Implanting
4 días hace
IMO if headline inflation goes back up to 3.5 or 4% (and it can) that will be very problematic for Powell and the Fed, especially for their credibility.
Everyone will KNOW these Idiots don't know what they're doing. If inflation started moving back higher the Banksters would be forced to reverse course and begin raising rates again. I suspect that wouldn't go over too well with Trump, as we know he wants to see easy money in the economy and lower rates. So, what might come next? Might we see some sort of clash between Trump and the Fed? I think that would be highly probable. We can only speculate on how that might turn out. My wish would be that Trump would move or at least gesture to abolish the Fed.
PM's should be a beneficiary and the stock market would certainly tank. I heard on the biz news just yesterday that the Street is currently expecting ONLY 1 rate cut to come now in 2025, that's been reduced from originally 4 cuts. Obviously, there's much, much more inflation still present than they want to admit. How's higher rates, for longer going to work for the debt situation? Not well, so that will be another BIG problem for them.
My feelings on the tariffs are that they are a tax on imported goods, so they could be inflationary IF consumers pay up for what they're buying. I suspect if the prices go up, then people will buy LESS, so that might result in less buying and be deflationary in the end. As far as EV's go most people don't want those at any price, they're really not practical for every day, working people and in large part are more of a novelty for the rich to own and play with. I see EV sales going down, not up, from here. American car companies, like Ford, have lost a ton of money in the EV market. I've seen articles showing thousands of Chinese EV's sitting waiting for a home that's NOT being found for them. Over and above that the U.S. doesn't even have the infrastructure set up for EV usage yet. IMO most of this has been a Green New Deal scam, that's made the taxpayers a lot poorer.
The port strike is the workers fighting for their jobs against new technologies like AI. They know many of those port jobs can be replaced by AI and they don't want to see it happen. IMO that's what's coming with AI anyway, machines taking away human jobs. Where do you go when your job is replaced by AI? Do you draw a Univeral Basic Income check or just become homeless? Replacing people with machines maybe more productive and cheaper to have, but where do the humans go when their jobs are gone? We'll see how they put lipstick on that pig in time, I guess.
SeaBlue
4 días hace
Interesting Boockvar interview. Wow, they covered a lot of topics in 30 minutes. I hope the inflation is in the 3 to 4 percent range he mentioned. I have retirement money tied up and I have it in short-term Treasuries right now so 3 to 4 percent is fine with me. Even if I lose money on the underlying bonds I don't have to worry about a 30 to 50% market correction right before I leave my job. I am of the mindset that I'll have to work until I am not able to anyway, so preservation is key until I can roll it into a self-directed IRA. My higher-risk investments outside of my 401k are in things like gold and miners. If FF comes through for us it would be a huge boost to my ability to pull the plug and do something REALLY productive with my remaining time, like tutor/mentor kids and do other work that benefits folks...i.e. - coaching, etc. In an ideal world I would have enough to not worry and be able to do that.
I still can't believe the insanity we saw a few years ago and the resultant 18 trillion in negative-yielding sovereign debt. Just nuts.
So what did you think about his commentary at the end regarding tariffs and EVs? About bringing the prices of our EVs down to match those of China? I just don't know if that is possible because the Chinese have got folks working for slave labor level wages in some industries. Based on other products I have bought from China I don't think I'll be buying such a high cost item from China (completely separate from my desire to stick with the combustion engine over EVs and what I view as the long-term cost and convenience values of a combustion engine vehicle compared to an EV). If I am missing something please let me know - do you think the US would be able to bring our EV prices down to that level?
The port strike is interesting. I was shocked to hear what some of the port workers make. Give me that job! Lol....no thanks, too old at this point. I understand one reason is that some jobs are physically demanding and there is an expiration date on the useful life of our bodies as it relates to work (believe me, I know this one!) and that some jobs will never be replaced by automation. If the unions were smart - and there are some pretty smart folks working in the unions - they would focus on identifying and training their folks to be as technically proficient and technologically savvy as possible. That in my opinion is the best way to protect their people. The automation will come sooner or later, but if the workers are able to adapt then business might be able to accommodate them in certain areas (wages, etc.). If their members are up to speed the unions might find those members can expand their work repertoire outside of the standard dock work. Anyway, just a few thoughts. They can't even get enough kids in my area to drive a bus for $30 an hour so maybe a big part of the problem is a generational change in which people don't want to work or refuse to work certain jobs despite fair pay. What do you think about the port strike? I believe it has been settled since the Boockvar interview. I guess I can see both sides of the coin - some arguments of labor and management both make sense to me.
