News

Stocks Stumble

Posted on by Jim Carlton

Independent Investment Management designed to protect and grow your wealth.

JIM CARLTON
Managing Director
Chief Investment Officer

Friends

 

If you want to understand why the financial markets are difficult to oversee and why Congress has such a difficult time designing legislation to do so, today’s Committee on Financial Services zoom testimony with the GameStop situation players was essential to that education. Simply put, very few of the folks asking questions have a clue as to the workings, much less the purposes of financial markets. But I digress.

 

Stocks slumped mightily in early trading but did recover some of those losses as the trading session wore on. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 119 points to finish the day at 31,493. The S&P 500 was down 17 points to close at 3,913. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 100 points to close at 13,865. Gold was up $1 to trade at $1,773 per ounce, while oil was down $1.15 to trade at $59.99 per barrel WTI.

 

I know it’s been a difficult week for us here in Houston and in Texas in general. Hopefully you have your power back by now and your water is running. We have all been in this together and after tonight it looks like we will start to thaw out. Stay strong, the week is almost over.

 

Have a nice evening everyone.

Jim

10200 Grogan’s Mill Road, Suite 340
The Woodlands, TX  77380 
(281) 298-2700 Phone
(877) 824-4299 Toll Free
(281) 298-2760 Fax

info@chjwealthmanagement.com        www.chjwealthmanagement.com

Investment Advisory offered through Carlton, Hofferkamp & Jenks Wealth Management, LLC (“CHJ”).

*Numbers and figures sourced from the following: Bloomberg.com, CNBC.com and Finance.Yahoo.com.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.

CHJ Wealth Management,
10200 Grogan’s Mill Road,
Suite 340
The Woodlands, TX 77380

Talent on Loan From God

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Yesterday God called back the talent he had loaned out to Rush Limbaugh.

“With talent on loan from God, it’s Rush Limbaugh,” part of how the intro to the daily conservative three-hour show went.  And, went.  For three hours a day, for 52 weeks, and for 32+ years the solo voice behind the golden mike, comfortably ensconced in the EIB(Excellence in Broadcasting) studio, offered lectures in advanced conservative studies as he put it.  Over six hundred stations globally offered his “course.”

His reach and his resilience are unmatched.

Limbaugh is regarded far and wide as the savior of talk show radio regardless of your political preference or party affiliation.

But, he was so much more than that to so many.  The charitable donations of his money, time, or airtime were far too numerous to count and far too generous for even a man of his wealth.

But he was so much more than that.  His passion for his country, his vision for how it was, and how it could and should be, was unwavering.  Guiding principles never go out of style.  You might disagree with the “how” but you’d be a fool to disagree with the “what” and the “why.”

Rush shaped lives.  Rush changed lives.  Rush was bigger than life.

And, yet, he had his missteps and faults.  Prescription drugs and a few wrong turns down the racial rabbit hole were all too well documented.  But, we’d guess God just gave him a fast pass ticket through the pearly gates.  Life is after all a roller coaster, isn’t it?

Fox News commenters, a video of him receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor at President Trump’s State of the Union(SOTU) in February of 2020, and President Trump himself all intersected on the Fair and Balanced network yesterday shortly after his passing.

And, that confluence is an example of where America got it all right and yet all wrong.  Rush would tell us so in comical and wise detail if he had but one more day to use his fine audio pipes.

Bill Hemmer asked Trump to watch along with the audience the SOTU moment when he awarded Rush the medal.

As Trump spoke directly to Rush and his wife seated in the balcony, behind the Prez was the one and only Nancy Pelosi.  She thought so little of the moment that she turned her body and therefore her view well away from Trump and even further away from the about to be anointed Rush.  She rifled through the paper that her SOTU copy was printed on like Amazon’s Alexa’s best shuffle.  So childish, like Trump.

Should anyone turn their back on Muhammed Ali, Bill Clinton, George Clooney, or countless others if they were getting a lifetime achievement award regardless of your beliefs about their beliefs?  No. No.  No.  Respect is earned and should always be recognized.

The Republican congressmen and women roared.  The Democratic ones sat in silence.  Maybe you didn’t like what he stood for, but at the very least you could have stood up for the presentation out of the respect you had (or should have had) for his place in American history.  Shameful.

And then Hemmer made the mistake of asking Trump what Rush told him after the November 3rd election.  Trump immediately launched into saying that Rush thought he won, and Americans thought he won, and Trump himself thought he won.  So childish, like Pelosi.

You take the low road and I’ll take the high road.

Even on his last day Rush would have dissected his own moment, found a way to make sense of it all, pointed us in a better direction, and stayed mostly above the fray.

America lost a great one yesterday, all of America that is.

So, who possibly can take Rush’s place?

The answer is no one even if you have considerable talent on loan from God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Doubt, Game On

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Ten days into month two of year 21 of century 21 you have two serious doubts.

One is, you doubt that you’ll ever watch a movie on one of the super big screens inside of an American Multi-Cinema (AMC) Theatre again.  Two is, you doubt that you’ll ever watch another hour of the American political theatre again.

AMC theatres are closed.  It’s a virus thing you know.  Political theatres never close.  It feels like a virus thing as well.

AMC has no choice right now.  Politics chose basically to rerun the Trump Impeachment.

It’s a slightly different plot but all of your favorite characters are there.  It’s got a catchy name too- The Second Impeachment of Donald Trump.

They had a choice.  They could choose to let the darkest days of his Presidency stay that way.  Or they could choose to “buy” airtime on all of your favorite channels like MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, or NBC to shine more light on the darkness.

So while America watched one Super Bowl commercial after another that spoke to unity and coming together, the newly sworn-in Congress decided to further unify us by making their first order of biz in the new year with a new prez a docudrama about the old prez.

How many times can you watch Jason hack someone up in Friday the 13th?

Super Bowl parties can leave you hungover.  American politics can as well.

But you wonder if the sequel has and the prequel had ulterior motives.  Did the prequel have everything to do with getting 45 out of office and 46 in?  Does the sequel have everything to do with the 2022 midterms?

You see to “unify” you can always divide to conquer.  And, forcing a Republican to vote for or against Trump being impeached and/or convicted gets him/her on the record.

Vote to acquit him and the Dems will run against you on that very point.  Vote to convict and you risk alienating the very people that may have put you in office last time or for the first time.  It’s a win/win or a lose/lose depending on the color of your uniform.

We highly doubt that America is watching this anymore closely than they were watching the last five minutes of the Super Bowl.  The outcome at the game’s end was no longer in doubt, only the final score was.  And, breaking news, Trump isn’t going to get convicted either.

Meanwhile, for AMC, it’s at least the two-minute warning.

But in American politics running up the score never ends.

And make no mistake about it, the game never ends either.

 

 

When the Game Stops

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The get rich quick crowd gathered on Reddit and was having quite the party.  There was no stopping the game that they were playing with stock in GameStop.

But, like at the stroke of midnight, if you don’t pay the band the music stops.  And, yesterday it got quiet.  Quiet like the inside of GameStop stores during this pandemic.

Just last Thursday shares in GameStop were bought for as high as they were sold-it always takes two to dance.  And the price to get on the floor was $483.  The stock was a much cheaper date in mid-summer at $4.  That’s no typo.  And, yesterday the stock retreated to $84 just four trading days after the $483.  That’s again no typo.

If you’re a retail investor and you wanted to show old school Wall St. that there was a new kid in town, you did.  Briefly.  The short-selling hedge funds got squeezed a bit.

If you wanted to get rich quick, hopefully you bought low and sold high.  Because as it was quickly learned again, value never goes out of style. Stock is always only worth what someone will pay for it.

However, if you bought high and sold low maybe it’s time to get off of Reddit.  If you did so with margin money you might need to see a bankruptcy attorney.  If you did so with your stay at home stimulus money, as many on Reddit bragged, maybe you should go get a job.

But, if you live in Long Beach, CA, and want to get into the grocery business you’re looking in the wrong place.  Yesterday, Kroger announced that it was closing its two stores at the end of this month in response to the mayor’s mandated “hero” pay of minimally $15 an hour for those “workers on the front lines.”

And, we are reminded again, value never goes out of style.  People are always only worth what someone will pay for them.  And jobs are valued for what people will accept them for unless you are the government and want to cause some market disruption.

Government has its eye on this stock market disruption.  They’ll start hearings next week on what we can learn from it.   That should be good for a few laughs.  Do you notice how the government always reacts, it never acts?

Political opposites Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz were in full agreement that the bad guys in this were the old Wall Streeters who were trying to blame the up and comers for making the market rattle.

In other words, “let the free market decide what a stock is worth.”  Hmm.  That seems like the polar opposite of what the government is trying to do with wages.

Reddit user benaffleks (really) says “This is a big moment.  Hedge fund managers live in the past.  They believe that average retail investors don’t know anything about the market(which may be true) and we’re just gambling our money away.  This was the past.”

One never really knows when the game stops.

But, when it does fair market value is always the winner.

Always.

 

 

Serious Problem Solved

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Four days into the Joe Biden presidency and we can already feel what true leadership looks and feels like.  Gone are the petty arguments this same time four years ago that were being played out by the Trump team v. the media over how many people attended his Inauguration Parade.

“We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people,” said President Andrew Shepard in the movie The American President.  He went on castigating his reelection opponent Bob Rumson, “This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.”  There.

So some serious people have been weighing in on a serious problem in the last few days.  The serious problem is Covid-19.

It got serious in March of 2020.  By mid-October of 2020, Biden had seen enough.  He tweeted, “We’re eight months into this pandemic and Donald Trump still doesn’t have a plan to get this virus under control.  I do.”

Amongst other jewels on his platform, he promised 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office!  Bold goal aiming for 1 million injections a day don’t you say?

His advisers advised the press that this would be a tall hill to climb but they would do everything they could to make it happen.  How tall?  His senior advisor Cedric Richmond spoke to CNN’s Pamela Brown on air about the Covid vaccine distribution.  “The sad part is the last administration didn’t leave anything.  They didn’t leave a plan.”

The funny or not so funny thing about that is America has been averaging almost that for the last 15 or so days before Biden took his oath under heavy security.  It might be over a million a day if California, ranked dead last in the US in percent of vaccines administered versus shipped, could roll up more sleeves.

Now, this conflicts with another Biden tweet this past week.  @JoeBiden: “There is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”  Say it ain’t so, Joe?  What happened to your plan?

But for some, if you follow the science, apparently the situation is getting better after nearly ten months of stay at home orders.

One believer is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer(D).  She announced that her state would allow restaurants and bars to reopen for indoor service at 25% capacity starting early next week.  She stated, “The science around this is settled, and if we all wear masks and wash our hands while social distancing, we will be in a strong position in a few weeks.  And then we’ll even be able to do more.”  Groundbreaking really.

Did she learn this while attending Biden’s inauguration while not socially distancing?  Sounds like her husband can go clean his boat safely now, too.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser(D) found the science news refreshing as well.  She announced an identical plan to Whitmer’s on the same day.  The mad scientist, she is.

Both are timely, though both are a full week behind New York(D) Governor Andrew Cuomo’s pronouncement a week ago.  He brilliantly blabbed that New York can’t go on like this any longer.  “We must reopen,” he said.  The plan floated there is to use rapid testing administered at hundreds of government locations. Of course, it is.  Rapid testing has been available for about six months.  Let the government help you.

So, either we have a plan or don’t.  Either we reopen or not.  And, we need more vaccines that we don’t administer.  And then, there is our new leader who said there’s nothing we can do about the trajectory.

No wonder we need the government’s help to solve this.   Surely they’ll follow the science to get us there.  And, just in time we might add.

 

PA, QB’s, KXLPP, and Phil

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The state of Pennsylvania has produced more great quarterbacks than any other.   Namath, Unitis, Kelly, Marino, and Montana hail from all over the Keystone State as it is known.

And, as of today, it will have produced yet another.  This one is tasked with leading the most important team of all, the United States.  His name is Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and he was born in Scranton, PA way back in 1942. 

If you listen to those who voted for him, Joe’s facing fourth and long given the job done by his predecessor, outgoing QB Donald J. Trump.

But, undaunted, the Scrapper from Scranton has promised much to many.  His game plan is aggressive on day one and even more so in the first 100 days.

One of the first plays he is expected to call is a halt to the Keystone XL Pipeline Project (KXLPP).

