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1. Gold has traded between $1,568 and $1,600 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $2 an ounce at $1,579…Silver has slipped 9 cents to $13.84…base metals are off slightly with Copper, Nickel and Zinc trading at $2.15, $5.10 and 83 cents, respectively…Crude Oil has retreated 13 cents to $20.35 amid a bigger-than-expected rise in U.S. inventories and a widening rift within OPEC…the greenback is pushing higher again with the Dollar Index jumping half a point to 99.55…data from ADP and Moody’s Analytics showed U.S. companies cut 27,000 jobs through March 12…actual losses for the month will be much higher, as shown by the record number of jobless claims for the week of March 20…meanwhile, U.S. manufacturing activity contracted in March, as expected, with the ISM index falling to 49.1 from 50.1 in February…April’s contraction will be more severe…President Trump warned Americans yesterday of a “very, very painful” first half of April with White House health officials modelling an enormous jump in virus-related deaths even with strict physical distancing measures…in British Columbia, where 5 new deaths were reported yesterday along with 43 new cases, officials stressed there is “zero” chance that the orders brought in to curb the spread of the virus will be lifted before May…Health Minister Adrian Dix added, “I think we’re in this for a long time”…the Trudeau economy was slowing well before the Wuhan virus came ashore…Stats Canada says the broader economy expanded by a less-than-expected 0.1% in January (below the 0.3% expansion in December) with the weakest sector being mining and Oil and gas, shrinking by 0.6%…

2. Canadians are far from done with dealing with the Wuhan virus, as measures to fight the spread of the virus are expected to continue until at least July, according to a government document obtained by the National Post…“Current GoC (Government Operations Centre) modelling suggests as a best case scenario that current measures continue until at least July”…that short line, written in a COVID-19 “Daily Sitrep Highlights” by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on March 30 and obtained by the National Post, is the clearest timeline we’ve seen from the federal government to date on how long Canadians will have to endure measures to fight COVID-19…is IRCC referring to physical distancing measures including self-isolation and the banning of public gatherings?…or the closure of the Canadian border to most foreigners?…maybe the obligatory 14-day quarantine for those who return to the country?…perhaps all of the above?…the number of bankruptcies across the country is going to soar as the current lockdown continues, no matter what protections federal and provincial governments try to bring in…

3. Does it make any sense that highly populated China, the source of the global pandemic, could have only one-quarter the deaths of Italy and one-third the deaths of Spain from the Wuhan COVID-19 virus?…increasingly, the numbers that were reported by China appear to be a total fraud, meaning the world was much less prepared for the seriousness of this pandemic than it should have been…that also raises more troubling questions about the World Health Organization (WHO), known for its close ties with China…according to a Newsweek report by Christina Zhao, some Wuhan residents estimate that the real death toll in that city of 11 million could be at least 26,000 (10 x what was reported), based on the number of urns that are being delivered and distributed across the city…citizens on Chinese social media have said that 7 Wuhan funeral homes will likely distribute 3,500 urns per day on average from March 23 to April 4, which marks Qing Ming, the traditional tomb-sweeping festival…by that estimate, 42,000 urns would be given out in the 12-day period….by subtracting the expected deaths of roughly 16,000 in Wuhan, based on China’s annual death rate over 2-and-a-half months, it’s now estimated that the urns – if all of them are being used – show that the virus could have resulted in approximately 26,000 deaths…Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas cited the urn deliveries several days ago to accuse China of misrepresenting the impact of the virus…“A *single mortuary* in Wuhan reportedly ordered more urns in 2 days than the Chinese Communist Party has reported total deaths in the whole country,” he tweeted…“I’m sure you’re shocked by evidence of Chinese lies”…the world is paying a heavy price for how China’s communist dictatorship has handled the virus outbreak, first by attempting to cover it up after the first reported case December 10…they arrested whistleblowers, lied about infection rates (even to their enablers at the WHO), denied access to the country to American medical experts, kicked out reporters investigating the story, and to this day China still isn’t fully sharing data sets on the virus…a recent University of Southampton study revealed that 95% of this global pandemic problem would not even exist if China had handled things differently…

4. Thanks, but no thanks:  A number of European governments have rejected Chinese-made equipment designed to combat the Wuhan virus…thousands of testing kits and medical masks are below standard or defective, according to authorities in Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands…the Dutch health ministry announced it had recalled 600,000 face masks…the equipment had arrived from a Chinese manufacturer in late March and had already been distributed to front-line medical teams…“The rest of the shipment was immediately put on hold and has not been distributed,” a statement read…“Now it has been decided not to use any of this shipment”…Spain’s government encountered similar problems with testing kits ordered from a Chinese company…Spain announced it had bought hundreds of thousands of tests to combat the virus, but revealed in the following days that nearly 60,000 could not accurately determine if a patient had the virus…the Chinese embassy in Spain tweeted that the company behind the kits, Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology, did not have an official license from Chinese medical authorities to sell its products…Turkey also announced that it had found some testing kits ordered from Chinese companies were not sufficiently accurate…allegations of defective equipment come after critics warned China could be using the pandemic to further its influence…in a recent blog post, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell warned that there is a “geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’…“China is aggressively pushing the message that, ‘unlike the U.S.’, it is a responsible and reliable partner,” he wrote…“Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors”…

