Addison Wiggin – March 8, 2012
- Humans who can will themselves to evolve… A 14-year-old who achieves a nuclear reaction… other tales of scientific achievement… with staggering wealth to match…
- A good way to go broke in the private sector: James Grant, Jeffrey Tucker on the Fed’s latest follies
- The emerging economy now bigger than Britain’s… And the trend it portends
- Oil stays right where we want it… The confluence of zombies and student debt… More reader suggestions on keeping your gold from prying eyes… And more!
“Homo evolutis,” he calls it.
“This new species,” reads a profile of the man in Wired, “will be able, or already is able, to regenerate limbs, extend its life span and control its environment in ways considered impossible a decade ago.”
Juan Enriquez, venture capitalist and map connoisseur, helped assemble the private-sector financing for the visionary Craig Venter’s efforts to map the human genome at the start of the 21st Century.
Today, on the tail end of the success of that project, Enriquez continues to see vast potential for humans to achieve greater perfection… and build ever-greater wealth all the while.
Yesterday, we had the good fortune of catching up with Juan again at his home in Boston for yet another interview for our current documentary. Juan regaled us with a few meaty anecdotes detailing the challenges entrepreneurs and innovators face following the financial crisis and bailout period that began in 2008.
“When you bring together the ability to read life with the ability to rewrite life,” Enriquez assures us with optimism, “you’re going to generate a big chunk of the coming global economy.”
Enriquez expects to be in the driver’s seat: “We’re going to try to change energy, we’re going to try to change chemicals, we’re going to try to change medicine, we’re going to try to change a pile of stuff.”
“We’re just beginning to touch it. That’s what’s amazing.”
More to come as we work our way through the 4½ hours of footage we shot…
We’d scheduled the shoot for this week because last week Enriquez was a featured speaker at TED. To the confab, Juan brought his own exhibit of Homo evolutis: a young man by the name of Taylor Wilson.
Taylor memorized the periodic table by age 10. At 14, this boy from the Texas-Arkansas border built a working nuclear fusion reactor. Seeing the reactor in action at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Intel CEO Paul Ottellini quipped, “I am so glad that kid is on our side.”
Today, Wilson aims to develop a reactor small enough to cheaply irradiate materials and create medical isotopes for cancer patients. That’s a process that currently requires multimillion-dollar cyclotrons.
In fact, it’s a process Iran has been trying to perfect to the considerable consternation of the White House and European powers. This kid did it in the basement of his parents’ home.
“Stroke patients are a step closer to a breakthrough treatment that could spare them immense pain,” our own Patrick Cox contends, leading us into three extraordinary opportunities he’s uncovered in the same field.
Patrick probably can’t top a homemade nuclear reactor. Nonetheless, he remains one of the leading writers at the forefront of developments in tech and biotech.
This morning, Patrick announced a drug made by one of the companies he follows is about to go into Phase 2a testing, which means it’s already deemed to be by the doyens at the FDA to be safe. (Senor Enriquez told us one maddening anecdote about the process by which these drugs get approval — and the rising costs for engaging in the trials — but we’ll save you the angst. Look for it in a future episode of The 5.)
For now, let’s take a look at the potential market: Stroke is the second-leading cause of death worldwide. In the United States alone, 750,000 patients experience a stroke every year. The annual costs top $50 billion.
The drug on Patrick’s hit list “is superior to available medications in that it can be administered longer after a stroke.” It should also demonstrate few side effects, based on animal studies.
Later this month, another company Patrick follows will meet with the FDA to discuss its revolutionary treatment for viruses, combining nanotechnology and biotechnology.
It has the potential to treat some of the scary types of flu that have made headlines in recent years, including swine and bird flus — along with the common seasonal flu. Here too, the potential is huge: The market for flu drugs is already as high as $7 billion.
A third company is on the verge of getting patent approval for a variety of tobacco that doesn’t cause cancer. “This product would be a lifesaver for millions of smokers if they could access it,” says Patrick.
“It’s vastly superior to other forms of oral tobacco, not to mention the smokable type. While I haven’t smoked in years, nicotine still torments me, and this product kills that craving completely.”
You get the idea: New products are on the verge of changing lives… and building vast new wealth for early investors. That’s what Patrick’s been doing for his readers for four years now.
Last year, for instance, he closed a position for 838% gains. And with most of his picks, he’s holding out for more. Much more… as you’ll see here.
[Ed note: As you may know, Patrick will also be the keynote speaker at the Personalized Life Extension Conference in San Francisco, March 31-April 1. We’ll keep you up to date as details unfold.
U.S. stock indexes are up once again today… although they’ve yet to reclaim the lofty heights achieved before Tuesday’s wicked reversion to the safety trade. As of this writing, the Dow is knocking on the door of 12,900.
“It appears as though Greece will end up attracting enough investors to swap their current Greek Bonds for new bonds,” writes Chuck Butler at EverBank. The deadline is 3:00 p.m. EST today.
“This news is positive for the euro, and we all know that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and all we have to do is switch goose for euro and gander for currencies and metals.”
Thus, gold continues its recovery from Tuesday’s beat-down… although last we checked, it’s still about $6 shy of reclaiming $1,700.
Silver is up a few cents, to $33.56.
Oil too is moving up; in fact, we just glanced at our screen and it’s back above $107.
