Readers: Please educate me! What does Rivian know how to do that makes it worth huge $$ despite zero revenue? Wikipedia doesn’t describe any innovations other than maybe putting in four motors (but so what? A C8 Corvette has only one motor and it gets down the road and around corners).
It can’t be battery chemistry because the company buys batteries from Samsung (InsideEVs).
It can’t be that nobody else can make an electric pickup truck because the Ford F-150 Lightning will be here soon.
It can’t be that nobody else can make electric commercial vehicles because Mercedes promises the eSprinters to Americans starting in 2023 (Car and Driver).
I don’t see how it can be the case that Rivian will flood the market before the legacy companies, the way that Tesla has remarkably done, because Rivian is only just struggling to get its first vehicles out to consumers. If things go perfect, Rivian will deliver 40,000 units in its first year (source). Ford sells nearly 1 million F-150s per year.
An electric pickup enthusiast will have to wait his/her/zir/their turn for either a Rivian or a Ford. Why wouldn’t the typical buyer prefer to order a Ford? The price for Ford’s electric truck is lower than Rivian’s price and the reviews of the Ford are positive (example).
Ford is an investor in Rivian, so presumably there is a rational answer to why Rivian is worth a lot (since Ford knows the industry!). But what is that answer?
(Investors take note: I thought and wrote pretty much all of the above about Tesla when the company was young. I think it is safe to say that I have been proven wrong! But on the third hand Tesla didn’t arrive on the scene at the precise moment that the legacy car makers were going all-in on electric vehicles while Rivian is arriving after Ford already demoed the electric F-150.)
“If I can hire a massage therapist to help relieve my back pain … and a mechanic to service my car, I should be able to legally hire a man to have sex with me.”
Who’s the author? “Patricia Thornton is a psychologist, mom, dancer and writer. She lives and works in New York City.” In other words, someone with an elite education (vaguely scientific?) living in an city packed with elites.
Here’s the part of the article that fascinates me:
in October 2020 after not having sex in almost a year due to the pandemic
#AbundanceOfCaution and #FollowTheScience. Avoid sex with mild-mannered accountants because, despite their low comparative risk, it is still possible that they could have asymptomatic COVID-19. But is that level of risk-aversion consistent with wanting, right now, to hire a prostitute (regardless of the prostitute’s current gender ID)? Prostitutes are not known for a low level of infectious disease. Vaccine+sex with prostitute is not the most obvious strategy for avoiding COVID-19.
We were informed that Brexit (January 31, 2020) would cause multinationals to move their headquarters to the EU. This week we learn, however, “Royal Dutch Shell has announced a plan to move its headquarters to the UK as part of proposals to simplify the company’s structure” (BBC):
The oil giant will ask shareholders to vote on shifting its tax residence from the Netherlands to the UK.
Shell’s chief executive, Ben van Beurden, will relocate to the UK.
The company’s chief financial officer, Jessica Uhl, will also move, alongside seven other senior employees.
Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng welcomed Shell’s announcement, tweeting that it was “a clear vote of confidence in the British economy”.
The Dutch government, however, said it was “unpleasantly surprised” by Shell’s proposal.
Stef Blok, economic affairs and climate minister, said: “We are in a dialogue with the management of Shell over the consequences of this plan for jobs, crucial investment decisions and sustainability.”
Shell has been incorporated in the UK and had a Dutch tax residence – as well as the dual share structure – since 2005.
The changes also mean the company will drop “Royal Dutch” from its title and be renamed Shell. This element dates back to 1890 when the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was formed. That company merged with the UK’s Shell Transport and Trading Company in 1907.
“Carrying the Royal designation has been a source of immense pride and honour for Shell for more than 130 years,” Shell said.
Shares in Shell rose by nearly 2% on Monday morning.
The Netherlands will become the first western European country to impose a partial lockdown since the summer, introducing strict new measures from Saturday in the face of record numbers of new Covid-19 infections.
Gatherings at home would be limited to a maximum of four guests, all amateur and professional sporting events must be held behind closed doors, and home working was advised except in “absolutely unavoidable” circumstances, Rutte said.
