Not My First Choice, But...

This election year will go down in the record books!

A lot has happened while I was away.  One of the strangest things to happen was the all-but-nominated candidate for the Democratic party to drop out with only a few months left in the race.  Not since LBJ refused to run for re-election has there been such an event.  Of course, back then, we had the "smoke filled room" where nominations were clinched at the convention, with a lot of back-scratching and horse-trading deals being made.  Today, the nomination seems to be all but secured by the time of the New Hampshire primary - which I guess is more democratic.  Well, that is, until now.

Last time around, when Harris was aiming for the top spot, I wrote a piece on her and her husband and how their finances seemed to be in disarray.   Well, to be more precise, they were as messed-up as most Americans - mired in debt with little in real savings or wealth.  Americans love to have the appearance of wealth - fancy mini-mansion houses and "luxury" cars, all paid for with loans.  In reality, though, they own nothing and have no real wealth.

But perhaps this is one way Harris will connect with similarly indebted voters.  It may turn out to be an advantage.  Mr.Walz similarly has no real wealth, but instead is relying on a traditional defined benefit pension to support him in his old age.  Oddly enough, Republicans are attacking him for this, apparently trying to get the Billionaires all riled up against him. Who does he think he is, being an ordinary working stiff and not one of us!  Only the rich should rule!

Of course, Trump is also in debt, but by a magnitude or two (or three) larger, and often indebted to some shady folks, such as Saudi Arabia or Russia.  What's different, of course, is that Trump often doesn't pay back these loans, leaving banks or contractors on the hook for thousands or millions.  Or in the case of the Saudis or Russians, they never expect to get paid back.  Of course, if a loan is forgiven, you have to report that as income, right?  Well, only for student loans, I guess - at least at the State level.

But taking her personal finances aside, it really is no contest as to who is a better candidate.  We've already seen how Trump worked out as President and we voted him out of office, despite his conspiracy theories to the contrary.  But this leads to the next thing that will make this election season one that is studied in future history books.  Trump has promised to contest the election with more bogus theories and "evidence" that they cannot show us.  Some election officials in some States are Trump minions and have promised not to certify the election - throwing it to the State legislature to decide where the electoral votes will go.   And Republicans in the House and Senate are hoping the election gets punted to them, so they can select the winner.

And who oversees the counting of electoral votes?   Vice-President Harris!  So of course, they will argue a conflict-of-interest and muddy the waters further.

But the real problem is political violence, which some on the far-right are claiming is a legitimate form of politics as a whole, citing such events as the Civil War (who won that? I forget).  I suspect more than one or two of these self-appointed patriots will cry "civil war" and shoot their lesbian neighbors as some sort of protest.  It will get very ugly in December.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. - Read the 25th Amendment sometime. If Biden dies in Office, then Harris becomes President and the House and Senate have to ratify her nomination of a new VP.  What a shitshow that would be.

When Worlds Collide - When Truth Confronts Lies.

Lies only work for so long and then all hell breaks loose.

A reader writes that the recession I have warned about has failed to materialize.  He is right which scares me more.  I wrote before about "rubber band theory" - that when you stretch reality with fiction, it snaps back eventually.  And the more you stretch the truth, so to speak, the worse the snap-back will be.

I started this blog back in 2008, when the world was recovering from the real estate market crash of 2008 - the worst crash since 1929.  What caused this crash? Lies, plain and simple.  Real estate prices were jumping 20-30% a year and even professionals in the business couldn't figure out why - and didn't expect it to last.  "We can only hope for a soft landing" they said, hoping prices would just freeze for a year or two to let the market catch up - or maybe decrease slightly.  Instead, nearly overnight, they dropped like a bomb - over 50% in some places.

Truth caught up with the lies.  And the lies were nothing-down liar's loans with "optional payments" and variable interest rates or balloon payments.  Everyone wanted to get in on the deal, just as they wanted to get in on gold and "crypto."  Whatever happened to the gold and silver bugs, anyway?  All that talk of $5000 an ounce went away very quietly. Sure, the price went up - so did the price of everything else.   But the average investor hardly got rich from it, in fact, most lost money at it, when mean old reality kicked in.

Nearly two decades later, much has changed while remaining the same.  People are still using lies to manipulate markets - and politics - but the rise of social media has extended the reach and power of liars by a factor of 100 or more.  Someone posts a rumor on Facebook and, like the old game of "telephone operator" it gets amplified and mangled until people actually believe that immigrants are eating pets (and they are also getting free government handouts, which causes one to wonder why they would eat pets, but let's not let logic ruin a good story, right?).

Real estate is once again wildly overvalued, based of speculative values based on AirBnB rental income, even as more and more municipalities outlaw such rentals in residential neighborhoods and as interest rates went up.  "Stonks" are bid to the stratosphere, for tech companies (and I use the term "tech" loosely!) that have never made a profit and have no plans to.  Stocks are becoming little more than a vehicle for scamming greedy retail investors who hope to strike it rich.  Meanwhile, the people manipulating stock prices rake in the dough - aided and abetted by our obsession of being online.

But a recession? Not yet, although every major retailer and manufacturer is trimming their sails - laying off employees and cutting back on expenses, to maintain profit margins to appease investors and the C-suite.  Software companies were first to lay off, followed by many manufacturing companies.  The latest is PwC (poor Mr. Waterhouse, reduced to lower case and italics no less!) is laying off 5000 people.  Perhaps they are replacing them with "AI" - wouldn't that be an audit nightmare?

