Digging Deeper …
by Justin Angell
Thank you for all the kind comments from those of you who enjoyed trip highlights. My biggest vacation takeaway is that anyone interested in history, architecture, Christianity and/or Catholicism should spend at least a week or maybe two in Italy. History, art, architecture, Roman archaeological remains are everywhere.
I will also have to say I’m not a foodie or a wine connoisseur, but I will guarantee you the food and the wines of Italy are wonderfully healthful and delicious. I was on full feed for three weeks and I only gained 2 pounds. Walking 13,000 steps a day probably helped in that weight control effort.
By far the greatest part about Italy is the beautiful Italians. Greece and Portugal were nice stops along the way home, however we never left Lisbon or Athens, so I have no real opinion about the true flair of either country.
The last impression that I have from this vacation is the same I have after every vacation. My favorite turn is when I turn into my driveway and my favorite sight to see is my home and our cows. We live in one of the best places in the world and I am always happy to be home.
I love optimism and I love this country. I watched Maria Bartaromo interview Chris Wright; our secretary of energy. Chris Wright is a superstar and one of the best energy secretaries we’ve ever had at a time when that is very important. I learned several things while watching this interview. Among those things, most interestingly, the USA is now the largest oil exporter in the world, exporting more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. For context, the USA produces 24 million barrels of oil per day, while Saudi Arabia produces 10.9, Russia 10.5, Iran 4.6 and Venezuela only 1.1 million barrels per day.
Chris Wright highlighted how this administration is willing to endure temporarily higher energy prices to solve a 47-year-long problem. He assured the audience that “despite many selling pessimism and doomism, dawn is coming to America soon.”
Growth, Opportunity and Optimism will return. America’s future is bright, soon it’s going to be time to build big things again. Highway systems, cities, and whole new industries are coming soon.
Another problem that needs to be solved is the Ukraine Russian conflict. Throughout history, wars have been won when one side develops a technology that tips the scale to victory. Examples of this would be developing iron weapons, the long bow, stirrups and saddles for horses, gunpowder, cartridge ammunition, repeating weapons and machine guns to eventually nuclear weapons. You get the point.
I believe we may be witnessing one such moment in history due to Ukrainian development of land, sea and air drone weapons. Against all odds, the Ukrainian command of drone warfare is tipping that conflict towards victory for the under-dog Ukrainians. Russia has a massive population advantage over Ukraine, 145 million vs 38 million. Russian military strategy, like during World War II, is simply overwhelming their adversaries by throwing hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers at them.
Unlike their success against Nazi Germany and Napoleon before that, using this meat grinder tactic against Ukraine has been disastrous and a tragic loss of lives on both sides. Russia thought they had more soldiers than Ukraine had bullets, but strategic calculations never considered small, inexpensive drones that can kill from a distance while keeping the drone operator safe.
Introduction and development of sophisticated drones has proven the Russian meat grinder strategy to be severely flawed. Currently, Ukraine is killing and wounding more soldiers than Russia can recruit with recent casualty’s ratios being 17:1 . During the entire Vietnam conflict, the United States suffered about 55,000 casualties, the Ukrainians are now killing 60,000 Russians every two months.
Besides the growing possibility of a long range drone attack on his residence, Putin has developed a righteous fear of his own people as more and more information leaks to the people of Russia about the catastrophe Ukraine has become for them. His “special military action” has also caused a lot of powerful oligarchs in Russia to lose a tremendous amount of money. Putin’s days may be numbered.
The biggest problem yet to be solved is how to fix our broken money. This country, along with every other government in the world is printing new money for social program obligations, military expenditures, interest, and other government bills. 40% of the dollars in circulation had been printed since Covid.
Fiat money historically has a 100% failure rate. Central Banks across the world continue to buy gold, inflation is heating up, exasperated by higher energy prices caused by the closure of the Straight of Hormuz. Gold and silver will continue to increase in value but most of what we will see and have seen is the dollar’s loss of purchasing power.
For those of you too young to remember Paul Volker and Ronald Reagan, you cannot see any similarities between the 1970s and now like the wise old surviving veteran farmers and ranchers remember vividly. For a lot of different reasons but primarily inflation, gold prices rose from $35 an ounce in August 1971 to $850 in January 1980 for an approximately 45% annualized return. The 12% inflation was stopped when Paul Volker as Fed chairman, initiated interest rates that eventually reached 20%.
Can you imagine 20% interest on all your operating notes today? I do not want to be one of those people selling doomism, especially at a time where I believe we are on the cusp of an economic revival of this country, but you cannot cure a problem if you don’t first correctly diagnose it.
Briefly touching on one other subject from past editions, is my comments about graphene and a small company called Hydroraff Clean Power (HGRAF) as perhaps an investment opportunity. Hydrograff Clean Power has invented a way to produce pure graphene economically and unlimited amounts. I am convinced now more than ever that graphene, discovered in 2004, will finally now be able to change the world.
Exploiting the potential of graphene will enable the potential of AI to be realized. Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel, bulletproof, conducts electricity so efficiently it does so without creating heat, and is carbon based, which makes it completely environmentally safe and carbon-based materials can be added and infused into almost every product we make without any issues. To any product we add or infuse graphene, the product performance is drastically enhanced.
A real-world example happening now with graphene would be at Quikrete. America’s largest concrete company has now completed preliminary research on graphene enhanced concrete. Researchers measure concrete strength by using a core sampling machine that presses a core sampler onto a slab until it fractures the concrete and punches through measuring the amount of pressure required for the concrete fracture and allowing a core sample to be obtained. Conducting this test, for the first time, the core sample press could not fracture the graphene-enhanced concrete. Imagine the efficiencies gained if you could use 1/3 less concrete and have the same strength.
Graphene is now or soon will be available as an option when you order Quikrete Concrete. Besides all these industrial benefits, the most important property of graphene is its ability to conduct electricity. Graphene is the most conductive substance known to man and can conduct electricity without producing heat. Imagine a product that has the potential to replace silicon in computer chips.
If you would like to have an optimistic day, just google “graphene”. Most of the information you’ll find about graphene itself is interesting and accurate. You will however also find that many of the articles talk about the promise of graphene, but the roadblock until recently is the lack of our ability to produce graphene on an industrial scale both efficiently and economically. The company Hydrograph Clean Power (HGRAF) has patented a graphene production process that claims to solve this problem.
The Publisher tells me I can’t recommend individual stocks for investing, but I can tell you after looking into it for myself, I have invested some money in the Hydrograph Clean Power for myself starting back in February of this year. I’m not recommending that you invest in it, as I don’t know your finances and situation… however, I am recommending that you look into it for yourself as an exciting distraction that may lead to something else.
Like the 2000 Internet boom and bust, there will be many winners and many losers. Sometimes being early with a call is beneficial, but other times being very early is the next thing to be wrong. Hydrograph Clean Power is absolutely a very early call that will have a currently unknown outcome. All I know for sure is I am confident that graphene will eventually change the world and the next few years will be very interesting.