Cancer: The Beginning of the End?
Cancer: The Beginning of the End?
“There is no magic bullet for cancer,” lamented Paradigm’s tech-and-biotech authority Ray Blanco a couple of years ago.
“We’ve been searching for a magic bullet going back at least as far as Paul Ehrlich, the father of chemotherapy and winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine all the way back in 1908.”
As you’ve likely heard by now, former President Biden has been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer.
When he was vice president under Barack Obama, Biden announced a project touted as a “Cancer Moonshot” — an initiative that continued on during the Trump 45 years and into Biden’s own presidency.
The National Cancer Institute’s budget grew from $5.2 billion in 2016 to $7.1 billion in 2023.
Ray — a cancer survivor himself — bristled at this venture the entire time. Curing cancer is not like putting a man on the moon.
A moon landing was a totally doable proposition when JFK laid it out in May 1961; Apollo 11 landed in July 1969.
“While there were difficult engineering problems to be solved,” Ray told us, “no basic scientific breakthroughs were needed. The basics of getting to the moon had been solved by Robert Goddard’s liquid-fueled rocket in 1926, and further refined by Wernher von Braun in the decades following.”
In contrast, a cure for cancer “requires more than solving an engineering problem,” says Ray — “it needs a scientific breakthrough.”
In addition, “Cancer isn’t a single enemy that can be killed with a single bullet. It’s a handle we use to describe hundreds of different diseases caused by cells that have run amok. Every single one of those different diseases is unique.”
And every individual cancer case is different. “Not only are the genes in these malignant cells unique because they derive from the person who gets sick, the mutations that emerge are also unique.”
But that was two years ago. Today, Ray says we might well be on the verge of such a breakthrough.
Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation — what if they were no longer necessary?
“What the world has largely thought about cancer and how to treat it may be proved entirely wrong,” Ray tells us.
Indeed, stunning images captured by a high-powered microscope might mean “the true beginning of the end of cancer as we know it.
“For the tiny, sub-$1 billion microcap behind this monumental discovery, the potential financial rewards at stake are nothing short of staggering.
“I expect the entire story comes to a head on July 22,” says Ray — “when the FDA is set to issue the most important announcement of my career.”
Readers of Ray’s Catalyst Trader service are already positioned to take advantage. If you’re not among them, there’s still time to act. Click here to see the microscope image that could change the world — and send shares of this microcap surging higher.
“The Safest Bet on Earth” (Uh-Oh…)
Let’s follow up on yesterday’s double-whammy to the bond market — the downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt by Moody’s and a budget-busting vote by the House Budget Committee.
Hedge fund legend Ray Dalio correctly says that Moody’s was being too kind.
“You should know that credit ratings understate credit risks because they only rate the risk of the government not paying its debt,” he posted on X.
“They don’t include the greater risk that the countries in debt will print money to pay their debts thus causing holders of the bonds to suffer losses from the decreased value of the money they’re getting (rather than from the decreased quantity of money they’re getting).”
Exactly. Under the scenario Dalio paints, it’s not only that the 10-year Treasury note you buy for $1,000 today might be worth $950 or $900 in another couple years. It’s also that your cost of living might be rising faster than the 4.5% yield you collect.
Meanwhile, in a truly worrisome development…
“Make no mistake, the U.S. debt is the safest bet on Earth,” says Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. “There is no country’s debt that I’d rather have than the United States’,” he tells Fox Business.
Hassett’s early claim to fame was as co-author of the 1999 book Dow 36,000 — predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach that lofty level by 2004. (It didn’t get there until 2021.)
But that was only the first in a series of embarrassing calls. During the Trump 45 years, when Hassett was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the late economics blogger Robert Wenzel took to calling him “Baghdad Hassett” — a nod to Baghdad Bob of Iraq War fame.
Doesn’t bode well for the prospects of U.S. Treasuries. At all.
The president went to Capitol Hill this morning to dig Uncle Sam’s fiscal hole even deeper.
He’s personally lobbying holdout Republicans to back his “big beautiful bill” of tax cuts and an increase in the debt ceiling — with the promise that DOGE-driven spending cuts will come later, pinky-swear.
But rather than persuade the spending hawks to see things his way, he lashed out at them instead…
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), the closest thing we’ve got to Ron Paul in Congress today, is almost certainly a “no.” That means the president can afford to lose only two more Republican votes.
If history is any guide, the Moody’s downgrade will not spell bad news for the stock market, other than in the very near term.
As we mentioned yesterday, Moody’s was the last of the Big Three credit rating agencies to downgrade U.S. government debt from a pristine AAA rating. Fitch did so in 2023 and Standard & Poor’s in 2011.
Colleague Bob Byrne, the lead stock researcher on James Altucher’s team, passes along some interesting figures from MoneyFlows and Factset.
