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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,714 and $1,740 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $18 an ounce at $1,734…$1,700 may become new support…Bank of America analysts noted that with Gold prices having traded around $1,750, the market is up almost 15% for the year…one should expect significantly higher prices this year just based on historical patterns…“Gold prices have rallied 20% or more 15 times since 1981 and 30% or more 7 times. The biggest rallies were in 2006–2011 during the late cycle equity rally into and after the Global Financial Crisis. If $1,947 were to be reached, then Gold would be up 27% YTD. A 31% YTD rally reaches $2,000. A 41% rally like 2006 reaches $2,150“…Silver is up 8 cents at $15.52…base metals are relatively quiet with Copper, Nickel and Zinc at $2.31, $5.28 and 88 cents, respectively…Cobalt remains steady at $13.38…Crude Oil is up slightly at $19.95 while the U.S. Dollar Index has gained one-quarter of a point to 99.72…respected JP Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic said yesterday on CNBC’s “Fast Money” that he thinks the next few weeks will see a limited reopening of the U.S. economy and another move higher for stocks…Kolanovic observed in late March that some alternative data pointed to a faster peak for coronavirus cases in the U.S. and a rebound in stocks, and since then the market has erased a big chunk of its losses as some of the hardest-hit areas from the virus , such as New York, start to show some encouraging signs of progress…a popular small business relief program ran out of funds this morning, as billions of dollars in additional coronavirus aid remain stuck in congressional limbo…the Small Business Administration said on its website that the agency is “currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding. Similarily, we are unable to enroll new PPP lenders at this time”…getting timely relief to affected citizens is going to be a huge challenge for overwhelmed federal and state governments…protests in Michigan show that draconian state lockdown orders – if allowed to continue too long – threaten the voluntary law-abiding character of the American people…state governors, who truly control whether the economy stays open or shut, must better explain their reasons for their trade-offs between slowing the spread of the pandemic versus throwing millions out of work and destroying billions in economic activity…the same applies to Canada…

2. More than 5.2 million Americans filed unemployment claims last week, taking the number that have sought benefits for the first time since last month’s start of widespread U.S. lockdowns to more than 22 million…initial jobless claims totalled 5.25 million in the week ended April 11, lower than the 6.62 million recorded last week, the Labor Department announced this morning…according to preliminary state-level estimates that have not been seasonally adjusted, California once again reported the largest number of jobless claims at 660,966…the Labor Department also reported that, among the unemployed, the insured rate on April 4 had climbed to 8.2%, up from 5.1% the previous week…that is the highest rate of insured unemployed since the department began keeping records in 1967…it is also likely an undercount of unemployed Americans, as there have been widespread reports of state-level breakdowns and delays in filing for and receiving unemployment insurance benefits….

3. China’s “Big Lie”, the costliest government cover-up of all time: There is an increasing belief that the current global pandemic that has already killed nearly 150,000 people (unofficially many more) and created an economic catastrophe originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, not in a wet market as claimed by China’s Communist Party…the virus was not a “bioweapon”, high level sources say, but was part of Beijing’s effort (a bungled one) to identify and treat viruses to enhance its own international prestige, according to multiple media reports…documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment…the Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and sources told Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy…U.S. embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday…it’s believed that standards in Wuhan were disregarded before the virus leaked accidentally, and then Beijing began its cover-up…”Patient Zero” worked in some capacity in the Wuhan laboratory, having caught the virus from a bat, and then unwittingly went into the general population…when early efforts of containment failed, journalists and doctors who spoke out against the threat were disappeared…sources also say the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning to help China cover its tracks…the WHO and China have denied any wrongdoing…there is precedent for such virus “escapes,” usually via inadvertently infected lab workers, both in China and elsewhere…they include a 1977 flu pandemic traced to a lab mishap in China or Russia, 3 or 4 accidental releases of SARS virus from a Beijing lab in 2004, and the repeated, unintentional escape of smallpox from a British facility in the 1960’s and 1970’s…a number of American virus labs, meanwhile, have been shut down in recent years because of dangerously sloppy procedures, according to a National Post report…

4. A Canadian Parliamentary health committee has repeated calls for the World Health Organization to explain its handling of the pandemic, amid mounting criticism that the United Nations’ agency knowingly relayed faulty Chinese data about the Wuhan COVID-19 virus…the federal Standing Committee on Health passed a motion, put forward by Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux, that invites senior WHO official Bruce Aylward to appear before the committee by the end of month…Prime Minister Trudeau continues to deflect criticism regarding WHO and China…it’s increasingly clear, however, that Trudeau put the safety of Canadians at risk simply because of his strong desire to earn Canada a seat on the UN Security Council (for part of February, Trudeau travelled across the globe promoting his desire for a Security Council seat, even warmly greeting Iran’s foreign minister)…Trudeau refused to impose a travel ban on China at the end of January, as President Trump did, apparently out of fear of “retaliation” by China, while the Prime Minister supported WHO’s argument at the time that a travel ban was “racist”…yes, the politics of securing a Security Council seat appears to have mattered more to Trudeau than taking decisive early action to protect Canadian lives, at the expense of annoying China…

5. The United States is moving aggressively toward a phased restart of its economy within the next couple of weeks, but that’s not the approach being taken by Canada even though there are fewer reported per-capita cases of the Wuhan COVID-19 virus in this country…Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the partial shutdown of Canada has to last “weeks more” to get COVID-19 under control, using his strongest warning yet against loosening economic restrictions too soon as he unveiled expanded help for hard-hit workers…in the last month, the national economy has experienced a record contraction as businesses have been ordered closed (some are certain to never reopen again) and Canadians told to stay home…a more targeted approach makes more sense, but Canadian governments also did nothing for 3 weeks in February while the economy was held hostage by anti-capitalist anarchists protesting a huge job-creating LNG Project in Northwest British Columbia…in a fierce warning from in front of his residence in Ottawa, Trudeau said yesterday the country is still contending with the first wave of the pandemic…loosening controls too quickly, he emphasized, could mean the country gives up the ground gained…“With spring coming, people are looking outside, wanting to get out, wanting to this to be over – I understand that. It will be weeks more before we can seriously consider loosening the restrictions,” he added…as we pointed out the other day, Austria – on the border with Italy – has already started to loosen its restrictions…Canada’s federal and provincial governments are “behind the curve” and as a nation the “cure” is going to prove to be worse than the disease…

6. The Dow is off 221 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…dismal economic reports this week are cutting into some of last week’s optimism on Wall Street…in Toronto, the TSX has lost 73 points…1st quarter Gold and Copper production left Barrick Gold (ABX, TSX; GOLD, NYSE) on pace to meet its 2020 guidance, the company announced this morning…the senior Gold producer listed preliminary January-March production of 1.25 million ounces of Gold and 115 million pounds of Copper…the tallies were down from the results posted in Barrick’s 4th-quarter earnings report, which included 1.44 million ounces of Gold and 117 million pounds of Copper…Barrick will release its Q1 results before market open on May 6…the Venture is up 4 points at 447…Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE) staged a dramatic intra-day reversal yesterday, closing up 42 cents at $1.97 after dipping as low as $1.31 on a “Wave 4” technical correction…a powerful “Wave 5” move now appears to have started…keep an eye on G6 Materials (GGG, TSX-V) which has traded record volumes in recent weeks and appears poised for another breakout during this 2nd half of April…Datametrex (DM, TSX-V) is this morning’s big mover after the company announced that it has secured the rights to import iOnebio Inc.’s iLamp novel COVID-19 detection kit (real-time reverse transcription Lamp-PCR assay system) into Canada…under the terms of this agreement, Datametrex was also given rights to sell the tests into other countries around the globe, including the United States…DM is up 4 pennies at 9 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific…

7. Feds target resource sector through CRA: Seabridge Gold (SEA, TSX) announced this morning that it has closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement from an existing shareholder for 1.2 million shares of the company at a price of $11.75 for gross proceeds of $14.1 million…what’s interesting, though, is the reason for the PP…the Trudeau government is believed to have instructed the CRA to crack down on Canadian resource companies who are utilizing flow-through monies…Seabridge is one of many examples…the company announced that the main use of the $14.1 million is to make deposits to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that cover potential tax liabilities stemming from reassessments of its Canadian exploration expenses by the CRA as disclosed in the company’s 2018 and 2019 financial statements…making the deposits enables Seabridge to proceed with its legal challenge of the CRA (of course, what about the juniors who have limited resources to fight the CRA?)…Seabridge CEO Rudi Fronk said, “We have an obligation to reimburse the investors who purchased our flow-through shares and are now going to be subject to reassessment by the CRA. We intend to honour our obligation to our investors and with this financing we have raised the funds needed to do so without affecting the business of the company. CRA decisions can be appealed to the courts and we intend to do so. We, and our advisers, are very confident that the Canadian exploration expense which the CRA has disallowed meets the requirements of the relevant statutes. Moreover, we believe the disallowed expenditures were accrued by us in a manner consistent with similar expenditures accepted by the CRA in previous audits. The total potential tax reassessments for which Seabridge is liable, if the CRA’s position is fully upheld, is $14 million, which is fully provided for in this financing”…

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