- Team Biden: All-electric U.S. military?
- A “green” seven-year plan defies physics
- The 3,000-lb. elephant in the room
- James Altucher: A “winner-take-most” phenomenon
- Shake Shack, AI and vegan-dairy desserts… Manipulations galore… And more!
File this one under “No one’s coming to save us.”
“Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday that she supports efforts from the Biden administration to require the U.S. military to implement an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030,” says a Fox News report.
(We’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.)
Asked at a Senate hearing about whether she supports that goal she replied, “I do, and I think we can get there, as well. I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels where we know that global events like the war in Ukraine can jack up prices for people back home… does not contribute to energy security.”
How unserious can one person be? Or one administration, for that matter?
Ponder this for a moment: The U.S. military is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet. By one calculation, the military is responsible for 77–80% of the federal government’s energy consumption since 2001.
So yes, if the Biden administration intends to move the needle on Uncle Sam’s carbon footprint, an electric fleet for the Postal Service isn’t going to cut it.
But where’s the multitrillion-dollar crash program to implement this goal on a seven-year timeline?
Because that’s what it would take, assuming the laws of physics would even accommodate such a goal — which they don’t.
Consider the electric Hummer — whose original gas-guzzling version you’ll recall was derived from the Humvee, a military vehicle.
“The Hummer needs more electricity than any other EV on the market to move its elephantine frame one mile,” says a 2022 piece from Business Insider — not exactly a rabid right-wing outlet, last we checked.
“The Environmental Protection Agency rates the pickup at 47 MPGe (miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent). For comparison, the Tesla Model 3 sedan is nearly three times as efficient, earning a rating of 132 MPGe. The Ford F-150 Lightning, another electric truck, gets 70 MPGe.”
The electric Hummer’s battery alone weighs 3,000 pounds — more than an entire Honda Civic.
“Both EV cars and trucks are much cleaner than their gasoline counterparts,” points out the Union of Concerned Scientists — again, not exactly a right-wing outfit — “but electric trucks are responsible for more global warming emissions than electric cars simply because trucks are larger and heavier.”
Did anyone tell that to Joe Biden when he drove an electric Hummer during a photo-op in Detroit 18 months ago?
“This sucker’s something else,” he said — not realizing all the implications. [C-SPAN/YouTube screengrab]
Of necessity, electric military vehicles would also be bigger and heavier. Thus, electric tanks and electric armored personnel carriers would be less maneuverable. Never mind that they’d need transportable wind and solar arrays to keep charged in the field. (Or, uh, diesel generators?)
And we haven’t even gotten to electric ships and electric jets yet!
Again, it’s all deeply unserious — but this is the mindset of the people who presume to rule us. They will come to grips with reality and the laws of physics when it comes to the military sooner or later.
Of more importance right now are the immediate consequences of the administration’s “green” policies at the consumer level — higher prices both for transportation fuel and for electric power as summer approaches.
Paradigm’s Jim Rickards says you will feel these consequences. In fact, he suggests you hold off paying your electric bill this month until you watch this presentation of his.
With the latest wave of the bank crisis receding for the moment, Wall Street is starting the new week on a sleepy note.
At last check, the major U.S. indexes are all down by 0.3% or less; the S&P 500 is still comfortably above the 4,100 level.
Gold is up $10 to $2,027; silver has shed a few pennies to $25.59. Copper is off a nickel to $3.82, but crude is up $1.74, back above $73 a barrel.
The meat of earnings season is behind us now; 85% of S&P 500 companies have now reported, and more than three-quarters of them have delivered a surprise to the upside. Thus the next scheduled market-moving event will be the release of the official inflation numbers on Wednesday.
That said, there’s a big cloud hanging over many earnings reports this quarter — one that Jim Rickards hinted at here last week.
“U.S. and European companies have blamed disappointing earnings on a slower-than-expected economic rebound in China,” says today’s Financial Times, “after its sudden reopening from pandemic curbs prompted over-optimistic growth forecasts.”
Case in point: The share price of the cosmetics giant Estee Lauder registered its biggest single-day drop on record, after the firm slashed its sales forecast, citing a “far more volatile… and more gradual” recovery in Asia.
Starbucks… Qualcomm… Hilton… they all say the vaunted “reopening” of China was overblown.
Well, Jim said last Thursday it would be a “false dawn.” Once more, you heard it here first…
At the risk of beating a dead horse, here’s another sign that only “a few companies are propping up the S&P 500 and Nasdaq,” says Paradigm contributor James Altucher.
“Vanguard,” says James, “offers a Mega Cap Growth Index ETF, with the top six stocks in the ETF being Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google) and Tesla. This mega-cap ETF is up 20.5% year-to-date (YTD).
