Looking Backwards
LB #1
This is episode number 317 which upsets me because had Warren Buffet retired midweek I could have named this episode Buffet 3:16 in an homage to the Bible and Stone Cold Steve Austin, but alas a day late and a dollar short will get you nowhere so we are forced to sacrifice cleverness and simply say goodbye. This from John Melloy and Yun Li at CNBC, “An end of an era was announced in Omaha Saturday as Warren Buffett said he will soon ask the board of Berkshire Hathaway to have Greg Abel replace him as CEO at year end.
While Buffett is 94 and Abel was designated as CEO successor in 2021, it nonetheless came as a surprise to the thousands of admiring shareholders gathered for this year’s annual meeting to once again hear the investing legend opine on the future of the company.
“Tomorrow, we’re having a board meeting of Berkshire, and we have 11 directors. Two of the directors, who are my children, Howie and Susie, know of what I’m going to talk about there. The rest of them, this will come as news to, but I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” said Buffett, in the final few minutes of the meeting.
In 1965, Buffett bought what was then a failing New England textile mill, and over six decades transformed the company into a one-of-a-kind conglomerate with businesses ranging from Geico insurance to BNSF Railway. Buffett is handing over his reins on a high note as Berkshire shares just reached a new peak, giving the conglomerate a market cap of nearly $1.2 trillion.”
I was a young man when Warren was already an old man and a legend. He, along with our own Charlie Munger, built something special and it was wholesome, successful, and deserved to be replicated the world over. Value investors who don’t believe social media, Madison Avenue marketing, or simply the media’s own narratives can use Warren as their North Star to guide their way that in the end the right way is the right way. Recently, I saw the performance of billionaires’ wealth ups and downs during Trump’s little tariff tantrum and surprise surprise who was making money while everyone else lost, Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway. He is sitting on so much cash right now that he knows something is amiss and if you listen to the old man, you will be better off.
This from ZeroHedge, “Buffett – whose track record cemented him, along his long-time sidekick Charlie Munger, into a celebrity billionaire renowned for his investing acumen and witticisms – built Berkshire Hathaway into a business valued at more than $1.16 trillion, generating compounded annual returns to shareholders at double the rate of the S&P (19.9% vs 10.4%), since 1965, and a staggering 5,502,482% overall gain on BRK stocks since 1964, vs “only” 39,054% for the S&P. His investing success gave him the power to move stocks and helped him strike lucrative deals with Goldman Sachs and General Electric during times of crisis.”
It turns out you would have been a lot better off. That doesn’t even include his investing partnerships before he bought Berkshire Hathaway so add in another decade of spectacular returns and you have a 70-year history of the greatest investor that ever lived. Others will say that he isn’t and point to someone whose returns are better over a time period going back 20-30-40 years. I always smile to myself and simply say, what did they do, buy and hold? Everyone has made money in the last 45 years. If anyone made money when real values of stocks went down 75% in the late 60’s and 70’s and still beat Warren’s record, please step forward and I will admit I was wrong.
LB #2
From the most financially responsible to the least, Gabrielle Fonrouge tells us about the newest fad at grocery stores, ”A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.”
One half of the country is using digital layaway and 82% of those are making late payments. Folks, if anyone tells you that this is a good economy, stop listening to them. Get as far away from them as possible or steal them blind if possible. They are both deluded and probably a recipient of the governmental policy of allowing money to flow from those without assets to those with assets. There is a lot of America out there that isn’t buying anything because they can’t afford it.