Implanting
6 días hace
I won't speak to any conspiratory connections to the L.A. fires, because I don't know, but IMO it's mostly just the stupid, incompetence on the part of the WOKE politicans running the state of California. This is the same shit Trudope was doing in Canada and why he's out on his ass.
California is the wealthiest state in the U.S. and it's run like a third world country by the politicians there. My hope is that the people in California, like the Canadians have done, will wake up and put people in office that care about THEM and not some bullshit, woke, ideology. Time will tell.
P.S: Brain-dead Joe's ass was on a plane out to L.A. almost immediately. He barely made a comment about all the folks that lost everything in Hurricane Helene when it went through Florida, Georgia, and N. Carolina. He didn't give a rat's ass about them, but his woke buddies out on the left coast were a top priority. Sad.
Nsnz33
6 días hace
I hover more so around the conspiratorial side and think DEW weapons were FOR SURE used in Hawaii during the Maui fires, and is it really that far fetched to extrapolate they could've been used in these CA fires too? Our government, media, military, entertainment, and big tech is in full control of the special chosen tribe, and this group as Bobby Fischer put it is pure evil. Yes I know Fischer was ONE too, but he was one of the few good righteous ones who 1) renounced his "tribe" kinship and lineage, 2) exposed them, 3) had an IQ of 180 and the best chess player of all time which gave him tons of credibility, WHICH IS WHY a massive media wide smear campaign ensued to slander, smear, and drag his name and EVEN HIS SANITY through the mud, when in actuality he was completely sane and lucid, and still a genius.
Then again I could be wrong and this could've just been a legit fire with no foul play, but there are too many coincidences in this YOU KNOW WHO controlled world we live in to not raise an eyebrow at the timings and MANNERS of occurrences and developments, from COVID (bazar bat flu > lie > was a weapons lab afterall), to 9/11 (if you still believe it wasn't an inside job engineered by the usual suspects who control our government and beyond then..), to U.S.S Liberty, and to whatever other next manufactured event they have in store for us that they'll for sure use as a pretense to segue us into their CBDC cashless digital dystopian communist system.
Ever wonder where the Soviet Union / Communist "Red Star" sign's genesis is? think STAR.
Trump, Elon, Ramaswami, Vance, and basically all the democrats and republicans (with the exception of Thomas Massie whose wife they killed last July because he opened his mouth about YOU KNOW WHO's in June) are all CONTROLLED OPPOSITION trojan horses whom THEY will use to smoothly transition and segue us into their CBDC system.
There is no getting out of this, giving them the money printer first in England with the Bank of England in 1694 (then Rothschild took it over in the 1750s) then the Federal Reserve in 1913 and then every other central bank that spawned ever since was like handing Satan himself something holy and good and expecting him to not rot and destroy it.
Unless Private Central Banking is uprooted and destroyed and power to print is returned to the people, the human race will never be free.
Implanting
1 semana hace
You're right. I didn't catch it the first time I watched the video, but go to about 10:20 into the video and he talks about raising $60+ million from selling assets in the portfolio, then he says they've had to raise equity through dilution AND MAY HAVE TO DO MORE.
That didn't take very long did it. Was it on the year end webinar he was talking about raising equity through selling more from the portfolio and not doing more share dilution? I guess he's forgotten about what he said on the webinar. That's exactly why Dan can't be believed. I know at the end of the day Keith is calling the shots, but IMO the more continued share dilution, the more our share price tanks.
I don't know if Keith is smart enough to know how low the share price can go with any continued dilution, but IMO if they keep diluting the price will keep dropping.
I agree with You. Sell assets from the portfolio if necessary and hold off on continued share dilution. Let's see what happens.
Implanting
1 semana hace
IMO the time is rapidly approaching getting right, especially with our share price down here where it is. I'm certainly not advocating giving anything away for cheap, but without knowing what's being discussed behind closed doors, our share price continues to get cheaper by the day. That's not good.
