Looking Backwards …
LB #1
The layoffs have begun at Boeing. 17,000 workers were fired as the plane maker goes through a strike. If they are no longer building planes, they need less people and obviously they need to conserve cash. They have offered 30% to the workers and they were turned down according to Steve Coogan at My Northwest. Remember that the dockworkers just got 62% so the stakes are high, and the two sides don’t seem to be that close to working things out.
These airlines have got to be getting concerned as well as their orders are now starting to be pushed back further and further. The problem with a global duopoly is that as more people get discretionary income and start flying, the airlines need to add routes. The other alternative is for the economy to go into recession where people aren’t flying as often, or the price of flights goes up and the number of people that are flying goes down again.
The stock of Boeing is also being watched very carefully because Boeing is obviously too big to fail but not too big for a bailout. With the judgments that the company had to pay out over the 737 crashes and now the cash burn it is experiencing now, the company has credit issues. Coogan writes, “Also this week, S&P Global Ratings put Boeing Co. on its “CreditWatch Negative” list, citing increased financial risk because of the strike.
“We estimate the company will incur a cash outflow of approximately $10 billion in 2024, due in part to working capital buildup to support manufacturing process overhaul and costs associated with the strike,” S&P wrote.
The addition to S&P’s CreditWatch means there is an increased likelihood of a credit downgrade, which could make it more expensive for the company to borrow money.”
It looks like flying will be more expensive in the future, like everything else.
LB #2
“The only two things in life that make it worth living is guitars that tune good and firm feeling women.” With apologies to Waylin Jennings, we are finding out actually living is a little more difficult than worth living. Lest I sound like a country song, I want to remind everyone how easy it is to live and how little we actually need. We need water, shelter, food, heat, etc. Those basic things were taken away by Helene and all the digital apps in the world didn’t help a damn bit. This from Jeffrey Tucker at the Epoch Times vis ZeroHedge, “Imagine a time when it all goes down, not for an hour or day but for weeks. Or months. This is precisely what people in areas most affected by Hurricane Helene experience. As is well known, FEMA has been underperforming, but more importantly, it has attempted to stop private efforts in multiple documented instances. Elon Musk had to take to social media to beg the government to let him offer free internet to people because all other options died.
The money died. Credit cards stopped working. ATMs were dead. All communications came to a halt. The only way to transact was through cash, silver, gold, or barter. Electric cars could not be charged. The locks on doors seized up. You could not access your bank. The internet was gone in a flash. In short, the whole of the 21st century vanished in an instant.
The only path out of this mess was with old technology. Gasoline. Generators. Matches and candles. Internal combustion. Radios with hand cranks. Cash. Books on physical paper. Paper maps. Thermometers. Blankets. Firewood. In the end, survival depended on analogue things and analogue skills. For all the methods in which we’ve tried to reinvent the world in ways that are not dependent on “fossil fuels,” know-how, and elbow grease, it just keeps reverting.”
We live in a digital world of devices and technology, but that can all go away in a flash of lightning and a strong downpour. I’d make sure that your Mother Nature App was downloaded with some essentials, and you won’t find them at the App store.
LB #3
I loved having discussions during Covid about employee empowerment and how today’s employees simply wouldn’t stand for going in to work every day. They would simply quit and find another job that didn’t require it. Well, it turns out the employer has solved that for them as they have simply started firing them. Amazon, Wall Street, and now Dell has required in office 5 day a week jobs. Companies must be getting assured that their employees aren’t going to quit because Dell did it with two days’ notice. This is what the headlines said. But this is what Polly Thompson discovered for Business Insider, “In February, the company told all US employees to choose between hybrid or remote work, with the caveat that remote workers wouldn’t be eligible for promotions or role changes. Starting in May, hybrid workers were required to be in the office 39 days a quarter, roughly three days a week.
Attendance was tracked, but the system was flexible in practice, and many ended up leaving at lunchtime, Dell workers told Business Insider.
However, on September 26, the company’s sales team received a memo from executives: From the following Monday, they’d be expected to be in the office five days a week.
“The expectation is that ALL Global Sales team members who can work from a Dell office be on-site five days a week, regardless of role,” Bill Scannell and John Byrne, the company’s sales chiefs, told staff in the internal memo seen by BI. It was sent on a Thursday, giving staff notice of two working days.
Some parents and other caregivers on the sales team told BI that the lack of notice sparked panic.
In June, BI reported that nearly half of Dell’s US workforce had opted to remain remote. Workforce reductions since then may have changed that balance, but BI’s sources said that many of their team members were still remote and did not live near an office.
One remote worker in a technical role said she would have no choice but to quit if Dell’s five-day RTO policy was extended to remote workers.
“I cannot move close to a Dell office for family reasons, and so they would be forcing my hand to quit,” the worker said.
“It’s very disappointing that a company such as Dell, which supposedly prides itself on pushing a good work-life balance, has instead cultivated a culture of fear of losing one’s job if we don’t have ‘butts in the seat,'” she said.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told BI that as more organizations have called workers back to the office, it’s become clear that many employees didn’t heed warnings that remote work was not here to stay.”
Some people produce enough value that they can work from wherever they want. However, For those of you that don’t that think you should dictate where you want to work to your employer, I simply channel my inner Captain Ellerby “the world needs plenty of bartenders.”
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
Some people might choose the quiet life and leave the corporate rat race alone. Perhaps they are the better decision makers even if the pay isn’t as good.
This from Jamie Friedlander Serrano at the Washington Post, “Throughout history, artists, philosophers and other visionaries have had a penchant for solitude. But the rest of us can benefit from alone time, too. Solitude gives your brain the chance to reset and restore,” says Robert Coplan, a developmental psychologist and professor in the psychology department at Carleton University in Ottawa. “It’s a good place for creative endeavors because it lets our mind wander. Solitude tends to make us feel calmer because it takes the edge off of negative emotions. It’s freedom from all of that social input. You’re free to do what you want, think what you want and be who you want.
One of the clearest findings on solitude is if it’s chosen for the value that it has, it’s going to be a more positive experience,” says Netta Weinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Reading in England and a co-author of “Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone.” “If it’s forced on you, it’s going to be a less positive experience. Although poets and philosophers have written about the power of solitude for centuries, there wasn’t much empirical evidence to support its benefits until very recently, Coplan says. “In the last few years, people have really started to come out with concrete evidence to support the idea that solitude can be a good thing,” she says.
Whether we’ve just engaged in a high-energy social activity or are dealing with something stressful, solitude can provide an opportunity to calm down and process strong emotions, says Thuy-vy Nguyen, an associate professor in the department of psychology at Durham University in England and one of Weinstein’s co-authors on “Solitude.”
Nguyen’s 2017 research article in the scientific journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found this ability to decompress from strong emotions, what she referred to as the “deactivation effect,” didn’t happen when people were with others, but rather when they were alone.
Solitude can also allow us to think differently and more creatively, Weinstein says.” Perhaps solitude and less money aren’t such an unreasonable outcome either.
LF#2
Now we move from the contemplative to the ridiculous. Meme coin or shit coin season seems to be upon us as the stock market once again reaches new highs. This time dogs are out and hippos and cats are in. Anthony Cuthbertson writes for the Independent, “A fringe cryptocurrency inspired by a viral hippo has shot up in price by nearly a million per cent after the token went viral.
Moodeng, which is named after a two-month-old pygmy hippopotamus called Moo Deng, rose in value so sharply that one crypto trader was able to turn an $800 investment into $7.5 million. The gains, first spotted by crypto publication Decrypt, come as investors proclaim the beginning of “meme season”, with several other so-called memecoins hitting all-time highs in recent days.
Popcat, a crypto project inspired by a viral cat named Oatmeal, hit a record high on Monday of $1.45 – up from below 1 cent at the start of the year – as some traders called for a “memecoin supercycle”.
Watching our government spend two trillion dollars a year that it doesn’t have so that money can flow like wine from the government coffers into Moodengs and Oatmeal kitties makes me want to seek out more solitude. How bad could October be north of the arctic circle be where memecoins aren’t a thing?
LF#3
From stores of value that have been around for 5 days to something that has been around for 5,000 years, it seems Russia is in the news regarding silver. Jesse Columbo writes on his substack The Bubble Bubble Report, “The report states that Russia’s State Fund plans to acquire gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and gemstones. Russia’s decision to add silver to its reserves distinguishes it from most other central banks, which have largely focused on accumulating gold while overlooking silver.” Willem Middelkoop has confirmed the same report on his Twitter.
So we find ourselves fighting a proxy war with a country that we have sanctioned and kicked out of the international monetary system. We are fighting gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and gemstones with Moodengs and Oatmeal kitties. I wonder which side and which money will win this long-term game of Gresham’s law.
Columbo is describing the conditions that surround silver breaking out and heading to all-time highs. Gold is up 35% past its all-time highs this year while silver lags almost $20 below its all time high price. The average gold to silver price since 1915 has been 52.8 but currently trades at 82.4. Instead of buying some Moodeng and some oatmeal kitties perhaps it is time to put some moolah into the silver kitty. I’m pretty sure that it will be around 5,000 more years whereas I’m not sure these other two monetary abortions will be around 5,000 more minutes.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 42,863.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …at 4.09%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $79.04 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at $2,674/oz.
The price of silver is … at $31.73/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, a termite walks into a bar and asks is the bar tender here?
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.