Thursday 30, December 2021

The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed

New England is a lodestar. It shows ordinary people like me where the world is going. It is achingly hip, and green, and averse to fossil fuels and nuclear power. It doesn’t like gas pipelines and will stop ones being built in its own states. It wants to transition to a fossil-fuel-free electricity grid.

The world is going in this direction, and maybe it’s a good thing. But it will not be as painless a transition as the think tankers tell you. In New England, it’s going to get very cold for a lot of people this winter, unless we get an incredibly mild winter, and at some point ordinary consumers are likely to revolt.

I didn’t do the work to prove this, but Doomberg did. I strongly urge you to read his excellent take on the situation, here.

Worth Reading

• Why Biden is so disappointing to progressive democrats. Biden will outspend Trump on the military industrial complex, but will massively underspend on promised social programmes.

• BGS is worth a look, like other processed food brands. BGS has the added benefit of being highly geared and heavily shorted. Obviously, not one to buy on the way into a recession.

• Big Pharma sold vaccines on a false promise?. Sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but it’s kind of weird that vaccines have been so unsuccessful in preventing transmission.

• $OXY looking like a value proposition. I am very bullish about oil, but the actual commodity has just gone sideways. There is a lot to be said for buying a drilling company that will give positive carry while we wait for the market to realize that the commodity is going to the moon.