If we are currently talking to interested JV partners, they know what we have and what it's worth. Obviously, they want to buy in on the cheap if they can and we want to get as much as we can. I don't really buy into the claim that the "market" is bad. We have two exceptional properties in tier 1 districts that the Big Boys want to buy into. IMO this all comes down to what Keith is willing to take for someone to partner with us.
Initially, I want to see some sort of partnership, not a buy-out, because IMO a JV partnership will put us where we need to be for at least the next couple of years or until we see better sentiment come in the mining sector. I hope this is what our management is envisioning also.
Implanting
1 semana hace
Jim Grant is a very wise man and he's been around a long time. He knows what's happening with the shortcomings of the Fed and that this is eventually coming home to roost. Grant also is a closet gold bull and likes sound money.
IMO what he said about the affluent parent giving the kids 20 million to go get drunk on could be a veiled reference to Von Mises' "Crack up boom" theory. They're basically spending money like there's no tomorrow to keep the wheels from coming off the car. We'll see the fiat money printing ramp back up when they finally run out of road, but as we can see now with all the debt that's been created the bond market is NOT allowing the Fed to drop rates without causing the 10-year treasury to rise. This is a very big problem for them, because it signals some sort of reality coming back into the market and that the Fed and government don't have "carte blanche" to print money going forward because of the debt and elevated inflation it's causing. I believe this is also what Peter Schiff has been advocating to happen.
The debt that you referenced taken out at 0% is going to have to be refinanced at much higher levels going forward and that's supposed to begin in earnest this year. That's going to be a nightmare for the overall economy.
Do I think the Fed will change course under Trump? Frankly, I don't think they can just drop rates as a matter of course going forward and they know it now. Trump's tariff agenda is inherently inflationary because it could likely cause supply chain shortages, which could be inflationary in itself. I think Trump wants to see China continue to hurt economically and the tariffs will most likely do that. We know if prices continue to rise then spending on those things will fall off. That should slow down all the world economies going forward.
You would think since Trump got elected the price of oil might have dropped, but that's not the case, it's actually gone up. That may change as oil supply gets more plentiful going forward, but we're not seeing it now. IMO the mining sector should benefit greatly once the Woke Progressive crowd is out of office. Their regulatory agenda has greatly held back the sector, hopefully that changes in Canada.
SeaBlue
1 semana hace
Very interesting commentary by Jim Grant. I liked his affluent parent analogy in the last 1/3 of the video - affluent parent giving their kid 20 million dollars and saying
Here, go drink yourself to death or something akin to that. He also mentioned something Jim Rickards has harped on over the years - the mathematical models used by the Fed don't always work.
So do you think the Fed will change course under Trump? I don't, because a pullback in free money will probably result in economic contraction, which would hurt Trump in the eyes of the public. Trump will want the money spigot to remain open and for business-friendly tax policies to be passed to stimulate economic activity and maybe bring some jobs back to the US. All the recent presidents - Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden - have had crazy money creation during their terms. I don't see that stopping under Trump. What do you think? Will Trump at some point ease up on the monetary madness?
Think about what Jim Grant discussed - all that debt at 0 percent yield. What he did not bring up are the pension funds and other funds who bought into that debt. I believe we probably discussed this on this board in the past, but think about the position of the pension fund managers. You have to at least partially invest in "safe" assets. So you put money into the zero yield bonds. Your pension funds models are reliant on, say, a 6 or 7% yearly return on funds, which you're not getting. On top of that, for retired folks the COLA keeps increasing due to inflation. As yields rise while you're being paid zero, the bond values decrease. Upon final redemption you've received no yield, your underlying asset is worth less, your outlays have increased due to inflation/COLAs and you have to make up for that. If anyone can poke holes in this please educate me. To me it does not seem like a rosy picture for pension funds. Don't even get me started on social security. Lol. I'm confident I'll get hosed on that one at some point in time.
That being said, the right business-friendly tax policies could really help stimulate activity and would help our investment in FF. Ok, maybe not directly, but I would argue reductions in fuel cost alone would free up a lot of funds for major producers to acquire or partner on our assets. In other areas, a lot would ride on what our brothers up north get through parliament. For example, equipment write-offs/write-downs, credits for various purchases/activities, etc. I would imagine the mining climate would improve under a more moderate government.