If you’re not familiar with the project here’s where the bouncing ball stands after three phases were completed.  The pipeline became well known when a planned fourth phase, Keystone XL, attracted opposition from environmentalists, becoming a symbol of the battle over climate change and fossil fuels. In 2015 Keystone XL was temporarily delayed by then-President Barack Obama. On January 24, 2017, President Donald Trump took action intended to permit the pipeline’s completion. On January 17, 2021, it was announced that President-elect Joe Biden planned to cancel the Keystone XL project during his first days in office.

You’d think that it’s the first of its kind as opposed to likely the safest of its kind.

Opponents cheered.  If you’re in the stands waving pompoms for the Green New Deal, it’s a touchdown.  Proponents jeered.  If you’re a member of one of the four national unions that have nearly 7000 of their teammates working on it, or if you prefer North American oil refined in North America, you booed lustily.

So the Keystone State commander in chief will punt the political football known as the Keystone Project down the field.

And, that’s how it goes these days.  Every four years we spend a lot of time, energy (not the dreaded fossil fuel type), and money undoing what we’ve been doing.  Next up immigration laws, then the dreaded wall, then corporate taxes.  Then?  Well, how about the inheritance tax?  How dare you die and leave your hard-earned money to your family!

It’s hard to win the office and keep the office when 50% of the stands are filled with the opposition to your game plan.  It’s harder still when you make choices like stopping the KXLPP.  The union vote of confidence is waining and you just kicked off.  Fifty percent of 50% of 50% of 50% is, well you understand, not enough after four years in the biggest league of them all.

And, speaking of kicking off, this QB is a mere 78 years old as he takes office, but we digress.  Former Oakland Raider QB George Blanda grew up in Pennsylvania as well.  Blanda retired from pro football in August 1976 as the oldest player to ever play at the age of 48.  Maybe 78 is the new 48?

Blanda played in four different decades.  Biden has been in political offices of one kind or another for at least that many.

With that type of longevity, you must be pretty good at knowing when to run v. when to pass.

Good luck Mr. QB President-elect Biden.

Puxatawny Phil will be watching.  He too is from PA.  Will he see his shadow, take his ball, and go home?  Or does hope eternally spring early this spring?

 

 

Do Not Pass Go

Posted on by boom booms room staff

“Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the rest of the play?”

The fallout continues from the storming of the Capitol Building last Thursday.  And it accelerates.  The siege didn’t last very long, but the damage in so many ways was done.

And, the door to reshaping America has blown more wide open than the courtesy shown by the Capitol Police to the not so peaceful of the mostly peaceful protesters.

Cancel culture is evolving like a revolving door that lost power.  Have you ever been in one when it came to a complete stop?  You try not to smash your face against the suddenly stationary glass.  Good luck.

Do you remember the decibel level of the media when an Oregon baker refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple wedding?  That was when the media deemed it so wrong for a private business to selectively not serve a willing paying customer.

Chick-Fil-a still doesn’t open on Sundays, but it takes some damn fine chicken to survive the cancel attempts of the culture of today.

Parler might be in the deep fry, however.   Surely you heard of them?  They are (or were) trying to build a Twitter-like platform for the right.   Amazon, Google, and Apple collectively pulled the virtual rug out from under Parler.

Every vendor for texting and email services and even their lawyers ditched them.  Poof!  It can be awfully dark on Al Gore’s internet in so many ways.

If you have no server, no app, and no search engine result, you have no social media business.  It’s pretty simple.  And, it should be pretty scary to all.

The PGA has had it with Trump too.   They exercised their right to cancel their agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminister, one of his courses.  It’s their right after all.

Major corporations are running, not walking away, from members of Congress who voted against ratifying the electoral college results.  Some have stopped political contributions altogether.  And, altogether that might not be a bad idea.

BBR has long supported a business’s right to refuse service for any reason(s) including religious beliefs but not on prejudices.

Hate Trump all you want.  Hate the right all you want.  Hell, impeach him for a second time if you want.  But, we better start pointing some vitriol and arrows at big tech and now.

The monopolies that they have and the power that they wield should scare us all.   Try working your way down the fourth side of the Monopoly Board.  Pacific, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Park, and Boardwalk are all very expensive if you land on any one of them.

The war on free speech makes the storming of the Capitol look like a bunch of misguided, misfit amateurs, oogled on by a sore loser, which it was.  And both should scare all.

The right to burn the American flag has long been ruled as guaranteed freedom of expression.

You don’t have to like it.  You just need to respect it.

The same should go for freedom of speech.

 

(In)Civility

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The roads that lead to the corner of civility and incivility are but a few steps apart from one another.

Was yesterday’s mostly peaceful protest march that started just steps from the White House and ended up the steps of the Capitol Building a new low? Not at all.  The First Amendment guarantees it.  But.

Was the lowest of lows reached when a subset of the group invaded the hallowed halls of the Congress by breaking windows, brandishing a few guns, and carrying out artifacts from their conquest?  We can hope.  Or, we can do more than hope.

Trump was elected as the ultimate outsider and built his momentum by condemning all that Washington is (drain the swamp) and all that reported favorably on it (the fake news folks).  His base loved(loves) the idea.  His fringe zealots crossed a line that heretofore may have never been crossed before.  And, where the hell was the police?

We all had to feel violated.  The White House and the Capitol Building are more than architectural masterpieces.  They’re our home and our workplace.  They are uniquely Americas to cherish.   They are the envy of the world for what they symbolize or did symbolize.  Freedom.

But maybe, just maybe we’ve taken these freedoms a bit too far.  And, like it or not that goes for both sides.  We’d rather argue and stand our ground on every item of our agendas no matter how big or small.  “Leaders” would rather tear up a speech behind the President’s back than meet with him face to face to try to advance the quality of the American way of life.

If you protest longer, yell louder, destroy more, burn hotter, and loot till you can’t carry anymore loot maybe you’ll be heard.  Or, maybe you’ll be ignored and despised. Kill a few cops while you’re at it too.  Feed your base and your fringe will carry your water.

If you claim repeatedly, and petulantly, and incorrectly that the election that you lost was really one that you won in a landslide somebody will believe you and you can still sit in the wooden chair in the Oval Office.  Feed your base and your fringe will carry your water.

Yesterday the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat issued a joint statement prior to their game.  “2021 is a new year, but some things have not changed,” the statement read. “We play tonight’s game with a heavy heart after yesterday’s decision in Kenosha, and knowing that protesters in our nation’s capital are treated differently by political leaders depending on what side of certain issues they are on. The drastic difference between the way protesters this past spring and summer were treated and the encouragement given to today’s protestors who acted illegally just shows how much more work we have to do.

You might have missed the news(understandably) that no Kenosha officers were charged in the Jacob Blake shooting that left him paralyzed.   They weren’t charged because eyewitness and video accounts showed the repeat offender of the law carrying an open knife disobeying the lawmen who feared for their lives.    Why would you have a heavy heart about that?  Nevermind that Kenosha was burned down as it doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Celtics and the Heat then knelt together pregame protesting the Washington protest.

What’s next?  Could some group protest a protest of a protest?

What Trump said to his supporters was wrong.  What they did inside of the Capitol Building was criminal.

When the peaceful protesters in the summer of love burned down the Minneapolis Police Precinct Three Station it was wrong and it was criminal as well.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.  And ten wrongs don’t make five rights.

Yesterday wasn’t a civil war, but it was far from civil.  But, if we keep justifying lower lows of uncivil behavior we’ll get there.

In less than two weeks President-Elect Joe Biden will take the oath of office on the same steps that the protesters occupied for hours yesterday.

Donald Trump issued a statement last night saying that the transition would be orderly.  He’s a funny guy.

Joe Biden said he was running for office because “the soul of the nation was at stake.”

It sure seems so.

 

 

Tic Toc Goes the Clock

Posted on by boom booms room staff

In 2009 newly elected and inaugurated President Barrack Obama told Republican Congressional leadership that “elections have consequences.”  And, indeed they do.

In 2017 newly elected and inaugurated President Donald Trump told America that “we are going to win, win, win.  We’re going to win so much that you’re going to get tired of winning.”  And, apparently, indeed America did tire.

With one seat still undecided in Georgia this AM, the Democrats are so close to their own win, win, win.  They have a slim majority in the House, they won (stole say some who remain in denial) the Presidency, and they are on the doorstep of the slimmest of margins in the Senate.

In 2009 when the Democrats last controlled all three, Obamacare was born. It turned healthcare into a right, not a need, for all practical purposes.

But remember, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”  Well, not really, but we digress.

So, assuming Georgia delivers two peaches to the Senate from yesterday’s runoffs, what “consequence” or “consequences” will they deliver? The world is their oyster thanks to the presumptive peaches.

Well, what’s on the menu?  Is Washington DC headed for statehood?  Are higher corporate taxes on the way?  Surely there is some further social and justice reform coming.

How about more black robes for more black Supreme Court justices.  Nine is such an odd number anyway.  How about a lucky 13?

And, it’s cold (too cold) outside now, but it’ll soon be warm (too warm) this spring.  Climate change needs to change.  And, all of those windmills that you’ll soon see won’t cool us down enough.   The car battery business is very good, and it just got better.

And, finally, Twitter’s “disputed claims” department can reassign a few workers.

Or, will the Democrats have trouble group ordering from the menu?  Can’t decide?  It’s happened before.  Can’t share?  It’s happened before.   It happened in 2009.  Indigestion and heartburn aren’t ever far away if one gets gluttonous.

Two years seems so far away.  But, in two years could the Republicans recover from so much winning and whining and take back the House?  The Senate?  Both?

Sure they can.  The pendulum always swings.  At least it always has.  Obama found out the hard way in late 2010 just as Reagan did back in 1982.

Stacking on two more Senators by granting statehood to DC would make the Senate tough.  But, don’t forget that politics is always local, and the “on the ground” House seats that the elephants gained in November is a modest but significant move countrywide that could make landfall in the Capital as early as 2022.

As for the now?  One of our staff members fielded a question from his soon to be 32-year-old son this AM.  “Now what do we do, dad?” the young businessman asked.  “Go to work, son,” came the reply we’re told.

While two years seems like an eternity to reshape America, it’s but a New York minute in our history.

And, the clock never stops ticking.

 

5593 Pages and $2000

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The ride to the $2000 per family stimulus signed into law by President Trump had a few twists, turns, bumps, and bruises.  But, in the end, is or isn’t it all worth it?

The answer reminds us of a quote from a famous president of our yesteryear.  “It depends on what your definition of is, is.”

The house bill called the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2021, funded both the government to do its usual fine job and the citizens who don’t have a fine job.

Actually, it did that and then some.  And, some.  It’s a measly $2.3 trillion spend.

That it took a while might have had to do with that pesky election in November.  You see, multiple attempts were made to line your pockets with bread crumb money in the fall.   But, a few Dems said no and no and no for one reason or another or another.  Till now.

Senator Marsha Blackburn may have summed it up best when she said, “One of the things that is so frustrating about this is that you could have had a lot more money than $2,000 in the pocket of hard-working Americans if, back in July or September or twice in October or in November, they had voted to increase unemployment by $300 per week.

Nevermind that, take a look at what’s inside this 5593 page beautifully wrapped Christmas present if you have time.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC if you’re short on time, just a few days ago complained that she didn’t.  Maybe she was out doing some last-minute shopping of her own.

The novel War and Peace was just 1225 pages.

USA Today had some time.  They feel like if you are a concerned citizen on climate change you got everything you ever wanted.  If you think climate change is a bunch of malarky it looks like you got a lump of coal in your stocking.  See what we did there?

USA Today reported that environmental activists “are touting the $2.3 trillion bill as a potential game-changer thanks to tax breaks for renewable energy sources, initiatives to promote carbon capture storage, and a significant phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that are a key culprit to the planet’s warming.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) supported the bill and likes the incentive features.  “Free-market innovation is the key to addressing a changing climate,” Barrasso said. “This bipartisan legislation proves we can protect our environment without punishing our economy.”  Can you hear the laughter all of the way from China?

The law also includes expanding the federal bureaucracy across federal agencies, including creating the Office of Fossil Energy, the Office of Science, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

That’s lots of new offices at a time when the commercial real estate biz is tough because that Covid thing keeps getting in the way.  DC must be the place to relocate if you are a commercial realtor.  Perhaps a lease-to-own arrangement is best for you Uncle Sam?

The Direct Air Capture Technology Advisory Board also would be put in place.  I guess if we want to know what it is we should heed the advice of Nancy Pelosi of years gone by when Obamacare was passed.  She uttered, “if you want to know what’s in the bill you can read it after we pass it.”

Still, we wondered what the hell direct air capture was.  A quick Google search turned up a page that had a popup request that we donate to the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The WRI sounds mighty important, almost as important as the $2000 you’ve been waiting on for four months.