Thanksgiving Links

• Ewald asserts, along with a growing body of studies, that many common diseases of unknown origin are likely the result of chronic low-level infections from viruses, bacteria or protozoa. For example, cervical cancer can be caused by the human papilloma virus, some cases of liver cancer are caused by hepatitis C or B and the bacteria Helicobacter pylori has been proven to cause stomach ulcers. Ewald argues that many common diseases of currently unknown etiology, such as cancers, heart attacks, stroke and Alzheimer's, may likewise be also caused by chronic low-level microbial infection. Ewald disagrees with the popular theory that genes alone dictate chronic disease susceptibility. Ewald, whose background is in evolutionary biology, points out that any disease causing gene that reduces survival and reproduction would normally eliminate itself over a number of generations. Ewald says that "chronic diseases, if they are common and damaging, must be powerful eliminators of any genetic instruction that may cause them." One example of this is schizophrenia; patients with this mental illness rarely reproduce. Ewald argues that, just by evolutionary pressures, schizophrenia would have already been eliminated if its causes were strictly genetic; he suggests that in the future, an infectious cause of schizophrenia will be discovered. Ewald explains that purely genetic causes of chronic disease will persist only if a genetic instruction provides a compensating benefit (for example, the disease sickle cell anemia is caused by a genetic mutation that, in heterozygotes, protects against malaria, which kills millions worldwide each year). [Paul W. Ewald]
• The most important claim of MMT is that a government need never default on debt issued in its own currency. The lesson of 2020 was that MMT is right. “We got five or six trillion dollars of spending and tax cuts without anyone worrying about payfors, so that was a good thing,” says L. Randall Wray, an economics professor at Bard College in New York and a leading MMT academic. “In January [2020], MMT was a crazy idea, and then in March, it was, OK, we’re going to adopt MMT.” It isn’t just MMTers who say the world took a turn toward a new way of thinking. “Governments have lost their fear of debt,” says Karen Ward, chief market strategist for EMEA at JPMorgan Chase’s asset-management arm. “They were terribly worried about bond markets and investors punishing them. What they saw last year was record high levels of debt at record low levels of interest rates.” [WSJ]
• When it started, Bitcoin was meant as an alternative to central banking and the traditional financial system. Libertarians really dislike central banking, but they really, really like drugs, so Bitcoin only kicked into high gear once users could exchange it for lab-grade alternative pharmaceuticals. Back in 2011 and 2012, prices were quite seasonal: low in the winter and spring, and higher coming into summer, then lower after Burning Man. [Byrne Hobart]
• Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact—and it cannot be repeated too often—that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. [Eugene V. Debs]
• I will now do a thread on how to start a serious men’s group. The results of mine after over a year…we started as a book discussion group, but now everyone trains together periodically in the gym and on the range. It’s basically a safety squad at this point. I selected 12 men from my area based on social media.  Not people that I had regular contact with but had evidence they were serious people. I didn’t care about walk of life or political leaning. Excessive politics posting? Out. Funkopoop soyshit? Out. You get the point. How did I invite these people? I wrote a two page letter, and printed it on the nicest paper I could find. In this letter I explained why it was important to read the great books of the western world. When was the last time you received a letter? Better yet, when was the last time you put your thoughts about something on paper? In the letter I communicated the serious nature of what I would be asking for and a rough outline of what we would be reading (more on this later). Because of this letter, every man invited showed up on the first night to receive a copy of Homer’s ILIAD, meet everyone, and enjoy some drinks. I will now take an aside for some logistics. I am not asking a lot of time from people here. Two hours, once a month, with a hard stop. One book per month results in less than 20 minutes per night of reading, even at a slow pace. I pick up the tab on the books, as that solves any issues with translations. There are folks in the replies asking for the reading curriculum.  I am focused on development of @QuintusCurtius “magnitudo animi” - greatness of spirit. All texts will be focused on cultivating it.  No political theory or stuffy philosophy here. Iliad. Odyssey. Greek Tragedies. Last Days of Socrates. Livy’s History. Marcus Aurelius. Cicero’s On Duties. Aeneid. al-Masudi’s Meadows of Gold. The Song of Roland. Notebooks of Da Vinci. etc. etc. I am just an interlocutor for discussion. I tell everyone to nignore introductory material and go straight to the text.  I will prepare ahead of time and bring in excerpts that are important from Thucydides, Herodotus, or famous poetry (Kipling, Tennyson, Eliot). Now, onto the discussion- in order to cultivate the virtue of magnificence, I have a room dedicated to this for the winter months, but all other times we are OUTSIDE. I serve high quality wines and charcuterie-type foods. Everything is oriented to the magnitude of the situation. On the night of the meeting, I reserve first 20 or so minutes for “tasteful banter” - I focus this discussion on sharing our VICTORIES from the previous month. The next 90 minutes is dedicated to the text. Remainder of the time I pass out next book with some info about it. I have one rule about the discussion. You may mention no politician that is currently alive. Instead of Donal Trom and Clintong, you need to be considering Bismarck or Queen Victoria. Other than that, no holds barred. The results of this have been unbelievable. For those that are married, their marriages are better. For those with kids, their kids are reading the books. Two men have even started their own groups. It’s a based pyramid scheme. It is the best day of everyone’s month. WE WILL WIN. This is a group of a wide age range (22-51) and political spectrum, but everyone has lurched right because of this. Even the most lefty member.  Even Heracles went to the Underworld to bring someone back. Frend @CastizoCapitan is right. We should be building communities and I am proposing one way to do it. Twatter should be like the black ships at Troy. The place to rest and dunk on mentally ill leftoids, as Ajax and Achilles are depicted playing games at the ships. This is an endeavor that is important to me. Where I live, it is difficult to find men that aren’t techoid bugmen, though this may be the case everywhere these days. I am willing to help, even provide a redacted version of my letter. Feel free to reach out. [Cimmerian V]
• North American Helium Inc. today announced the Company recently closed a non-brokered common share equity financing of approximately $127 million. Proceeds from the financing will be used to, among other things, advance the Company’s active exploration and development plan for the 2021/22 drilling season and to bring additional helium production online in 2022. This current round of financing was led by XM Capital Partners Opportunity Fund LP, a new investor in NAH, with significant participation from existing institutional shareholders. [North American Helium]
• GMXR published its reserve report in its most recent 8-K filing, showing estimated future revenue and expenditures attributable to the production and sale of net proved reserves as of December 31, 2012. The PV-10 of proved developed producing (PDP) reserves is only $77.984 million. That is quite simply astonishing. The company spent $272 million on capex in 2011 and probably about $100 million in 2012, and has very little to show for it. Of course, the company had negative retained earnings of $856 million as of Q3 last year. The PV-10 of the proved undeveloped reserves (PUD) is only $2.1 million according to the reserve report, and it would require $356 million in additional capital expenditure even to realize those. Granted, the value of the reserves is levered to natural gas price increases - the company gives an estimate of the total proves reserves using futures prices for gas instead of the 12 month average (SEC guidelines). That gives a PV-10 of $195 million, which would still mean that only the secured debt is in the money. [CBS]
• Nate has a theory that activist takeovers should be bought. The hypothesis would be that in those companies, minority shareholders have had dead money for a long time. Sure, the stock might rally when the activists win, but this could be an under-reaction to what better aligned activist investors can do with the underutilized assets. It will be very interesting to watch where the company goes from here. Maybe the Keweenaw copper royalty stub (will they change the name?) buys Pardee Resources in a hostile takeover, fires the expensive board, sells the timber and agricultural investments,and retains the coal royalties and the oil and gas production. Perhaps they could buy Beaver Coal (with its metallurgical coal royalties) for good measure. [Oddball Stocks] 
• With nearby contracts rattled by U.S.-led efforts to boost supply -- and the potential for an OPEC+ backlash -- those further out are being boosted by dwindling investment in production, and a dearth of producers selling deferred futures to lock in their future sales. [Bloomberg]
• The parallel with 2000 is that certain sectors are exploding with supply - IPOs, insider lockup expirations, and VC dumps - but there is little new supply in low-tech sectors like legacy financials. Focusing on banks, IPOs in the sector remain rare, and multiples are inline with historical standards at 12-14x for regionals. This is partly because banks were perceived as low rate losers through 2020 - 2021, suppressing IPOs, and rates only now appear to shown signs of rising slightly. [Sam Haskell]