“The virus is everywhere and needs to combated everywhere. I want every Dutch citizen to be asking, can I do more? Can I do better? We had hoped with the vaccines we wouldn’t have to do this, but we see the same situation all across Europe.”
(I asked a Dutch friend about these situations. On the Shell move, in his view, it was as simple as cutting the corporation’s tax bill. Except for in Germany, which refuses to bend the rules for the politically connected, Europe is much like the U.S. in which states compete by offering special deals for the biggest companies and, in this case, Boris Johnson was offering Shell a better deal. On COVID, my friend said that the current outbreak is primarily due to immigrants in the Netherlands who were, in his view, both more likely to be infected with and less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19. His perspective is confirmed to some extent by “What is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrants and their children?” (OECD, October 2020), in which immigrants are roughly twice as likely to show up as a “confirmed case” (meaning they actually accessed the health care system and got a test) compared to the native-born. The government had previously reduced the number of hospital rooms per capita in the Netherlands as a cost-savings measure and if the hospitals now fill up it will discredit the government’s competence. World Bank data show that the number of beds per capita in the Netherlands is down by almost half since 1990, only partly due to population growth via immigration; the U.S. also has a reduced capacity per capita since 1990 (population growth from 250 million to 333 million combined with insufficient wealth to build new hospitals can explain much of this).)
Under the measures announced on Sunday, the unvaccinated are ordered to stay home except for a few limited reasons; the rules will be policed by officers carrying out spot checks on those who are out.
The lockdown plan which was agreed in September called for unvaccinated Austrians to face a stay-at-home order once 30% of intensive-care beds are occupied by Covid-19 patients. Unvaccinated people are already excluded from entertainment venues, restaurants, hairdressers and other parts of public life in Austria.
In neighboring Germany, ministers have ramped up their rhetoric towards those who are not inoculated. Its capital Berlin announced on Wednesday it will ban people who are not vaccinated from indoor dining, bars, gyms, hairdressers and cinemas from next week.
Now wouldn’t it be simpler if everyone had an RFID chip instead of relying on the police to “spot check” folks’ papers?
Returning to the main theme… gasoline was about $3.30 per gallon at the Shell station in Indiantown, Florida (when does that name get changed?) this weekend. And we used that gasoline to go to the Stuart Air Show where we saw the AeroShell Aerobatic Team (Canon R5 body and cheap/light 800/11 lens):
One way to come across as more elite, like the folks who own and edit the New York Times, is to work January 6 into every conversation. Top of front page of NYT, 11/8, for example, a “breaking” story:
I’ve been practicing this. A colleague on a project asked me to do something urgently. My response:
I will try later. Dealing with an insurrection by the 6- and 8-year-olds that makes Jan 6 look like a church picnic.
How else can January 6 be used in everyday conversations? Here are some ideas…
In a store:
Wow! The prices are up 20 percent compared to when I was here during the January 6 insurrection.
(notice how this communicates to the listener that the speaker is not a Deplorable who traveled to Washington, D.C. on January 6; don’t use this if you’re in a store in Washington, D.C.!)
If someone expresses unhappiness at being ordered by Professor Dr. Joe Biden, M.D., Ph.D. to get vaccinated/boosted by January 4 with the latest concoctions of the pharma industry:
If you get your last shot on January 4, you’ll have January 6 as a paid day off for vaccine recovery and poignant reflection on the one-year anniversary of the day that the insurrectionists nearly toppled the U.S. government
If your golden retriever is pulling on the leash and refusing to abandon a tree:
She hates squirrels more than the armed January 6 insurrectionists hate democracy.
Readers: Now it is all up to you!
Hunting squirrels from inside the minivan:
Video! (sorry that it is vertical, but trees are vertical)
What are folks doing for end-of-year portfolio clean-up in light of the radically changed economic landscape, notably the dramatic inflation as measured by the CPI and the even more dramatic inflation as experienced by actual consumers? A friend who is a connoisseur of hip hop sent me this brief lecture on portfolio diversification (the percentages are accurate for a lot of states, but the dollar figures could have been a lot higher if higher-income targets had been identified). Note that the lecturer’s strategy is inflation-proof since the wages on which her income is based should rise along with any inflation rate.
