New World A-Comin''

[Monksdream]

It will only continue...
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
How behavioral threat assessment can stop mass shootings before they occur
May 2, 202212:48 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
DAVE DAVIES

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Mourners gather in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 2021, to remember the victims of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
How do we prevent the next mass shooting before it happens? That's the question Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Follman has been researching since 2012, when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

Follman says the first step is recognizing the misconceptions we have about mass shootings — beginning with the notion that these massacres come out of nowhere, and that no one saw them coming. That's not the case, he says.

"This is planned violence," he says. "There is, in every one of these cases, always a trail of behavioral warning signs."

What's more, Follman says, the role of mental health is also widely misunderstood: "The general public views mass shooters as people who are totally crazy, insane. It fits with the idea of snapping, as if these people are totally detached from reality."

There Have Been, On Average, 10 Mass Shootings In The U.S. Each Week This Year
NATIONAL
There Have Been, On Average, 10 Mass Shootings In The U.S. Each Week This Year
In actuality, Follman says, there's "a very rational thought process" that goes into planning and carrying out mass shootings. In his new book, Trigger Points, Follman writes about efforts to study the psychology and behavior of the shooters — and to deploy so-called "behavioral threat assessment" teams in schools and workplaces that work to get troubled people help before they turn to violence.

"If we study these cases and understand better what leads to them ... that gives us more knowledge to work with to prevent them," Follman says. "I think, conservatively, dozens of potential mass shootings have been stopped using this approach — perhaps even hundreds of them."

[Monksdream]

Been awhile, about three weeks, since I last made a message.

Last Thursday evening I listened to Terry Gross' Fresh Air podcast that featured an interview with Oliver Bullough, a British freelance journalist who has spent the better part of two decades investigating how Russian and Ukranian oligarchs have funneled money from those two countries into Britain and the US.

His latest book is entitled Butler to the World about how Brits have set up a network that allows oligarchs, not only from Russia and Ukraine, but also the world at large, to deposit ill-gotten money.

I am immersing myself in video interviews with Bullough explaining in detail how the Brits have become the enablers to the world's crooks.

[Monksdream]

This is a chart, courtesy of bigcharts.com, of the Standard and:Poor's 500 going back some 30 or so years.



It was Jim Rogers, the famous commodity trader, who was once a partner with George Soros of Quantum Fund fame, who has said, a chart can always tell what has happened, but it can't necessarily tell you what will happen.

As far as I am concerned, that chart has something to say about human aspiration and human endeavor.

Human aspiration and human endeavor are things I wouldn't bet against.

[Monksdream]

If anything, CYNGN (CYN) serves as a prime example of how social media pumpers pounce on a recent IPO that made a pricing bottom. In the brief search I've done of the company's website I also came across a web article from the Benzinga people. The webpage will include irritating pop up ads from Robinhood.

https://www.benzinga.com/money/cyngn-stock/

I particularly liked the description of the company as "non revenue producing." So how did the company get started? Probably from venture capital investors who also funded the underwriting of the IPO, which was on October 21. These investors will own the majority of the outstanding shares, minus what is currently owned by the retail participants and the institutional participants.

Apparently the pump began last week due to a promotion by Jeff Brown, one of these self appointed technology gurus who makes a living, probably a darned good one, selling retail participants his paid subscription newsletter. I decided to subscribe to his freebie email which will always include a video of his latest pitch.

The man is slick, to say the least. He reminds of this Billy Mays character (I think he OD'd on cocaine) who pitched a product called Oxyclean on TV, among other products before he died.

Don't allow yourself to be misled. In no way does this company enjoy what is known as a first mover advantage as it pertains to the AI software it wants to sell to manufacturing companies and warehouse operators. Plenty of competition from much larger and better capitalized firms such as Fortune 500 companies like Rockwell Automation (ROK) which has been in the business much longer.

That said, it is all about the recent hype and the challenge facing the social media participants to keep the momentum going. What is interesting to observe, in my view, is the degree of trading volume it took to move the share price a whole dollar.

And with that said, I will repeat a thought I made about Mullen Auto, that traders believe it is easier for a $2 stock that is being heavily pumped to double in price compared a stock priced much higher in a comparable time period of a few trading sessions or less.

Welcome to the game

[Monksdream]

Cyngn Highlights Launch Of Its DriveMod Kit Turnkey Autonomous Vehicle Solution
8:34 am ET April 21, 2022 (Benzinga) Print
Cyngn (or the "Company") (NASDAQ:CYN), a developer of innovative autonomous driving software solutions for industrial and commercial enterprises, today announced the official launch of DriveMod Kit, a turnkey autonomous vehicle ("AV") solution for which Cyngn filed a patent in February 2022. DriveMod Kit's inaugural manufacturing run started coming off the assembly line in the first half of April 2022.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220421005339/en/

Cyngn launches DriveMod Kit, a turnkey AV hardware integration module. Its inaugural manufacturing run began coming off the assembly line in early April 2022. Source: Cyngn

[Monksdream]

Bloomberg radio has spent all day parading analysts to comment on Netflix.

So far, the most reasonable assessment I've listened to was from one guy who said Netflix has 220 million subscribers so it's not going out of business anytime soon, but the company will have to face some challenges it hasn't faced in very many years.

[Monksdream]

I'm full of giggles this morning, though I shouldn't. The horrors in Ukraine. Tom Keene, a Bloomberg radio host, was in conversation with an analyst who characterized these Cathie Wood type companies as "no profit tech companies."
2020 was a year that will likely be a year Ark Fund CEO Cathie Wood will never see again. But I've been wrong before.

Wall Street and venture capitalists poured billions into these companies. Institutional asset managers and retail participants ran up the valuations to absurd levels. Although the stock is a discounting mechanism it is only capable of pricing in a decade of future results in a single day for so long. Eventually someone comes to his or her senses, and says, this is ridiculous -- and sells.

[Monksdream]

Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG), a leading provider of turnkey hydrogen solutions for the global green hydrogen economy, today announced an agreement with Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) for an option to deliver up to 20 tons per day of liquid green hydrogen to power material handling lift trucks across Walmart distribution and fulfillment centers in the U.S., marking an additional step the retailer is taking to incorporate alternative zero-carbon energy sources throughout Walmart's supply chain. This is one of the first green hydrogen supply contracts for Plug, validating the company's multi-year investment in its green hydrogen network.

[Monksdream]

Chuckle...

Bloomberg radio is currently interviewing a "knowledgeable person" about the world's supply chain problem.

The supply chain is a phenomenon of the marketplace and its attempt to "solve a problem."

And just what is that problem seeking a solution?

You order it online and it shows up on your doorstep the next day or the next 15 minutes instead of a waiting for the plaid shirt you ordered from LL Bean after you filled out the order blank, wrote the check, put a stamp on the envelope, put it in the mailbox, waited two weeks for the check to clear and then waited another 10 days or so for the shirt to arrive in the US mail.

[Monksdream]

Mondays appear to be the best day of the week for day flipping.

Veru, Inc. (VERU), a micro bio pharma, is an excellent example. The company issued a news release Monday morning, April 11. The pricing advanced throughout the morning after the opening bell and eventually peaked in the afternoon until profit taking hit.



What I have noticed is micro bio pharma that release news after the 4pm close aren't good bets the following day. I don't bother participating in the Gaucho Market with the idea of holding for the following day. What I have noticed these tickers tank two seconds after the Webull trading platform opens at 4am. What it tells me is traders who are able to borrow shares in the four hours after 4pm then submit ridiculously low buy to cover bids from the get-go. What I have also noticed is these after the close micro pharma stocks tend to decline even more for the next several days to the next several weeks. What I think happens is the companies, which produce no revenues, stay in operation by making loan deals with toxic lenders who sell discounted shares issued to them until the terms of the loan are satisfied. Dilution, in so many words.

In this particular instance, VERU did advance in price after a brief decline for two days. This is somewhat unusual, but not unheard of for a micro bio pharma.

What I think is taking place has to do with the day flippers finding opportunities are currently running a little low. So, they will focus on what has already run up and return to it. This is hot money being run by the impatient who aren't interested in waiting days, weeks, months for the right opportunity.

This is trading, pure and simple. Zero sum game.

[Monksdream]

It was before I was born. How can I tell? The image is in black and white. The year is unknown. That isn't important.



The Ford F-150, over the decades, eventually became the biggest selling American made "pick up" truck. Which is saying something, considering the power of General Motors and its GMC and Chevrolet truck models.

:Pick Up is an apt descriptions. Notice what is taking place in the image.

Ford will eventually bring to market a battery powered pick up that will replace the models powered by internal combustion engines. This is truly a dramatic change in the New World A-Comin''.

First off, factories that make the internal combustion engines, or ICEs, as they are now referred to, will no longer make them. What does an ICE consist of? First off, there is the block of iron. It is cast in a foundry from a mold. The holes in the block are for the pistons, the cam shaft, the crankshaft, all three of which are manufactured for installation. Then there are the valves. And so forth. The ICE is truly a marvel of engineering.

Don't forget the spark plugs. And the coil. And the copper wiring encased in rubber or a variant of rubber insulation.

And the starter motor. And the flywheel with its gear teeth that engaged with the gear teeth of the starter motor that turned over the engine that produced a spark from the ignition coil that transferred electricity to the spark plugs to ignite the gasoline that was supplied by the mechanical fuel pump.

