You’ve seen the debt load we’re gifting the grandkids. As I noted yesterday, one way to tackle it is by making cuts and buckling down, chipping away at it like one manages the family budget. The government? Since it can create its own money out of thin air, it chooses to inflate the debt away. With all that fiscal Covid money running dry, it looks like the Fed wants to come to the rescue with more easy money. As an appointed official, not elected by you and me, Fed Chair Powell must be hearing the footsteps from Main Street voters looking for some monetary discipline. Just when we see … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2024
Detroit’s Electric Avenue – A Six Million Dollar Road of the Future
Danny Lewis of The Wall Street Journal tells his readers about a real-life electric avenue, a quarter-mile stretch worth six million dollars. Who knew forty-plus years later that Eddy Grant's song, "Electric Avenue," would have a whole new meaning? Lewis writes: Imagine driving an electric vehicle on a highway that recharges your battery as you travel. Stefan Tongur has been hoping to make this futuristic tech a reality since 2010, when he was working on his doctorate at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2019, he joined Electreon, an Israeli startup that aims to … [Read more...]
How Your Survival Guy is Investing Today
Your Survival Guy recently made a six-figure addition to my dividend-centric portfolio. Does that mean every single position pays a dividend? Not necessarily. It just means I favor dividend-payers over non-dividend-payers. On the fixed income front, I have plenty for my age (52 years), with some gold as part of the mix. When you’re in your 50s, you want to build in some stability with bonds. As you get closer to retirement, I like the idea of gradually increasing that percentage. You need to figure out the right mix for you as you build your retirement plan. Action Line: In my … [Read more...]
U.S. Government Awards Largest Grant in CHIPS Act
Asa Fitch and Annie Linskey of The Wall Street Journal tell their readers that the government's $8.5 billion dollar grant awarded to Intel is the largest yet to come from the $53 billion Chips Act. They write: The U.S. government is granting Intel up to $8.5 billion to help fund new chip plants in four states, the largest award yet in an effort to revive American chip-making overseen by the Biden administration. The money will go toward new factories and expansion projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, the Commerce Department said. Intel’s total investment in U.S. projects in … [Read more...]
The Chickens Will Come Home to Roost
When your pharmacist knows more about Nvidia than pills, we might have a problem. That’s the nature of runaway stocks. They pull everyone in because “this time, it’s different.” But at what price? Your Survival Guy’s seen this movie before. Three times already this century, it ended with heartache and blame. No one likes losing money, and no one likes to admit they were wrong. But wrong they were in thinking there wasn’t any risk in chasing performance and yield. Take a look at the chart of the 5-year treasury yield below. That’s as good a measure as any of the increase in the cost of … [Read more...]
Reinventing Food Delivery
Sarah Nassauer of The Wall Street Journal reports that Wonder Group CEO Marc Lore is shifting to conventional restaurant delivery, which will require less funding and generate profits sooner, shifting away from its original plan for a nationwide fleet of trucks. Nassauer writes: Food-delivery startup Wonder Group is laying off staff and scrapping its plans to roll out a nationwide fleet of food trucks, shifting to a more conventional and less expensive restaurant delivery model. The shift is a significant change for the four-year-old startup, which currently cooks food with a fleet of … [Read more...]
Hydrogen-Powered Big Rig Hitting Supply Chain Snags
Paul Berger of The Wall Street Journal reports that hydrogen-powered truck deliveries have been slow, pushing manufacturers to spend more on air freight to meet demand. Berger writes: Supply-chain shortages are slowing the rollout of Nikola’s hydrogen-powered big rigs. Steve Girsky, Nikola’s chief executive, says a shortage of pressurized fuel tanks and electric batteries is delaying production of the newest zero-emission technology for truckers. The hangups are hitting as demand for zero-emission big rigs grows, especially in California, where new emissions regulations and generous … [Read more...]
A Race for Critical Minerals on the Ocean Floor
Yusuf Khan of The Wall Street Journal reports that the possibility of harvesting the seabed is growing in popularity among lawmakers amid a push to extract rare minerals for defense applications. Khan writes: Mining the ocean floor for minerals often seemed like a fantasy, but U.S. national security concerns could be bringing it closer to reality. Thousands of feet down at the bottom of the ocean, small rocks holding vast quantities of nickel, manganese and cobalt—the perfect combination of minerals to make an electric-vehicle battery—sit untouched, as high costs to reach them, a lack of … [Read more...]
Boiled Frogs: Lulled to Sleep by This Market
Run your finger along the 5-year treasury line in the chart above, and you immediately get a sense of where we’ve been. As you can see above falling interest rates were a boost to bonds and stocks. This efficient frontier is a combination of bond returns based on the ICE BofAML 7-10 Year U.S. Treasuries Index and stock returns based on the total return of the S&P 500 Index from 1978 to 2023. In the above, you’re looking at the 5-year treasury before the tech bust and then when it hit up to now. The efficient frontier above is from the same time period. This one … [Read more...]
It’s Not “Greedy Business” That Causes Inflation
Joe Biden spent time during his State of the Union address to discuss shrinkflation in grocery stores, pinning the blame for the annoying tactic on greedy corporations eager to trick consumers. At the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, former congressman and presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul explains that it's the Fed's money printing that causes inflation, not greedy corporations. Paul writes: President Biden may have recently made history as the first president to discuss snack chips in the State of the Union message. He used snack chips to illustrate the phenomenon of … [Read more...]
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