I returned to Maskachusetts at the end of last month. My first impression of the city was surprise at how much trash was allowed to accumulate in the corners of Logan Airport parking lots and how many marijuana shop billboards are now lining the Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90).
We flew up to Manchester, New Hampshire in a friend’s Cirrus. The FBO and a local camera shop (Hunt’s) devoted some signage to our current Vietnam War:
A college in the Boston suburbs tries to keep the infected barbarians outside the walls (“Campus Access Restricted”):
Wellesley College had similar signage. Speaking of Wellesley and signage, I visited a family at their $3.5 million house in Wellesley. Across the street:
Unrelated, a sign in their kitchen:
Speaking of $3.5 million houses, I visited a friend at his $3+ million place in Brookline. His kids lost more than a year of education, but the good news is that they no longer have to exhaust themselves to get to a marijuana store (“essential” according to the Covidcrats and, therefore, open throughout coronapanic). Right around the corner:
I visited the Museum of Fine Arts and determined that our apartment would look a lot better if IKEA would start making Ettore Sottsass‘s Carlton room divider (1981):
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The vaccinated white elite are forced to wear masks inside the museum by order of Boston’s mayor. They’re also required to wear masks while walking up the driveway, by the museum itself:
There are numerous reminders inside the museum regarding the mask requirement. Example:
How can the vaccinated white elite put together an exhibit on Blackness? Have local high school students do the curation (this exhibit opened in January 2020, shortly before the schools for those curators were shut down for 1.5 years). It is nice to see an art museum take a firm stand on the Debian vs. Ubuntu question:
Humans come in a rainbow of gender IDs, the museum would like to remind us, but only one gender is entitled to space on the top floor of the newest wing:
Since the MFA is in Massachusetts, of course there is a section curated by Elizabeth Warren:
What if you get tired or feel sick while you’re at the museum? Just step outside and there you will find all of the information that you need to have essential marijuana delivered into your hands:
The ad, direct mail copies of which had piled up in my Harvard Square mailbox, raises a deep question: As noted above, marijuana is officially “essential” according to the Maskachusetts governor and therefore marijuana stores had to remain open while schools were closed. In light of this status, when doesn’t life call for cannabis?
Not everyone agrees with being stoned 24/7 (airport souvenir shop):
After the museum, it was off to visit friends in Newton, a suburb dominated by rich white heterosexuals. Based on their signage, they’re most passionate about the BIPOC and the 2SLGBTQQIA+, but they apparently are happy to pay $1-2 million extra for a house in Newton (compared to house prices in neighborhoods that are diverse) so that they don’t have to live anywhere near those people.
Based on the sign, what is “the Faith”? Is it Christianity, to which the church nominally adheres? One might say “no” because there is no cross or other symbol of Jesus on the sign. But there is a rainbow flag. So perhaps “the Faith” at this church in Newton is faith in Rainbow Flagism.
On arriving at my friend’s house for a planned outdoor walk, his wife asked through the screen door “Are you vaccinated?” Her next question was “Did you get a booster yet?” Later she asked what has become today’s conventional test of faith: “Are you going to get your children [youngest: 6] vaccinated?” She then lamented that her 4-year-old was too young to qualify for the sacrament of vaccination against a disease that kills 82-year-olds.
I visited CVS and found that they were seeking to hire more workers while simultaneously promising those workers 8 hours of mask-wearing time:
If you take the job, you won’t be working with a lot of coins:
Because obesity is a minor problem in the U.S. compared to the horrors of COVID-19, the health-promoting pharmacy maintains its mask vigilance while simultaneously offering ginormous chocolate bars on a “buy 2, get 1 free” basis:
Even at 6 am on a Sunday, Logan Airport was mobbed and my JetBlue flight was full. Note in the pictures below that more than half of the gate agent’s computer screen is devoted to “Federal vaccine mandate” (deadline: January 4; why not January 6 to coincide with the one-year anniversary of The Insurrection?)
