“Can anyone tell me what this is?” the teacher asked. Outside the rust rains had come again and the building reacted by assembling a nano sphere shield. They would be inside until it stopped. None of the children were old enough for the skin adaptation. She might as well keep them busy.
She held up half of a glass object, the top edge crude and sharp.
“A cup?” asked Sarla.
“Close. It’s been broken. It’s from the 21st century, circa 2017. Let me show you what it used to look like,” said the teacher. She turned the Time Jog to find images of the object in its prime. There was a website – an old page of text that had once been viewed on a glass screen – that showed the item whole[1]. It was some sort of silicate jar with red beads inside, much like the sand outside the school. She projected the image in the air in front of her.
“An hourgulp,” said Rudo. He had been weaned off of ed-stim and could finally focus on human faces. He searched for a reaction in his teacher’s. She smiled.
“Very good,” she said. “But they called it an ‘hourglass’ back then. That’s an excellent answer, though,” she said. She glanced to her periphery to bring up his daily log and noted his face-to-face interaction improvement. His overall score inched out of the red and into the yellow.
He made a smile like a grimace. She noted that, too. Facial expressions were an indicator of a healthier mind.
“Before we came to this planet, our home, the planet Earth was full of artisanal objects that they sent up the gravity well in hopes of recreating our...
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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up Michael Pento of Pento Portfolio Strategies joins me and lays out a scenario he says is ahead for the economy, interest rates, and monetary policy – all of which point to a watershed moment for gold. You simply will not want to miss a truly enlightening interview with Michael Pento, coming up after this week’s market update.
Gold and silver markets held their own this week even as crude oil prices dipped, the Fed vowed more rate hikes, and the stock market set another new record. The gold price currently comes in at $1,268 an ounce, up 0.9% on the week. Silver trades at $17.38 as of this Friday recording and is posting a weekly gain of 2.6%.
On Tuesday, the White House sent Congress a $4.1 trillion spending plan. President Trump’s budget makes cuts to a variety of agencies and programs. At the same time, it boosts defense spending by $500 billion over 10 years and makes no changes to Medicare and Social Security retirement benefits -- the largest programs in the budget.
Administration officials also boast that their plan balances the budget in 10 years without raising taxes. To achieve this feat, they assume economic growth will rise to a rate of 3% per year. That’s significantly higher than we’ve seen in recent years. Government economists are predicting growth of around only 1.8% over the next decade. Even that could turn out to be overly optimistic, especially if a major recession hits.
The political reality is that Trump’s budget for fiscal year 2018 won’t make it through Congress anyway. Trump and his policy agenda now have significant opponents on both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator