Farmer Diaries

 Trump a good old mercantilist has decided that raising tariffs on merchandise trade is a good idea.   It achieves two goals it created a break with Nato countries which he considers "community" as opposed to his friend Puttin.   It looks good politically, at home. Now the infamous 30% tariff on "dryers" did not work the way Trump wanted, but he did not care which shows what he wants, to make his billionaire friends happy and richer.   The tariff did not lead to less foreign competition, just higher prices for washing machines and dryers.    That means higher margins.  Part of Trump's problem is that he forgets that America is a HUGE exporter of services.  You can draw your own conclusions...tariffs on services are far deadlier! The cabinet of incompetents doesn't matter, the people who he nominated with one or two rare exceptions are just there to kiss his ass, have no real competence and will face a reluctant civil service, thing ...

 I told this story a few months ago, my ex-employer aka a fund manager for high net worth investors had a few mainland Chinese clients.   One family was finally able to "get out" 2023 -- when the COVID restriction fell away, and they had sold their business to a bunch of PLA generals and other officers.   The price was almost irrelevant, what the general gave them was far more valuable:  exit visas for the entire family. The family owned 19 properties purchased between 2002 and 2018.   All the properties had been purchased around Shanghai, some of the country's most valuable and desired real estate.   It encompassed 90% of all their domestic savings.    The family sold the entirety of their property portfolio.  On real estate they purchased between 2002 and 2015, they realized an average of 5% ROE.  On the real estate they purchased between 2016 and 2018, they lost 30%, 50% and 80%, of their capital.    It i...

China's sovereign debt at 25% of GDP is one of the lowest in the world and speaks volumes about Bejing's ability to keep expenses under control....NOT. China's sovereign debt has to take into consideration the debt of the states.   When that happens the debt/GDP ratio climbs to more than 80%, and if you add on its pension obligation, then you are in the Japanese nosebleed level of 400% to 500% of GDP.  China is hardly alone in playing games with its balance sheet, Mexico is infamous for excluding from its sovereign debt burden any of the mega projects it has built in the past six years, or the debt of the state oil and electricity companies.    China's problem is fundamentally incurable., and will have to be forgiven one way or another.   The problem is that virtually 100% of China's debt (direct and indirect) is held by its citizens (individual and corporate).   The government thought they were smart when they made debt sales price secret, t...

 They've been gone for a few years now, yet somehow they are still the subject of weekly articles in the gutter press.   thinking of you The Daily Express.   For now, they live in the US and seem to be planning an exit in case Trump feels like kissing the ass of the King of England...,(which begs the question why).  The fact that he is married to an American means that he should be able to get a US passport but never underestimate the hypocrisy of the American media and that there is a big move to kick him out.     If the news is correct, Harry and Megan bought a massive property in Portugal...

A drone built in Kyiv costs between $300 and $5,000 for the larger longer-range models.    The cheap battlefield drones are already changing the nature of warfare because drones are more polyvalent and extremely cheap in their simplest format.    The reality is that Ukraine was able to shut down airports around Moscow last weekend with its drone, which is 1,700 miles from the Ukrainian border.     The question is therefore is America's war machine geared to the war of 30 years ago or to the war of today.   A swarm of small drones could lay waste to the flight operation of an aircraft carrier, and while the F35 is a fantastic platform it's hard to justify the capital, and manpower when a drone costs 1.000th the cost can do about 95% of its mission.  How many American war vessels are built specifically for drone operations?   How about none!   Of course, the firepower of an aircraft carrier can be unbelievable but it ma...

 The four biggest ticket items in the US Federal government Report are Social Security, defence, healthcare, and interest expenses Social Security is an expense, but it is also something for which people pay directly form of insurance. A certain amount is deducted from your monthly check, which will become your payment once you retire. The reality is that most Social Security in the United States are "pay as you go" as the money has been used by governments in the past.. The reality is that cutting Social Security would be a very easy thing to do most retirees are already Republican and they’re not about to vote Democrats anyway worse, they won’t vote at all so who cares? The second is more complicated defence spending has two aspects. The first is the cost of running the world's single-largest army, but there’s also the VA and other retirement benefits for past soldiers. There’s not a lot to cut here if you’re gonna be strong on defence, it’s hard to see how you can cut ...

