This week, we add a new feature for the #hottakeoftheday newsletter we are calling "Around the Horn."  Mark Rossano, Ellen Wald, Ryan Ray and I tackle issues from last week that will have a longer lasting impact in the next month.  Get involved, propose questions, make comments and we will plan on doing a webinar with subscribers as we get further into this.  Subscribe today! 1) With the reduction of production in the US and refineries going off line for...

By Ellen Wald As the Lone Star State faces a near-apocalyptic cold spell not seen in over thirty years, it seems that every talking head and opinionated American has a view on why Texans are freezing without power. Do these people even understand what powers Texas’s grid? Do they know that people are freezing without their electric heat pumps? It seems that most people, outside of Texas, at least, are hoping to use this catastrophe to promote their preconceived personal...

By Ellen Wald In 1729, British satirist Jonathan Swift recommended that poor families sell their babies as food. It was not a serious suggestion, but rather an attack on the absurd theories of the day. In 2019, an activist satirically told Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that the only way to solve climate change was to “start eating babies.” What would have happened if that activist had stood up in this winter of 2021 with such a wild idea? After a year of...

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Why Would The World’s Biggest Fund Push Carbon Credits? Wald Wednesday: Carbon credits, big finance, big oil, and big billionaires By Ellen Wald BlackRock is getting involved in financial environmental engineering. In his annual letter to the boards of corporations, CEO Larry Fink asked companies “to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy.” Companies whose progress towards “net zero” is deemed insufficient according to BlackRock’s standards will face consequences. The letter raises suspicions...

On January 4th, 2021, GameStop was a $1.3 billion market cap company with $1 billion in quarterly revenue and $295 million in losses over the previous 9 months.  It was also the subject of discussion on a Reddit forum called "Wallstreetbets" and as near as I can tell, this is the post that laid out the case for what COULD happen.  It was a sleepy story, little noticed, but potentially explosive, if only the entire world knew about it. The...

New presidential administrations bring drastic policy changes, especially in a partisan era such as ours, and crypto currency may be an early victim of those changes. Janet Yellen, the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary and former head of the Federal Reserve, hinted during her confirmation hearing that addressing Bitcoin is on the Biden administration’s agenda. It makes sense that the government is not happy about crypto currencies, and it is well within the government’s power to deal Bitcoin and crypto...

If you aren’t following Mark Rossano, you are missing out on a huge amount of data (which, when used correctly becomes knowledge). Whether it’s the economy, energy or commodities and the EIA data, Mark breaks it down every week better than anyone. In partnership with PrimaryVision, we are launching a pregame show to tee up the topics of the week. This is the first one, and we will get to under 15 minutes by the end of our experiment. Let...

Wald Wednesday Why Elon Musk Can’t Save Free Speech But Canada Could By Ellen Wald Over the past week and a half we have not only witnessed the “banning” of numerous individuals from social media platforms, but also the deplatforming of entire businesses via the refusal of service from their vendors. These vendors—including Amazon, Apple and Google—had provided hardware, software and marketplaces to the businesses now struggling to survive. After initial surprise and outrage, I started to see many calls (especially on...

This weekend, we add a segment we’re calling “The Counter Point” for newsletter subscribers only. Fresh off the LinkedIn ban, and still without great insight into the murky algorithm and the “cancel/silence-culture” things that got me suspended in the first place, we are transitioning some of the more lively content to subscribers only, of which you are one (and thank you for that). The articles in the newsletter include additional details, thoughts and a slightly more BH vs. PG content...