Why Silver Has Been Surging More Than Gold

Above, a 1923 Peace silver dollar. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

With silver surging on the spot market, I am glad that I bought a lot of it while the spot price was in the 20s. Right now, it is around $59/toz.

If one is wondering why silver has hit record highs lately, an article in Bloomberg can provide some insight.

They begin with:

Gold has staged a dramatic rally this year as the US Trump administration’s unorthodox economic policies sent investors and central banks reaching for safe-haven assets. Right now, however, it’s silver that’s stealing the spotlight.

A squeeze in supply of the precious metal had catapulted it to a 100% gain as of early December, while gold was up 60%. Both have been experiencing a surge in demand from investors seeking to hedge against political turbulence, inflation and currency weakness.

Unlike gold, silver isn’t just scarce and beautiful: It also has many useful real-world properties that make it a valuable component in a range of products. With inventories near their lowest on record and investors still scrambling for more, there’s a risk of supply shortages that could impact multiple industries.

 To read more, go here.

Caribbean Cruises Rise As European Cruises Out Of Favor

Above, a cruise ship docked at Freeport, Bahamas. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Europe isn't much in favor these days for cruise line travelers. This is resulting in priorities by the cruise lines to shift their bookings and schedules to the Caribbean.

I can easily see why the Caribbean is a popular area to cruise at. The weather is better and the people seem nicer.

A couple of friends are currently on a 15-day cruise that will take them to the Panama Canal.

The topic of Europe cruises being out of favor is in an article in Forbes.

They begin it with:

European cruises are now out of favor, a relief for many locals who have been grappling with the issues of overcrowding and protests across Croatia, Italy, and Greece. As Bloomberg reports, cruise operators are shifting to the Caribbean, with port calls now evenly distributed between Europe and the Caribbean, a stark contrast to the situation three years ago when there were 7,000 more dockings in a European port than in a Caribbean one.

To read more, go here.

Dollar At ¥146.79

 

Now that we're in a new month (where the hell did January go?), it is time to take a look at how the U.S. dollar is faring against the Japanese yen in foreign exchange.

This is a major factor in travel to Japan by Americans.

According to Bloomberg, here's where the dollar stands at present:

USD-JPY X-RATE

USDJPY:CUR

(JPY)

As of6:34 AM EST 02/01/24.

146.7900

–0.13–0.09%

Best Places In Japan To Visit Before The Swarms Arrive

Above, the stage of Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

In nine more days, Japan will open up to international tourists.

Independent foreign visitors will be able to enter Japan without need of a tour guide or travel agency. Just like it was before the pandemic.

Demand is already surging and it looks like hordes of visitors will be coming. What are the best places to visit before the swarms of visitors arrive? Bloomberg has listed some of them.

They begin with:

After almost three years of Covid-induced border closures, Japan is finally opening up to vaccinated tourists from most countries, with no need for quarantine, PCR tests or visas. And with the yen making hotels, restaurants and shopping more affordable, demand is sure to be high.

Airlines are ramping up flights and businesses are getting to receive visitors from Oct. 11. Even so, it will probably be a while before crowds return, especially with China restricting travel.

With that in mind, here’s are some of the top spots to visit in Japan while the country is still relatively empty, as curated by Bloomberg Tokyo’s newsroom:

To see what they are, go here. 

Bloomberg: Why The Yen Is So Weak

Right now would be a great time to travel to Japan since Americans could get much more yen per dollar if it weren't for Japan's crazy maze of rules for foreign tourists. Because of those rules, tourists are shunning Japan.

Bloomberg takes a look at why the yen is so weak.

They begin with:

The yen has weakened beyond 140 per dollar for the first time in almost a quarter century, mainly because Japan’s central bank is keeping interest rates at rock-bottom levels while the Federal Reserve and other central banks are conducting outsized rate hikes. Price growth in Japan is much cooler than in the US, and the Bank of Japan believes it needs to do more to cement inflation in the minds of consumers and businesses after years of deflation. The yen’s historic slide has both benefited and harmed the economy, businesses and consumers. The steepness of its fall raises questions over whether policy makers need to curb its decline through currency intervention or a change in BOJ policy.

 To read more, go here.

Key West Airport To Get New Concourse

Above, a portrait of Ernest Hemingway at the Hemingway
Home and Museum in Key West. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Before the pandemic hit two years ago, I was planning to return to Key West, Florida. The pandemic put a nix on that idea.  

