Looking Backwards …
LB #1
We talked about the Euro elections and how that was able to shake up European politics last week. The wonderful thing about societies where we do have enough freedom to have elections is that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, the people get their head out of their asses, and vote some moron out of office. It is a rare thing, like somewhere between seeing Haley’s comet and seeing Joe Biden complete a sentence on the spectrum of rarity. The people are speaking and we will see in a few weeks if there is a seismic shift or if this is just noise. While politics can be fickle, there is nothing fickle about people voting with their wallets and it would seem that the voting public is not picking up what the governments of Europe are putting down.
Pierre Gosselin writes for the Notrickszone “Back to fossil fuels! The figures for the registration of new electric cars in Germany are looking increasingly awful. In May 2024, the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported that it had registered only 29,708 vehicles with electric motors. That is 30.6% down on the result for the same month last year.”
The government can reward their friends who have raised money and donated to their campaigns, but they can’t make the people buy an inferior product. At least, not yet. Germany is far out there on the environmental branch and even their citizens won’t, can’t or simply have no interest in owning EV cars. I use these generalizations because that is what must be used. Governments think that everyone is going to adopt this technology and the public is all dying to own one of these glorified golf carts. They aren’t. The Prius came out damn near 20 years ago, and to quote a movie, we just aren’t that into you. There is a sizable minority that have bought an EV and that is fine. They might do it for hipster reasons, environmental, or maybe even because they could afford it. I am afraid we are reaching a saturation point and when you see major auto manufacturers cancelling plans for new factories and shifting course away from EVs, I think the game is over. Without a government mandate, I think the EV has been relegated to a riche niche for now.
The Europeans aren’t just tired of the EV agenda as the other primary talking point throughout these elections has been immigration. Newsflash, it will be here in November as well. The Europeans are tired of the crime, cost, and cultural decay of their communities and some are starting to float ideas that are pretty extreme, at least to the powers that be.
Paul Joseph Watson writes for Modernity, “Right-wing Austrian political party FPÖ wants to appoint a ‘Remigration Commissioner’ who will oversee the deportation of illegal immigrants. The Freedom Party of Austria won the EU elections after obtaining 25.4 per cent of the vote and gaining 3 seats, marking the first time that the FPÖ has emerged as the strongest political party in the country.
When asked why they were voting for FPÖ, 62% of FPO supporters stated that they “wanted to make a statement on domestic policy.” That includes addressing Austria’s problem with illegal immigration, which authorities have taken a tougher stance on over the last year.”
I learned a new word, remigration. Deportation is out and remigration is in. But to where and how. The devil is always in the details, and folks this is going to take place on the internet, and it is going to be painful to watch. We have talked about how the migrants are risking their lives just for a chance at a better life, and damn that is noble. Unfortunately, there is no room for them at the inn, or at least it seems. This voting topic could become very important in the upcoming elections, domestically and abroad.
LB#2
On April 24th 2024 I wrote about a ZeroHedge article that wasn’t getting nearly enough coverage concerning DEI policies that was watering and dumbing down the talent of pilots. I warned that we need to be keeping a close eye on the skies for a disaster. Boeing has its own issues, but the talent of pilots is being compromised by socialist policies. Well, we had a close call, a very close call. Let’s again go to ZeroHedge who is all over this…”Bloomberg has obtained an internal memo from Southwest Airlines that was recently distributed to pilots. The memo details a frightening incident in April when a Boeing 737 Max 8 nearly crashed into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii during an aborted landing.
The memo states Southwest Flight 2786 dropped at an abnormally high rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute before one of the pilots was able to sharply pull back on the yoke, sending the jet climbing at 8,500 feet per minute. The jet was 400 feet from hitting the ocean when the pilot recovered the aircraft.“ This is not good. But it gets worse.
“The memo shows the incident was likely pilot-induced – and not a Max glitch:
According to Southwest’s review, the incident occurred following an aborted landing attempt due to inclement weather that blocked the pilots from seeing the runway by a specified altitude.
The captain opted to put the “newer” first officer in command on the short flight to Lihue despite the forecasts, according to the memo.
The less-experienced first officer “inadvertently” pushed forward on the control column, then cut the speed causing the airplane to descend. Soon after, a warning system sounded alarms the jet was getting too close to the surface and the captain ordered the first officer to increase thrust. The plane then “climbed aggressively” at 8,500 feet per minute.“
Dangerous travel conditions is on no one’s mind right now. Everyone is flying around, vacationing, eating at restaurants and no one even considers that there have been numerous whistleblowers reporting safety issues at Boeing and now we are seeing near misses due to a pilot being called up to the big league a little too early. I hate to see minor league ball players fail, but piloting an aircraft is a bit more important than getting shelled in September in the major leagues.
LB #3
It is the summer and vacation season is in full swing. The poorest of the nation are struggling to survive, but a large contingent are flying and traveling and having a normal summer. What if all of that was taken away? Have we thought about that? No, I’m not talking about Boeing or even the pilot’s issue. Those might slow down air travel if there was an accident or two, but what I am talking about is much much more serious.