How long has this been going on?

We come to a remarkable man, Karl Benz, who is credited with the invention of the first automobile. He was, at the time in the late 19th Century, a culmination of what scientists going back to Isacc Newton had discovered about the properties of electricity, chemistry, metals, physics, and so on. He assembled all that what was known, as Ken Griffin of the Citadel hedge fund put it in a Bloomberg radio interview, to solve a problem.

If nothing else, the problem Karl Benz first solved was the horse manure problem in the world's largest cities.

And we have been a planet on wheels ever since.

[Monksdream]

Bloomberg radio has been replaying interviews with Ken Griffin. This is his brief bio:
Kenneth C. Griffin
FOUNDER AND CEO
CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER
Kenneth C. Griffin is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Citadel, a global alternative investment firm. Ken began trading from his dorm room at Harvard in 1987, installing a satellite dish on the roof to receive real-time stock quotes. Three years later, he founded Citadel, believing that the integration of exceptional talent, advanced quantitative analytics and leading-edge technology would generate consistent, strong long-term performance. Today, the firm is recognized as one of the most successful alternative investment firms in the world, investing on behalf of capital partners that include preeminent public, private and non-profit institutions.

In 2002, the team at Citadel established Citadel Securities, now one of the leading market markers in the world. Citadel Securities has been at the forefront of the modernization of markets and market structures, which has delivered enormous benefits to investors globally. Its institutional business serves more than 1,600 clients, including many of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and central banks. Over the past two decades, Citadel Securities has advocated for and created more open, transparent, competitive and resilient markets, both in the US and abroad. Ken is Non-Executive Chairman of Citadel Securities.

Ken has contributed more than $1 billion philanthropically in recent years, including catalytic giving to expand access to high-quality education at every level, advance medical research, reduce recidivism and violent crime, enhance public spaces and support our country’s world-renowned cultural institutions.

Ken holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College and serves on a number of boards that reflect both his commitment to driving upward mobility through economic and educational opportunities and his passionate support for cultural institutions that enrichen our lives and communities.

In the final portion of the interview, Griffin said firms that successful are firms that solve problems.

[Monksdream]

I am listening to Bloomberg radio reporting on Tesla. To get a sense of the magnitude of what is ahead, the recently completed Austin factory ranks with the largest manufacturing plants in the world, capable at some point of producing one million units a year. Shanghai is a problem, which accounts for 35 percent of production. A city of 25 million people is all but shut down with no estimate of when the Chinese kleptocrats will reopen the city. Elon Musk was recently in Berlin for the opening of that manufacturing plant. Tesla is so far ahead of any of its competitors in the electric vehicle business the company will continue to grow its revenues for years to come.

But, at a trailing twelve-month p/e ratio of over 200 times earnings, has all the success already been priced into the shares? There is no question about widespread institutional participation for Tesla. However, Bloomberg radio constantly interviews professional asset managers (other people's money) who tell the interviewers they are hesitant about buying more shares due to that excessive p/e ratio. But does it mean they are selling? Hard to say. These guys don't always engage in honest candor. The challenge facing a retail participant is simple: Don't listen to what they say. Watch what they do.

Meanwhile, there is Mullen Auto (MULN) and its recent run up in price over the past month or so from 54 cents to over four dollars. Not bad for a month, particularly if a retail participant took a flyer and bought shares when they were still priced below a dollar. Based on what I read on the chat forums, Mullen is the Once and Future EV company. Maybe it is. Maybe it will overtake Tesla one day in terms of units sold.

Nah.
Let's examine a ten-day chart of volume and pricing on a five-minute basis for MULN.

The four-dollar plus price tag occurred a couple of weeks ago. Taking that into account the market value has dropped 50 percent. If a retail participant bought above four dollars, the stock has to double in value just to reach break-even. Is it an impossibility? Stranger things have happened in the stock market in my nearly 50 years of participation.

The way I see it at this juncture, Mullen is no better -- and no worse, for that matter -- than the typical OTC stock. Once the price hit 54 cents the CEO stepped up the news release machine. He was desperate. He needed to defend the stock. This is typical of OTC companies. Lots of promises in the news releases, yet in the longer term the company ends up, short on the delivery on those promises.

[Monksdream]

It was John Kennedy who said, "we prepare our children for a world we will never see." It is becoming increasingly difficult. At least that is the way I see it. Those yet to be born will enter a world I will hardly recognize as the century progresses.

Energy. How it is obtained. How it is used. For good and for ill, will dominate the remainder of the century.

he Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that what Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s called “the cold peace” has given way to Cold War II. The first Cold War was a struggle not only of nations and alliances but also of systems—capitalism versus communism. The second Cold War is already a struggle among systems as well, pitting countries that focus on manufacturing (China) and resources (Russia) in the physical world against an alliance led by the United States, which for the last generation has sacrificed much of its own manufacturing and mining to specialize in global leadership in finance, services, and entertainment. To put it another way, the contest of models in Cold War II is not about ownership of the means of production; it is about material production versus immaterial service provision.

The other side in the new Cold War is very good at making things, mining minerals, and growing food. In contrast, the U.S. economy, although it still manufactures many products and is highly productive in energy and agriculture, rewards and celebrates those who make apps and loans—after a generation in which American business and financial elites made fortunes by offshoring industrial jobs and facilities to China and Taiwan.

Beginning in the Clinton years, policymakers and economists of both parties celebrated the shift of the United States to a “post-industrial economy.” In a speech titled “The Challenges of Success” to tech executives and investors in San Francisco on April 28, 1998, the neoliberal economist Larry Summers, then deputy secretary of the treasury, celebrated the allegedly immaterial information economy: “The twin forces of information technology and modern competitive finance are moving us toward a post-industrial age,” he said. Silicon Valley and Wall Street, not manufacturing or agriculture or oil and gas, symbolized the “new economy.” Summers listed examples of this new economy—“AIG in insurance, McDonald’s in fast food, Walmart in retailing, Microsoft in software, Harvard University in education, CNN in television news.” Let backward, old-fashioned East Asians and Germans make cars and TV sets and telephones and computers; America will sell insurance and infotainment to the world.

In the post-industrial economy, large firms regulated and supported by government and negotiating with organized labor would give way to spunky startups founded by overnight tycoons, according to Summers in 1998: “Look right here in California, where millions are invested before revenues, let alone profits come, and anyone with a good idea can make their first million before buying their first tie.”

A quarter-century later, when it turned out during the COVID pandemic that the United States had ceased making many essential drugs and medical supplies and was dependent on autocratic, anti-American China for many of them, the same Larry Summers was apparently shocked to learn that many things are no longer made in America. On March 21, 2020, Summers tweeted: “Thoughts at the end of a long week: Why can’t the greatest economy in the history of the world produce swabs, face masks and ventilators in adequate supply?”

Cold War II may finally discredit the fallacies of the free market globalist economists who shaped the consensus among both Democrats and Republicans for three decades.


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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-coming-resource-wars
Following COVID-19, Cold War II may finally discredit the fallacies of the free market globalist economists like Summers, Paul Krugman, and Glenn Hubbard who shaped the consensus among both Democrats and Republicans for three decades. Appropriately enough, for a financial and online business services superpower, the United States responded to the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine with more or less the arsenal described by Summers in 1998—“AIG in insurance, McDonald’s in fast food, Walmart in retailing, Microsoft in software, Harvard University in education, CNN in television news.” The United States waged financial warfare against Putin’s Russia, American credit card giants cut off Russian consumers, and, in a devastating blow, McDonald’s pulled out of the Russian Federation.

It may be that financial and economic sanctions are enough to force Russia to retreat or negotiate. But Germany, the major NATO economy after the United States, is dependent on Russian oil and gas, which Germans continue to buy, partly subsidizing Putin’s military. At the same time, the world’s largest nation and its biggest economy (in purchasing power parity terms), China, which has surpassed the United States in many areas of manufacturing if not yet software, is in a position to help Russia endure Western sanctions as part of a common crusade to drive the United States out of their regional spheres of influence.

Even the beneficiaries of U.S. dependence on China—Silicon Valley, universities, Wall Street, “green” technologies that need Chinese imports—are being forced to acknowledge that we still live in a material world in which countries can be great powers even if they do not dominate global banking and insurance markets, on the basis of mining energy and minerals, growing crops, and making physical things. Russia and Ukraine together are responsible for more than a quarter of global wheat exports. Russia and Belarus together produce nearly half of the global exports of potash, a critical nutrient used in fertilizers, while Russia produces more than a fifth of the ammonia exports used in global agriculture.

For its part, China dominates global production of many essential minerals, both directly—producing 63% of rare earths and 45% of molybdenum—and indirectly, by investing in lithium mines in Australia, platinum mines in South Africa, and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A few decades ago, the United States mined and refined many of the minerals it now imports. But thanks to cheap labor abroad, excessive environmental regulations at home, and the fantasy of the post-material “information economy,” the U.S. government allowed corporations to shut down many American mines even as other firms shuttered American factories. The energy analyst Mark P. Mills describes the result:

As recently as 1990, the U.S. was the world’s number-one producer of minerals. Today, it is in seventh place. …
More relevant, as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) notes, are strategic dependencies on specific critical minerals. In 1954, the U.S. was 100% dependent on imports for eight minerals. Today, the U.S. is 100% reliant on imports for 17 minerals and depends on imports for over 50% of 29 widely used minerals. China is a significant source for half of those 29 minerals.
Along with free market globalism, the environmental movement has crippled and endangered the economies of the United States and its allies. Rejecting the asceticism of the old Malthusian left that called for voluntary poverty, edgrowth, and population decline through anti-natalism, establishment environmentalist leaders like Al Gore and his European counterparts have optimistically claimed that existing technology permits a rapid “green transition” from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to solar, wind, and hydro power, with no need to lower Western living standards or cripple what remains of Western industry.

But according to experts on global mineral production who belong to SoS Minerals, in a letter delivered to the British Committee on Climate Change:

The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric [in the UK] by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and 12% of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry. …
Challenges of using ‘green energy’ to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years’ worth of total global copper supply and 10 years’ worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.
There is not enough cobalt, neodymium, or lithium being mined and refined in the entire world today for Britain to meet its green transition goals in the next generation. And Britain has only 67 million people. The United States has 330 million. The world has nearly 8 billion. Do the math.

“Clean” energy is not clean. No less than natural gas and oil extraction, extracting the minerals required for solar, wind, and hydro power equipment requires massive mines and destruction of local landscapes and ecosystems. For pointing out this obvious fact, the left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore’s documentary Planet of the Humans was denounced by the organized green lobby, and Moore himself has been canceled by the left.

While some democracies like Australia, Canada, and the United States have significant mineral resources, many of the countries with large mineral resources and reserves are autocracies or fragile postcolonial regimes: China (gold, tin, and bauxite, used to make aluminum), Indonesia (nickel, tin, gold), and Russia (oil, gas, nickel). Half of global cobalt reserves are found in one country—the Democratic Republic of Congo. Substitutes for some of these minerals may be discovered or synthesized. But in other cases, natural deposits of elements that are essential to an advanced industrial society may give particular countries enormous economic windfalls.

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During and after the first Cold War, many Westerners assumed that capitalism was associated with democracy and liberalism, and communism with autocracy. But economies based on resource capitalism or a single commodity crop (“banana republics”) have so often been ruled by dictatorships or oligarchies that the phenomenon is known as the “resource curse.”

To excel in global manufacturing, a country has to have a well-educated workforce, while innovation requires a high degree of intellectual (if not political) freedom. But if a government or economic elite derives its income simply by selling other countries the products of its mines or farms or ranches, what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson call an “extractive” regime, it has no incentive to educate most of the population or respect their rights and every incentive to enserf or enslave the miners or agricultural workers. And if the route to personal political power and wealth in a nation lies through control of the nation’s oil fields, mines, or agricultural estates, ambitious individuals will be tempted to dispense with cumbersome elections and to seize power and resources directly through assassination and coup d’etat.

We Americans should recognize this pattern in our own history. The “original sin” of the United States was not slavery or racism; it was plantation agriculture. The Southern planters—oligarchs who raised first tobacco and then cotton for export—did not care what race their unfree workers were, settling on African and African American slaves only after experiments with exploiting Native American labor and European indentured servants had failed. And as Barbara Fields and other scholars have observed, Southern racism was formulated and enforced to rationalize labor exploitation in the plantation system, both before and after the abolition of slavery.

Far from being “backward” or “premodern,” the 19th-century Southern planter oligarchy, like the theocratic monarchy in 21st-century Saudi Arabia, was a product of modernity. As Britain and the Northern United States industrialized, the demands of their factories for Southern cotton grew and enriched the lords of cotton, just as global industrial development has enriched the monarchs and military dictators of various contemporary petrostates. Southern planters and Saudi princes, like Russian oligarchs, recycled the wealth they gained from the industrial regions by importing manufactured goods and vacationing and buying luxury real estate abroad.

This kind of elite “co-dependency” is built into industrial capitalism. The more advanced the technology becomes, the richer become those who, through fair means or force and fraud, control the appropriate industrial inputs and energy supplies. The genius of the creative entrepreneur in the diversified industrial economy who improves the quality of life of working class people with innovative goods may indirectly create corresponding fortunes in poor countries with deposits of essential minerals ruled by hereditary cliques or military dictators.

A green transition, then, will not necessarily lead to a liberal democratic world. Rather, it may simply ensure that petrostate oligarchs will have to share Swiss banks and swank London and New York neighborhoods and New England prep schools with counts of cobalt and lords of lithium, whose yachts and mansions may be as impressive as those of Jeff Bezos or Putin’s fellow kleptocrats. Generations of politicians from liberal democracies who are yet unborn may find themselves forced to flatter the president-for-life who controls a large bauxite deposit or the junta whose country sits atop a lot of samarium.

Last but not least, great powers like the United States that have decided to forgo entire areas of manufacturing as well as resource mining and refining may find that cornering the global market in insurance, investment banking, and adolescent action movies may not help them in the global resource competition to come.

Michael Lind is a Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, a columnist for Tablet, and a fellow at New America. He has a master’s degree from Yale and has taught at Harvard. His most recent book is The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.

[Monksdream]

What I find fascinating, once I have spent a few hundred or more hours pondering on upon what little I have read has to do with about how the planet earth came to be even before the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago.

The planet has spent billions of years to become what it is today.

When it comes to how the planet has evolved, which I think is the wrong way of describing it, as it pertains what resides within the crust, I think what has happened is simply what has happened.

In other words, the planet evolved long before the humans that evolved who would take advantage of what was within the crust.

The planet didn't evolve in a way so that humans could drill for oil in which each of the current recognized the United Nations recognizes on an equal basis.

It was John Kennedy who once said, "life is unfair."

Indeed it is. Especially for people who will spend the rest of their lives living inside an iron lung.

[Monksdream]

After Walmart announced it would bump the income paid to training trucker drivers, Bloomberg radio has done a bunch of sound bytes about the truck driver shortage.

What does the shortage mean? It means what we think of as long haul truck drivers. The best I have done driving long haul was when I was in between the summer break at the university in the early 70s. I and two physics majors took turns driving my Ford van from Wrightsville Beach North Carolina to the San Bernadino Freeway in something like 54 hours.

In his Wall Street Journal videos, Christopher Mims, the Journal's technology writer, along with other academics who study the US transportation business, talk about the coming shortage of men and women who would be willing to make a decent living, away from spouses and children for long periods. That is the essence of long haul trucking, unless you and your spouse want to drive together and never have children and make a decent living for the next 40 to 60 years.

The reality is battery operated long haul truck tractors that have to be recharged, much less self driving long haul trucks remains a 21st century dream.

Much less solar powered tanker ships as long as the Empire State building in Manhattan, much less the Empire State building deriving all its electrical needs from solar panels.

[Monksdream]

I can't remember if I read it or caught a sound byte on Bloomberg radio. Anyway, it was about Elon Musk saying he needs his own battery manufacturing company. I found this interesting.

Many decades ago, there was the famous Ford Company Rouge Plant in Detroit. All the raw materials necessary to make a Model T Ford car showed up at one end of this huge manufacturing plant and out came a finished car at the other end headed for a Ford dealer near you.

It must have been incredible. In David Halberstam's book, The Reckoning, about the rise and fall of the US auto industry, he wrote that Henry Ford's real pride and joy wasn't the car, it was his factory.

Elon Musk knows the Chinese mainland produces 80 percent of the world's lithium. Maybe Elon realizes the 20 percent that can be mined elsewhere makes his company vulnerable to whatever these producers ask for a kilogram of the stuff, much less what the makers of the batteries would charge his company that go into the cars his company makes.

Elon Musk may be viewed as something of an eccentric. In my view, he is also something of an astute businessman.

[Monksdream]

Maybe it is due to the internet. Maybe it has everything to do with the internet.

Marshall McLuhan, the famous "media guru" during the radical 60s, made an interesting observation: Government by news leak.

In the past few weeks we have witnessed a few Federal Reserve Board of Governors making public statements and granting interviews. This is actually highly unusual. The Fed folks at the top of the ladder have traditionally kept their thoughts about future interest rate policy close to the vest. Telling tales out of school was considered a non-non, a high level breach of protocol.

Recently Bloomberg radio and its TV division have broadcast the views of Larry Summers who served as a heavy hitting economic policy maker some two decades ago, then went to pasture as a Harvard professor. He has since resurfaced, taking on the role as the Cassandra, warning the world that the chances of a global recession are greater than the current heavy hitting economic policy makers currently serving the planet would want the world to believe is possible.

In dire times, it seems the media will always focus an inordinate amount of attention on the self appointed. Maybe Larry Summers became bored with being an ordinary Harvard professor and decided to seek the limelight he once enjoyed when he was a member of the Washington inner circle.

That said, it doesn't mean his views about a possible economic recession being a strong possibility. Nobody likes hard times, unless you're Jeff Bezos, or a trust fund bum wasting away your life playing cards in the lounge of a country club with the rest of your trust bum buds.

That, at least in America, is an exceedingly small percentage of the total US population. The rest have to work for the money spent on energy, food, insurance, child-care and so forth.

We will all know in the fullness of time what is to take place in the next couple years.

