Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

The U.S. has military presence all over the world. A significant amount of oil travels through the Straight of Hormuz, if that is the point.

85 percent of that oil is heading to Asia. The vast majority of that oil doesn't come anywhere near the U.S. The U.S. takes a strategic interest in the passageway, the same way it takes a great deal of strategic interest in the 38th Parallel and has tens of thousands of troops in South Korea, facing North Korea. With the Straight of Hormuz, we want to contain Iran and any efforts it might make to destabilize the world.

 

It's not inaccurate because it is old. It is inaccurate because it is looking at military expenditures and making them into something other than what they actually are. Assigning dollar costs to something those dollar costs don't relate to.

Whoever wrote that should have just left it at, "Calculating the numbers isn’t straightforward." Because it's ridiculous to take U.S. military expenditures in that area, and attribute it across the board to OUR energy needs. As if those are dollar for dollar expenditures that really should make the price of oil higher by exactly the amount we spend on our military in the region. It's ludicrous. We have our military all over the world. I don't particularly like it, but the reasons for that are manifold.

The oil that piece was talking about goes mainly to Japan and China. We aren't, as you suggested in that first post, spending billions to keep oil securely flowing into our country -- your rationale for the dumbass subsidy and regulatory environment behind EVs. That article isn't a serious analysis of any sort. I mean, I can take any part of U.S. government expenditure that has a tangential relationship to "the middle east" and make that kind of direct relationship. But it's nonsense. It's the kind of thing done by people who want to make a case for something and then create bullshit numbers to support whatever they wanted to assert all along.

If you want to take me on a wild goose chase through your posts, OK. But first you did a post suggesting that the U.S. spends billions or trillions of dollars to protect oil interests in the middle east that the U.S. doesn't really have -- at least from an "our oil comes from there perspective," and not a "global stability perspective." I pointed out the reality of where our oil actually comes from. Honestly, what I pointed out was spot on. We barely import any oil from the middle east, and to the extent that middle east stability keeps down the worldwide price of oil, we would have to worry a lot less than most other countries, because we are a major oil producer and exporter.

Then it was "Strait of Hormuz." and a GTK. Except the reason we have a military presence there can't have much of a direct relationship with our oil needs, because very little to none of the oil that gets consumed in the U.S. actually travels through the Strait of Hormuz. I pointed that out.

Then you gave me that link -- and some non sequitur about Saudi Arabia's oil fields. Yeah, the U.S. has this policy of keeping Saudi Arabia stable. And yeah, Iran is a threat to Saudi Arabia (what I said about why the U.S. likely has a presence around there -- to keep Iran in check from being a threat to others) -- at least Iran is hostile to the Saudis. And yes, Saudi Arabia's relative well being depends on its oil exports. But all of this is really about U.S. intervention in the world and the foreign policy agenda we have pursued for decades now for all kinds of fucked up reasons. As I said, it is more akin to us massing troops near North Korea than it is to some narrative about our energy needs that doesn't make much sense.

This isn't 1973. An oil embargo wouldn't cripple us today, for example. And OPEC has relatively little clout compared to what it used to have. That is in part because of the oil we produce for ourselves now.

And. ... the subsidization and regulatory environment giving a boost to EVs has nothing to do with our oil usage. It's a BS rationalization that doesn't make much logical sense.

 

Indeed. Tesla as a company is worth more than Ford. Ford made more than $10 billion last year. Tesla lost close to $700 million and is burning through cash at an extraordinary rate that has it out of business within the year. ... without yet another capital raise soon.

Welcome to bubblepalooza.

The best part of Tesla today. ... Musk was taunting the shorts on twitter a little while ago with: "Stormy weather in Shortville."

This is why for all I have written on this thread (and I really follow this stock closely off the board), I kept saying I would never short this thing. I'll leave it to the Jim Chanos types of the world. It's a cult stock. You need some very deep pockets to allow it to run against you irrationally and drive you nuts -- and things like this idiocy can go longer than the rational people of the world can imagine, when they look at it. It's not enough to just see the lunacy of it on every fundamental metric.

When all of the liquidity that central banks have flooded the markets with starts drying up, this stock is going to end up being the poster child for the misallocations of capital (on cheap debt) that they created.

When Chanos is having the last laugh, the way he did with Enron, we'll see if Elon Musk is tweeting away, I guess.