LB #3
I have held off writing about this subject for a bit because I wanted to get more information as I frankly didn’t know that much about it. It certainly didn’t pass my smell test. Steve Witkoff seems to be our lead negotiator in the Middle East and Ukraine. He is a real estate developer from New York and a long-time friend of Trump. This makes him qualified to do what exactly? I have been telling myself, why is he there? Remember, when Trump was going to have this Ukraine situation done on day one. Well, this week Trump signed a minerals deal with Ukraine. Remember, we mentioned that the UK signed a minerals deal with Zelensky so I guess we are just butting in there and Putin is also taking over large parts of the Ukraine as we speak and has men, tanks, missiles in Ukraine and Trump is going to force him to leave. I am confused. Caitlin Doombos writes for the New York Post about why negotiations have taken so long. “President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, former real estate attorney and investor Steve Witkoff, has left administration insiders distressed by his approach to negotiating with two of America’s greatest adversaries.
Witkoff, who has become Trump’s de facto personal ambassador to Russian President Vladimir Putin in addition to taking on the Middle East portfolio, takes part in high-level meetings alone — and is said to have even occasionally leaned on Kremlin translators — in a break with longstanding diplomatic procedure, multiple sources told The Post…A member of Trump’s first administration was more succinct. “Nice guy, but a bumbling f–king idiot,” this person said of Witkoff. “He should not be doing this alone.”
In his role as Middle East special envoy, Witkoff has tried to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, as well as a revised agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program.
Witkoff’s tenure got off on the right foot after he helped broker a two-month pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas that took effect the day before Trump was sworn in. But the envoy’s attempt to extend the cease-fire went badly. On March 12, Witkoff left meetings with Hamas representatives in Qatar believing he had a deal in principle. The cease-fire would be extended by another month, with the terror group releasing five living hostages in exchange for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners.
Two days later, Hamas countered: It would release one living US hostage taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, along with the bodies of four others. Witkoff turned down the offer out of hand and the cease-fire collapsed four days later.
“I thought we had an acceptable deal,” a befuddled-sounding Witkoff told “Fox News Sunday” March 23. “I even thought we had an approval from Hamas. Maybe that’s just me getting duped. I thought we were there, and evidently we weren’t.”
No Steve, it is only all Americans getting duped. It’s not your fault, like I wrote about months ago. You have been in the job 30 days, and your opponents have been doing this 30 years. It’s merely amateur hour. You have no business being in this position in the first place. Trump, bless his heart. He is just as loyal as can be. If he ran a casino, there would be no way he would fire Don Ward. Now in government, doge has been a failure, tariffs have been a failure, and the new spending plan will be a failure. New boss, same as the old boss. Terrible decision makers shouldn’t be running this country, but since being popular and winning elections is the only criteria for the job, it is only a matter of time before we get a social influencer like a Paul brother running the country. Maybe they can stage a fight and knock Putin out?
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
Since this country seems to be barreling toward irrelevance, we might want a snapshot of what that looks like. When the Republicans lose the next election, and the Democrats come in and pull a Trump, executive order and undo everything he has done and swing even further the pendulum of petulance back in their direction, the green agenda will really be on. Well, there are consequences of not understanding how things work. This from ZeroHedge, “Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday. At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France.
As Michael Shellenberger writes at PUBLIC, this wasn’t just a Spanish blackout. It shook the entire European grid.
…none of this should have been a surprise. The underlying physics had been understood for years, and the specific vulnerabilities had been spelled out repeatedly in technical warnings that policymakers ignored.
As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017.
Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close. Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired. On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit. And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse. ”
That was Monday when the entire Iberian peninsula was hit by a huge blackout. I’m not an electrical engineer and don’t want to play one online, but agendas don’t keep the lights on. Lobbyists don’t keep the lights on. Politicians don’t keep the lights on. Logic does. Does the policy actually work within the frameworks of physics, science, and economics? It better, because Katrina showed us that you have a couple days before society collapses when the lights go out.
The Madrid tennis tournament was taking place and the patrons were unable to buy anything because there was no ability to take payment without power. As a proponent of cash, I just started laughing. No electricity, no money honey. Money does not rely on electricity, and if it does you are doing money wrong. You are referring to credit, maybe crypto.
LF#2
From one screw up to another. Madison Darbyshire writes for Bloomberg, “On an April afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas, dozens of ranchers wearing tall hats, boots and pressed shirts milled around outside a conference room. The next panel discussion at the annual Cattle Raisers Convention wasn’t slated to start for another 20 minutes, but the cowboys were worried about finding seats. Everyone was anxious to talk about a parasite whose larvae feed on the flesh of living animals. The title of the panel was, “New World Screwworm: The Threat Returns.”
A “flying piranha” that eats its host from the inside out, the screwworm is capable of killing a full-grown steer in just 10 days. It was a relentless, deadly blight on America’s livestock for decades from the 1930s, costing ranchers and the US economy hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Now, after being eradicated from the US since the early 1980s and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect the screwworm could be back as soon as the summer.”
This is a terrible disease that affects wildlife, domestic and otherwise, and can even affect humans. But if history is our guide, and it certainly is here at the CTPC, listen to this from Darbyshire. “In the late 1930s two USDA entomologists, Edward Knipling and Raymond Bushland, hypothesized that the screwworm’s sex life might prove its undoing. Female screwworms mate once in their lifetime, but male flies are promiscuous. If they could sterilize enough male screwworms, they could ensure the eggs laid by females were non-viable. World War II interrupted their research, but by the 1950s they were using airplanes to drop hundreds of millions of sterilized flies per week over infected areas. The sterile flies would mate with and overwhelm the reproduction of native flies, essentially rendering the population infertile.
The “sterile fly technique” was heralded as groundbreaking. “It’s refreshing to learn that this ‘single most original thought’ of our time has nothing to do with thermonuclear annihilation or even astrophysics, but relates instead to control of a fly that bothers Texas livestock,” the New York Times wrote in 1970.”
There were centers for breeding these sterile flies, regular drops, and regular controlled analysis of the screw worm situation. However, Covid upset the supply chains and budgetary cuts have stretched resources thin. Now Texans are bemoaning that the screwworm could join measles as diseases that had previously been eradicated but are again showing up in Texas. I would add irresponsible spending to that list, but I digress.
LF#3
From screw worms to just well screwing, Virginia Giuffre committed suicide this week. You might know her as one of the most outspoken victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the one with the famous picture of Prince Andrew’s arm around her waist while she was underage and Ghislaine Maxwell standing behind her looking on approvingly. That girl. Steve Watson writes for Modernity News, “The father of prominent Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse victim Virginia Giuffre doesn’t believe the narrative that she took her own life last week, and is demanding an independent investigation.
As we highlighted, Giuffre previously stated that she was not suicidal, and her lawyer is adamant there is no evidence to suggest she was.
She was also involved in a bizarre incident just weeks prior to her death wherein an Instagram post from her account claimed she had been hit by a bus in Australia and had just days to live.”
It turns out she got hit by a bus and then took her own life days later. Remember when we were going to get the Epstein files as soon as Trump got in office. I remember. We know that the list contains lots of powerful people on it. Evidently, they are more powerful than the president who seems to be doing whatever he wants to do other than releasing the list. Wrecking 100 years of world trade, 250 years of friendship with Canada, turning our back on countries that were our allies, but the Epstein list is where he draws the line on the limits of his power. How strange?
Perhaps Jean-Luc Brunel can help us discover the truth. The French designer accused of raping some of the victims and close associate of Epstein. Oh wait, he hung himself with bedsheets three years after Epstein did. Now the victims are being targeted. I guess when it is exposed that the British Royal family and many of America’s elite are doing on their private time what they do to the public’s finances during their professional time, that story must be snuffed out. If I was P daddy or Puffy Diddy or whatever his name is I would develop a real allergy to bedsheets if I were him..
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 41,317.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …4.308%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $61.29 per barrel .
The price of gold is … at $3,247/oz.
The price of silver is … at $32.05/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, What did the Buddhist ask the hot dog vendor? “Make me one with everything.”
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.