Fly United

If you're of a certain age, you've seen the poster 'Fly United'. In the bidnezz world, M&A is the fly united meme. And it always starts with rhetoric about synergy and proposed whole being far more valuable than the existing parts. Yada, yada, yada. What really happens, for all these decades of merging, is a massive debt and equally massive cost cutting, aka reduction of product. IOW, the consumers lose. The CxO class gets richly rewarded for their 'hard decisions'. And so on.

So, another example:

The announcement of scrapping plans for the two films comes amid Warner Bros. Discovery trying to cut costs, a whopping $3 billion, in the wake of their merger in April.

American bidnezz is on your side!

I Told You So - 2 August 2022

Well, here's the report:

U.S. manufacturing activity slowed less than expected in July and there were signs that supply constraints are easing, with a measure of prices paid for inputs by factories falling to a two-year low, suggesting inflation has probably peaked.
[my emphasis]

Are You Listening to Me?

Now, how did the Good Guys track down Zawahiri without any boots on the ground? A few Fake News reports have used The Name That Shall Not Be Spoken: the NSA heard every word (text, e-mail, etc. too) in and around Zawahiri for a long, long time.

Now, don't you think they have every word (text, e-mail, etc.) passed from and to the Russians who futzed with our 2016 and 2020 elections? Don't you? The only question is whether they were as deeply co-opted by wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 as the Secret Service.

The .75% Solution

Remember that Powell admitted that interest rate hikes wouldn't stop inflation? Here it is:

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers Wednesday that rate hikes will not bring down oil and food prices, despite their contributing the lion's share of recent inflation gains.

In an exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Powell was blunt in saying that the Fed's efforts to tamp down on higher prices with higher interest rates will not impact either category.

"Chair Powell, will gas prices go down as a result of your interest rate increase?" she asked.

"I would not think so, no," he replied.

Then Warren asked, "Will the Fed's interest rate increases bring food prices down for families?"

Powell said, "I wouldn't say so, no."

He nonetheless stressed that the Fed was equipped to tackle inflation more broadly.

"We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses," he said, during his semiannual testimony to Congress.

That was just over a month ago, when the Fed did its first massive rate increase. Both Powell and the Right Wingnuts he kowtows to treat the current state of inflation as specific, and limited to, Sleepy Joe and the USofA, when, in fact, the developed world is all in a pickle.

But the U.S. is hardly the only place where people are experiencing inflationary whiplash. A Pew Research Center analysis of data from 44 advanced economies finds that, in nearly all of them, consumer prices have risen substantially since pre-pandemic times.

It's, mostly, a supply side issue (where's Laffer when it's this funny?): Russia, Ukraine, China chief amongst them. It is also true that consumers held back about $2.4 trillion in spending over the course of the pandemic. That's a good slug of moolah to unleash on wary producers, too. Producers chose to recoup lost profits all at once, and we got inflation.

All Powell is going to do is what Right Wingnuts always do before an election: stab Democrats in the back with a recession.

Ingrates

At least since the Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin, the Democrats have used the power of the Damn Gummint to better the lives of people living in the shit-kicker counties. And, every time, said shit-kickers turn around and vote for the Right Wingnuts who've kept them poor, uneducated, and unhealthy. The Damn Gummint in Washington provides the services that the Red state, county, and local governments deem the shit-kickers don't deserve.

Now, yet again we find the Do Nothing Sleepy Joe (as both the extreme Right and Left label him) is doing for the shit-kickers what none of the other governments will. Ya think they'll vote for the Dems in the fall?? A few short months away?? Can pigs fly???

Thought For The Day - 20 July 2022

Somehow asserting that deleting texts:
- Let's go Brandon!
- MAGA uber alles!
- Hang Mike Pence

and the like as 'not work related' is the height of conspiracy. Did the Secret Service agents abet the insurrection? Did wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 move one of his agents to the White House? Has that been done before? It appears not. There was MAGA rot everywhere.

Energy Bars

There's been a flurry of some related news of late, on the topic of climate change (warming) and alternative sources of electrons. (Aside: should the USofA really migrate from gasoline to electrons, the shock to the system will be huge; we'll become like Olde Europe with trams, trolleys, and other sorts of electrified public transportation. Oh, the horror! No more Mom driving a 2-ton SUV by her lonesome to get a bag of carrots from the MegaMart down the street. Freedom!!)

Here's a report on Hawaii's attempt to integrate solar into its infrastructure. Ain't no oil wells or coal mines out there.

Many energy companies also felt threatened by small-scale energy systems because they reduce the need for larger power plants and transmission lines. The nation's investor-owned utilities make their money typically by earning a roughly 10.5 percent return on every dollar they invest in the grid.

Ah, the Tyranny of Average Cost strikes again! If houses are allowed to have panels, only poor people will get electricity from our lines, and they'll have to pay for all those costs by themselves!

And, I'll note that my beloved Block Island got its electrons from diesel generators for ages, until the recent building and integration of a five mill wind farm in the Sound. Whether it's gotten Islanders cheaper electricity remains up in the air (if you're so inclined to disinformation), but, when the cable isn't busted, the electon delivery is more reliable. Here's some information from this past March at the 'Block Island Times'

Well, it turns out that when you add all the monthly rates and divide the sum by 12, you get an average rate of 30.02 cents per kilowatt. Using the blogger's benchmark of 54 cents per kilowatt-hour, that is a 44.41 percent decrease in electricity for year-round residents.

Of course, the summer Mainlanders in their McMansions pay more (they gobble far more electrons, naturally), but so do natives.

Another alternative to huge fossil fueled electric plants is nuclear. France gets 72% from nuclear. Nobody does it better.

But now there's talk of small scale nuclear, as if that's never been done. Really?? Among the first (if not the first) uses of nuclear outside of research and bombs was the US Navy's Nautilus sub. So, we already know how to make a city-sized nuclear reactor. There remains the question of safety of light-water reactors. Submarines have an infinite supply of water, should the reactor go dry. Are they designed to take advantage? Let's go see... apparently not. Putting some in Phoenix, and other desert towns, might not be the wisest course of action.

Finally there's the the Bloom Box. Got play on '60 Minutes' back in 2010, but not so much since. It does run on gas (the gaseous kind of gas), and emits some CO₂. Appear to have a lifetime of your average household water heater. Ouch.