5. Just a day after another G-20 country committed to the purchase of 2 million test kits, Canada’s federal government got hugely behind Sona Nanotech’s (SONA, CSE) Rapid Response Lateral Flow Test for COVID-19 yesterday…SONA received a $4.1 million grant from NGen, Canada’s advanced manufacturing supercluster, to develop and commercialize this unique test which will work anywhere without a technician (one of its major selling points, in addition to its accuracy and delivery of near-instant results)…this non-repayable grant will be used to immediately accelerate the development of the prototype, in its final stages of optimization, and scale manufacturing capabilities…“NGen is excited to support Sona Nanotech’s efforts to get a point-of-care test for COVID-19 in the hands of Canadian medical authorities as soon as possible,” stated Jay Myers, CEO of NGen…he added, “Sona’s proprietary and unique Gold nanorod technology enables a rapid-response antigen test that has the potential to significantly reduce the time to results for COVID-19 diagnosis and, ultimately, save lives”…with $4.1 million going toward SONA from the feds as part of the government’s overall response to the pandemic crisis, and Myers’ comment about getting the test “in the hands of Canadian medical authorities as soon as possible,” the company now has 2 G-20 countries lined up for major orders with more on the way…advanced discussions continue with multiple procurement departments of government health agencies around the world…meanwhile, SONA is also nailing down more manufacturing contracts (after the first one was announced Monday ) as part of its multi-pronged global sales and delivery strategy (GE is helping with this)…SONA is targeting manufacturers with the capability to push out multi-million units per month…as of 7:00 am Pacific, SONA is up 4 cents at $1.12…

6. The Dow has tumbled 673 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…the Dow plunged more than 23% in the 1st quarter, its biggest quarterly fall since 1987…meanwhile, the S&P 500 experienced its worst Q1 ever , and its biggest quarterly loss since 2008, with a drop of 20%…in Toronto, the TSX is down 215 points while the Venture has slipped 5 points to 385…G6 Materials (GGG, TSX-V) is charging higher out of the gate this morning after the company announced that it’s optimizing its business model to accommodate new opportunities created by the global pandemic…the company’s R&D department has developed a graphene-driven solution for air purification products designed to mitigate the threat of virus infection in confined spaces such as offices and industrial warehouses…there is substantial scientific evidence of antiviral and antibacterial effectiveness of graphene coatings…GGG is up 3 cents at 9.5 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific…the stock has broken out above a long-term downsloping channel…VSBLTY Groupe Technologies (VSBY, CSE) and RadarApp, a smart city solutions provider, are now testing crowd temperature scanning as a tool to help identify potential at risk individuals and ultimately reduce the spread of the Wuhan virus…the testing was launched at the urging of Mexico City officials who are investing in the safety kits and integrated security program that is already proving successful in reducing crime…VSBY is up a nickel at 25 cents in early trading…Sixth Wave Innovations (SIXW, CSE) has appointed John Cowan as its Chief Operating Officer…Cowan has extensive experience in the planning, design, construction and management of industrial manufacturing facilities in the United States…he has spearheaded the configuration and growing operation of high-precision production lines on behalf of Fortune 500 companies such as Eaton Corporation, Harley Davidson and Caterpillar…SIXW, which initially listed in February and ran as high as 75 cents, tumbled to as low as 27 cents during last month’s “Corona Crash” but is now rebounding strongly, back at 50 cents…the appointment of Cowan suggests the company has some big plans in the works…

7. The U.S. federal budget deficit is likely to increase to $2.4 trillion for fiscal year 2020, or 11.2% of GDP, which would be the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II when it reached 25%-30% of GDP, according to Wells Fargo…historically, the level of deficits relative to GDP exhibits even higher correlation than the size of the Fed’s balance sheet…Gold bottomed at the end of the Clinton era when deficits had turned into surpluses…Gold launched into a bull market after 9/11 when deficit spending returned…Gold peaked in late 2011 when the deficit trend reversed lower…Gold bottomed in late 2015/early 2016 when deficit spending once again increased…the U.S. deficit is now going to go through the roof with no relief in sight, realistically, until 2022 at the earliest…below is a graph from last year – deficit projections are now much, much higher, exceeding the levels during the Great Recession…

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