Author: A.T.

79 Seconds That Say It All

There’s SO much to say — most of it being said well by others — I’ve been tongue-tied (lucky you), spending my time raising money (not so lucky you).

Back soon.

But if you doubt whether the Democrat Party is worth supporting, take 79 seconds to watch this.

You can start at the 59-second mark . . . “It was Winston Churchill who said . . .” and quit at 2:18 “. . . in the privacy of your own bedroom.”

I think you’ll want to share it widely.

 

Too Good To Waste; Financialization

Thanks to my quantum philosopher pal David for this great tip — an app for getting bargains on food.  Not for billionaires, clearly . . . but read this review if you’re on a budget — or simply want to get a little exercise walking to local restaurants and supermarkets and cut down on food waste.  Cheaper than a Peloton.

Some of you know Revlon has filed for bankruptcy.  Some of you know I wrote a biography of Revlon founder Charles Revson.  Some of you wrote when you saw the news to ask what I thought.  And, upon reflection, I do have a thought: namely, that it’s a perfect example of the evils of “financialization.”

Charles Revson built a great company on the strength of his passion for the best possible product that would most wow and please his customers.  No detail was too small.  Ron Perelman wrecked the company by having a passion for squeezing every last penny out of the business for himself.

Matt Levine, in his newsletter, gives a little flavor of it . . . too fun not to excerpt.  But the point is: this is not about lipstick or nail polish or fragrance, not about marketing, not about making a fortune by  making women feel good about themselves.  It’s about money.

  • . . . In 2016, Revlon Inc. borrowed $1.8 billion from some banks and hedge funds using a seven-year term loan secured by Revlon’s assets. Citibank NA advised on the loan and served as its administrative agent.

  • In 2019 and 2020, Revlon took some of the collateral for the 2016 term loan and snuck it out, away from the lenders: It put much of its intellectual property, including brands like American Crew, Elizabeth Arden, Almay and Mitchum, into new subsidiaries (generally called “BrandCo”) that did not secure the 2016 loan. It borrowed some new money secured by those brands, and rolled some of the old term lenders into the new facility in order to get them to vote to approve it. There were various shenanigans involved, including doing a new revolving loan under the 2016 credit agreement in order to get just enough votes to approve the new deal. We have discussed the basic form of this many times before: If you are a company in trouble, you pay off 51% of your lenders to get them to approve hosing the other 49%. That’s what happened here: Revlon gave some of its lenders a new loan with better security (those brands), making the security for the other lenders worse. (This is explained in more detail here.)
  • The 2016 lenders who didn’t participate in the new BrandCo deal were annoyed: Their collateral had disappeared, and now they were effectively junior to the 2020 lenders. They sued Revlon, Citibank and various other people, claiming that the BrandCo deal violated the 2016 credit agreement and was invalid. If they won … I dunno, it would be a mess if they won, but generally speaking if they won then they would get those brands back as collateral for their loans.
  • The day before they filed that lawsuit, Citi paid them off by accident. Oops! This was very funny and we have talked about it a lot, but the gist is that Citi, as administrative agent for the loan, was supposed to pass along a small interest payment from Revlon and accidentally paid off the whole loan with its own money.
  • Citi politely asked the 2016 lenders for the money back, but the lenders were really mad at Citi for helping with the BrandCo transaction, so some of them — who had gotten about $500 million of Citi’s money — said no.
  • Citi sued them and, somewhat shockingly, lost.
  • Citi appealed. I assume Citi will win on appeal, but then I assumed they’d win in the trial court so who knows. The appeal is still pending and could take a while.. . .

And so on.

A good segue to the biography I’ve just begun to listen to, and that I’ve previously plugged: The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy.

The hearing was devastating.  Next one scheduled for Thursday.

 

Three Arguments

MARC ELIAS ON “TEAM NORMAL”

It will take a lot more than their hearings testimony to redeem these people, Elias argues.

FORMER FED CHAIR BEN BERNANKE ON INFLATION

No one knows what course this round of inflation will take, but it may well NOT be a repeat of the ’70s and early ’80s, Bernanke argues.

. . . The Fed’s greater policy independence, its willingness to take responsibility for inflation and its record of keeping inflation low for nearly four decades after the Great Inflation, make it much more credible on inflation today than its counterpart in the ’60s and ’70s. The Fed’s credibility will help ensure that the Great Inflation will not be repeated, and Mr. Powell and his colleagues will put a high priority on keeping that credibility intact. . . .

The Fed chair who restored the Fed’s credibility in the early ’80s — with some very tough, painful medicine — was Paul Volcker.

When all is said and done, I argued after getting to spend a some time with him 40 years ago, the job of running the Fed, especially at times like these, is as much about psychology as economics.

YTRA

For those of you still holding it — as I am — there is reason to hope.

 

Romney Was Right

Corporations may not be people, but Russia has clearly proven to be a terrible threat —

> to the U.S., sowing division and subverting the 2016 election

> to the world order, invading its neighbor and threatening the Third World with mass starvation.

These four minutes from Fareed Zakariah are well worth the watch.

(And, wait — Henry Kissinger, at 99, is still in the mix???)

And now back to the hearings.

Democracy hangs in the balance.

Trump trusts and admires Putin, “loves” the people who stormed the Capitol, lives in the world of FOX and — despite his debilitating bone spur — is a tough guy who’d  “like to punch him in the face.”

I trust and admire Biden, love the Capitol police who fought to protect Congress and the rule of law,  and long for the days when Republicans were people of honor and decency.

Millions still are, of course.  But not enough of them — especially in Congress — have Liz Cheney’s courage to speak out.

 

What Ordinary Republicans Think About January 6

David French lives in Very Red America.

He knows that most Trump voters are good people.

The hearings could change their minds, he writes — if Fox News actually aired them.

But not only did Fox not; they ran their regular programming without commercials, lest anyone stray during a break and hear what bleeding hearts  Liz Cheney, Bill Barr, and Ivanka Trump had to say.

. . . The Trump coalition is broadly built on two categories of Republican voters—those who know exactly who Trump is and . . . those who even now don’t know who he is and would very much care if they know the whole truth. It’s the latter group that most needs to watch the January 6 hearings.

For our nation’s sake, we can only hope that some do . . .

A second piece to read as we await Round Two: Trump’s Sedition: George Washington Warned Us In 1796, by Thom Hartmann in Raw Story.

. . . Trying to hang the Vice President of the United States and kidnap or murder the Speaker of the House to stop the peaceful transfer of power is clearly sedition.

And participating in organizing the entire thing, as Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, and other senior members of his staff appear to have done, deserves the 20 years in prison that a sedition conviction brings.

. . . Five people died that day, and soon thereafter three police officers died as a result of its violence. Sedition, attempted murder, destruction of property, assault on police officers: all these crimes were committed in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.

It’s truly breathtaking.

And when we turned to Fox “News” during the breaks, we saw Sean Hannity, a close ally of Trump’s, whining that Nancy Pelosi had not called out the Capitol Police when the National Guard, who were under the direct control of Donald Trump, were positioned just a few miles away but had been forbidden to assist or even move on that day under order of Donald Trump‘s Acting Secretary of Defense. . . .

. . . George Washington, in his farewell address of 1796 (ghost written by Alexander Hamilton), warned us of this moment. . . .

Finally, this, from Brookings.

Stephen Pizzo:  “I just read the whole damn thing, and it’s the most devastating indictment of criminality I have ever read…and I’ve read a lot of indictments. Reading it is like listening to the closing argument to a jury by a federal prosecutor, strong and so full of illegality and violations of laws that it’s simply stunning one man could be so criminal. If you haven’t read it, you should before the live hearings. It gives you a road map to the committee’s findings and will produce enormous pressure on the DOJ to prosecute Trump and those closest to him during this sorry episode in American history.  From the conclusion: ‘There has never been a case where securing accountability for wrongdoing was more critical to the future of the nation.'”

Have a great weekend.

Hearings resume at ten Eastern Monday morning.

 

Tonight’s Hearings In One Analogy

What if during all that time those 10-year-olds were calling 911 desperate for help, Uvalde’s mayor had been watching from his office on TV — doing nothing?

Indeed, enjoying it.

Surely Americans of every political stripe would have been horrified — no?

You obviously see where I’m going with this.

Isn’t that what Trump was doing in his office on January 6 as he received endless  cries for help?

As Capitol police were being bludgeoned?

As calls were ringing out to hang the Vice President?

As the nation’s Capitol was being breached and defiled?

As a coup was under way?

(When you use violence to prevent a duly elected head of state from taking office, that’s a coup.)

There are differences, of course.

No children were hurt or killed at the Capitol on January 6, only adults.

And it wasn’t 75 long, agonizing, scream-filled minutes, it was much longer.

(And Uvalde’s mayor hadn’t himself incited the attack.)

House Republicans are so NOT troubled by Trump’s behavior, they voted overwhelmingly against investigating.

Indeed, have punished Liz Cheney.

But doesn’t it trouble most non-elected Republicans?

Just as Uvalde troubles all of us?

Am I missing something here?

 

There’s Hope!

For the country.

As I’ve recently argued, we absolutely can hold Congress and steer the country back from the brink.

And that’s the main thing, by seventeen orders of magnitude.

But a boy’s gotta eat — vegan cheese and burgers ain’t cheap — so I was delighted to see these items on WheelTug and ParkerVision yesterday:

PRKR:

Another Peculiar Anti-Patent Court Decision in ParkerVision v. Qualcomm

. . . In 2013, a jury found that ParkerVision’s patents are not invalid, and that Qualcomm infringed. The jury awarded ParkerVision $173 million in damages. With an ongoing royalty, the potential total damages award was nearly a billion dollars.

Judge Dalton stated on the record that “there is certainly going to be an ongoing royalty” and sent the parties to negotiate the royalty rate so that he could enter his final Order. Several weeks later, Judge Dalton shockingly overturned the jury’s verdict and granted Qualcomm’s summary judgment of non-infringement, thus killing the case . . .

Why did he do that?  Odd.

And why, eight years later, would a second judge, in a second case, do something equally odd?

The article concludes:

If ParkerVision cannot enforce its patent rights, neither can anyone else. The innovators, startups, and investors that power American innovation deserve better.

With the stock now barely above a dime again, the whole enterprise is valued at less than $15 million.

Whatever happens on appeal with this big Qualcomm case, there is the not-trivial Intel case before a patent-friendly judge that’s supposed to be coming up in January or February.  And there are other potential suits.  And there is possibly valuable technology that they’ve developed.

So, as crapshoots go, with money I can afford to lose, how can I resist?

BOREF/WheelTug

Have you heard the news out of Ahmedabad and the Isle of Man?

ADANI GROUP AND WHEELTUG COMPLETE FASTGate FEASIBILITY STUDY

Ahmedabad, India, and Douglas, Isle of Man – June 2022 – WheelTug plc, the electric taxi pioneer, and Adani Group have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration on a FASTGate (Fast And Safe Turn) project implementation that will focus on improving airside efficiency, increasing automation of airside operations, and decreasing carbon emissions at Indian airports.

In 2020 WheelTug and partner companies ADB Safegate, AERO Group, and IABG launched the FASTGate project. The goal is to design and implement airport gates optimized for WheelTug e-taxi maneuvers, and prepare airports for WheelTug’s entry into service. The group has now finalized the feasibility study at Mumbai International Airport.

The study concludes that FASTGates are feasible at Mumbai International Airport without major initial capital expenditures; at these gates, an additional 2-3 aircraft movements per gate will be possible every day. Higher throughput will not only aid in decreasing congestion, but will also bring operational savings of tens of millions of USD a year, increase safety, and significantly decrease carbon emissions. Non-aviation revenue (passenger fees, shopping, etc.) will also increase.

Adani Airports and WheelTug share a long-term vision of airside operations that are not only faster and more cost-effective, but also safer and greener.  The new alliance looks forward to setting new best practices for airports across India and worldwide.

WheelTug has signed letters of intent with IndiGo and SpiceJet, two airlines that currently control 60% of the Indian market. They join two dozen other airlines on five continents that have already secured delivery slot positions for more than 2,000 WheelTug systems.

“We look forward to drawing on the comprehensive experience of the Adani Group to help us optimize the benefits of our system at airports in India and elsewhere,” said WheelTug CEO Isaiah Cox.

About Adani

The Adani Group entered the airports sector in 2019. Operating within the group’s flagship company Adani Enterprises Ltd. (AEL), Adani Airports now administers Mumbai International, one of the world’s busiest airports, and six more of India’s top airports – Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru, and Thiruvananthapuram.

About WheelTug plc
WheelTug plc is developing the WheelTug® aircraft electric drive system. More than 25 airlines representing 2000+ aircraft have reserved slots for WheelTug systems.

I know, I know.  And maybe the answer is: “never.”

But BOREF, which owns more than half of WheelTug, is currently valued at less than $25 million.  Nothing.  It remains my longest-running speculation.

The hearings start tomorrow!

 

The Republican Ban On Lawn Darts

More than 3 million seniors are graduating high school this month . . .

. . . nearly all of them old enough to buy an assault weapon, none of them old enough to buy lawn darts.

(The sale of lawn darts was banned at the end of the Reagan/Bush administration.)

Republicans want to be sure all 3-plus million 18-year-olds can buy AR-15’s.

What if all of them did each year?

Kind of a rite of passage — your diploma and your AR-15.

Of course, phrasing it this way is typical left-wing hysteria, since all 3 million won’t.

But should we be worried about the few who will?

What, after all,  motivates an 18-year-old to want an assault weapon?

What if we restricted the sale of military-grade weapons to well-regulated police forces, well-regulated National Guard units, and, if need be, well-regulated shooting ranges?

I’ve got to think most Republicans would agree that’s reasonable.

The hearings begin Thursday in prime time.

I, for one, would like to know who attempted to overthrow our government.

When you kill, imprison, or otherwise prevent a duly-elected head of state from taking office, that’s a coup, no?

Who aided, who abetted, and how.

BONUS

Interesting Maps.