Juggling Dynamite

Great article from Jeffrey Sachs this week reminds us of the generational, efficient, productive, investment opportunities in things that matter, which are now unfolding all around us in the real world. Deep-decarbonization is the next great boom to spread sustainable prosperity through humanity. See Sustainable infrastructure after the Automobile Age:

The first infrastructure task, therefore, is one of imagination. What kind of cities and rural areas do we seek in the future? What kind of infrastructure should underpin that vision? And who should plan, develop, build, finance, and operate the systems? These are the real choices facing us, though they’ve hardly been considered in our political debates to date.

Fortunately the technology for this smart evolution is already here. Solutions to our challenges are everywhere today: vertical farming, sustainable power, intercontinental transmission lines that bring low cost, clean energy to population centers, smart grids, home storage, electric, autonomous vehicles. Very exciting time to be alive.

The world requires an area of farmland the size of South America to feed itself. Vertical farming could be the future of agriculture. Here is a direct video link.

At the same time, last week Elon Musk tweeted about the new integrated Powerwall 2.0 roll out that will allow individual homes to capture our own free solar energy, store it in our own on site Powerwall and electric car.  Hyper-efficient, clean, sustainable living. Yes we can.

Aiming for Oct 28 unveil in SF Bay Area of new Tesla/SolarCity solar roof with integrated Powerwall 2.0 battery and Tesla charger.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 22, 2016

See:  Tesla’s integration of home charging station + energy storage + solar will change everything:

All of these products and applications are individually available today or have been announced by solar or energy storage companies, but the integration of all of them into a single package, combined with seamless integration with an electric vehicle, would be a real game changer.

Excessive leverage 2005-2015 brought forward years of what would have been future demand and booked it as sales in the present, now the future has arrived and the world economy is slumping into the demand pothole this behavior left for us. While many so called experts are surprised, no one should be.  We have earned an equal and opposite mean reversion period.

Gary Shilling, president at A. Gary Shilling, and Alberto Gallo, portfolio manager and head of micro strategies at Algebris Investments, discuss areas of rising inflation, the prospect of a Federal Reserve rate cut and the lack of ammunition for the Fed to combat a slowing economy. Here is a direct video link.

Alberto Gallo, portfolio manager and head of micro strategies at Algebris Investments, and Gary Shilling, president at A. Gary Shilling, join Bloomberg’s Michael McKee to examine liquidity warning signs in global markets and the economic impact of globalization. Here is a direct video link.

As we have written earlier, Deutsche Bank is a canary in the ongoing global financial crisis. Its culture and management have blown up a $2 trillion balance sheet with reckless risk taking, illegal activities and suicidal-leverage. Now they are blaming a $14 billion fine being demanded to settle their role in mortgage fraud as unreasonable and want Germany to bail them out. So far Merkel’s government has said ‘nein’ as they face low popular support and a desire to distance themselves from bankers heading into next year’s election. But then there is the inter-connectivity between Deutsche and the other too-big-too-exist global banks as captured in this chart.

Will personal prosecution, compensation clawbacks and job losses follow for the directing executives this time?  It certainly needs to, might as well start now.