[Monksdream]

Russia, China, and Global Energy Markets
Apr 03, 2022 (27:56)

Sanctions go on a whole lot easier than they come off. Daniel Yergin is the Vice Chairman of S&P Global and the author of “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations". He’s been studying Russia's and China’s roles in the global energy markets for decades, and shares the implications of Russia becoming an unreliable oil and gas supplier in Europe. In this conversation with Motley Fool Senior Analyst Ben Ra, Yergin discusses:
- Russia’s economic relationship with China
- The role of shale for US energy independence
- Supply chain obstacles for wide-spread electric vehicle adoption

https://www.fool.com/podcasts/motley-fool-money/

[Monksdream]

Hindenburg Research has put Mullen Auto (MULN) under its forensic microscope. I get the reports in my Yahoo mail. I was already aware the CEO has a history of penny stock scams. I didn't realize how extensive. He also does business with conmen who've served time for fraud.

Mullen has yet to produce a single unit of this high powered luxury sedan capable of a 600 mile range, the longest of any EV out there. Since it, at this time, doesn't actually exist for sale to the public, then this amounts to a lot of hype.

The recent PR barrage, much of it, as Hindenburg has determined, was pretty much bogus, helped rescue the company stock. It has become a darling of the retail crowd thinking it can make thousands of percent profits from a low priced stock that has nowhere to go but to the moon.

I don't expect much from it except as a day flipping stock.

[Monksdream]

The House has scheduled the leading oil executives to be raked over the coals later this morning. Those guys are used to it.

[jbsliverer]

It's a hard thing. We are so interconnected with everything economically. Way too much with ones that are just not nice, and shouldn't be doing business with them. But the almighty dollar has just ruined the ethical focus, when we should, could've, would've engaged in support for more virtuous progress and advancements.

This Colorado steel mill ‘built the American west,’ but its ownership has ties to Russia
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/04/business/colorado-steel-plant-russia-military-invs/index.html
By Casey Tolan and Audrey Ash, CNN Photographs by Rachel Woolf for CNN
Updated 6:43 PM EDT, Mon April 4, 2022
CNN
—
The steel mill that looms over low-slung neighborhoods in Pueblo, Colorado, is a rare bright spot for American manufacturing. Once part of the state’s largest private employer, pumping out steel that was used to build rail lines across the Western US, it is now in the midst of a major expansion and recently became the world’s first steel plant to run almost entirely on solar power.

But in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, the steelworkers and their city are grappling with an unpleasant reality that is no longer easy to ignore: The mill is owned by a company that has been accused of potentially supplying steel to build Russian tanks and whose largest stakeholder is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The plant, which still ranks among the largest employers in the small city of Pueblo, was bought in 2007 by Evraz, one of Russia’s major steel-producing companies. Evraz’s biggest shareholder is the oligarch Roman Abramovich, who was sanctioned by the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada last month.

The Evraz steel plant in Pueblo, Colorado.
The Evraz steel plant in Pueblo, Colorado.
CNN
In announcing its sanctions, the UK government alleged that Abramovich controlled Evraz and that the company was “potentially supplying steel to the Russian military which may have been used in the production of tanks.” Abramovich was involved in “destabilising Ukraine” through Evraz, the sanctions office wrote.??

Evraz, which owns several other steel plants in Oregon and Canada in addition to the Pueblo mill, has denied that it supplies the Russian military and tried to distance itself from Abramovich. But its stock fell by 90% from the beginning of the year before it was suspended from the London Stock Exchange in the wake of the invasion, and its entire board of directors quit. The company nearly defaulted on its debt last month due to a sanctions-related delay in a bond payment.

Evraz’s North American subsidiary and its employees say the steel produced in the US is not going to Russia. The North American operation doesn’t send money to the parent company, and its profits are reinvested in its US and Canadian operations, according to executives.

But in recent years, the parent company’s operations have resulted in billions of dollars in dividends that have largely gone to Abramovich and a handful of other Russian oligarchs. Advocates for Ukraine say they’re distressed that the US hasn’t followed its allies in sanctioning Abramovich, and that a figure with close ties to Putin still holds the largest stake in the company that owns the Pueblo mill.?

“There is no clean money among the oligarchs,” said Marina Dubrova, the founder of Ukrainians of Colorado, a non-profit organization that has raised funds to send medical supplies to Ukraine. Even if he were to own a “half percent, even one-tenth of a percent” in the company, she argued, “Abramovich has to be sanctioned and his portion has to go to the highest bidder.”

Marina Dubrova, founder of Ukrainians of Colorado, pictured in a Denver office on March 28.
Marina Dubrova, founder of Ukrainians of Colorado, pictured in a Denver office on March 28.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
So far, executives and local employees at the Pueblo plant say there has been no impact on their day-to-day job. But some workers are worried about whether that could change if more sanctions go into effect.?

“Just the uncertainty is scary, it’s real scary,” said Rique Lucero, a metallurgical technician who has worked at the plant for 14 years. “We wonder how the war is going to further affect us.”

The Evraz situation is an example of how Russian investment in the West could be complicating sanctions: The company employs more than 1,600 people in the US, and the need to avoid job losses could make officials more cautious about sanctioning Abramovich, sanctions experts said.?

And the company also shows that the Russian elite’s money in the US goes deeper than stereotypical luxury items – even reaching a historic icon of American industry.?

Most people think Russian “oligarchs have been putting their money primarily into these mega-mansions, these superyachts, high-end artwork, Ferraris, Maseratis,” said Casey Michel, the author of a book on foreign investment in the US. But in addition to those flashy status symbols, he said, “there are so many other significant industries that are wide-open for all this oligarchic money.”

A plant that ‘built the American West’
A worker mans the control room at the Evraz steel mill in Pueblo.
A worker mans the control room at the Evraz steel mill in Pueblo.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Every hour, tons of recycled scrap metal are dropped into the Pueblo mill’s massive furnace, with a deafening boom and an eruption of golden sparks. The metal is heated at about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit into white-hot, molten steel, then cooled and carefully rolled into rail, wire rod, rebar or pipe.

That transformation has been taking place here, in one form or another, since the mill was founded in 1881 as the first steel plant west of the Mississippi River.?

Owned by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which grew into Colorado’s largest private employer, the mill attracted workers from around the world. At one point, 40 languages were spoken at the mill and its mines. It pumped out rail that stretched around the region, speeding migration across the sparsely settled Western US.?

“This steel really built the American West,” said Nick Gradisar, Pueblo’s mayor, whose father and grandfather worked at the mill, and who worked there himself several summers during college. “It used to be that the fortunes of Pueblo rose and fell on the economics of the steel industry.”

The city experienced the downside of that relationship when the price of steel crashed in the 1980s. Thousands of workers at the plant lost their jobs over several years, local leaders say.?

Historical photos of a mining operation are displayed at the Evraz offices in Pueblo.
Historical photos of a mining operation are displayed at the Evraz offices in Pueblo.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
After the downturn, the mill went through bankruptcy and was bought by an Oregon-based company. Evraz bought the parent company in 2007 for $2.3 billion, in what was at the time the largest ever Russian investment in the US.

According to the company’s 2021 annual report, five percent of Evraz employees are in North America and about 16% of its revenue comes from its North American steel operation. Most of its other mills are in Russia and Kazakhstan.??

As of February, Abramovich, a globe-trotting owner of the Chelsea soccer team who holds citizenship in at least two other countries, owned the largest stake in Evraz, at roughly 29%, according to the company. But the UK sanctions office argued that he effectively controls the company, which is publicly traded, along with his associates: Four other Russian oligarchs control another 38% of the company.?

Evraz has been a lucrative investment for Abramovich and other oligarchs. In 2021, according to its annual report, almost half of Evraz’s profit went to paying out more than $1.5 billion in dividends to its shareholders – two-thirds of which went to the five largest Russian shareholders. Evraz’s financial performance in 2021 “made it possible to pay” such generous dividends, the company wrote in the annual report, citing numbers that included a big increase in earnings in its North American operations.

Russian businessman Roman Abramovich attends talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on March 29, 2022.
Russian businessman Roman Abramovich attends talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on March 29, 2022.
Cem Orzdel/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Abramovich also has myriad investments in the US hidden through complicated networks of shell corporations and hedge funds, The New York Times reported last month. But his shares in Evraz are in his own name, as are two mansions he owns in Colorado ski towns. A spokesperson for Abramovich declined to comment about Evraz.

While the Pueblo mill now has far fewer employees than at its peak, it still puts out about half of all rail used in North America. And while it’s no longer the biggest employer in the city, it’s still the source of some of the best-paying blue-collar jobs in the region, local leaders say.

“Just about everyone that’s a resident of Pueblo has had family that’s worked out there,” some going back four generations or more, said Jeff Shaw, president of the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation.

How Russia’s war could affect Colorado steel
An employee performs safety checks before steel is tapped at the Evraz mill in Pueblo.
An employee performs safety checks before steel is tapped at the Evraz mill in Pueblo.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Most people in Pueblo don’t really think of the mill as Russian-owned, according to interviews with city leaders and local residents. Instead of referring to it as Evraz, locals still call it CF&I – Colorado Fuel and Iron – or just “The Mill.”?

But the new ownership became impossible to ignore over the last few weeks, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Chuck Perko, the president of one of the two United Steelworkers unions that represent workers at the plant, said he got “dozens of phone calls” about the potential impact in the days after the invasion and after the UK and EU governments announced sanctions against Abramovich.?

“Retirees are worried, will the company continue to exist, will their pensions stay solvent?” he said. “Families want to know, is my husband or wife going to have a job tomorrow?”?

In the weeks since, however, Perko said he hasn’t seen any real impact on the Pueblo mill’s operations. “I’m worried more about the people in Ukraine than I am about my people being affected by it,” Perko added.