The flight was jammed. As on the flight up, almost everyone was simultaneously demasked after every cart-based beverage service. When people struck up conversations, I would see them pulling their masks away from their faces to be heard. A woman who was at least 40 lbs. overweight had purchased all three seats in the row next to mine so that she wouldn’t have to sit right next to someone infected with SARS-CoV-2. As usual, I wondered why someone who was that fearful of COVID-19 was (1) on the plane in the first place (travel is almost always optional and, certainly, Florida and Maskachusetts are connected by highway), (2) unable to lose weight during the 19 months or so that we’ve known about COVID-19’s tendency to kill the obese. Staying home and shedding pounds are the only proven methods for avoiding infection/death by COVID-19. Why don’t people who say that they’re afraid of COVID-19 take these steps?
The Nest of Billionaires (in Palm Beach, median condo/house price $1.5 million and up 23 percent over the last year (but that’s not “inflation”)), about to get a super sweet tax break from the Democrats when the SALT deduction comes roaring back and they can write off their staggering property tax bills (this house next to Mar-a-Lago is hit for $226,667 per year):
Confirming the assertions of Bostonians that Florida has been taken over by the Devil:
(This particular devil actually said, “I’m a rampie,” but the Devil is famous for deceiving.)
I asked the flight attendants in both directions if it bothered them to wear a mask all day at work. “I hate it,” one said. “And since I live in Florida I’m not used to it because I never have to wear it at home.” Had flight attendants quit because they were tired of 20 months of masks during 14 days to flatten the curve? “Not that many,” she replied, “but the vaccine requirement will cause more people to leave.” She was in her 20s and did not want to receive the sacrament of vaccination, citing her low risk of severe COVID-19 balanced against concerns regarding the unknown unknowns of the new medicine/religion (an entirely reasonable perspective, given her age, according to my medical school professor friends, though they’re mostly old and want the vaccine for themselves).
Ben: I am a physician. We need to look at risks and benefits of vaccines and masks. The vaccines seem to protect against serious illness and hospitalization and make sense in terms of risk and benefit for adults. But this is no longer a pandemic but this is endemic. We need to understand the endgame. Covid will always be around like the flu even if every human in the world was immunized due to both vaccine failures and animal reservoirs. The best way to prevent serious illness is to reduce obesity as nearly 80% of deaths and hospitalizations are in obese people. This is not fat shaming but fatsplaining. This is why the USA has so many deaths whereas thinner countries have less. Covid is not going [away] even after reaching promised “herd immunity” percentages of 80% if one adds vaccinated and infected people. Also, masks don’t eliminate covid risk but perhaps delay it statistically until we are older and at higher risk. Thus, we just need to accept that this is just another potential way to die. Masking and social distancing worsens obesity with less exercise and walking, depression and suicide, and hurting kids development as they should be seeing faces. The masks at this point are worse than the disease. And let nature take care of the unvaccinated (and vaccinated) instead of dividing the country. We ban the unvaccinated from work but don’t ban obesity which is a higher risk? I am over covid and want to live my remaining years in peace without masks.
Jeff: @Ben Totally agree. As physicians we are constantly reminded of what an incredibly unhealthy society we have become. Nearly every aspect of medical care is complicated by obesity. It is really impressive that as a disease that has never existed before, COVID is yet again trying to smack us across the face of how unhealthy we are. All the politicized articles written early in the pandemic about how badly the US was performing relative to other countries provided zero context about the biggest factor for the disparity . . . The US is incredibly fat! That 50% of a [country’s] population is looked at as high risk for COVID is deplorable. If half the money/effort spent of COVID related stimulus/prevention were given to improving the daily health of our country, we would save exponentially more lives than COVID itself will ever claim.
These docs raise the same point that I’ve been making here for more than 1.5 years, i.e., that locking people at home next to their refrigerators is not the most obvious optimum public health response to a virus that attacks the fat and sedentary. (And in Massachusetts and California, at least, both brownie mix stores and marijuana shops were deemed “essential” so people were encouraged to stay home, smoke dope, and consume pans of brownies whenever the munchies prompted.) What’s new? The idea that, to the extent natural immunity via infection matters, avoiding COVID-19 could actually be harmful because you’ll just get it when you’re older and fatter. (Counterargument: those magic antiviral drugs we’ve read about will actually work, unlike most previously touted magic drugs, such as Prozac, whose initial efficacy claims could not be replicated.)
They also point out that, if we had budgeted $10 trillion and a lot of individual effort/sacrifice, there are many things that we could do that would save a lot more life-years than continuing to fight in the COVID trenches. (I began pointing this out at least as early as March 26, 2020, e.g., with Why do we care about COVID-19 deaths more than driving-related deaths? and then augmented in Save lives by limiting cars to 35 mph?)
If we’re serious enough about public health to suspend the Constitution, e.g., the First Amendment right to assemble, and to close schools, why aren’t we serious enough to ban sweets and junk food until American average BMI trends downward? Why is it legal for a pharmacy to have a sale on candy (as CVS often does)? Although I love them, why is it legal for potato chips to be sold in the U.S.? If restaurants are required to check vaccination tags, why aren’t restaurants required to check BMI for every customer and then limit the number of calories served to customers over a threshold of 25?
From a CVS in Newton, Maskachusetts, October 2021 (enter past a bunch of signs regarding protecting oneself from COVID-19 via masking, then walk out with 10,000 calories of chocolate):
(Ben, the first physician quoted, also says what the Swedish MD/PhDs said in February 2020: you’re not going to avoid COVID, no matter how long you hide in your bunker. So don’t change your lifestyle unless you’re happy to make it a permanent change. That’s another great argument in favor of moving to Florida! The outdoor lifestyle protects against every kind of respiratory virus and it is not an onerous adaption to sit with friends at sidewalk tables or to play tennis outdoors rather than to sit home alone and watch TV.)
Also in the comments for this article, from a Russian trying to influence our elections?
Yuriy: If the vaccines lose effectiveness against infection over time (something that we have known already for a couple of months) then there is no point to vaccine mandates! Vaccine mandates are about protecting other people and Covid spread. If vaccines don’t do that then they are just protecting vaccinated people from hospitalization and death, which sounds like a personal health choice. What is the point of forcing resistant adults and children (who have almost no risk to Covid) to get vaccinated when this doesn’t stop virus spread and just causes conflict in society?
I think the best answer to Yuri is that the government’s forced vaccinations wouldn’t cause conflict if people would #FollowScience and accept vaccinations. Alternatively, those who refuse vaccinations for themselves and their 5-year-olds can be placed in Protection Camps. Then they’re no longer part of “society” and, thus, society becomes conflict-free.
Let’s take a look at Germany (lockdowns, mask orders, and mandatory vaccine paper checks) versus the Swedish Free State:
It certainly look consistent with what Dr. Ben said, above. The Germans completely transformed their society and ended up deferring, rather than avoiding, a lot of COVID-19 cases. Perhaps Germany will ultimately have a slightly lower COVID-19 death rate than Sweden’s, due to the fact that more of the infections are coming after vaccination and better drug therapies, so this will be a “success” from the point of view of folks who judge a society’s success by the sole criterion of COVID leaderboard position.
How about those tight formations that we see when the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds perform. That’s how you go into a fight, right? Wrong! Here is how 4 F-15s are arranged to head into Iraq from Saudi Arabia at night:
The basic formation was a little bit wider than a normal daytime formation just to assist with flight path deconfliction and to reduce the workload on the wingman spending time on formation management. About 5nm between #1 (flight lead) and #3 (element lead) with the wingman on the outside of the formation, about 2–3nm away from their respective flight leads. This doubled the total width of the formation from 5nm wide to about 10nm wide. A standardized altitude deconfliction plan was also utilized based on a briefed “base” altitude for the flight lead. So, if the flight lead’s “base” altitude was 25,000 feet, then #3 might be 2,000 feet below, and the wingmen would be 1,000–2,000 feet above their respective flight leads. Any time the “base” altitude changed, the flight members would flex to the new relative deconfliction altitudes. Having the wingman slightly above their flight leads also helped with visual mutual support for the wingmen. That’s right … “visual” at night without NVGs.
If the F-15 is so great, why bother with four at a time? Why not send one to defeat the enemy?
A cold hard fact that has been forgotten and relearned, usually through misfortune, is that a single fighter jet is not an effective combat unit and is more of a liability than anything else. The enemy will grow a brave heart when they know they have a solitary American fighter pilot alone in his aircraft. Even if they should lose a pilot or jet of their own, they will attack confident of downing such a precious prize as an American fighter. If there is another supporting fighter within visual range, then the enemy will begin to lose his courage and doubt his own ability to be victorious. It’s called Mutual Support, and it is the bedrock of air combat tactics. I learned that lesson at my first COPE THUNDER, and I would never forget it.
How did our USAF heroes stay healthy without the marijuana that Maskachusetts and California say is “essential” and, from a medical point of view, super beneficial?
The other key player in this plan was Kory, our flight doc. Kory had been issued a truckload of amphetamines (specifically Dexedrine), or uppers, and the previously mentioned Restoril (downers), and he would be our acting “dealer.” All pilots at some point in our careers had been tested with both pills to insure we did not have any unusual side effects (other than the desired or expected ones), but most of us had never actually experienced using either regularly. The Restoril was to make sure that we could get to sleep quickly and soundly for the small window of opportunity we would have each day between combat missions. The Dexadrine was intended to keep us alert (and in some cases from actually falling asleep) in the cockpit.
Reminding us to “check 6” even after we vanquish the only cause of death that is now on anyone’s mind (i.e., coronaplague):
My roommate for the duration of the deployment was Capt Rory “Hoser” Draeger. Hoser was actually a young flight lead in the Dirty Dozen when I first arrived at Kadena. … I knew he was an outstanding aviator and, being from Kadena originally, he was somebody I could count on to lead some of our more difficult large-force missions. Also, we would need everybody we could get. Hoser and I were not “best friends” by any means, but we got along well together and gave each other “space” as roommates. Not too long after the war, I received news that Hoser was killed in a car accident. Apparently, he was a passenger riding with some friends when the driver lost control and went off the road. Very sad … and ironic to survive a war and be killed in a random accident.
Tollini writes about the modern rules-bound military compared to the 1980s, in which it was, according to him, more about personal responsibility:
The USMTM [a military training liaison base] in Tabuk had very nice apartments (for the residents only, not us), a great swimming pool, and its best asset … a fully stocked bar! There was supposed to be no alcohol allowed on base while we were in-country, but the USMTMs were different. They were a little piece of “America” and had immunity from local laws and customs. So when the Gorillas first arrived in Tabuk all the pilots would head to the USMTM on any given night they could, that is until General Order No. 1 (GO#1) was issued.
GO#1 would (in my opinion) become one of the worst decisions ever in the annals of military history. It was issued by General Norman Schwarzkopf (the commander of US Central Command/CENTOM) and the order stated there would be absolutely NO drinking in the Kingdom. This was hopefully to show “solidarity” with our Saudi hosts and not insult their cultural sensibilities. Even most Saudis I met who heard about this no-drinking order thought it was crazy. They really didn’t care if we drank as long as we behaved.
I now believe the long-term effect of this original GO#1 was that it tried to mandate good order and discipline via a “general order,” rather than to establish this with good leadership and respect up and down the chain of command. From then on, any chance a commanding officer had to create an appearance of “good order and discipline” quickly and easily, he would just start signing out these types of “General Orders” and absolve himself of any responsibility to actually “lead” beyond that point. It was such a crock, and the troops could see right through it. I saw it as kind of the opposite of how Opec Hess treated us that first day in Thailand. Our leadership no longer trusted us. If you think there might be a problem with behavior and leadership in today’s military, I believe the root cause goes all the way back to Stormin’ Norman’s original GO#1.
The F-15 could use a $659 ashtray ($1,727 when we adjust 1985 dollars to today’s Bidie-bucks):
It went so far that Cherry and I (and some others) would smoke in the jets while flying our DCA CAP missions. I had found that I could use these little plastic powdered-lemonade drink cups (which had a foil lid) that fit perfectly between the light control panel knobs on the right side of the F-15 cockpit. So, I had a little ashtray I could use in flight, and when I was done I would just wrap the foil cover back over the top of the cup to prevent spillage. It was perfect. We didn’t smoke when anything important was going on, but for a four- or six-plus hour mission boring holes in the sky, it was a nice “break” to look forward to every hour or so. If I ever took off without a pack of smokes and lighter in my G-suit pocket, I knew it was going to be a long and grueling flight.
