People forget how intelligent, educated, an accomplished doctor Ben Carson truly is. He attended Yale University on a full academic scholarship, then the University of Michigan medical school and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He was then accepted by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine neurosurgery program. And that’s just his educational background, I’m not even going into his years spent as a neurosurgeon, prior to entering politics. He literally is a “brain surgeon”.
He is not an economist though, so maybe he speaking out of turn, but he feels very strongly that the economy will recover a lot quicker than most people think, once it is reopened. Speaking to Sandra Smith of Fox News, the current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development said, “Well, what we have to recognize is that we have going into this an incredibly strong economy. And things were going very well. The fundamentals, the underlying structure of our economy is very solid and very strong. So what we want to do is we want to maintain that economy, bridge the gap, and that means that you are going to have to infuse some significant federal funds. But we want to keep things going so that once the virus problem has been eliminated, we can go back. And it doesn’t mean that we have to wait until every vestige of the virus is gone. You know, common sense would dictate that if we wait until everything is gone our economy will be gone, also. So we have to recognize that obviously, you know, there are risks, benefits and risks in everything and we have to weigh those things. That’s what a task force does. We look at all the different variables; we look at medical variables; we look at social variables, economic variables; and we try to give the president the kind of advice that would be beneficial in maintaining people’s health but also in maintaining their lifestyle.”
Smart people don’t just start saying dumb things. I’m with Ben, so maybe it’s time to buy stocks.
Do you think the economy will come roaring back or is this going to be a long depression? Reply to this email and let us know.
Trouble for Amarin Corp.
The recent performance of Amarin Corporation plc (NASDAQ:AMRN) has been crap. A small rebound from a huge gap lower, but that’s it. The stock fell by 69% but has been attempting to climb back on poor volume. Many analysts however, still have a target price of $16.09 for AMRN but that may soon change. That price would be about a 76% move higher, which is not likely in a short period of time unless there was some unexpected new drug approval, a takeover or they win their appeal.
On March 30, a federal judge in Nevada declared that the company’s intellectual property that protected its Vascepa drug was “obvious” and its drug patent was invalid. That’s about as bad as news can get for a drug stock. They are appealing, but the Nevada judges ruling was so biting, that the appeal doesn’t look good for investors. Competition is likely coming. No company is ready to launch a generic competitor to the market just yet, but the possibility is a huge uncertainty for the stock and several companies have generic versions in their pipelines. While it’ll still control the international market, that’s minimal consolation for the company, which depends on strong sales in the U.S.
Vascepa, is a pill containing modified fish oil that reduces triglycerides, or fat in your blood. Amarin’s scientific discovery was that one component of fish oil, the omega-3 fatty acid EPA, is helpful and good. In people with high triglycerides (which includes roughly one-fourth of adult Americans), Vascepa reduced heart attacks by 31%, strokes by 28%, and cardiovascular death by 20%. Those kinds of results are very much worth other companies developing competitive generics.
Amazons Alexa gets her voice
Amazon has introduced a new speaking style for Alexa and has also added some speaking styles for other Artificial Intelligence voices, the company said. The long-form speaking style is available for US developers who want a reading voice that sounds more natural when reading long pieces of content, like articles or podcasts.
Amazon says the long-form style is “powered by a deep-learning text-to-speech model,” and allows Alexa powered devices to speak in a more natural way, like using pauses and emphasis. It follows last year’s release of new speaking styles for news and music content and a November update that allows Alexa to sound “disappointed” or “excited.”
“For example, you can use this speaking style for customers who want to have the content on a web page read to them or listen to a storytelling section in a game,” according to the blog post for developers.
The tech powerhouse is also adding its news and conversational speaking styles for the “Matthew” and “Joanna” voices from Amazon Polly, its neural network-based text-to-speech AWS service, and is adding its news speaking style to Lupe, its US Spanish voice.
” The news speaking style makes the Matthew, Joanna, and Lupe voices sound similar to what you hear from TV news anchors and radio hosts, while the conversational speaking style makes the Matthew and Joanna voices sound less formal and as if they’re speaking to friends and family. The conversational speaking style is only available in select Polly voices and not Alexa’s voice,” the blog notes.
Alexa creeps me out if I’m being honest, even when it sounded like a machine. Human voice speaking-styles is one step away from a bad tech horror film.
Seems Wall Street Loves Bitcoin
In his recent regular live stream, prominent Bitcoin blogger “IvanOnTech” commented on what he considers to be fact, that Wall Street funds could actually be storing around 5% of the circulating Bitcoin supply. Wall Street could be sitting on 900,000 BTC, which would run counter to what most people think, re: Wall Street’s opinion of bitcoin.
However, he is certain that since there are several major investment funds dealing with Bitcoin and other digital assets, like Grayscale, the total amount of the digital gold held by Wall Street could actually be more than 5%.
He came to this conclusion after analyzing the recent financial report from the Grayscale fund. The latter reveals that the company is holding 1.7% of the BTC circulating supply, around 360,000 BTC, which is what IvanOnTech wrote in his recent tweet:
BREAKING: WALL STREET OWNS 360,000 BITCOIN!!
Smart money is accumulating…
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Despite the recent jaw-dropping crypto market crash in early March this year, Grayscale managed to attract $503 million of inflows in the first quarter of 2020 from investors.
This shows that interest from institutional investors in Bitcoin ahead of its third halving expected on May 12 remains high.
Would you Swipe Right on Dr. Fauci?
Government coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says that lonely people in quarantine can hook up with Tinder matches who are showing no symptoms of COVID-19, but like unprotected sex, it involves some risk.
The 79-year-old immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases dropped the dating tip in a Tuesday interview on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America.”
Toward the end of the taped segment, Fauci was asked: “If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble or Grindr, you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, ‘Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.’ What do you say to that person?”
“You know that’s tough,” he replied. Again, he’s 79, so how does he answer this with no concept of it… “Because that’s what’s called relative risk.”
Then he dropped the bombshell. “If you’re willing to take a risk — and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks — you could figure out if you want to meet somebody,” said Fauci, who was hilariously named a candidate for People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” award.
He added, “If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk.”