“The Invesco Russell 1000 Equal Weight Portfolio ETF is on the other end of the spectrum. This ETF applies a similar, though not perfectly identical, weighting to each of 1,000 stocks.” And it’s down 0.5% year-to-date.
What gives? “An instrument that measures the performance of 1,000 companies versus one that tracks a mere handful is likely to be a more accurate gauge of the economy and business climate.” Apple makes up 16% of the Vanguard ETF; no company takes up more than 1% of that Russell 1000 index fund.
“While a few select stocks like Microsoft and Apple have added billions in market value this year,” says James, “hundreds of other companies remain trapped in a bear market.”
“Winner-take-most” is the name that many wise market hands give to this phenomenon.
“Unfortunately,” James reminds us, “the shift toward a winner-take-most stock market often indicates a market that is increasingly vulnerable to a sharp decline.”
That said, there’s a niche of the market where James is incredibly bullish right now. More about that later this week…
The good news: AI is useful for recipes. The bad news, depending on your taste: They’re vegan recipes.
As of last Friday, the Shake Shack chain is offering new vegan desserts — a chocolate shake and a frozen custard — made from a dairy-free milk touted as being created by AI.
Shake Shack partnered with an outfit called NotCo, which has a product called NotMilk. NotMilk was created by the company’s proprietary AI named Giuseppe, which according to the New York Post, “can analyze food products on a molecular level and replicate it using only plant-based options.”
As NotCo’s website claims, Giuseppe “looks for matches in flavor, texture, nutrition and functionality, among other characteristics.”
Well, they look… pretty… good. [Shake Shack photo]
Presumably real people performed taste tests before these items were made available to the public?
“Gold and silver prices controlled?” says the subject line of a reader’s email.
“Since Deutsche Bank’s conviction for manipulating the price of silver in the last decade, I have read, and believed, that the prices of gold and silver were held down by the central banks to discourage flight from cash deposits to metals.
“I have read that they can control vast quantities of gold and silver with just a small investment. Is it no wonder that central banks all over the world are buying tons of gold at these prices?
“I’m not rich, so I can only invest a little. But I believe that when the banking system collapses, the prices of precious metals will soar. That is, if the Deep State ever runs out of money.”
The 5: Our most recent in-depth exploration of gold and silver manipulation came in the summer of 2019.
There’s not too much that’s changed since then, except for this: Pandemic supply disruptions have permanently widened the premium you pay for physical metal over the widely quoted front-month futures price.
If you want a one-ounce gold bar, our friends at Hard Assets Alliance will charge you $2,091.44. If you prefer the imprimatur of the U.S. government on your gold, a one-ounce gold Eagle will set you back $2,157.44.
The spreads are even wider with silver: A generic round is $30.66 and the U.S. Mint’s perpetual incompetence in acquiring one-ounce blanks results in a Silver Eagle costing $44.64.
[That said, Hard Assets Alliance relies on an extensive network of wholesalers to keep its premiums among the lowest in the business. Not a member yet? Here’s where to sign up. Full disclosure: Paradigm Press owns a piece of Hard Assets Alliance, so we’ll collect a small cut once you fund your account. But we acquired that stake only after Hard Assets Alliance proved over several years that they do right by our customers.]
On the topic of the April job numbers, we heard from one of our regulars: “Is it just me or does BLS consistently gin up new jobs every month and then, quietly and massively, ‘revise’ those numbers down a month later?
“Not that anything shady is going on, but it’s one thing to massage the data/propaganda for political purposes. It’s another thing to murder it like they do — big-time, every time.
“These constant, huge discrepancies between gubment numbers and truthful sources (like Shadow Government Statistics) are really bad signs.
“The BLS clowns have always taken liberties with their, uh, methodology. Now are they just writing fiction?”
The 5:We have no love for the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ methodology. But revisions are inevitable; that’s just the nature of the available data sets.
Still, the numbers aren’t useless. We can tease out trends and trajectories.
So if the number of new jobs in February and March is 149,000 less than originally stated, then we’re still looking at an average 285,000 new jobs each month for the first four months of 2023.
By most measures that’s still a “healthy” labor market… but it’s down slightly from the last four months of 2022… and down substantially from the four months before that.
So while the April numbers surprised to the upside, the job market is definitely “cooling,” if gradually.
In contrast, the ShadowStats numbers are useful primarily as a reminder of how the methodology has been distorted over the last 40 years. A real-world unemployment rate of 24.6% mostly reflects the sheer number of people who’ve given up looking for work — a permanent distortion that’s manifested itself especially since the turn of the century.
Anyway, fiction has its value too!
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast
