Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Tuesday Night Links

  • The good news is that because of rising herd immunity, fluvoxamine, and the pending Pfizer antiviral, the pandemic is nearly over. Of course, the perception of the pandemic will be over as soon as the media decides it’s over. After Republican wins in Virginia this month, look for word to go out shortly into the New Year that we have at long last defeated Covid, just as the 2022 races heat up. Conveniently for the incumbent party, it’s likely to also be true. [The Tom File]
  • Several theories are under investigation seeking to explain heart-inflammation conditions among small numbers of vaccinated. As U.S. health authorities expand use of the leading Covid-19 vaccines, researchers investigating heart-related risks linked to the shots are exploring several emerging theories, including one centered on the spike protein made in response to vaccination. [WSJ]
  • I am a fairly widely published epistemologist--that is, a specialist in the theory of knowledge. I have been astonished after coming into contact with other people injured by these same vaccines to see the independent reporting of similar symptoms. There are variations; these are not copied from one another. I kept track of my own symptoms for months before learning that there were others out there with such similar symptoms. This sort of independence with similarity is very important evidentially.  I wish others knew that these very serious adverse events are much more common than they are being led to believe. When you receive one of these new Covid-19 vaccines, you cannot be at all sure that you will have only a mild or brief vaccine reaction. Please think twice and more than twice, especially when it comes to giving it to a child or to any person for whom you are responsible. [Real Not Rare]
  • On November 3, advocates, vapers and industry insiders learned that the vapor tax had made its way back into the proposal, even if the rate is lower than the tax initially floated in mid-September. The new cigarette tax, meanwhile, was eliminated entirely from the bill. This means that the federal cigarette tax would stay at about $1 per pack, while nicotine e-liquid will be taxed far higher. An approximate $5 tax would be levied on a 6 mg/mL bottle of e-liquid, and a four-pack of Juul pods, for example, would land around $4.60. [link]
  • The latest version of the Build Back Better Act includes a tax on nicotine products, which would tax products by nicotine content at a rate of $50.33 per 1,810 milligrams of nicotine. This rate has been chosen to establish approximate parity between the tax rate on a pack of cigarettes and vapor products. Nicotine products are not uniform, however, and as a result, some nicotine-containing products would experience tax rates well above the rate levied on more harmful tobacco products. The original Build Back Better Act included tobacco and nicotine taxes which were estimated to raise $100 billion over 10 years, but the tobacco tax increases have been dropped from the latest version. [Tax Foundation]
  • So far, no one in politics has figured out how to be relevant to this broad revolt of people who work for a living either as small business people or as employees, both of whom are tired of Wall Street driven executives exploiting and insulting them. And I don’t have an answer to this political puzzle. But I do think that whoever figures it out could govern for a generation. [Matt Stoller]
  • Once family members lose interest in the business, the best thing to do would be to cash out in a sale to the public or to a competitor. A passive stock and bond index portfolio will beat a business run by people who don't care. Family members who aren't in the business and just receiving dividends should maybe have nonvoting shares. Or preferred stock. [CBS]
  • Here is our guess (or hope) for how the next several years in the tobacco business will play out. The FDA will deny the PMTAs filed by small tobacco, leaving big tobacco (PM, MO, BTI, and Swedish) as the only players granted PMTAs in the reduced risk product game. There will be a handful of legal lozenges and pouches, there will be a handful of legal closed tank ("pod") vape products. At that point, it will be time for some M&A activity and consolidation. If Juul's PMTA is approved, it makes sense for Altria to take-under the remaining Juul stake that it doesn't own, possibly structuring the transaction in a way that sheds the startup-era liabilities. (Maybe a bankruptcy or purchase an exclusive license of Juul combined with a sale of their minority stake back to the company for $1 to realize the tax loss.) Altria should reunite with Philip Morris, and together they should buy Swedish Match. Together they would have the #1 cigarette (Marlboro), #1 closed tank vape (Juul), #1 oral nicotine lozenge (Zyn), #1 snus (General), #1 heat not burn tobacco product (IQOS), and the #1 and #2 dipping ("moist snuff") tobaccos (Copenhagen / Skoal). And then... no more acquisitions! All that cash flow could roll on home to shareholders. [CBS]
  • Tailwinds continue in the global energy sector and fundamentals across the U.S. energy complex continue to improve. Inventory levels are low, rig count growth is tepid and operators continue to focus on balance sheet strength and free cash flow generation. We believe this energy 'up cycle' will last longer than previous cycles and that the modest increase in investment that is expected in 2022 will only serve to largely replace the significant depletion in drilled but uncompleted wells in the U.S., rather than providing much in the way of oil and natural gas production growth in the lower 48. The oil and natural gas royalty sector is particularly well-positioned to benefit from this cycle since we participate in the upside from commodity price inflation, but do not experience the cost inflation that is currently being experienced by both the energy services and upstream sectors. In fact, our cash G&A per BOE was flat between Q2 2021 and Q3 2021 even though our realized price per BOE increased 19%, driving positive operating leverage and record results. In this new world where lower 48 production growth is expected to be modest at best, we believe that production stability and flat decline rates will be the new theme of energy investing rather than the hyper-growth models of the past. [Kimbell Royalty Partners LP]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The left is furious at Kyle because he had “no business” getting in the way of the rioting they felt they were entitled to engage in. They believe they’re entitled to burn and loot cities on behalf of black knuckleheads who get shot by police. Just like they believe they’re entitled to topple statues, indoctrinate children, rewrite history, destroy businesses, force vaccines on people, open the borders, steal elections, all of it. Kyle got in their way and shut down their little party with six bullets. Moreover, he showed that it didn’t take much, one gawky teenager with a rifle. They can’t survive very many people taking a lesson from that.

https://www.unz.com/isteve/joe-biden-egged-on-the-kenosha-riots/#comment-5000137

Anonymous said...

Intelligent productive men are fully capable of governing themselves, but once settled and creating surpluses, there have been other people using force to extract the productives’ surplus for themselves. At minimum those parasites–“lords”, “nobles”, “kings”–are supposed to provide one service for productive people–keep any other parasites at bay; i.e. stop invasion! Our parasites won’t even do that … they wave more parasites in to loot what Americans have built. (A lower form of life can not be conceived.)
https://www.unz.com/isteve/joe-biden-egged-on-the-kenosha-riots/#comment-5000137