Chuck Perko, president of United Steelworkers Local 3267 poses on March 28, 2022 at his union hall.
Chuck Perko, president of United Steelworkers Local 3267 poses on March 28, 2022 at his union hall.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Evraz says it’s business as usual in Pueblo. David Ferryman, the Evraz North America senior vice president who runs the Pueblo plant, said watching the war in Ukraine was “heartbreaking,” but argued that critics of Evraz were painting any connection to Russia with “a broad brush.”

“We have our own CEO, we have our own board of directors … we’re about as American a company as it gets,” said Ferryman, sitting in a room in the company’s Pueblo office with walls covered in historic photos of the plant. “Those earnings stay here in North America, and they’re invested into these facilities.”

The US government has not publicly explained why it hasn’t targeted Abramovich with sanctions like the UK, EU and Canada. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked President Biden in early March not to sanction Abramovich, who has acted as an unofficial go-between for Moscow and Kyiv, in order to allow him to play a role in the peace process, according to two sources with direct knowledge. The Wall Street Journal first reported Zelensky’s request.

It’s unclear how active or central Abramovich has been in the negotiations since then. A Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that Abramovich was involved in peace talks, and he was present at a meeting between the two sides in Istanbul last week.

Treasury Department officials were examining sanctions on Abramovich that would exempt Evraz’s US plants as part of a wide-ranging effort to limit economic fallout of new sanctions, the sources said. A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment about the potential of US sanctions on Abramovich, saying the department doesn’t preview sanctions.

David Ferryman, senior vice president at Evraz North America, is pictured in front of the Pueblo steel mill.
David Ferryman, senior vice president at Evraz North America, is pictured in front of the Pueblo steel mill.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
According to sanctions experts, if the US does sanction Abramovich, the Treasury Department would likely issue a license allowing the Pueblo and Portland steel mills to continue operating in order to avoid any impact on American employees.?

“If 1,000 Americans are going to lose their jobs, that could impact their decisions,” said Charlie Steele, a former Treasury Department and Department of Justice official who worked on sanctions policy.?

Even without US sanctions, the UK, EU and Canadian actions appear to have complicated Evraz’s financial picture, between its stock being suspended from the London exchange and the near-miss in its bond payment. And the broader impact of sanctions can be unpredictable, especially if financial institutions decide they want to avoid the potential stigma of working with companies linked to Russia, experts said.?

Even if banks are allowed to work with the company, Steele said, “they might say, I’m not going to get within 100 miles of that.”

Russian investment in America’s industrial heartland
Cranes tower over a construction site for a new steel mill that will produce longer segments of rail.
Cranes tower over a construction site for a new steel mill that will produce longer segments of rail.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
While many major US businesses have expanded in Russia over the last two decades – and are now cutting ties – Evraz is a rare example of investment flowing in the opposite direction.?

There are a handful of other US steel plants in the country with ties to Russian oligarchs. NLMK, one of Russia’s largest steel companies, owns plants in Pennsylvania and Indiana. And Severstal, another major Russian steel producer, bought several plants around the US, including in Mississippi and Michigan, before selling them in 2014 as tensions escalated over the invasion of Crimea.?

Meanwhile, other proposals for Russian investment in US manufacturing have fallen through over the last decade, in some cases because of past sanctions – including plans for factories in Louisiana and North Carolina.

Most notably, in 2019, Russian aluminum company Rusal announced with great fanfare a $200 million investment to build an aluminum factory in eastern Kentucky, promising hundreds of new jobs in the economically struggling region. The investment came just months after the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Rusal – which had previously been run by oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska – amid an extensive lobbying campaign by the company.?

Buttons are illuminated on a panel in a control room at the Pueblo steel mill on March 29.
Buttons are illuminated on a panel in a control room at the Pueblo steel mill on March 29.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
But the Kentucky factory plan fell apart in recent years as Rusal backed out, leaving an empty greenfield and angry state legislators trying to claw back a $15 million taxpayer investment in the project.

By all accounts, Evraz has done the opposite. Workers say that their new owners have been far easier to work with than the previous, Oregon-based management, whose contentious relations with unions led to years of strikes and labor disputes. And they’re thrilled with the new investments Evraz is making in Pueblo, which have led to a bevy of construction cranes stretching up into the sky around the plant.

“Locally, Evraz has been a great partner,” said Jerry Pacheco, the executive director of the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority, which has helped fund the expansion.

The company is in the middle of building a new $700 million steel mill that will produce much longer segments of rail, helping them compete for contracts to build high-speed rail lines and other rail projects. The project is set to receive at least $84 million in public incentives from the city and state governments and the urban renewal authority, and potentially up to $118 million — with certain requirements including retaining jobs and paying higher property taxes in the future.

Evraz has invested more money into the Pueblo expansion in recent years than any capital project at its facilities around the world, according to the company’s annual reports.

Steel is cast at the Evraz mill in Pueblo on March 29.
Steel is cast at the Evraz mill in Pueblo on March 29.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
?Evraz also just finished a solar power project that makes it the first steel plant in the world to be powered almost exclusively with solar power – putting it on the cutting edge of green manufacturing. A sprawling field of solar panels now lies just beyond the historic mill buildings, swiveling to face the sun and stockpile the energy needed for the mill.?

The public incentives were crucial in keeping Evraz in Pueblo: The company had been exploring the possibility of moving its operation to another state before city leaders agreed to kick in the funding, and Gradisar argued that the taxpayer money was well worth it. “Good jobs for blue-collar workers, those are hard to come by in this day and age,” he said.?

Moral dilemmas at an ‘All-American’ mill?
Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar says the Russian connection to the Evraz mill is not a big concern for him.
Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar says the Russian connection to the Evraz mill is not a big concern for him.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Like many communities across the US, Pueblo is stepping up to help Ukraine. The county sheriff donated unused body armor to the Ukrainian military. A boy scout troop held a fundraiser for Ukrainian scouts at the local Pizza Ranch. A new mural painted on the levee of the Arkansas River, which runs through the city, displays the colors of the Ukrainian flag and a sunflower, the country’s national flower.

But there’s little public consternation or debate about Pueblo’s close ties with a company accused of potentially supplying Russia’s war effort.?

“It’s not a big concern for me right now,” Gradisar, the mayor, said of the Russian connection to the mill. He said he wanted to see stability at the plant: “Those are tough operations to operate and run, and you need to know what you’re doing.”?

“I’ve had people suggest to me we should seize the mill, whatever that means,” Gradisar added. “I didn’t even respond to that.”

Cars drive through downtown Pueblo on March 29.
Cars drive through downtown Pueblo on March 29.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Other Pueblans agree that they’re not bothered by the Russian ownership. As she waited for a lunch table at Estela’s Mill Stop Cafe, a popular Mexican joint around the corner from the Evraz offices, Carol Trujillo said she never thought of the company as Russian-owned before the latest string of headlines.

“To us, it’s All-American,” she said of the mill, listing her relatives who had worked there over the years: uncles, aunts, a brother, her grandmother. “I don’t think the ownership matters to what the people do here.”

Some officials in Canada have called on Evraz to divest from its steel mills there, to avoid any connection with the invasion of Ukraine. “That is actually the way out of this in terms of the balance between needing to support Ukraine and accepting those sanctions and protecting the employment and the … livelihood of those workers,” Sandra Masters, the mayor of Regina, Saskatchewan, which is home to a major Evraz plant, said last month.

Perko, the union president, and several other steelworkers said they would be happy to see Abramovich’s shares sold off, or the mill return to American ownership.??

“We’re fairly independent to the point that if something were to really happen, we could be ripped away from the parent company and run independently,” Perko said.?

Daniel Duran, an accounting clerk with Evraz, admits he has felt a moral dilemma for working for a company with Russian ties.
Daniel Duran, an accounting clerk with Evraz, admits he has felt a moral dilemma for working for a company with Russian ties.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
Some steelworkers said they’ve been feeling the moral dilemma of working for a company with ties to Russia. Daniel Duran, an accounting clerk who has been at the mill for five years after a string of nonunion, low-paying jobs in construction and at Walmart, said he loves working at Evraz, and credits the job for letting him give his four children a good life in Pueblo.

“Honestly, this job has afforded me everything I have today,” Duran said. “I have always thought of this place as being American hands forging US steel.”?

But when he’s turned on the news to see Ukrainian families fleeing Russian tanks, he said he’s found himself getting emotional. “I have my own kids, so it makes it tough to sit there and see all this stuff going on and try turning a blind eye,” he said.?

Sitting in his empty union hall, a 100-year-old Mission Revival-style building with long cracks running up the walls, Perko said that watching the videos from Ukraine reminded him of his own family history: his grandmother fled the Soviet army as a refugee from Yugoslavia during World War II.

“I disdain what’s going on over there,” Perko said of Ukraine. “But my company is not Abramovich’s company in my eyes – and so it helps me sleep at night to know that we’ve got so much separation from the larger picture.”?

The exterior of the steel mill in Pueblo.
The exterior of the steel mill in Pueblo.
Rachel Woolf for CNN
CNN’s Drew Griffin, Scott Bronstein and Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

[Monksdream]

Sad. But it is what it is.

[jbsliverer]

They are supporting Russia internally. They are not our friend, just the opposite.
Article posted on another board.


While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero.

The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past.

