John T. Reed’s news blog

I see gold commercials on TV daily. Gold is a hedge against inflation because it is a commodity and not USD-denominated. In that, it is no different from silver, and in a broader sense, it is no different from any commodity like wheat or oil or molybdenum or palm oil. I have gold and silver bullion coins. Those have relatively low weight and volume per $1,000 and do not spoil like wheat or oil or iron ore. . I urge you to take delivery of the commodities in which you invest. That means you physically possess and store them. Tight-assed...

At the end of a 2016 Trump-Hillary debate, an audience member asked each to say something good about the other. It was a nice moment..Trump said she was a fighter who never quit. Hillary said he had done a great job raising his kids..Well, that's interesting. Dems can rail and wail about Trump being Hitler and Satan and a Russian asset and all that BS, but they cannot really find fault with his kids. And how a man carries out his fatherhood responsibilities is a sort of core test of character..With his late first wife Ivana, Trump had Ivanka, Don...

Nothing would remain in space for either side. No one can control space because each side can easily use an EMP close to space. In WW II, air superiority and supremacy allowed us to see all from directly above and to drop bombs on assets we saw. Before heavier than aircraft, the advantageous spot in battle was the high ground. The air is the high ground. . There may be a way to EMP-proof satellites. When we tested an EMP in 1962 in HI, it did not destroy all electronics as everyone seems to assume. . “...the U.S. government had...

A number of colleges are saying their students need to learn how to debate civilly. University of Chicago was the first a number of years ago when a new president issued a letter saying something like if you want trigger warnings and safe spaces, do not come here. Last week Dartmouth said it. Today’s WSJ has an op-ed by a Harvard professor who want to have opposite sides of various hot issues debate there. Harvard is in favor of the idea in the abstract, but no way with real spokespersons for drilling or Israel or Ukraine or life or transgender...

Ya gotta love the Real-estate experts. The Realtors' chief economist Lawrence Yun says home sales and prices are up because people are taking advantage of the lower mortgage rates. . 6.6%!? That is the rate they said killed the market a year ago. . The FACT is that 3% mortgage rates were extraordinarily low by post-WW II standards and people like Lawrence Yun and Wall Street Journal writer Nicole Friedman who wrote today's article cannot be bothered to Google “home mortgage rates historical” to put their analysis in perspective. . Almost all my real estate investing career has been in...