I thought or hoped that our overheated economy would pull back with a "soft landing' years ago, but CoVid stepped in, throwing a wrench in the works and delaying the inevitable.  Post-CoVid spending goosed the economy further, along with free money and low-cost or no-cost interest rates. So, the rubber band stretches more and more, and the snap-back is going to get worse and worse.  The national debt is now a staggering $35.5 Trillion or nearly $100,000 per citizen today, skyrocketing in recent years as the graph above illustrates.  I'm not sure how I can pay back my share, how about you?

You can be sure if Kamala Harris is elected, the GOP will dust off the "debt clock" they've kept hidden during the Trump years, and demand cuts in Federal spending just at the time such spending would prime the pump out of recession.   Wash, rinse, repeat.

Maybe we are doomed to go through these economic cycles.  I noted time and time again that fiscal memory of most Americans extends about 18 months or so.  A year-and-a-half after filing for bankruptcy, the average American is down at the car dealer, signing papers on a new "luxury" SUV for only $80,000 on a 16% note.

I guess this is just part of the human condition.  I only wish it weren't so!

Why EVs Are Not A Universal Solution - At Least Not Yet

While the "Cybertruck" may fail for a number of reasons, the future of EV trucks may be limited.

It has been amusing to watch the cybertruck implode.  As one wag put it, it was released four years too late and two years too early.  The severe quality problems and limited functionality make the entire project the butt of jokes.  But one issue is not unique to the cybertruck, but common to all EVs - energy density.

The vaunted "gold standard" of an EV is having at least a 300-mile range.  Most EV manufacturers give optimistic range values, and Tesla seems to be the worst at this.  Problem is, even a 300 or 400 or even 500 mile range pales in comparison to most IC vehicles.  Our King Ranch has the optional 38 gallon fuel tank, and given its average fuel economy of 22 MPG, it can go over 700 miles between fillups - which take only a few minutes.

Granted, most people rarely travel over 300 miles a day, so for ordinary driving, an EV might fit the bill, if just barely.  The problem, of course, is that if you try to extend the range with more battery power, the weight goes up accordingly.  The cybertruck tops 7,000 lbs without the promised "range extender" battery pack (which, with the spare tire, would take up the entire bed).  The GM "Hummer" EV supposedly top 9,000 lbs, which makes many rural bridges very nervous.  Adding more battery adds more weight, which in turn, decreased efficiency, particularly in hill country.  There is a law of diminishing returns here - we can't have 20,000-lb EVs crushing the road.

But towing is where the whole concept falls apart.  And a surprising number of pickup trucks (including mine) are used for towing.  Look around you the next time you are on the highway and you'll see a LOT of trailers being towed by pickups - for camping, for boats, for lawn care, for contractors, for motorcycles - for anything and everything. Towing a 4,000-lb camper, our "Ecoboost" gets an astounding 14 MPG which is considered pretty good in the RV world.  With a 38-gallon tank, our "range" is over 400 miles.

With an EV, expect 100 miles, if that.  I wrote before about a Canadian friend was towing an 18-foot lightweight camper with a Tesla Model Y dual motor, and he reported that he got 100-150 miles between charges.  He had to plan his trip from Canada to Florida in many segments, and of course, map out where charging stations were.  On a good day, he could drive 100 miles in the morning, stop for lunch and charging, and then go another hundred miles in the afternoon.  Workable, but it required a lot more forethought than my, "hey look, there's a gas station!" technique.

The vaunted "cybertruck" seems crippled with a similarly limited range.  A pair of 'influencers' (throw up in mouth a little bit) have attached an advertising trailer to a cybertruck, with large screen televisions on all sides (ironically, powered by a gasoline generator) with the idea of flinging advertisements (animated, no less) on the rest of us as they go down the road.  New York outlawed these kind of rolling billboards in the early 20th Century and indeed, it was a first amendment legal case in our casebooks in Constitutional Law in law school.  Since then, I have noticed a few trucks with rolling ads on them.  Curses to whoever thought this was a good idea.

But taking aside the shitty business plan of these influencers (power-vomiting), they reported that their "cybertruck" would go barely 100 miles between charges and require and hour to charge.  Truly, the cybertruck is incapable of doing "truck things" like towing a trailer.  And I suspect the Ford F150 EV as well as the Rivian, would suffer from the same problem.  There is no "special sauce" in EVs that make one better than another - just battery capacity and weight, which in turn determines range.  No maker has much of an edge over another.

So despite all the hue and cry from the far-right that Democrats will "force" then to drive EVs is nonsense.  EVs will make good commuter vehicles which can occasionally be used for long trips.  And the carbon credits and equivalent EPA mileage will offset the gas burned by larger vehicles like pickup trucks.

In that regard, it is my humble opinion that the major carmakers are approaching the EV issue all wrong. EVs are being sold as high-end expensive toys, which worked for Tesla when selling the model-S.  But the rest of us might need or want only a simpler, smaller vehicle which might need a much smaller range and thus be well-suited for commuting and city driving.  Few such vehicles have been offered and often the ones that were offered (such as Mitsubishi's tiny i-MiEV) were eviscerated as cheap tinny boxes.

But perhaps this will change in the future.  All I know is, a 7,000-lb plus SUV or pickup isn't the answer, other than for people who buy pickups and SUVs and drive them to work, alone.  EVs are not going to make good off-road or towing vehicles, at least not in their current form.

As such, the cybertruck is doomed to fail, other than as an expensive piece of automotive jewelry that falls apart faster than a Yugo.