To the world, China casts itself as a principled onlooker of the war in Ukraine, not picking sides, simply seeking peace. At home, though, the Chinese Communist Party is pushing a campaign that paints Russia as a long-suffering victim rather than an aggressor and defends China’s strong ties with Moscow as vital.

Chinese universities have organized classes to give students a “correct understanding” of the war, often highlighting Russia’s grievances with the West. Party newspapers have run series of commentaries blaming the United States for the conflict.

Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/asia/china-russia-ukraine

[Monksdream]

The Chinese leaders will make public statements denouncing the invasion and then turnaround and support Putin and the Russian economy.

[jbsliverer]

China is definitely part of Russia's team from the start.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/04/03/putin-next-move-ukraine-clark-nr-vpx.cnn

[Monksdream]

Outlook
Russian business
The war in Ukraine has been a boon for Chinese companies as Western firms continue to suspend or exit their businesses in Russia. In fact, China's top envoy to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, has urged businesspeople in Moscow to seize economic opportunities created by the crisis, like adjusting their company structures and filling the "gap" in the Russian market.

Statistics: Telecom equipment supplier Huawei saw phone sales in Russia surge 300% in the first half of March, according to MTS, the country's largest mobile provider. Brands like Oppo and Vivo also logged triple-digit increases.

Meanwhile, popular Chinese companies such as Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY) and Xiaomi (OTCPK:XIACY) continue to conduct "business as usual" in Russia, while others that have made a decision to leave have quickly found themselves in hot water. In late February, ride-hailing giant DiDi (NYSE:DIDI) announced it would pull out of the country, only to reverse course five days later. Neither statement mentioned geopolitical factors, but users online pointed to heavy public pressure.

Outlook: If Chinese companies continue to sell in Russia, it could cut off their business in the West. Many of the electronics they export often contain high-end semiconductors - or are made with U.S. tools and machinery - making them subject to sanctions on Moscow. In the meantime, firms like Huawei are walking a tightrope, refraining from calling out Russia while trying to avoid secondary sanctions. "These policies and measures are complex and constantly changing, and Huawei is still in the process of careful evaluation," rotating chairman Guo Ping said in Shenzhen.

[WARHAMMER]

Ty!

[Monksdream]

Lilium NV NASDAQ: LILM
LILM
GoSymbol lookup
Based in GermanyCompany profile
Lilium B.V., formerly Qell Acquisition Corp., is a transportation company. The Company is focused on developing an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for use in air transport system for people and goods that offers connectivity. The Company's product is an electric, seven-seater jet aircraft that take-off and land vertically with low noise, which is called as the Lilium Jet. Its eVTOL aircraft is made up of battery technology, lightweight materials, sensors and computing power and propulsion technology. The Company's Lilium Jet architecture is based on Ducted Electric Vectored Thrust (DEVT) technology. DEVT consists of electric turbofans mounted within a cylindrical duct. The Company also operates a digital platform, which provides integration between Lilium Jets and its vertiports. Its online booking channels help customers find suitable flights, make reservations, select related travel products and collect necessary passenger information.

[Monksdream]

Bloomberg radio is currently interviewing the CEO of Piedmont Lithium (PLL)

[jbsliverer]

Russia war could further escalate auto prices and shortages
By TOM KRISHER and KELVIN CHAN
today
In this Monday, March 21, 2022, image made from video, Mark Wakefield, co-leader of AlixPartners’ global automotive unit, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the consulting firm’s offices in Southfield, Mich. Russia’s war on Ukraine is bringing new problems to the global auto industry. As Wakefield said: “You only need to miss one part to not be able to make a car.” (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
DETROIT (AP) — BMW has halted production at two German factories. Mercedes is slowing work at its assembly plants. Volkswagen, warning of production stoppages, is looking for alternative sources for parts.

For more than a year, the global auto industry has struggled with a disastrous shortage of computer chips and other vital parts that has shrunk production, slowed deliveries and sent prices for new and used cars soaring beyond reach for millions of consumers.

Now, a new factor — Russia’s war against Ukraine — has thrown up yet another obstacle. Critically important electrical wiring, made in Ukraine, is suddenly out of reach. With buyer demand high, materials scarce and the war causing new disruptions, vehicle prices are expected to head even higher well into next year.

The war’s damage to the auto industry has emerged first in Europe. But U.S. production will likely suffer eventually, too, if Russian exports of metals — from palladium for catalytic converters to nickel for electric vehicle batteries — are cut off.

“You only need to miss one part not to be able to make a car,” said Mark Wakefield, co-leader of consulting firm Alix Partners’ global automotive unit. “Any bump in the road becomes either a disruption of production or a vastly unplanned-for cost increase.”

Supply problems have bedeviled automakers since the pandemic erupted two years ago, at times shuttering factories and causing vehicle shortages. The robust recovery that followed the recession caused demand for autos to vastly outstrip supply — a mismatch that sent prices for new and used vehicles skyrocketing well beyond overall high inflation.

In the United States, the average price of a new vehicle is up 13% in the past year, to $45,596, according to Edmunds.com. Average used prices have surged far more: They’re up 29% to $29,646 as of February.

Before the war, S&P Global Mobility had predicted that global automakers would build 84 million vehicles this year and 91 million next year. (By comparison, they built 94 million in 2018.) Now it’s forecasting fewer than 82 million in 2022 and 88 million next year.

Mark Fulthorpe, an executive director for S&P, is among analysts who think the availability of new vehicles in North America and Europe will remain severely tight — and prices high — well into 2023. Compounding the problem, buyers who are priced out of the new-vehicle market will intensify demand for used autos and keep those prices elevated, too — prohibitively so for many households.

Eventually, high inflation across the economy — for food, gasoline, rent and other necessities — will likely leave a vast number of ordinary buyers unable to afford a new or used vehicle. Demand would then wane. And so, eventually, would prices.

“Until inflationary pressures start to really erode consumer and business capabilities,” Fulthorpe said, “it’s probably going to mean that those who have the inclination to buy a new vehicle, they’ll be prepared to pay top dollar.”

One factor behind the dimming outlook for production is the shuttering of auto plants in Russia. Last week, French automaker Renault, one of the last automakers that have continued to build in Russia, said it would suspend production in Moscow.

The transformation of Ukraine into an embattled war zone has hurt, too. Wells Fargo estimates that 10% to 15% of crucial wiring harnesses that supply vehicle production in the vast European Union were made in Ukraine. In the past decade, automakers and parts companies invested in Ukrainian factories to limit costs and gain proximity to European plants.

The wiring shortage has slowed factories in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and elsewhere, leading S&P to slash its forecast for worldwide auto production by 2.6 million vehicles for both this year and next. The shortages could reduce exports of German vehicles to the United States and elsewhere.

Wiring harnesses are bundles of wires and connectors that are unique to each model; they can’t be easily re-sourced to another parts maker. Despite the war, harness makers like Aptiv and Leoni have managed to reopen factories sporadically in Western Ukraine. Still Joseph Massaro, Aptiv’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that Ukraine “is not open for any type of normal commercial activity.”

Aptiv, based in Dublin, is trying to shift production to Poland, Romania, Serbia and possibly Morocco. But the process will take up to six weeks, leaving some automakers short of parts during that time.

“Long term,” Massaro told analysts, “we’ll have to assess if and when it makes sense to go back to Ukraine.”

BMW is trying to coordinate with its Ukrainian suppliers and is casting a wider net for parts. So are Mercedes and Volkswagen.

Yet finding alternative supplies may be next to impossible. Most parts plants are operating close to capacity, so new work space would have to be built. Companies would need months to hire more people and add work shifts.

“The training process to bring up to speed a new workforce — it’s not an overnight thing,” Fulthorpe said.

Fulthorpe said he foresees a further tightening supply of materials from both Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of neon, a gas used in lasers that etch circuits onto computer chips. Most chip makers have a six-month supply; late in the year, they could run short. That would worsen the chip shortage, which before the war had been delaying production even more than automakers expected.

Likewise, Russia is a key supplier of such raw materials as platinum and palladium, used in pollution-reducing catalytic converters. Russia also produces 10% of the world’s nickel, an essential ingredient in EV batteries.

Mineral supplies from Russia haven’t been shut off yet. Recycling might help ease the shortage. Other countries may increase production. And some manufacturers have stockpiled the metals.

But Russia also is a big aluminum producer, and a source of pig iron, used to make steel. Nearly 70% of U.S. pig iron imports come from Russia and Ukraine, Alix Partners says, so steelmakers will need to switch to production from Brazil or use alternative materials. In the meantime, steel prices have rocketed up from $900 a ton a few weeks ago to $1,500 now.

So far, negotiations toward a cease-fire in Ukraine have gone nowhere, and the fighting has raged on. A new virus surge in China could cut into parts supplies, too. Industry analysts say they have no clear idea when parts, raw materials and auto production will flow normally.

Even if a deal is negotiated to suspend fighting, sanctions against Russian exports would remain intact until after a final agreement had been reached. Even then, supplies wouldn’t start flowing normally. Fulthorpe said there would be “further hangovers because of disruption that will take place in the widespread supply chains.”

Wakefield noted, too, that because of intense pent-up demand for vehicles across the world, even if automakers restore full production, the process of building enough vehicles will be a protracted one.

When might the world produce an ample enough supply of cars and trucks to meet demand and keep prices down?

Wakefield doesn’t profess to know.