 The last time I look, the stock was down 20%. There’s an old saying in the business by the rumour sell the news. The truth is that Donald Trump right now couldn’t care less about true social. He’s the president he has to support of the Senate and the representative and the judges he doesn’t need anything from anybody. It is almost certain that all his court cases will go into Supreme Court review and he will be found not guilty of anything that’s America today. as for truth, social the fact that they announced their third quarter numbers the day of the election tells you everything you need to know about their results. They were horrible just simply horrible. How this business is worth $5 billion working with almost no revenues and no plausible source of revenues is mind blowing.  But it doesn’t matter those who bought true social by political conviction Will get hosed those who bought it based on trend probably made a lot of money assuming they bought it right

 The only question is how lazy Trump will be in a second term. He has strong majorities in both the house and the Senate and he can recast the United States more or less the way he wants. Obviously, the first step will be to continue his reform of the judiciary system with appointments of strongly pro-Republican judges in terms of healthcare American expects the removal of the Obama care and replace it with nothing, which is what the Republicans want anyway. I suspect that Europe can put even money that NATO will be shut down within the next 18 to 24 months. Donald Trump has never liked European countries and would prefer a line with With President Putin, then with the European nations, he has greater affinity with that man than he does with a German, the French or the Brits. I think it’s fair to expect massive increase in tariffs and massive reduction in taxes. America should be ready to see a removal of the Department of education and social services and removal of about four or ...

 The Americans have chosen Donald Trump. He won decisively he even won the popular vote why Donald Trump won is an interesting question. A few weeks ago, a man found an old shopping list of 2018. The price of fulfilling that same order today was nearly 4 times as high in the last 12 months general mill has increased the price Cereals by 20% because of higher expenses or they failed to say, of course, was a massive soldering increases that the senior management of general Mills gave each other in In the order of 300% the reality today is that the US stock market has never been higher because profitability by US corporations have never been higher I have not eaten at McDonald’s restaurant for more than 20 years but when I heard last week that a big Mac french fries and a Coke was $17 it was evident that something was very wrong. Price gouging has become the norm in North America. The true lack of competition makes it possible for delivery points to jack up their price dramatically wi...

 2024 will probably be our best year ever.   The numbers for the third quarters are now in, and while prices are on track with 2023 figures, the budgeted volume is almost 25% higher than last year.   Undoubtedly, the increased volume of produce and our new-ish high tunnels have had a major impact.   Demand from distributors remains strong and we are entirely satisfied with this segment, but where as in 2022 it represented nearly 80% of our volume, this year it was down to 45%, excluding the business that is channelled via our wholesalers but is destined for our subsidiaries.    One thing I had not counted on was the quick reproduction rate of our pigs, first pigs are very very good at reproducing, and that has increased our labour costs, but our direct-to-consumer business there has proven very successful and the 44 hams we have aging, are looking delicious.   Not the AAA equivalent to what the Spanish produce but a very attractive ...

 So for some bizarre reason our farm has become a bit Of an outlier, what happened is that our farm is no longer tied to the electric grid. The reason has little to do with the cost of energy electric in particular and everything to do with our slurry and waste treatment plant that has become a bio digester. The new European rules on clean water are such that when we built our farm installing a bio digester was a very reasonable solution to a ongoing environmental problem It was not so much out of conviction that green energy was better, but we needed to transform the slurry into something that was useable and non-toxic, especially we need to make sure that the water was clean before it went back into the water system That is a big advantage of a Bio digester The reality is that all our cattle produce enough waste at our farm, produce enough waste that it made sense for us to have some redundancy and two bio digesters with the waste gas we heat our high tunnels, the houses, and all...