Looking Backwards …
LB #1
Unemployment when Joe Biden took was over 6.4% now it is 4.1%. The S&P 500 was around 3,800 and now it is 6,000 so an increase of about 55%. The war in Afghanistan is over. Peace has been brokered in Gaza. Inflation, as we know, acts with a lag to monetary policy and 3 months into Biden’s term the inflation was already at 4.2% and it peaked 18 months into his term at 9.1% and he has done a remarkable job fighting inflation while bringing unemployment down. It is now 2.9%. When he took over power, the capital was being overrun, the government was on the verge of losing control and he brought calm, stability, and experience to clean up the mess that was left after a political newbie left a burning and rioting Washington. Literally. Now if you believe that I have a ski condo to sell you just outside of Wichita, it’s priced to move, but it did all happen but let’s not confuse causation with correlation shall we? Today we celebrate the last day in office of Scranton Joe Biden. That is a cause for celebration. The last day in office part not Joe Biden. However, this is the hand he was dealt. Let’s not sugar coat it one way or the other. I won’t play revisionist history with Don saying he left the greatest economy for Biden to inherit. He did not. He didn’t leave the office or the presidency or the country in a good spot, period. Now, he gets another chance. Let’s hope he performs better than he did last time. If memory serves, he was anti-Elon, anti-TikTok, anti-crypto, didn’t build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, didn’t stop the war in Afghanistan, and lost manufacturing jobs versus bringing them back. Those were his positions then. He seems to have done a 180, let’s hope his performance does the same.
The best way for this country to help itself and not expect a president to do it has been introduced in Congress. This from Stacey Robinson at the Epoch Times via ZeroHedge, “Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) have introduced joint resolutions in the Senate and House respectively, calling for congressional term limits. Bravo! The amendment would limit House members to three terms of two years, and Senate members to two terms of six years.
However, terms that began before the amendment’s ratification are not counted towards the total number. This has relevance for Cruz, who began a third term in the Senate this year.
“The Founding Fathers envisioned a government of citizen legislators who would serve for a few years and return home, not a government run by a small group of special interests and lifelong, permanently entrenched politicians who prey upon the brokenness of Washington to govern in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the American people,” Cruz said.”
This is what a Merry Christmas would look like for the nation.
LB #2
Now, one of the things that Don Trump did well in his first term was deregulate. I think his plan is to do that again. This is a good thing as the acronyms like the SEC, FDA, EPA are agencies and they do not make laws. The government needs to get out of business because they only make things worse. Here is a great example from Jon Brookin at ARS Technica, “New York started enforcing its Affordable Broadband Act yesterday after a legal battle of nearly four years. Broadband lobby groups convinced a federal judge to block the law in 2021, but a US appeals court reversed the ruling in April 2024, and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case last month.
The law requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers in New York to offer $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds. The plans only have to be offered to households that meet income eligibility requirements, such as qualifying for the National School Lunch Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Medicaid.”
I’m sorry but being poor doesn’t entitle you to stuff that other people have to provide. This isn’t socialism, New York. So, what happened? Brookin tells us, “AT&T has stopped offering its 5G home Internet service in New York instead of complying with a new state law that requires ISPs to offer $15 or $20 plans to people with low incomes.”
That’s what happens.
LB #3
We are seeing more pipeline terrorism this time on the Turkstream pipeline. This from ZeroHedge, “Moscow has this week made a big and provocative accusation, saying that the United States is seeking to sabotage the last pipeline transporting Russian gas exports into Europe, the TurkStream.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov alleged in a Tuesday press briefing that Washington is encouraging “terrorist” attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure. He specifically cited plans to target TurkStream, following a recent large-scale drone attack.
“The US does not tolerate competition in any sphere, including energy. They are recklessly endorsing terrorist activities aimed at undermining the energy stability of the European Union,” Lavrov said as quoted in Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
“They are encouraging their Ukrainian proxies to disable TurkStream following the sabotage of Nord Stream,” he followed with.
He described that Russia’s anti-air defenses were able to down nine Ukrainian drones during the attack which targeted part of TurkStream’s infrastructure…Following Ukraine’s refusal to renew a key transit contract with Moscow which expired by close of 2024, the TurkStream pipeline remains the only route carrying Russian gas into the European Union…Some of the energy hubs hit were hundreds of miles from the front line. Crucially multiple US-supplied ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles were used.”
Lavarov is right. The US hates competition and the US is reducing the Russian’s ability to sell that gas as it destroys their pipelines. Those are also the weapons that Russia said were a provocation to war with their country. We have talked about how the US is making a market for their gas in Europe and that means removing Russia. That is what this war is all about.
Leo Hohmann has an interesting viewpoint on his substack, “Don’t buy the hypocritical and self-righteous lies so prevalent throughout the Western media, including much of the conservative media. The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with democracy. It’s being fought for the sole purpose of detaching Putin from his position in control of a vast store of natural gas, oil, gold, uranium, and other valuable natural resources that the West wants to control and profit from. They can’t profit from it as long as Putin is in charge of Russia. And the last thing Washington wants to see is Putin plowing those oil and gas profits into his military/defense/industrial sector at a time when the West is seeking to eliminate so-called “fossil fuels” and convert to unreliable, less efficient and more expensive wind and solar energy.
The Kremlin on Monday also accused the United States of “destabilizing” the world energy market through fresh sanctions on Russian oil producers.
The United States and Britain on Friday announced sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, including oil giant Gazprom Neft and 180 ships it says are part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet.”
It will be interesting tomorrow to see how relations between Russia and the US might differ. Trump wants to dill baby drill and if he does, he will need new markets to sell into. It would seem Biden has set him up for that market.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
While America and Russia play gas station roulette to Europe, the Europeans are suffering. This from Charles Kennedy from Oilprice.com, “Greece is urging the EU to move faster to address the high power and natural gas prices in the bloc that undermine its competitiveness alongside burdening households, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen seen by Bloomberg News.
European wholesale electricity prices jumped in November to the highest level in 20 months, additionally burdening the key industries in major economies that had just started to recover from the 2022 energy crisis. Major economies in Western Europe – Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy, have seen a surge in energy costs…Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania have already called on the EU to discuss measures to relieve the high prices.”
I have an idea. How about you call up Vladamir and say, we would like our cheap gas back? This is what makes this so weird. The answer for them is so easy. I guess the US state department makes it unpalatable some other way. I just can’t think of anything more important to a nation and its economy than an economical source of energy.
Pierre Goselin writes at the notrickszone, “How’s the Green New Deal working out in Germany? Not very well at all.
Firstly, Germany has been in recession for almost 2 years now – thanks mostly to the policies of Economics Minster Robert Habeck (Green Party), who incidentally has no education in economics, business or finance. The guy just doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Secondly, German energy prices are among the most expensive in the world, and the German power supply has become more unstable than ever. Germany is now in a rapid deindustrialization tailspin.
Another indicator that the Green New Deal is faltering badly: sales of new electric cars have plummeted 27.5%”
If the demand for petrol cars goes up and they don’t have a reliable source of energy then what are they to do? You won’t believe what they are doing now. This from Thomas Brooke at RMX, “Germany is importing huge volumes of nuclear-generated electricity due to recent unfavorable weather for renewable energy production — placing the left-wing government’s decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants firmly under the spotlight in the lead-up to next month’s federal elections.
Rather than producing its own clean nuclear energy, Berlin is importing electricity from France at a far higher cost this week as winter grips the nation with colder temperatures, overcast skies, and weak winds drastically reducing solar and wind power generation.
“Friday is a very weak day. There will also be little wind on Saturday. Monday will be almost a total loss for wind energy. Tuesday will also be difficult. The high-pressure system is extremely stable,” warned weather expert Karsen Brandt from Donnerwetter.de, as cited by Bild.
With high energy demand but insufficient green electricity, Germany’s grid operators have had to resort to importing energy at a premium — primarily from France, where nuclear power plants are running at full capacity.”
Germans are known for efficiency and engineering prowess. The population must be furious at the elementary idiocy being shown by their government leaders. I guess that is why they have elections next month and are throwing the bums out. This seems to be a pattern around the globe isn’t it. Hurray for the people.
Another country just announced that they will be getting on board with buying more US fossil fuels, South Korea. This from ZeroHedge, “South Korea is looking at a plan to purchase more US oil and gas to diversify its energy sources, and also ‘potentially head off the threat of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs,’ Bloomberg reports. South Korea is heavily dependent on exports to drive its economic growth – with the US being one of its top trading partners.
The move comes after Trump promised an array of protectionist policies – including universal tariffs – to try and reduce an out-of-control US trade deficit with other nations.
South Korea, the world’s third-largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, follows several other nations who are looking at boosting their purchases of US fossil fuels, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the EU.”
Remind me again what just happened in South Korea? Oh yeah, they just removed their leader. Or did we remove it for them like we did in Ukraine in 2014. Now they are buying our fuel. Got it. What a coincidence. I’m sure it isn’t as cheap as where they are currently getting it, or they would be buying it from us currently.
LF#2
Let’s move domestic and look at what is happening in the real estate market. The 10-year bond yield has risen 100 basis points since the Fed started cutting rates. The mortgage rates are at 7% and this makes housing unaffordable for many, but the housing inventory is starting to pile up. Julie Gerstein writes for the New York Post, “The increase in newly listed homes contributed to an overall increase in inventory on the market across the country. On a national level, there were 22% more homes available in 2024 than in 2023…Home Builders Weekly, which tracks new-construction projects in Florida, reported that in 2024, there was a 10% year-over-year increase in new-construction permits—with Northeast Florida seeing a 25% increase year over year.”
We can see the price discrepancy between what sellers think they are worth and what they are actually worth by looking at the stock prices of real estate companies. Carol Ryan writes for the Wall Street Journal, “The stock market is pricing portfolios of American homes at a hefty discount to what houses are changing hands for in the open market. Shares of single-family landlords Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent are trading at 35% and 20% discounts to their net asset values, respectively, according to real-estate analytics firm Green Street. Invitation Homes’ stock has traded at a particularly large discount to NAV since interest rates began to rise in early 2022, but the gap has widened by 10 percentage points in the past year.” Real estate has a fatal flaw as well. Let’s say one homeowner in a neighborhood of 100 homes worth $600,000 sells for $500,000. They had to move, they got divorced, they lost their job etc. Every home in that neighborhood, with real estate being priced at the margin, just lost $100,000. That’s a $10 million drop in home equity in one neighborhood. That is 50% less than the discount being traded on Invitation Homes stock price. They own 84,000 homes.
Wall Street is calling BS on house prices
LF#3
I was all prepared today to write about how poorly Apple Ai is performing in its news summaries. This isn’t the most complex stuff, just summarize a news article for us. This is what has happened from Liam Reilly at CNN Business, “Apple is temporarily pulling its newly introduced artificial intelligence feature that summarizes news notifications after it repeatedly sent users error-filled headlines, sparking backlash from a news organization and press freedom groups.
The rare reversal from the iPhone maker on its heavily marketed Apple Intelligence feature comes after the technology produced misleading or altogether false summaries of news headlines that appear almost identical to regular push notifications… Two years after ChatGPT’s launch, AI hallucinations remain as prevalent as ever. A July 2024 study from Cornell, the University of Washington, and the University of Waterloo found that top AI models still can’t be fully trusted given their proclivity for inventing information.”
My goal here at the C Thomas Printer Cooperative has always been to make you think, make you remember, and make you smile.” It’s the first one for a reason. Don’t outsource your thinking.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 43,487.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …4.62%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $80.79 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at $2,740/oz.
The price of silver is … at $31.05/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, what do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind? A maybe.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.