I first visited Key West during a cruise one-day stopover in 2019 while en route to Havana, Cuba. The planned trip would have had me flying to the Key West International Airport. 

Should I go back to Key West in 2025 or after, there will be a new concourse at the airport to use.

According to Bloomberg:

Future pilgrims to Ernest Hemingway’s home and museum in Key West may find it a little easier to get there thanks to $36.7 million of municipal bonds. 

Monroe County, Florida is issuing revenue bonds next week to help finance a new airport terminal at Key West International. The new concourse will be 48,805 square feet, and is scheduled to open in late 2025.  

Key West International is recovering now after, like all airports, it was hard-hit by the pandemic. Traffic in April of 2020 was 3% of its level in the same month a year earlier. But business in fiscal 2021 was a-booming there, rising to a record level of 659,321 enplanements, or passengers boarding aircraft.

One of the best known sites in Key West is the house at 907 Whitehead Street, which was the home of author Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, from 1931 to 1939. The Key West International Airport actually pre-dates the arrival of the Hemingways and was where Pan American Airlines was founded in 1927, according to the offering documents to the bond issue.

In 1956, Hemingway was featured in a Pan Am advertising campaign, in which the author says, “We started flying commercially about the same time,” and refers to “the old Key West-Miami-Havana-Bahamas early days.” Pan Am went bankrupt in 1991.

While in Key West in 2019, I toured the Ernest Hemingway home and museum,

To read more, go here. 

9.1% Inflation CPI and Stupid People

The report on inflation is out and it is not good. In fact, it exceeded forecasts.

Bloomberg reported:

US inflation roared again to a fresh four-decade high last month, likely strengthening the Federal Reserve’s resolve to aggressively raise interest rates that risks upending the economic expansion.

The consumer price index rose 9.1% from a year earlier in a broad-based advance, the largest gain since the end of 1981, Labor Department data showed Wednesday. The widely followed inflation gauge increased 1.3% from a month earlier, the most since 2005, reflecting higher gasoline, shelter and food costs.

To read more, go here.

Nobody really needs a report to be fully aware that everything we buy is costing a hell of a lot more. With that being said, I heard a radio report on the upcoming mid-term elections. From what I heard, there's a lot of stupid people out there.

The report on the radio said 41% of people want the Democrats to retain control of congress, while 40% want Republicans to take over. While this is close, it concerns me that there are so many stupid people out there.

Who in their right mind want the Democrats to be in control of anything? They and His Fraudulency Joe Biden got us into the mess we're in and continually are making it worse. 41% is an awful lot of stupid people.

This goes with what I've been saying for years: Stupid People Should Not Be Allowed To Vote!

Kishida Pledges To Relax Japan's Border Controls Next Month

Above, the Godzilla mural at Toho Studios in Setagaya. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Japan's prime minister is pledging that the country's border restrictions will be relaxed by next month. 

It appears that the long two-year ban on foreign tourism in Japan may be coming to an end, perhaps in stages.

According to Bloomberg:

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he would loosen Japan’s virus-related border controls in line with other wealthy democracies next month, as he sought to boost consumer spending to fight an economic slowdown. 

Kishida credited the border controls with helping the country weather the pandemic relatively well, even as he announced their relaxation Thursday in a speech in the City of London. The premier told an audience at Guildhall that Japan would be as accessible as other Group of Seven countries by next month, when leaders of the bloc are due to meet in Germany. 

Border easing would be welcomed by Japan’s tourism industry, which has been urging the government to allow in more overseas visitors to take advantage of the weakening yen. Until the pandemic, tourism was a rare bright spot for Japan’s economy as the number of foreign visitors expanded five-fold between 2011-19.

To read more, go here. 

Japan Government Advisor to Propose Letting in Tourists

Above, the Seven Samurai mural at Toho Studios in Setagaya. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

An unnamed Japanese government advisor is proposing that the country be reopened to foreign tourism. The advisor is expected to submit the proposal in a meeting today.

Whether or not the government will agree to this remains to be seen. It has been reported that tourism may reopen in autumn.

Bloomberg reported:

A Japanese government advisor plans to call for reopening the country to tourists, the Yomiuri newspaper said, amid a recent decline in new Covid infections and calls to ease strict border controls put in place in early 2020.