After years spent in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines:
Saudi Arabia was a strange country. I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way, but just that it felt “strange” being there. I had been in a lot of foreign countries, but this was the first time I had felt like such a “foreigner,” like I did not belong there. The people were nice enough, and most of us even made friends with many of the Saudi pilots. But it just always felt like there was some kind of barrier, as if we were the houseguests that had impolitely overstayed our visit. Our hosts would never say anything to us, but I felt they probably really preferred it if we would leave, as soon as possible. And, frankly, I felt the same way.
The F-15 is an affordable, low-risk solution that maintains capacity and adds capability to the U.S. Air Force while preserving the Air Superiority and Homeland Defense missions.
Given the rate of inflation in Cirrus SR22 prices, the F-15 might well be considered “affordable” soon enough!
I had some cash sitting in a checking account due to selling our house in Maskachusetts and becoming a renter here in the Florida Free State (a relocation analysis). If this had happened a few years ago, I might have let the money sit in checking until the day when it is time to get super extra stupid again and buy a house here in Florida (trade “call the landlord and open the door to the maintenance guys one hour later” for “spend a week begging contractors to come over”). But with inflation for the stuff that we might actually buy, e.g., houses, aircraft, etc., running at 20 percent annually, “park it in checking” didn’t seem viable.
I didn’t have enough confidence in the U.S. dollar or the Democrats’ muscular central management of the economy to buy more U.S. stocks. Buying bonds seems literally crazy given that the interest rate is lower than the official inflation rate. Buying TIPS doesn’t seem wise given that they’re pegged to the official inflation rate, which is way lower than the inflation rate for our family. So… that leaves non-U.S. stocks. The euro seems to have some of the same inflation risks as the USD, with governments using the same logic that Americans used from 1961 through 1975 with respect to the Vietnam War (“if we just throw some more cash at fighting this enemy, we cannot be defeated”; the enemy today, of course, is SARS-CoV-2).
But my beloved Sweden has its own currency! And that currency is up quite a bit against the euro (i.e., of course I am late to the party!):
(The dollar has lost roughly 10 percent of its value against Swedish krona as well.)
I do think the Swedes will prosper in the long run due to superior mental health, a focus on something other than COVID-19, their kids having an extra year of in-person school compared to kids in U.S. cities, etc. I want to invest in Sweden with a 10-20-year horizon.
I have now put my money where my mouth is. The house sale proceeds are, as of today, in EWD, a high-fee index fund of Swedish stocks that I never could figure out how to buy directly as an American.
However, since I am the world’s dumbest investor, if I have moved money from cash to stock that can only mean one thing going forward: a worldwide stock market crash (or at least a crash in the Swedish market and/or currency!). You have been warned!
In the best tradition of Wall Street, if this investment outperforms, I will claim credit as a farsighted genius, second only to Mileva Marić, who explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and formulated the special and general theories of relativity. If this investment underperforms, I will say that it is my version of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing, in which I support a society that had the courage to carry on educating children, working, socializing, breathing without masks, etc. despite recognizing that COVID-19 would kill some people (albeit at a much lower rate than in a lot of countries that were celebrated for their mask and shutdown orders). The Swedes even managed to get through 2020 and 2021 without the marijuana that California and Massachusetts governors/covidcrats deemed “essential” (“Cannabis in Sweden is illegal for all purposes.”).
Readers: What are doing right now for protecting savings from Bidenflation?
Related:
“Annual inflation hits 30-year high” (The Hill, today): The consumer price index (CPI), which tracks inflation for a range of staple goods and services, rose 0.9 percent last month and 6.2 percent in the 12-month period ending in October, the highest rate in the U.S. in 30 years. Analysts broadly expected the CPI to rise by 0.5 percent last month, up from a gain of 0.4 percent in August, and 5.8 percent over the past year.