In Ecuador there was a blackout on Wednesday that caused 17 million people to lose power. This from ZeroHedge, “The immediate report that we received from the CENACE (National Center of Energy Control) is that there is a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there is no energy service on a national scale,” Public Works Minister Roberto Luque wrote on X. “
This is the kind of thing that I would consider an attitude changer. We are all very comfortable in our lives here in America. We have been watching the tragedies in Israel and then Gaza and then Ukraine from afar. There is real tragedy there, there is dying, there is starvation, but it is all on television or the internet. It is summer and if we had a major grid failure, it would cause unseen tragedy. Can you imagine a major city in the south without air conditioning for a week? Groceries would spoil, heat exhaustion would be everywhere, and there would be no ability to communicate as devices would die within a day from lack of power. This isn’t war conditions like the other countries are facing, but it is a major major suffering. We need to think about this being a possibility. We need to prepare for this possibility, and we need to invest for this possibility.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
We have been documenting how the EV companies are slowly going out of business as their new sources of funding are nowhere to be found in a non-zero interest rate environment. We have another bankruptcy.
This from Reuters via CNBC, “Fisker filed for bankruptcy protection late on Monday, as the U.S. electric-vehicle maker looks to salvage its operations by selling assets and restructuring its debt after burning through cash in an attempt to ramp up production of its Ocean SUVs.
The hyper-competitive EV market has seen several companies, including Proterra, Lordstown and Electric Last Mile Solutions, file for bankruptcy in the past two years as they grappled with weakening demand, fundraising hurdles and operational challenges from global supply chain issues.
The company, founded by automotive designer Henrik Fisker, flagged doubts about its ability to remain in business in February and later failed to secure an investment from a big automaker, forcing it to rein in operations.”
In a system built on credit such as ours is, only when a company goes broke does money get destroyed. The money invested will not be recovered after the bankruptcy settlement and someone will lose money. The article also listed Adobe, Google, and SAP as being among the 20 largest creditors. These are all software companies. How much exposure do these huge companies have to the EV sector, AI sector, and even the environmental sector? If these disruptor utopias don’t come about, who is the creditor behind this? That will be interesting to uncover, but it will not be moi as they say.
LF#2
I love people, well I actually love people watching, well that’s not exactly true either. I actually love watching people’s behavior. When interest rates were 50 basis points higher a month ago no one wanted to buy bonds, the auction attendance was abysmal and now here we are. The auctions have been great when investors are getting a lower rate of return. This from ZeroHedge, “After stellar 10Y and 30Y auctions last week, moments ago the Treasury sold its sole coupon auction for the week when it placed $13BN in a 20Y paper. The auction was met with no less than record demand, with metrics off the charts in virtually every category.”
Folks, this means that we have reach a bit of a bottom on yields and a top in bond prices when every Tom, Dick, and Harry want to buy bonds. Have you ever noticed that you do not want to try and use that Tom, Dick, and Harry reference in reverse, but I digress. The point is that people are weird, they buy when they should sell, and sell when they should buy.
This is what is making these markets so unique right now. I think the amount of algos or algorithmic trading is off the charts because it is programmed to not make these mistakes. It just keeps buying and buying NVDA. It is truly one of history’s great bubbles. Enjoy the show.
LF#3
I have always considered Canadians to be very nice people. They are like people from Wisconsin that play hockey better and have more access to maple syrup. I wasn’t expecting this next article to ever make the cut here at CTPC, but sometimes we must pause and remember our roots and the Have More Grace Challenge. This challenge was a way to make the world a little better place each week by doing something nice and building that muscle just like a brain cell or a bicep. We have a new winner and we go to Canada and Kasley Killam, a contributor at CNBC, “In my senior year at Queen’s University in Canada — where I studied psychology before earning a master’s in public health at Harvard — I decided to conduct a personal experiment: I’d do an act of kindness every day for 108 days, about three and a half months…On the 100th day, a friend and I stood at the entrance to the college library with signs I’d made that said, “Feeling stressed about exams? Have a free hug!” I felt reluctant at first. After all, I was feeling stressed about exams, not to mention nervous about putting myself out there.
Several hours and hundreds of hugs later, I was on cloud nine. The energy from so many positive interactions vibrated through my body.” The thought of hugging strangers makes me want to reach for the Dramamine, but as a tragic marksman once told Marky Mark “The world needs plenty of bartenders.” Well, the world needs more nice people and Kasley seems to be on her way to being one of them and sharing her experience with others to inspire some nice in them. Great work Kasley, if we should ever meet I’ll will buy you a Molson, but let’s keeps our hugs to ourselves.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading Thursday …at 39,134.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …at 4.25%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $85.79 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at $2,372/oz.
The price of silver is … at a $30.77 /oz.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.