PM Weekly Market Commentary – 03/26/2021

I found this site many years ago through a Chris Martenson interview, but your Daily Commentaries have become the main reason I visit the site every day. It won’t be the same without you. Hope to see you make a comeback from retirement! In the meantime, enjoy the vacay!

Thank you, Dave for all the market updates over the years. The summary section with commentary have been a real pleasure, even when I don’t agree. Enjoy your vacation.

Enjoy your vitamin D project and thanks again for all you’ve given this community!

My dream: for the Deplorables and the Bernie Bros to wake up one day and notice that they have a whole lot more in common with each other, than they do with the Oligarchs that run the place.

I’m on board with this dream, I’ve just never understood why you think Donald Trump is anything other than an oligarch / donor puppet himself. Ignoring all the noise around his disruptive ‘style’, in 4 years of power he never enacted a single policy to change the way the Fed runs the place i.e. through sneakily debasing the currency (and in many cases store of value) of all commoners. In fact he was calling for more easing, as almost all (short-sighted) politicians do.

If all you pay attention to is mainstream media type sources, you are likely going to have a very perverted impression of Trump.

“Donor puppet”… he funded his own campaign, lol. He absolutely was not a donor puppet which is exactly why they were hysterical for 4 years over him and tried everything in the book [ and outside the book ] to get rid of him.

If he was an “oligarch” “donor puppet” he’d still be in office.

Just finished reading The Bitcoin Standard and The Everything Bubble.  Things I’m learning in these places make Bitcoin seem increasingly important.

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An elderly man has a vision that his granddaughter will be born and and is destined do important work.  However she will need a gift of great value when she comes of age.  He will leave his wealth to his unborn granddaughter.

But how can he send his stored wealth across 50 years?

Dollar bills buried in a plastic container lose value at 3%-6% per year.  Barely 15% of the value would make it across the 50 years.  Same for Euros, Yen, Yuan.

Gold, frankencense, myrrh?

Gold would seem to be the most stable form of money over time.

—

(watch for the ongoing chapters in this exciting story.  heh!)

Hey Nate and others,

I would like to get your thoughts on the Lavo Home Hydrogen Battery.

Any idea what the “secret” metal hydride is that they are using to store the hydrogen?

My father, the chemistry prof, is still really skeptical about fuel cells, says they get contaminated too easily to be reliable. The round-trip efficiency is only about 50%, so that is a bummer. The projected capacity (40KWH X 20K Cycles) is notable.

I just doubt that the technology is there yet, especially when you could buy 15 of these 48V, 5KWH LiFePo4 batteries for the same price and get 75KWH with a 90% roundtrip efficiency.

Continuing with our saga….

Our heroic mythical granddaughter, destined to change the world had been born and received across 50 years of time, her grandfather’s money gift in the time-stable form of gold.  She now finds that to fulfill her destiny, she must order a custom part for her tractor that is made by a master craftsman in Albania.

In a phone call she orders the part.  The craftsman, known both for his exquisite skills and very busy schedule, is reluctant to start until his payment is in hand.  The granddaughter sets aside the required Gold Maple 1 oz coins in a small burlap bag and arranges transportation via air, train, boat and car.  It must be insured and guarded during every stage of the trip and will take a total of 3 weeks for delivery.

She learns that physical gold money, does not travel easily across distance.

—

But our heroine has learned that the nations’ central banks store gold and share reserves periodic resettlements.  Now she is able to deposit her gold locally in the banking system, send a digital representation of gold to the craftsman via wire, where he can collect the gold from his local bank.

She has learned that the sending physical gold as money over long distances requires a centralized banking system to intermediate.

(to be continued)

Enjoy the beach…..you will be missed and most of us await a possible happy return.
Cheers, TJ

JAG

I doubt the technology will ever be there at reasonable cost because hydrogen is the smallest material there is and leaks out of everything. Being a gas, it must be stored under pressure for there to be enough inside worth storing. That makes it more leaky. I, too, have heard of fancy, high-tech materials with electrostatic potential that will contain it for a bit of time. Fancy, high-tech materials with electrostatic potential require massive amounts of time, money, energy, and effort to produce. You would need several places in the instructions with “And then a miracle occurs.” For general energy use. the physics doesn’t work,  the mathematics doesn’t work, and the finance doesn’t work. But feel free to try.