Farmer Diaries

At an Energy conference in Mexico City last week every Mexican political party agreed that there was no turning back from the energy reform that was proposed by the current president and was enacted by the current Congress via a change to Mexico's constitution. The fear had always been, that AMLO (Lopez-Obrador) as he had somewhat expressed in several of his Youtube presentations that he wanted to turn the clock back on energy reform.  Last week, his energy spokesman indicated that AMLO's position has been miss-understood and that he saw the current energy reform as a way forward for the country -- which face regional energy shortages. Although the presidential elections will cause massive administrative dislocation (the first three layers of all department are political appointees) the reality is that much can proceed despite this certain slow down in the policy side of the equation. However, for asset builders, this has often ended up killing new energy proje...

If you consider that America has for decades actively meddled in many nation's democratic processes the news that Russia did the same to America cannot be a surprise.  Especially since so many of our institutions are more than happy to be corrupted for a few coins! What is amazing is the outrage...then again Americans have always been weird that way --

More than four years ago one aspect of Mexico's energy reform that was unanswered was the ability to finance some of Mexico's state monopoly's infrastructure requirements. Using the electric grid as an example -- especially since assets are difficult to identify and legally cannot be segregated -- the capital requirements (transport, distribution etc) implied massive investment that CFE was ill-equipped to meet, as its balance sheet is already under heavy strain. Moreover, as per Mexican law, it is impossible to segregate assets or create liens against specific assets owned by either PEMEX or CFE (although the former is allowed to sell some of these assets). In comes, the Fibre-E structure (Investment Trust in Energy and Infrastructure, is its full name), which is a listed instrument (on the Mexican stock exchange) that allows the participation of private capital into public infrastructure. Many commentators use a US structural analogy of an "MPL" (used in the ...

As was foretold Bitcoin has taken a bit of a reversal, from a January 10th high of $20,049, it now trades around $7,200 -- which is a rather substantial correction.  One journalist had the nerve to ask:  "How far can it go", the short answer is that it can go all the way to zero. At zero, Bitcoin would represent a real economic loss, since "mining" bitcoins is not a free enterprise.  It probably will not be the case, still there are some interesting information on the price rise and subsequent fall of Bitcoin:  (i) Two Bitcoin owners were responsible for 90% of the Bitcoin price rise between US$ 45 and US$ 1,000, (ii) Bitcoins are still being mined by Russian and Chinese "Coinfarms" although the economics are starting to be less interesting, (iii) the sovereign currencies are working hard a delegitimizing bitcoins (standard when you run a monopoly) -- but then Bitcoin has a lot to answer for.  40% of all Bitcoins have never been traded...and are owned by 1...