Farmer Diaries

From a high of $120,000 to less than $70,000 today, one has to wonder what is going on with Bitcoin.  My favorite are the stories of "Crypto-pushers" who now reveal that despite telling the world to "go big on crypto" have not purchased any bitcoin since 2018 when it hovered around $6k.  The truth of cryptocurrencies is that they behave more like rare paintings than even gold.  The value is entirely driven by what others are ready to pay, as a high water mark, and the cost of extraction, as the low water mark.   Currently the cost of mining a bitcoin is around $70,000 per coin.  The cost of extracting gold is about $1,000.  That means that gold suppliers will "stop" producing gold when the price drops below $1,000 (there is some flexibility there). However, the price of gold right now is around $5,000…so still a very profitable endeavor.  What this means is that most miners will stop mining until the price rises above $70,000.   I am exa...

Once again I am back from the US.   The trip was trouble free because we flew private there and back.  My friend invited my wife and I to join him in Jackson Hole for 10 days of skiing.  The truth is that it's evident that some pigs are more equal than others.  The customs and immigration experience when flying private is very different.  We still needed a visa but no real questions were asked, we landed in Chicago to refuel…and then to Jackson Hole My comment is different, I saw the USA as a billionaire would.  As an example the "cost of leasing a G700" is $32,000 per hour and we used it for nearly 30 hours all in all…you do the math of how expensive the flight was for the four of us.  Our host "borrowed" a 9 bedroom house from a "friend of a friend".   We had special VIP ski passes where we did not wait for gondolas and at only in 3 star restaurants the entire 10 days we were there.  The notional cost of the trip for the four of u...

The US now owns Venezuela…and not in a good way.  America is not known for its nation building skills, and yet it now owns the disaster that is Venezuela.   Starvation and exodus are the natural progression.   In addition it will become a haven for narco-terrorists, more so than it already was. I am sure that Trump and his friends really thought that little attack very well…I guess that he will now attack Iran now.  

2025 has been a strange one.    Our family is stronger than ever, our four kids are doing great and everyone is healthy.   The farm is doing great, and our businesses are doing very well.   Sure we have seen declining demand for our products, but since demand far exceeded supply it really has not hit the bottom line, the only change now is that we have enough stock to meet demand.  It doesn't say anything good about the UK economy, but we are ok for now. Politically, the UK has been an unmitigated disaster, with an incompetent government and an idiot as prime minister.   Granted Brexit is finally starting to hurt, mainly because the EU is hurting and the first to suffer are the outsiders (AKA us…).  However, the incompetence of the government is breathtaking, and the blame must be squarely set at the 10 Downing Street. If someone had told me that America could decline as fast as it did over the past year, I would have called you a liar....

Tesla and Truth Social are two strange animals in the US stock market.  First, Tesla has seen terrible operating performance and massive stock grants to its CEO and founder.   The world's single largest stock granted by a 20x order of magnitude.   Yet the company goes from weakness to weakness, and fails to deliver on new products.  The cybertuck is a disaster, the Y and the 3 are not leading the market anymore with falling sales, other brands such as BYD are doing a lot better across the world (not only China).    As for Truth Social, its performance continues to disappoint with massive operating losses, and now the rumors that it will be acquired by an American company active in the nuclear power plant business (Not a single nuclear power plant has been built in the US in nearly 40 years…).  Yet the stock is still trading around $14.00 (the company generated a $55 million loss in the last quarter, and has not generated a profit since incept...

It has started!   Things in Las Vegas have been hard for nearly 24 months now.   The strategy was always doubtful.  How many high rollers were there in reality?  The chase for the higher premium players the massive increase in the cost of visiting "Sin City", and the reality of ageing demographics was certain the result in one outcome:  failure and bankruptcy Las Vegas is a microcosm of the rest of America, a bet made on borrowed monies.   In the past 7 years the debt burden of the average casino has doubled, but more seriously the cost of debt service has grown exponentially, based on unrealistic assumptions.   Bottom line the cost of financing Las Vegas has risen from 1.1% per annum to 6.5% now, and virtually 30% of Las Vegas casino properties are heading for chapter 11 or maybe even chapter 7 (liquidation). An extreme example is the dome, that costed nearly $2.3 billion, and requires that 95% of its seats be sold at a premium rat...

 it’s been a while. To be perfectly blunt I’ve been busy, and repeating the same old thing over and over gets old quickly. Early this morning, the Americans decided to reveal all the information on the Epstein files. There is no doubt, that the data that will come out will be bad for Trump, but the worst of it is that no one will believe that everything is out. Maga and its cohort will still believe that some files are hidden away, especially when there are rumours that the department of justice has been trying to clean up the file of all the names of Republicans.  We know the data is bad, because of defrocking of Andrew Mountbatten (A.k.a. Prince Andrew).  It will do nothing to Trump, he’s Teflon and will remain Teflon. But more importantly is now officially a lame duck president. For the past year, Donald Trump has worked very hard at stopping the publishing of the Epstein paper and has failed spectacularly. Of course he’s now playing the role of the guy who wanted the ...

 The most amazing thing about the actions of ICE against the South Carolina plant being built by the Koreans, was the gleeful commentary by ICE. According to the leader of ICE, the raid had followed from months of investigation against the company. The implication, is that this was not an accident but actually by design. It’s hard to understand how America wins from this. Korea was well on its way to meeting Donald Trump’s expectation of massive investment in American manufacturing. It’s unclear how the bosses in Seoul Will react to the ice comment. However, the nearly 375 Korean workers are being deported and will be unable to return to the United States for at least a decade. this is where it gets interesting. The Korea workers were there to install the machines that were to make the plan function. That means, that the Koreans no longer have the necessary staff to get the plant working. Depending on how much the Koreans have spent on the new plant, either they will slow down the ...

 That's how some are referring to the National Guards that are currently deployed in Washington DC, they have nothing better to do than to pick up the trash from the parks...kind of sad

I just spent the last five days in Washington.  First, I did not fly commercial, we flew on a Challenger, and the immigration and customs reception was fine, polite even. Goes to show that some pigs are more equal than others. The trip itself was a favor for a friend, the conversations were with the government, some of the biggest players in the administration.   My observations are general: People I've met were polite but generally clueless and uninterested in the work.   It was evident that despite my counterparts being very senior, they had no authority.   Not only that, they absolutely did not want authority The discussions were about very serious topics that impinge the relationship between the UK and the US, and yet there was no sense of urgency, or even a desire to correct what was clearly incorrect information.   The knowledge base was shockingly shallow, and the American bench was very thin.    On my return to the UK after ...

Don't even think about it!   There are powerful forces in place to ensure that even if Trump is greatly diminished that he will remain in power for the foreseeable future.   Think of Regan, Joe Biden, both clearly diminished by the end of the term, and yet protected by the party and the White House. What you can expect is less Trump in your face, fewer visits and speeches, but he will be there long after he is no longer competent. It is the nature of the beast.