Early returns for the S&P 500 after those two previous downgrades were lousy. But by the time you get to six months out, the S&P was solidly in the green. And a year after the downgrades, the S&P was up 19% in 2023 and 16% in 2011.
Admittedly, we’re not working with a very big data set here — but based on what’s available, the post-downgrade prognosis is positive.
As for today’s trading action, all the major U.S. stock indexes are down by less than a half-percent — the S&P 500 at 5,937.
Precious metals are perking up, gold adding $52 to $3,280 and silver 54 cents to $32.85. Crude has shed 46 cents to $62.23. Bitcoin is making another halting move approaching its $106,000 record.
Deficient Diplomacy (Ukraine)
“It’s not clear to me when the U.S. stopped producing world-class diplomats,” Jim Rickards wrote his Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence readers yesterday.
The occasion for this observation was Donald Trump’s muddled Ukraine policy — one of the few areas in which Jim has a bone to pick with the president.
Yesterday Trump was on the phone with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Putin refused to agree to an immediate cease-fire with Ukraine.
But why would he? Moscow has the upper hand in the war. A cease-fire would merely buy time for Kyiv to regroup and re-arm. Like it or not, “the war will end on Russian terms,” says Jim, “and not any other.”
Which brings us back to Jim’s complaint: “Whether you agree with their policies or not, there’s no dispute that the long line of U.S. diplomats from Dean Acheson to John Foster Dulles, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker produced momentous agreements that changed the history of the world and preserved the national security of the United States.
“Beginning with Bill Clinton, we began to have second-rate national security advisers and secretaries of state including Sandy Berger, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Rex Tillerson, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. In succession, they have produced wars in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen with India-Pakistan next in line.”
In the present moment, someone continues to tell Trump he’s got leverage over Putin that doesn’t exist. “Until the West takes Putin seriously and internalizes the actual state of the war,” Jim says, “the slaughter will continue.”
Jim didn’t call out anyone by name in Trump’s inner circle. Then again, he didn’t have to…
The Pope and the IRS
“Turns out that even becoming the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and the head of the world’s smallest country doesn’t give you a free pass with the IRS,” says an article at the Catholic news site The Pillar.
As you’re no doubt aware, Pope Leo XIV, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, is the first American pope.
“If Pope Leo XIV maintains his U.S. citizenship,” says The Pillar, “he will owe income tax in the United States, said Ken Milani, a professor emeritus of accountancy at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.”
As we mention now and then, the United States is one of only two countries in the world that taxes its citizens’ income no matter where in the world they earn it. (The northern African state of Eritrea is the other.)
It’s still possible the pope will escape U.S. tax liability — but only if…
- He refuses a salary, as his three most recent predecessors did…
- Or he surrenders his U.S. citizenship (colleague Sean Ring at the Rude Awakening, who’s lived abroad since 1999, says it was one of the smartest financial moves he ever made)...
- Or the U.S. government revokes his citizenship, seeing as he’s now a foreign head of state.
The last of those three is up in the air. The Pillar put in an inquiry with the State Department — which said it does not comment on individuals’ citizenship status.
They’re in It for Themselves
“Dave, I appreciate your insightful commentary on the bond market's ‘panic’ and the current fiscal fiasco brewing in Congress,” a reader writes after yesterday’s edition.
“You're right — long-term Treasury yields edging above 5% and the GOP's reckless spending spree underscore a troubling reality: Politicians are still playing the same tired game. This time, Congress funnels public funds to an even more brazen set of insiders.
“Deficits have become little more than a pass-through mechanism — an elegant way to launder taxpayer dollars into private gains. Trump's administration isn't about making America great; it's about capturing the whole kit and kaboodle for himself and his cronies. And sadly, they're off to an impressively productive start.
“The music continues, the looting persists and the carnival rolls on. But Trump and his band of opportunists overlook a critical point: This game of musical chairs is built entirely on trust. The foundations weaken as they chip away relentlessly at trust within institutions, markets and society. Eventually, when trust collapses, the entire edifice will crumble spectacularly.
“The bond market jitters are just a symptom. The real disease is the cynical exploitation of public faith and resources to further concentrate wealth and power. Until we address the concentrating of wealth and power, we'll keep witnessing panic, instability and the inevitable reckoning.
“P.S. I’m not sure why pundits like you keep suggesting politicians are doing anything but enriching themselves and their benefactors. I guess keeping the ruse alive — that someone is actually interested in the public good — provides a sense of nostalgia and comfort as the system crashes.”
Dave responds: Well, sometimes they act out of hubris that they know what’s best for the rest of us.
But yes, by and large, they’re in it for themselves. As the radio host Charles Goyette wrote in 2009, “America’s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system. America has become a piñata: Everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the piñata party.”
Oh but see now, someone’s reading this daily dispatch for the first time today and thinking I’m just a cynic. Not so!
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