“We’re in a raising-price environment, a (production)-constrained environment,” he said. “That’s a weird thing for the auto industry.”

___

Chan reported from London.

[Monksdream]

Bloomberg tv at 1:30 will conduct an interview with the CEOs of Hertz and Polestar, which is a unit of Volvo that makes all electric performance cars.

Hertz has already bought or ordered 100,000 Teslas

[Monksdream]

Twitter shares are trading higher after Elon Musk disclosed a 9.2% passive stake in the company.

[jbsliverer]

I don't know about price, but I know they have been working on them for yrs. There is flying motorcycle they were stating for $150,000 (bottom video).

These are pretty cool.

[WARHAMMER]

Wasn’t there some news recently about a flying car that worked and was actually not insanely expensive to build? Somewhere if memory serves me, under 100k.

[Monksdream]

Christopher Mims is a technology writer for the Wall Street Journal. This video is based on his recent book about the supply chain and its future vulnerabilities.

Like or not, we live in an increasingly interconnected world.

[Monksdream]

In my research of American Cars of 1958, it led me to examine the covers of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines from that era of American culture. Many covers from both magazines featured artists renderings of flying vehicles.

Now, billions have been invested into flying vehicles. Will this become a reality?

Watch and learn.

[Monksdream]

Mullen Auto (MULN) earlier this year was given up for dead. Then the Reddit or WallStreetBets or the Stocktwits gangs decided it was a darling. Then came all the claims about an electric car that has yet to be built from a factory that has yet to be completed will trample all the competitors in the EV sector, including Tesla. That is how these social media outlets operate and will always operate. Wild claims, combined with page after page of penetrating analysis (mostly word salad, in my view) all intended to motivate market participants to buy shares. The more noise they generate that motivates participants to buy shares the more willing those sitting on the fence will step in to buy because, to put it simply, they fear missing out.

I like Warren Buffett's observation of stock market dynamics: in the short run the stock market is a voting machine; in the long run it is a weighing machine. History tells us an exceedingly small percentage of public stock companies have appreciated substantially in value over time periods measured in decades. They have done so for only one reason: financial performance.

With that concept established, let's compare Mullen Auto with three domestic EV makers, Rivian (RIVN), Lucid (LCID) and Fisker (FSR) for the past month. Those three are selling vehicles at present. The challenge the three now face is how soon they will stop burning the cash invested in them and start turning a quarterly bottom line profit, less the usual accounting tricks companies employ to make themselves appear better than they actually are.



Back in March 2020 up to February 2021, which could be characterized as the Robinhood Era or the WallStreetBets Era, take your pick, the three Chinese EV companies, mostly notably NIO (NIO), which ran from 50 cents to over $60, have pretty much flat lined in the past month compared to Mullen Auto.


In my view, what the Voting Machine is saying is that it is easier for Mullen shares to double from its current pricing in the short term than it is for the other six EV companies to double in price in a comparable time period.

That simple. It is really the sole reason why anyone would buy shares on Monday.

[Monksdream]

The latest podcast from Freakonomics Radio was most enjoyable.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538045/freakonomics-radio

I've listened to it twice. I may listen again on a Sunday of a morning in Charlotte North Carolina while wishing I were still 12 years old fishing for sunfish in Stoney Creek where I grew up in Eastern North Carolina.

Way back when, once the Industrial Age got into full swing and folks moved to the cities to make things instead of growing things, the primary mode of transportation, aside from bicycles, which was actually a recent invention, relatively speaking, was with horses.

Just like any ICE vehicle the world depends on today, there was a problem int those days of unwanted by products. Instead of nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxides emitted from the tailpipes of ICE vehicles, the world had to deal with what was emitted from the tailpipe of a horse.

Collecting horse manure was a problem. The solution at the onset was relatively easy. Farmers would buy it. Horse manure is a source of nitrogen. All well and good. Except it got to a point there was so much available manure from horses that got so cheap to a point the farmers could buy all they needed. The rest was surplus manure with nowhere to go. So it got dumped into the sewers and then into the rivers and lakes or wherever there was available land.

Then along came the electric car in the early 1890s. Battery technology, such as it was at the time, was enough to solve the problem off all that manure. The electrification of the cities also resulted in the electric street cars.

Battery powered cars remained popular up until the early teens. But Karl Benz and his marvelous invention eventually made the battery powered horseless carriage obsolete.

The rest is history.

It seems we have come full circle.

I have often said, Ours truly remains the Age of Oil.

What is next?

Ours truly remains the Age of the Battery?

[Monksdream]

I was in a somewhat silly mood this morning. My thoughts were about making money from the stock markets.

People with at least $1 million to put to risk day trading just stocks. Not options. Not warrants, or whatever else is out there outside of common stocks, which represent ownership in a company and its chances for making one money in terms of its change in price for the shares one bought.

There are roughly 250 trading days a year on US common stock markets, excluding the Saturdays and Sundays and the federal holidays. Let's do some simple third grade arithmetic.

If one wants to make $1million in day trading profits from those 250 days, it averages out to $4000 a day. $4000 profit on the $1millon put to risk works out to a mere 0.4% return each day on those 250 days.

That isn't possible, at least from my standpoint, because I think the world doesn't work that way. Still, I suppose it is possible, thanks to the internet and the digital way of putting money to risk.

That said, we, all 8 billion of us on this Big Blue Marble, can't be day traders. Somebody has to continue going to school instead of quitting in sixth grade to become a full= time day trader because, last time I checked, we may still have a need for brain surgeons, and school teachers, and trash collectors, not to ,mention farmers to grow the corn for the grits we eat with our bacon and eggs at breakfast.

Last time I checked, the corn that was milled into the grits didn't fall from the sky onto a supermarket shelf.

[Monksdream]

When I was boy growing up in a small city in Eastern North Carolina in the very center of the world's tobacco growing region I would watch commercials on WNCT from Greenville North Carolina about Smith-Douglass fertilizer. At one time, Smith-Douglass was public traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. It has since been acquired, probably at least 30 years ago, by a larger company, probably an S&P 500 company, looking to monopolize its hold on fertilizer production (and therefore guarantee the ability to charge farmers ever increasing prices).

One would view the fertilizer industry as a slow but Steady Eddy sector. The companies pay dividends which institutional money managers like (they're not going out of business by any stretch of the imagination) because they can put that free money to risk into enterprises that can generate greater returns on invested capital.

I found this snippet of info from Seeking Alpha interesting:

Commodities
Food concerns
As wheat and corn futures continue to surge, and fertilizer prices ride the commodity boom, some investors are reaping big gains. Compared with the nearly 6% YTD loss of the S&P 500, shares of the top three U.S.-listed fertilizer producers are having a great year. Mosaic (NYSE:MOS) is up a staggering 70%, CF Industries (NYSE:CF) is ahead by 50%, while Nutrien (NYSE:NTR) is up 40% - and the first quarter is not even finished yet.

Not all is well: The fertilizer shortage comes at a time when Northern Hemisphere producers are preparing for spring planting, according to Ben Maddox, Director of Farm Operations for AcreTrader. That could reduce crop yields across the board, with some farmers not even able to get their hands on fertilizer. Supply shortages continue for ingredients like nitrogen, phosphate and potash, while the crisis in Ukraine is compounding the problem, throwing a wrench into global food supply.

"With regards to food shortages, it's going to be real," President Biden declared after meeting with NATO allies in Brussels, adding that Russia and Ukraine are the breadbasket of Europe. "The price of these sanctions is not just imposed on Russia, it is imposed on an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and the U.S." Biden also related that the G7 had discussions on ways to "increase and disseminate more rapidly" grain from America and Canada, while European nations were urged to end limitations on sending food abroad.

Outlook: "This is a really big deal, because when that volume of calories comes out of the food chain, it triggers other things. Not only hunger, but unrest," AGCO (NYSE:AGCO) CEO Eric Hansotia told CNBC. "The last time we had this kind of disruption, it was one of the major triggers for the Arab Spring, and it's because a lot of this food goes to areas like North Africa, the Middle East, or places where the cost of food is a large portion of the income of that population." (8 comments)

My takeaway:

As much as I detest my sister's husband (he did about next to nothing for almost 20 years waiting for his rich mother to die so he could get his cut) he did provide me with an insight that I like to call Biology 100: "Everybody's hungry."

I find it ironic that those three boring companies, around for more than a generation, which have done so well in the past 12 months while this Cathie Wood and her Ark Fund concentrated on disruptive technology, inflation flighting companies have pretty much gone down the toilet.

Cathie Wood has recently said, "give me another five years and I will be back on top."

That could very well happen. She will be 70 years old. After all, Warren Buffett is somewhere in his 90s and his partner Charles Munger is age 98. As it has often been said, it is not so much a matter of timing the market as it more a matter of time in the market.

[Monksdream]

Although he didn't win the popular vote in 2106, Donald Trump didn't exactly lose it by a landslide margin. His Electoral College margin was much larger. I would have to conclude, in retrospect, he won in some key states in which the electorate shared his views. Now we're stuck, at least in the minds of folks who don't care one wit for Donald Trump, are stuck with what the popular media describes as "Trumpism."

One of the major themes associated with Trumpism is the loss of high paying manufacturing jobs due to large American corporations shifting their operations overseas. Reason? Cheaper labor. It definitely hit a nerve. Later, as US President, Trump imposed tariffs on cheaply made Chinese goods. What followed was a series of exemptions his administration approved , including tariffs on clothing his daughter's company imported from that country.