An unnamed, private-sector member of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, which advises Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, is expected to submit the proposal in a meeting Wednesday, the Yomiuri reported without saying how it obtained the information. It was not immediately clear whether the member had the support of the council’s other members.  

To read more, go here. 

Supply-Chain Crisis Sparks Hoarding

A couple of nights ago, I went down to Denny's at the Flying J to have a salmon dinner.

When I ordered, the waitress had to go back to the kitchen to check if they had any salmon available. She came back and said they didn't have any. I ended up having an omelet from the 55+ menu (what we call the "geezer omelet").

Thus far, that has been the only instance of a supply-chain related problem I've faced. I guess it depends upon where one is located.

But the "supply-chain crisis" will likely get worse before it gets better.

The New York Post reported:

Parts of the US are now battling food shortages as worried Americans have emptied supermarket shelves amid the supply chain crisis threatening the nation’s economy and holiday shopping.

People are stockpiling everything from canned goods to boxed items and even making a run on milk when it’s available in grocery stores, Bloomberg reported.

The surge in demand comes as two of America’s major container ports in California face a massive pandemic-related backlog.

“People are hoarding,” Adnan Durrani, CEO and founder of Saffron Road, a producer of frozen and shelf-stable meals, told Bloomberg.

“What I think you’ll see over the next six months, all prices will go higher.”

To read more, go here. 

How high will prices go up?

From Fox Business:

Americans will see food costs rise "tremendously" in the coming weeks, according to billionaire supermarket owner John Catsimatidis. 

Catsimatidis, who is the president of Gristedes and D'Agostino Foods, discussed his concerns about inflation and supply chain issues on FOX Business’ "Mornings with Maria," and warned companies like Nabisco, Pepsi and Coke will begin to prioritize products and raise prices in order to get ahead. 

"I see food prices going up tremendously," he told Maria Bartiromo. "[CEOs] want to be ahead of the curve and the way they're doing it is they're dropping all promotions. They are dropping low-moving items."

Catsimatidis went on to say this trend won’t reverse "anytime soon." 

"I see over 10% [price increase] in the next 60 days," he said. 

To read more, go here. 

Alejandro Mayorkas, The Idiot At DHS

Above, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The way His Fraudulency Joe Biden and his administration are running things, I have to wonder how on earth they managed to pass the congressional confirmation process.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the loon that now runs the Department of Homeland Security has got to be the biggest idiot ever to occupy that office.

From the Gateway Pundit:

A whistleblower came forward and alleged DHS Chief Alejandro Mayorkas is threatening to terminate border patrol agents who don’t get the Covid vaccine by November.

So border patrol agents must be vaccinated, but the illegal aliens flooding over the border are not subjected to any vaccine or testing mandates.

And, from Bloomberg:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration won’t build walls on the border despite a pickup in crossings.

“We have seen large numbers of individuals encountered at our border making a claim for asylum, for humanitarian relief,” Mayorkas said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” adding that it’s nothing new and spans several administrations. “It is the policy of this administration, we do not agree with a building of the wall.”

The 2024 election campaign cannot come soon enough!

U.S. State Department: Americans Should Avoid Traveling To Japan

Above, the Five-Storied Pagoda of Sensoji. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Two months before the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory telling citizens that it is not advisable to travel to Japan.

Bloomberg reported:

The U.S. said Americans should avoid traveling to Japan, with the country under a state of emergency over a widening Covid-19 outbreak that has sown doubts about Tokyo’s plans to host the Olympics in less than two months.

The State Department raised its travel advisory to level four on Monday, putting Japan in a category with a broad swath of nations from Latin America to Europe that Americans are urged to avoid due to coronavirus concerns. The action is a fresh blow to a country struggling to convince its own public and the international community that it’s ready to host the Summer Olympics beginning on July 23, following their delay in 2020.

In many ways, this travel advisory is hilarious as foreign travel to Japan, except in certain cases and situations, is already not allowed. So what's the point?

To read more, go here.

The Stock Market Is Now Tanking Thanks To Joe

The Stock Market was up, but is now tanking once it was revealed that His Fraudulency Joe Biden wants to hike the capital gains tax.

Gee, thanks a million, Joe! What an idiot!

Demorats OWN The Shutdown Now!

It's now the #PelosiShutdown!

If there were any doubt before, the reaction by the Democrats to President Trump's compromise proposals to get them back to the bargaining table leaves no doubt on who owns this shutdown.