Everything remains in place for a handsome four-day payout from the “mock trade” in the binary options that Abe Cofnas suggested on Monday. He figured there wouldn’t be massive swings in the oil price this week, so he suggested a range play — counting on oil ending the week between $103.75-108.75.
So far, oil is staying right between the goal posts. If that’s how it ends the week, it means a gain of up to 19.5%. Not bad for four days… and four days is the longest you have to wait to see how a play worked out in the binary options market. More tomorrow…
Brazil has surpassed Great Britain as the world’s sixth-largest economy, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research in London.
Despite a decelerating rate of growth, Brazilian GDP reached $2.5 trillion last year.
It’s another signpost on the road to what Chris Mayer calls the World Right Side Up — which happens to be the title of his new book. “Emerging” economies like China and India are reclaiming their role atop the world’s economic heap — where they were for much of recorded history.
“These trends,” he writes, “will become more pronounced over time. The creation of new markets, the influx of hundreds of millions of people who will want cellphones and air conditioners and water filters, who will want to eat a more varied diet of meats and fruits and vegetables, among many other things, will have a tremendous impact on world markets.”
Publication is set for next month… Watch this space.
“The Fed wants to suppress longer-term rates,” says James Grant of the Federal Reserve’s newest gambit, “but doesn’t want to have us believe it is recklessly printing the money with which to do this.”
Yesterday, someone inside the Fed floated the idea — called a “reverse repo” — to The Wall Street Journal: The Fed would buy Treasuries or mortgage bonds… and then would more or less tie up the money by borrowing it back for 30 days or less at low rates.
Thus, in the minds of Fed governors anyway, the economy wouldn’t be flooded with new money and the move wouldn’t be inflationary.
“It’s going to borrow short and lend long,” the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer tells CNBC, “which in the private sector is a great way to go broke. It is manipulating perceptions of risk and it is creating a real inflation in the sense that people who want to retire on their savings now need much more cash to do it.”
“The catchphrases are multiplying,” adds our own bow-tied commentator, Laissez Faire Books executive editor Jeffrey Tucker: “quantitative easing, Operation Twist, sterilized QE, ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and now reverse repo.”
“Stay tuned for other amazing tricks,” he writes in today’s Whiskey & Gunpowder. “They could pull out the camel clutch, the bite of the dragon, the hammerlock, the bridging chicken wing, the gorilla press, the octopus hold, the sunset flip, the inverted figure-four three-quarter leglock and finally, if they really get desperate, the Tree of Woe.”
“These names are all, of course, drawn from the world of professional wrestling. Sadly, the world of central banking is not nearly as entertaining, mainly because instead of just hurting each other, the bankers are hurting the rest of us.”
The higher-education bubble grew larger in January, according to the Fed’s latest reading of consumer credit.
Total consumer credit grew $17.8 billion, to $2.512 trillion. Within that number, credit card debt declined. That means the heavy lifting fell to nonrevolving credit, which includes student loans.
Federal student credit outstanding rose from $425 billion to $453 billion — a 6.5% increase in one month. That figure has quadrupled since 2008.
Oy.
“Now that was funny,” a reader writes about the zombie apocalypse course at Michigan State. “Got to give the professor some credit for being creative, I guess.”
“One has to wonder what the students who take this course expect this to do for their future. Perhaps they will get front-row seats at the Occupy Protests this summer, or maybe free abortions if they happen to mate with a zombie.”
“Neat trick,” adds another, “putting the upcoming college loan bubble and the zombie course in the same edition.”
“It’s idiotic courses like these and useless degrees in things like African Studies, Women’s Studies and the ever-popular Political Science that lead to unemployment and low wages for these ‘graduates.’ I wonder what the median income for computer science and engineering grads looks like? And what their default rates are compared with the others.”
“I asked the people that I buy metal from what records they keep on sales,” writes a reader keeping our thread about gold and privacy fresh. “They keep them on index cards for easy disposal.”
“Of course, they can get in personal bank records and scan them, but it has to be a concerted effort to find out. Under the Patriot Act, they can just search your house. I’m doing my best to make that search difficult.”
“I buy all of my gold from coin shows or a coin shop in Canada,” writes another, “then store it in a safe-deposit box over the border, out from under the nosey government.”
“Been doing it for over five years now, and when I cross the border, I just tell them that I’m going to the casino.”
The 5: Indeed.
Cheers,
Addison Wiggin
The 5 Min. Forecast
P.S. “China Protests India Cotton Export Ban,” says a headline in today’s Financial Times. Boring, we know… and the details of the dispute are quite beside the point.
But we mention it for a reason: It’s an uncomfortable reminder of the most likely wellspring for a 21st-century nuclear war — something we’ve had an eye on for 2½ years.
The short story: China and India — home to more than a third of the world’s population — fought a border war in 1962. It was a rout; India was humiliated. The two remain at odds over a region that amounts to a frozen wasteland at 15,000 feet.
“India sees the growing array of Chinese bases in Tibet as an extreme danger,” writes Eric Margolis, one of the few Western reporters who’ve bothered venturing into to the region. “China’s air, missile and intelligence bases in Tibet look down on the vast plains of India.”
“India believes China is trying to strategically encircle it. To the west, Pakistan; to the north, Tibet; to the east, Burma. To the south, China is busy cultivating Sri Lanka. Even a small border clash between these two assertive giants could light the fuse of a broad and very frightening conflict.”
And in recent years, the United States has been arming the Indian side.
We don’t anticipate the war turning hot tomorrow. But we’ll keep it on our radar.