February 16, 2025 | Wonks and Eggheads Still Don’t ‘Get’ Trump

Trump promised everything but a cure for cancer during last Thursday’s press conference, and there was no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to helping to shape a better world. Can he do it? One thinks of Teddy Roosevelt, who possessed seemingly limitless energy and zeal for taking on big projects, including building a national […]

February 16, 2025 | Pharmaceutical Marketing – Billions Spent to Make You Sick

  The United States and New Zealand are perhaps the only nations that permit direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising. Big Pharma is permitted to use every marketing tool at its disposal to glamorize medications to consumers, who are then expected to go to their doctors and ask for the latest and greatest pill, treatment, or […]

February 15, 2025 | RFK on Gates & Fauci

February 15, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday February 15th 2025

Reminder U.S. and Canadian equity markets are closed for a holiday on Monday. The Bottom Line Diverging trends! On one hand, equity indices are responding to higher than consensus fourth  quarter earnings and revenue results. Focuses this week are reports by Wal-Mart on Thursday and reports by a series of commodity companies throughout the week. […]

February 14, 2025 | Higher Inflation Could End Rate Cuts For This Year

Higher inflation returned this week. The numbers for January CPI inflation came in hotter than expected. A significant upturn in Core CPI on a monthly and annual basis raised eyebrows, although the markets were not rattled for long. Is this the end of rate cuts? Will rate hikes be next? The U.S. CPI released on […]

February 13, 2025 | China’s Real Estate Bust Leads Other Countries

Anyone who plays Monopoly can experience how quickly real estate holdings drag once cash in hand proves insufficient. Bubbles may seem fun on the way up, but they’re universally brutal in the inevitable deflation stage. China’s stimulus boom helped inflate global demand and real estate prices after the 2008 recession, but mean reversion has been […]

February 13, 2025 | Could Canada Join the EU?

  An economist has made headlines for suggesting that Canada unite with the European Union bloc. Could Canada become the 28th member state? Absolutely not. The very idea that Canada would consider joining the European Union and abandoning the Canadian dollar for the euro is sheer economic insanity. To throw away its sovereignty and monetary […]

February 12, 2025 | US Total Consumption Falls While Commercial Crude Stocks Rise

President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have given Hamas until noon on Saturday to release all remaining hostages (alive and the bodies of the dead) as Hamas has not met the phase one conditions. If the release does not happen then Trump’s ‘All hell is going to break out’ could escalate the fighting in the […]

February 12, 2025 | Matt Taibbi Explains the USAID/Politico Scandal

For readers not familiar with Matt Taibbi, he’s an old-school, 1960s liberal reporter who is appalled by the corruption of his industry. In the following article, he explains why the USAID drama is important and (at least partially) untangles the rat’s nest of interlocking, taxpayer-funded entities that have turned the search for truth into a propaganda sausage […]

February 12, 2025 | Investors Dumping Real Estate

Blackstone is selling off their subsidiary Home Partners of America, and doing big price reductions on certain homes. This is an indication of the ongoing investor selloff occurring in the US Housing Market. Big Wall Street investors like Blackstone and Amerst Holdings have lowered their purchases of homes, and haves started to sell off properties. […]

February 12, 2025 | DOGE Turns Attention to the DoD

    The Pentagon has never passed an audit nor has been expected to pass one. The government has spent hundreds of millions on conducting audits that they knew the Pentagon would not pass. DOGE has set its focus on eliminating waste from one of America’s untouchable branches – the Department of Defense. The DoD […]

February 12, 2025 | Is This Time Different?

“We will not have any more crashes in our time.” – John Maynard Keynes, leading British economist, in 1927 “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I […]

February 11, 2025 | Trump About to Hit Canada with Category 5 Hurricane – You Won’t See it Coming, Warn Insiders

“Fentanyl is just the cover for what’s really wrong. What’s wrong is massive money laundering by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on a huge scale,” reveals Marc Cohodes, legendary short seller and investor. In a powerful roundtable discussion, Cohodes joins Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper and our own Daniela Cambone to expose the deep-rooted corruption, […]

February 11, 2025 | Canadian Insolvency Filings Leap Along with Property Listings

The Hoyes, Michalos 2024 Canadian Joe Debtor Survey is out and available here. The numbers portray Canadian households as increasingly cash-strapped and vulnerable to unexpected shocks or economic weakness. S0me standouts: The average insolvent debtor owed $60,678 in unsecured debt in 2024, an increase of 12.2% from 2023—the largest annual rise since the study began in 2011. […]

February 11, 2025 | Gold Outlook: Murky For the Metal, Bright For the Miners

It’s another great day for gold, with $2,800 in the rearview mirror and $3,000 in traders’ crosshairs. This means it’s time to take a deep breath and consider gold’s — and the miners’ —near-term prospects. Reasons for Caution   Let’s start with seasonality. Winter is usually a good time for gold, while spring and early […]

February 11, 2025 | Canada Becoming the 51st State – When?

  QUESTION: What do you think of Trump’s proposal that Canada become the 51st State? Rob ANSWER: If we are talking about economics, then yes, it would be better for Canada to merge with the USA for its own benefit. The provinces in Canada have trade barriers among each other. That would be illegal under […]

February 10, 2025 | Cooper: Canada is a Major Fentanyl Portal

Today we’re speaking with Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper, whose deeply researched book Wilful Blindness exposes Canada’s damning role in the opioid trade. This might explain why the Trump administration is going on the offensive with our northern neighbor. Sam’s research uncovers an intricate network where the inputs to make synthetic opioids like fentanyl move […]

February 10, 2025 | The Discretionary Bid

Happy Monday Morning! And just like that, tariffs are off. At least for the next 30 days, or so we are told. In other words, the direction of the Canadian economy really depends on what side of the bed President Trump wakes up on. Remember, just last week we were facing 25% tariffs across the […]

February 10, 2025 | Store Nothing in the Cloud – EVER!!!!!!!!!

The Washington Post reported Friday that the United Kingdom’s deep state has demanded that Apple create a back door for them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud—what would be an unprecedented erosion of online privacy and civil liberties. This works because once the UK seizes your data, […]

February 9, 2025 | China’s Underground Banking Empire: How Drugs & Money Corrupt America | Sam Cooper



February 9, 2025 | Juicing Our Bull Market Bellwether

Get the forecast for Microsoft right and you cannot go far wrong guessing where the stock market is headed next. This has been an article of faith at Rick’s Picks for years, and it has served us well. The chart shows MSFT either moving in lock-step with the Dow Industrials, or sometimes leading the Indoos with pullbacks […]

February 9, 2025 | ‘Quantitative Easing with Chinese Characteristics’: How to Fund an Economic Miracle Ellen Brown

China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble. Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, […]

February 8, 2025 | Attack Rapidly, Ruthlessly, Viciously, without Rest

QUESTION: Would you comment on Trump’s agenda? Paul ANSWER: Those in Washington have lived a privileged life. During the Mortgaged Backed Security Crisis, when real estate declined, it did not decline by much at all in Washington because the government is like a broken gun without a firing pin – it won’t work, and you can’t fire […]

February 8, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday February 8th 2025

The Bottom Line Despite better than consensus fourth quarter earnings and revenue reports released to date by large cap U.S. and Canadian companies, equity market indices on both sides of the border have stalled below their all-time highs set at the end of January. Analysts have started to take a more cautious stance on strong […]