Bloomberg reported:

Top Democrats said they’ll reject an offer expected from President Donald Trump to extend protections for so-called Dreamers for three years in exchange for $5.7 billion in funds for border security as a way to reopen the federal government after almost a month. 

As well as giving protections for Dreamers, young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, via the bipartisan Bridge Act, Trump is expected to propose extending the visas for Temporary Protection Status holders, though it’s unclear for how long, said a person familiar with Trump’s plan. 

The concessions, to be outlined in a speech at 4 p.m. on Saturday, are aimed at getting Democrats back to the negotiating table in a bid to end a partial government shutdown now into its fifth week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the President's proposals "a non-starter" even before he spoke.

The Democrats OWN this shutdown.

To read more, go here. 

Social Media Antitrust Executive Order Drafted

In recent months, it has become apparent that some social media sites have an obvious bias against conservative viewpoints by employing such tactics as "shadow banning" to outright bans while promoting leftist/liberal viewpoints.

The Trump Administration is considering whether such actions are in violation of antitrust and other laws and has drafted a draft executive order to investigate.

According to Bloomberg:

(Bloomberg) -- The White House is considering a draft executive order for President Donald Trump that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open probes into the practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., and other social media companies. 

Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order, which a White House official said was in its early stages and hasn’t been run past other government agencies. Separately, Lindsey Walters, deputy White House press secretary, said in an emailed statement that the document isn’t the result of an official White House policy making process. 

The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed, actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”
Read the Executive Order draft on bias in online platforms. 

The document doesn’t name any companies. If signed, the order would represent a significant escalation of Trump’s aversion to Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies, whom he’s publicly accused of silencing conservative voices and news sources online.

To read more, go here. 

Russia To Expel 60 U.S. Diplomats and Close Consulate

The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin (Vlad The Invader) is retaliating for the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats by expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg.

According to Bloomberg.com:

Russia said it’s expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the American consulate in St. Petersburg in a retaliatory move linked to the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in England. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the measures against the U.S. “include the expulsion of the same number of diplomats” as the Russian envoys ordered out by President Donald Trump. Other countries that recently kicked out Russian diplomats also will face mirror-image retaliation, Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. 

The measures came in a crisis over a nerve-agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter that the U.K. government is blaming on Russia. 

I texted Asya, asking her if she is aware of this and if she needs to get her visitor's visa at the consulate in her hometown of St. Petersburg. She replied that she applies for her visa there.

To read more, go here. 

Graceland Taps Municipal Market for Renovation and Expansion

Above, the rear of Graceland mansion. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Elvis Presley Enterprises will be tapping again into the municipal market for renovation and expansion of the Graceland complex in Memphis, Tennessee.

According to Bloomberg:

It’s an estate fit for a king. The King of Rock and Roll, to be more specific. Graceland, Memphis’s premier tourist attraction, which draws more than half a million visitors a year, plans to borrow $88 million in the municipal market with a negotiated deal scheduled to price on Wednesday. 

This is actually the King’s third trip to the municipal market. The new deal refunds $84 million in notes sold through private placement in 2015. In 2016, the issuer sold another $40 million in notes. The conduit issuer is known as the Economic Development Growth Engine Industrial Development Board of the City of Memphis and the County of Shelby, Tennessee. 

And there will be more visits to MuniLand, according to Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Graceland Holdings LLC, the majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc., which manages the 120-acre Graceland campus. The company aims to transform Graceland from an attraction to visit to a vacation destination. (Elvis’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley, own 15 percent of all Graceland-related entities). 

That transformation is well underway. The home of Elvis Presley (1935-1977) is a National Historic Landmark that opened to the public in 1982. In 2014, Elvis Presley Enterprises developed a master plan for a public-private partnership with the city, county and state for the redevelopment of Graceland, which now includes an archive studio, a 450-room “Guest House at Graceland Hotel” (which opened in 2016 and replaced the 128-room “Heartbreak Hotel” built in 1989), a museum, retail facilities and a recreational-vehicle and campground park.

Above, the office and store of the Graceland RV Park and Campground. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To read more, go here. 

Osaka Is Asia's New Tourist Hotspot

Above, an entrance to Osaka's Dotonbori. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Japan's tourism boom has benefited many areas of Japan, this is especially true of Japan's "second city" of Osaka.

