these people know a weak dollar if they saw it?
Trying to explain gold like this is just silly.
The Nominal Broad U.S. Dollar Index is 120.51, down 7.4% from the January all time high of 130.21.
The all time low for this index was under Obama in July 2011, at 85.46.
You remember the summer of 2011, right?
The dollar was at its weakest, America lost its AAA rating, and precisely net zero jobs were created that August, the first time since WWII.
We have a strong dollar today, not a weak one.
