Looking Backwards …
LB #1
I find Donald Trump to be a very poor martyr. I think he is a liar, a cheat, and someone that uses bankruptcy laws as his own walled garden from actual financial responsibility and ability. I don’t think any parent would want their child to grow up and act like him. I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could throw Rosie O’Donnell. With all that being said though , 30% of this country really likes him or put another way 60% of Republicans really like him which is 60% of roughly half of our country. I somehow picture him being tied to the railroad like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. But you don’t have to be in the 30% to realize that he seems to be getting railroaded. First it was the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. This was Trump being Trump. Whether there was any sexual impropriety or not isn’t the issue with regard to the civil verdict. Rape cases held 30 years after the fact are a he said/she said affair at best, but what was on trial was Trump’s behavior and that is what was lost. Trump did Trump things which was attack her in public, which is his most popular trick. That trick works against political opponents, but the strategy in this case Don was to shut the hell up. He couldn’t because he can’t, and his petulance cost him $83 million. I like to think that this verdict was smiled upon by the mass of vendors and creditors that Don has used the system against for his benefit. CNN’s Kara Scannell writes, “In the current case, a jury found Carroll should receive $83.3 million in damages to repair her reputation, to compensate her, and to punish Trump.” I agree this is to punish Trump, and $83 million seems like a proper price for a lesson. I don’t agree with it, but Trump has needed a lesson and he got one, a painful one, because Karma is a bitch.
It is completely different though in the business fraud verdict last week in which Don was to pay a $355 million fine and give up control of his companies in New York for three years. He also can’t apply for a loan from New York State institutions. What happened here was Don applied for some loans and he fudged the numbers because he is a liar and a cheat, this isn’t news or surprising. But he paid the loans back. The Wall Street Journal editorial said it best, “Yet this remedy is like using a Hellfire missile to annihilate a shoplifter. Deutsche Bank made money on the loans, and its valuation teams gave a “haircut” to the numbers provided by Mr. Trump. There was no real financial victim.”
See the bank gave his numbers a haircut because they know who he is and what his business reputation is. It doesn’t mean that they can’t do business with him or shouldn’t. That is between two independent parties. If Trump lied about his numbers and then welched on the loan, then the bank would have a case, but he didn’t. Who is the victim? This was all about a witch hunt, and I also think it might go even deeper. Washington politics is all about control, which is what makes that Jeffrey Epstein case so troubling. Washington loves to exert pressure on its opponents whether through blackmail or financial rewards, and to keep them in line to get things done. Normally lobbyists pay for the privilege, companies pay for speeches, and the next thing you know the Clintons and Obamas are summering on the Vineyard with the industrialists.
Don’s appeal is that he is a wild bull and can’t be controlled because he doesn’t need their money so they can’t buy him. Well, we are in the midst of a frozen real estate market. That can’t be great for Don’s business, and now he is being asked to write almost half a billion dollars’ worth of checks because New York City’s liberal legal system wants to punish Trump. Weaponizing the legal system is as big a mistake as weaponizing the US dollar was against Putin. What happens when the tide turns? Do you want someone else to be able to use that power against your candidate? From the Journal again, “Mr. Trump denounced the verdict and says he’ll appeal. Meantime, this example of targeted civil prosecution ought to worry fair-minded people regardless of political bent. CEOs might wonder about doing business in a jurisdiction where elected politicians use the law to smash companies this way.” This is not how a legal system is supposed to work, but instead a corrupt to its core society. Don’t think Don’s base hasn’t noticed as well. Weaponizing the legal system is a new low even for a Democrat.
LB#2
Let’s go over to ZeroHedge “Truck drivers transport between 70% to 73% of all freight in the United States. Therefore, when truckers begin discussing plans on social media to boycott loads to progressive hellhole New York City, it’s important to pay attention.” That is exactly what was circulating on Friday night after this verdict. It seems that they too are starting to say FU. Maybe they listened to my …I’m just kidding I know they didn’t…The fact remains that people continue to act as if there are no consequences. When you run your mouth you have to pay. When you try and railroad a president that has a very loyal base, they might respond accordingly. I have often smiled at the liberal elites that mock flyover country. In a real showdown the flyover states could simply block the interstates going into the elites’ states and in a week they would be starving and coming around to the country way of thinking. In fact, that is what the Europeans just did, and why they won. When two groups of people treat each other civilly then they can get along and do business and disagree, but when the rhetoric gets ugly so does the behavior. That is one of the things I don’t like about Don is that he pushes this ugly rhetoric and now he is getting a faceful of his own doing. His liberal opponents might get their faceful next. If a large segment of truckers start boycotting certain cities then companies will have to pay more, and that is inflationary for the people in those cities. Remember, all these cities are broke. There are consequences for your decisions people for both Don and the cities that are going after him. You saw what happened to Bud Light, the quiet boycotts on commerce could have a similar effect on cities if they overstep their bounds.
LB#3-
Tom Fairless had an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal regarding how war was benefitting the US economy. “In the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. defense industry has experienced a boom in orders for weapons and munitions. Business is coming from European allies trying to build out their military capabilities as well as from the Pentagon, which is both buying new equipment from defense manufacturers and replenishing military stocks depleted by deliveries to Ukraine. Industrial production in the U.S. defense and space sector has increased 17.5% since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, according to Federal Reserve data. Biden administration officials say that of the $60.7 billion earmarked for Ukraine in a $95 billion supplemental defense bill, 64% will actually flow back to the U.S. defense industrial base.” This all makes more sense now right? Nato keeps moving east for the last 20 years, we stage a coup in Ukraine in 2014, and presto we have a war where we can sell weapons to Ukraine for immediate use, but the rest of Europe is now beefing up their weapons and defense capabilities. If defense contractors and military companies want to make money by selling weapons to the rest of the world, then that is great business. We make some of the most sophisticated and deadly weapons in the world. Good for them and good for free markets. If we are building bombs that are paid for by the American taxpayer and go to Ukraine and get blown up and create rubble, then we are at risk of advancing the largest broken window fallacy ever. That is the parable that when a window breaks, someone has to spend money to fix it, and that adds to the economy, but it just brings the economy back to where it was and doesn’t add value. Spending money on defense shouldn’t be to create rubble in the Ukraine, not for Americans. We need to separate defense sales from defense spending and make sure that our spending benefits Americans not just the highly lobbied defense industry.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
I’ve often marveled at people that buy things online. I buy books and when I get them, I get what I expected. If I order something else online, and I don’t like it, I have to go online somewhere and print out something which has a code and then print it out and then take that and something else and then send something back and then go to a place and fill out some forms and then they do stuff and then I finally am rid of something that I ordered and didn’t want. This was exhausting and I haven’t repeated the mistake again. But I must be in the minority here. There is a whole other world of shoppers out there that buy clothes, have them delivered at great cost and fossil fuel usage, try them on and ship them back and use more fossil fuels. According to Emily Stewart from MSN “A December 2022 survey by the National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail found a 16.5% return rate for that year, estimating $816 billion worth of merchandise would be sent back.” She also cites a story from The Cut “One woman who had returned items to Urban Outfitters once a month since high school was given the boot. Another lost her shopping privileges at Saks after she bought — and then returned — $15,000 worth of merchandise. Another was described as “pleading” with ASOS to earn back her right to shop. Her pseudo-crime: returning 99% of the 172 purchases she made in the span of a year.” Trying to wrap my head around this topic has been a challenge, but to quote the Green Bay Packers football coach of yester year Vince Lombardi “What the hell is going on around here?”
I, as a member of society, do have the obligation to clothe myself regularly, which I do. Unlike the spelling of the word, I can guarantee there is no I in fashion. But it seems that there are those that have abused the system. They are being punished for it. What did they think would happen? Do they not realize that businesses are in business to make money and that they are the worst kind of customers. The company actually loses less if they go away. These shopping Sharons we will call them are a cousin to the HOA Karens made famous by sticking their beak in someone else’s business, but neither Karen nor Sharon is the purpose of this discussion. I have been railing about the dangers of this centralized big box and now online obsession for years, Emily Stewart sums it up more beautifully than I ever could “Retailers spent years getting us addicted to online shopping. And now that we’re hooked, they have more leeway to jack up fees for logistics.” That is exactly right. We are probably replowing old soil here, but think about what the business model for these companies is. Borrow lots of cheap money, lose money but get market share, when competition goes out of business then raise prices. Emily, the prices that these businesses are going to charge in the future are going to be higher because they can. There used to be main streets with entrepreneurs but now we have Wal-Mart or Amazon where people buy things at lower prices. That is a good thing right, except for when they decide to raise prices and there is no one left to check them. Retail is almost hollowed out of our inner cities and malls. When it is complete the online stores will jack up the prices and print money.
Remember how much cheaper Uber was when they first came out. Now their prices are ridiculous, but cabbies have went broke in bunches because they didn’t have free money to survive the price wars. Careful shopping ladies, you are digging your own graves here, but you don’t have to take my word for it. In the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith he writes “To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens…It comes from an order of men, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” Adam Smith wrote this in 1776, and human behavior hasn’t changed.
It is about time to pay the piper
LF#2
We check in on our favorite libertarian politician next, Javier Milei. Milei is having difficulty getting legislation passed in his country, the people are protesting, and yet he is making progress. Sky News Australia reports “Argentina’s government, under newly-elected President Javier Milei, achieved its first monthly budget surplus in nearly 12 years in January. The surplus, $US589 million at the official exchange rate, the Argentinian government revealed on Friday. It also includes interest payments on the public debt. It is “the first (monthly) financial surplus since August 2012, and the first surplus for a January since 2011,” the Economy Ministry said, according to Telam news agency.”
Is he out of the woods yet, oh hell no. 57% of his nation is in poverty and inflation is over 200%, but he has inherited these issues, and this is one of the first places in world history that capitalism can be shown to be the answer. Free markets and smaller governments can be shown to be the answer, where individual liberty and not socialist handouts can be shown to be the answer. Cutting the government in half was a great start and when, not if he turns it around, let that be the blueprint for the world, much like the founding of the United States was for much of the world 250 years ago.
LF#3
What a week for AI. On Thursday Nvidia stock rocketed higher on the back of an outstanding earnings report released Wednesday after the close. The stock closed Thursday 16% higher and added a staggering $273 billion in market cap in one day. That is a record. From the AP “The amount Nvidia Corp.’s market value increased on Thursday alone, according to FactSet. The previous record one-day jump was Meta Platform’s gain of $205 billion on Feb. 2 of this year. In other words, Nvidia’s one-day gain is more than the total market values of market stalwarts Bank of America ($265 billion) and Coca-Cola ($263 billion). In all, just 26 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 have market caps above $273 billion, including Nvidia. Nvidia’s total market value as of the close of trading Thursday. It recently passed Amazon and Alphabet to become the third most valuable public company, behind Microsoft ($3.051 trillion) and Apple ($2.845 trillion). The company was valued at around $580 billion a year ago.” Nvidia sells chips to companies that are creating products with imbedded AI. It was quite a week for them as well.
First ChatGPT had what is being called a meltdown. Tristan Greene writes for Cointelegraph, “OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) system suffered a bit of a public meltdown between Feb. 20 and 21 that had it confusing and confounding users by spouting gibberish and other strangeness including unprompted pseudo-Shakespeare.” This is the best AI program out there and it does this? Forgive me for being a late adopter and for not believing the hype or having any interest in using this software. But even ChatGPt had a better week than Google’s Gemini AI product that took history and made it woke. Did you know the Vikings were Indian women and Vietnamese? It seems Gemini just washed white people from history. I guess that is by design considering the woke history of its development staff. Even Elon Musk jumped in and called Gemini’s Sr Director of Product Management a “racist douchenozzle.” Garbage in and garbage out. Use at your own peril people. God gave you each a brain, I’d suggest using it before outsourcing your own thinking.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading at …….39,131
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …4.248%.
The price of Brent Crude is … $81.62 per barrel.
The price of gold is … $2,045/oz.
The price of silver is … $22.97/oz.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.