Bloomberg.com has posted an article on Osaka's tourism boom and calls it "Asia's new tourist hotspot."

They begin with:

Amid the gloom and struggle that Osaka has gone through in recent years, a tourism boom has been an unexpected boon for Japan’s gritty second city. 

The commercial roots and boisterous and friendly people of Osaka and the surrounding Kansai region provides a contrast to the relative coolness and formality of Tokyo that’s winning favor with tourists from Northeast Asia.

The boom is boosting the local economy. Duty-free sales at department stores in the region were up almost 60 percent in the first eight months of this year from the same period in 2016, according to the central bank. The area’s relatively high unemployment rate has dropped considerably, to 4 percent last year, while the number of companies in Osaka grew 16 percent in the 12 months through March, faster than in Tokyo or across the whole nation.

Above, Osaka Castle. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

 I visited Osaka two years ago and found the pace there more relaxed and the people to be quite friendly.

To read more, go here.

Clinton Recounts and Elector Death Threats

Not that I had any doubts before Election Day, but the Hillary Clinton campaign and its supporters have confirmed to me that they are a pack of bottom-feeding sleaze bags.

Two articles caught my attention.

First, as if any recount will ever overturn the election results, the Clinton campaign is joining in on recounts in three states.

According to Bloomberg.com:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer announced plans to participate in vote recounts of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan if they take place, yet doesn’t expect to overturn the election of Donald Trump as president. 

If Green Party candidate Jill Stein initiates recounts in all of those states as she intends, the Clinton campaign “will participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” lawyer Marc Elias said Saturday in a post on the blogging website Medium.com.

And then, another article is reporting that members of the Electoral College are receiving death threats from Clinton supporters.

WND.com reported:

One of Michigan’s 16 electors who will be called upon to cast a vote validating the election of Donald Trump in the Electoral College has testified on video that he and others in the state are receiving “dozens and dozens of death threats” from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to switch their votes to Clinton. 

On Dec. 19 the Electoral College will convene to cast their votes for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, with each state’s electors pledged to vote for the candidate elected on Nov. 8 in their state. 

But more than a dozen states have no laws making it illegal for the electors to change their vote while others have only a minor penalty such as a fine for doing so. If Clinton’s supporters can get enough of the 163 electors from states where Trump both won and votes can be legally switched on Dec. 19, Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States.

This confirms to me that the voters made the right choice on November 8. 

Yen Surge Is Making The Imperial Hotel Nervous

Above, the dinner party at the Imperial Hotel last October.

In 1954, United World News reporter Steve Martin (Raymond Burr) was just "lucky" enough to be at the right place at the wrong time.

He was on his way to Cairo and stopped off in Tokyo for a nice, relaxing visit with an old friend, Dr. Serizawa. That visit never came about (unless they chatted aboard a boat in Tokyo Bay before Serizawa suited up for a fateful dive). The stopover in Tokyo was hardly relaxing either. Martin stated that he was staying at the Imperial Hotel before being led from the airport for "just questioning". It is unclear if he ever made it to his room at the hotel since a giant radioactive lizard decided to stroll through Tokyo, including the district where the Imperial Hotel stood.

Today, the Imperial Hotel doesn't have to worry about threats to its existence by radioactive lizards, but the surging Japanese yen has been cramping its style in recent weeks. And that is making the hotel's management nervous.

Bloomberg.com reported:

Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, the luxury inn that counts Marilyn Monroe among past guests, raised room rates last year to levels it last charged before Japan’s bubble burst in the early 1990s. A surging yen now threatens those gains. 

With signs of spending from foreign tourists starting to wane as a result of the stronger currency, the hotel is looking to boost wedding banquets and turn those younger guests in to repeater clients, said Hideya Sadayasu, the president and general manager of Imperial Hotel Ltd.

Last October, I hosted a little dinner party for Toho Co., Ltd. friends at the Imperial Hotel. We had a splendid window table that had a view of the Imperial Palace and the National Diet Building. At that time, the dollar/yen exchange rate in Tokyo I received was ¥116.99. Today's exchange rate in Tokyo is hovering around ¥100. But that "catch" is, that rate is only available to "high rollers". Ordinary visitors will receive considerably less in exchange.

With the yen performing stronger, it makes visits to Japan and the cost of goods and services there more expensive. Unless things turn around soon, the Japanese government may be forced to step in to devalue the yen. We shall see.

To read more, go here.