That probably wasn't the main reason why he lost both the popular in 2020-- this time by a larger margin -- but it certainly didn't help his chances for re-election. When you live in a fishbowl, you should expect other folks to expose your flaws as much, if not more so, than your strengths.

The comments Seeking Alpha provided were made by some heavy hitters in the world of investments and finance. Some were more candid than others. The most candid, in my view, were those in which the heavy hitter admitted he became fabulously wealthy from this globalism. The same could also be true for an individual wage or salary earner who has put most of his disposable income into a tax deferred account with the Vanguard fund indexed to the S&P for the last 40 or so years.

An extended period of economic stability that tends to increase one's chances for growing a small sum of money at the beginning and watch it grow to a large of money will do that for you. Based on the conclusions these extremely wealthy men have made, the takeaway is they think the gravy years are just about over. Up ahead is a prolonged period, perhaps lasting a generation, of little to no growth of the money that is allocated toward investments.

Will this collective conclusion made by just four extremely wealthy men come to fruition?

My answer would be "no." But it is a kind of complicated no. The way I answer it has to do with a quote from the psychiatrist Eric Berne who became popular during the radical 60s era: "Although there may be no hope for humanity there is at least hope for the individuals in it." Those four guys are senior citizens now. They all could live into their 90s the same as Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, still putting money, their own and that of others who have entrusted it them to manage, at risk, so they, and others, can become even richer.

To complicate matters further, these four guys didn't begin their journeys to multi billionaire status by first working as a clerk at a convenience store out of high school. If one bothers to examine their backgrounds, one will determine that they possessed certain advantages not every inhabitant currently living on the Big Blue Marble will ever enjoy.

First off, they attended universities, and later obtained graduate degrees. Their career goals were to make money from investing and finance while they were attending university. Later, as young adults, they worked for investment management firms, first as interns, and later, in some junior capacity. After cutting their teeth working for and learning from the other man they struck out on their own.

With that thought in mind, they would have succeeded anyway because of who they were as individuals and the career paths they chose. They had time and youth on their side at the beginning. Not to mention a relentless ambition to work, work, work while others were enjoying themselves.

Today, there are teenagers, still in high school, who will attend a university possessed with the same relentless ambition. They won't become multi billionaires two years out of graduate school, but that relentless ambition will eventually make them members of the billionaire class.

[Monksdream]

This appeared in my email from Seeking Alpha. There is no byline. Therefore, I have to assume it was composed by either a staff writer or an editor. I will post personal views in a reply.

Top News
End of globalization

Shutterstock
The economic globalization seen since the end of the Cold War is coming to a close, which relied heavily on the interconnectedness of national economies for cross-border movement of goods, services, technology, and capital. Protectionism and self-reliance have stepped in over the last few years, replacing free trade agreements and the promotion of economic liberalization. What started off as trade wars and increasing tariffs has morphed into an outright rejection of the complex multinational supply chain, with pandemic restrictions exacerbating supply shortages and now the war in Ukraine endangering food and energy security.

Economist Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute: "It now seems likely that the world economy really will split into blocs, each attempting to insulate itself from and then diminish the influence of the other. With less economic interconnectedness, the world will see lower trend growth and less innovation. Domestic incumbent companies and industries will have more power to demand special protections. Altogether, the real returns on investments made by households and corporations will go down."

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic: "The tragic war in eastern Europe will further momentum toward reorienting production and supply networks away from pure cost minimization and toward resilience and risk tolerance. Supply chain disruptions [also] caused by the coronavirus pandemic prompted business leaders to start diversifying supplier locations and firms, increasing inventories, and bringing production closer to final markets to maximize reliability. Think of it as a shift to just-in-case inventories from just-in-time."

Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks: "The availability of ever-cheaper goods like cars, appliances and furniture produced abroad was a major contributor to the benign U.S. inflation picture in this quarter-century. On the other hand, offshoring also led to the elimination of millions of U.S. jobs, the hollowing out of the manufacturing regions and middle class of our country, and most likely the weakening of private-sector labor unions. The recognition of these negative aspects of globalization has now caused the pendulum to swing back toward local sourcing. Rather than the cheapest, easiest and greenest sources, there'll probably be more of a premium put on the safest and surest."

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades. We had already seen connectivity between nations, companies and even people strained by two years of the pandemic. It has left many communities and people feeling isolated and looking inward. I believe this has exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today." (15 comments)

[Monksdream]

The chatter about inflation creating "demand destruction" increases. Yet no important American official has stepped up to the mic to tell the American consumer to use less energy. Instead, the officials step up to the mic and blame the energy producers for not supplying enough cheap energy.

Americans are so spoiled.

[Monksdream]

The increase in the SPR was known yesterday. Biden also spoke about tax incentives for the average home owner to implement energy efficiency improvements.

[jbsliverer]

And in the Senate will be where it falters. They are going to have an issue with even some of the democrat senators votes. The Republicans have their own bills addressing that to bring forward, but that will depend on how much of voter importance there is, and how much big money/corp is pressuring. High finance definitely is wanting their cut, but banking has so many other cuts from things and the Republicans have suppressed the vote so much and have secured their control so much that it's almost like an apartheid. They've also thrown so many lies and other things up on the wall to rile up the base, they may not need the votes that they've secured up already for this to have a whole lot of importance.

So we'll see, but it might be just "much ado about nothing" and only good for spiking pot stocks, but will fall back down after a bit of time.

[Monksdream]

Marijuana is still illegal on the federal level, but that could change this week.

The House will vote on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, also known as "MORE," on Friday.

The bill would remove marijuana from the list of scheduled controlled substances, requiring courts to clear prior marijuana-related convictions from criminal records. Additionally, the bill would impose a federal tax on marijuana sales.

If the bill passes the House, it will then head to the Senate where it would need 60 votes, including the support of at least 10 Republican senators if every Democratic senator backed it, in order for it to advance.

[Monksdream]

Defense Production Act
The Defense Production Act of 1950 is a United States federal law enacted on September 8, 1950 in response to the start of the Korean War. It was part of a broad civil defense and war mobilization effort in the context of the Cold War. Its implementing regulations, the Defense Priorities and Allocation System. Since 1950, the Act has been reauthorized over 50 times. It has been periodically amended and remains in force.

[jbsliverer]

Vinfast market listing as soon as this year.

https://www.newsweek.com/biden-praises-electric-car-company-4b-investment-thousands-jobs-1693153
AUTOS
Biden Praises Electric Car Company for $4B Investment, Thousands of Jobs
BY PATRICIA MCKNIGHT ON 3/29/22 AT 8:35 PM EDT

A new Southeast Asian electric car company is planning to build a manufacturing facility in North Carolina, creating thousands of jobs in the U.S.

President Joe Biden announced VinFast, a Vietnamese automaker, plans to expand its operation to the U.S., investing $4 billion to create its first North American automotive assembly and battery manufacturing plant. The company says it will employ at least 7,500 workers by 2027.

The Biden administration says VinFast's announcement is the latest effort to build a clean energy economy.

"Since taking office, we have implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing and create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and supercharge the industries of the future like electric vehicles—and we see that strategy paying off day after day," Biden said in a statement.

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The plant will be built at the Triangle Innovation Point in Chatham County, North Carolina, on an approximately 2,000-acre plot. Once up and running, VinFast says the manufacturing plant will produce more than 250,000 vehicles per year.

Vehicles planned to be produced at the site include the VinFast VF 9, a seven-passenger all-electric Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and the VinFast VF 8, a five-passenger, all-electric midsize SUV.

Construction for the factory is expected to start in July 2024, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said.

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"North Carolina is quickly becoming the center of our country's emerging, clean energy economy," Cooper said in a statement. "VinFast's transformative project will bring many good jobs to our state, along with a healthier environment as more electric vehicles take to the road to help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

VinFast car
Vietnamese automaker VinFast plans to expand its operation to the U.S., investing $4 billion for an assembly and battery manufacturing plant in North Carolina. The company says it will employ at least 7,500 workers by 2027. Above, a general view at the VinFast electric vehicle lineup and technologies reveal on January 5, 2022, in Las Vegas.
GETTY IMAGES
VinFast says North Carolina's commitment to fighting climate change and building a clean energy economy makes the state an ideal location for the new manufacturing site.

In 2018, Cooper issued an executive order to tackle climate change. The order included an economy-wide target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

"Having a production facility right in the market will help VinFast to proactively manage its supply chain, maintain stabilized prices and shorten product supply time, making VinFast's EVs more accessible to customers, contributing to the realization of local environmental improvement goals," said Le Thi Thu Thuy, Vingroup vice chair and VinFast Global CEO.

VinFast was founded in 2017 as a subsidiary of the Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup. It's headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam, with a vehicle production facility with the capacity to produce 950,000 vehicles per year by 2026.

[Monksdream]

The stock market, that is, the general market as measured by the major popular indexes, is out of "correction territory."

I do a check each day on the Barchart.com market momentum page to determine the percentage of stocks priced above the key simple moving averages. The most import ant are the 50 and 200 day moving averages.

As of today's close, the 50 day average showed 66 percent. The 200 day showed 42 percent.

It has been said a rising tide lifts all the boats.

As I seen it, a bull market tends to make even the crummiest that never will make a profit companies also rise in price.