Bill Maher Does A Double Plus Rant
Episode 8: Bill Maher does a Double Plus rant and Ken predicts which China company will buy Tesla by 2031. Smartypants thinks out loud on techies vs Trekkies.
Bill Maher, the guy who used to be politically incorrect until it could get you canceled, went on a rant about China in his New Rule segment on Friday. It was appropriately called Clown & Country.
In the last issue of Double Plus, titled China Deserves to Win, I said exactly what Maher said, only without the one-hour prep time and the rewrites.
Anyway, welcome to the Double Plus, Bill!
For those who don’t know what double plus is, or means, it is a Chinese saying for something that is really good. I hope this free, random newsletter is really good. It’s still in beta mode so I thank you for staying with me as I build it out.
We are a group of American China investors jawboning over the big picture that’s driving national conversations and the markets. I let you know what some of my Street friends are saying about their investments, often as it relates to the main macro theme presented here.
In this issue, Bill Maher tells Americans they’re fighting over nonsense and giving China a leg up.
Fact check: true!
The other day I met my first non-binary teen. I saw this person with blue hair covering their face, tons of homemade bracelets on from a childhood bracelet kit (my kids wear them) and I couldn’t tell the sex, which is often the case with young people. I pointed them out to my daughter and said, “that kid wins the bracelet award,” being mindful of “misgendering”. Even though the person was not close enough to me to hear.
Later, I met the parent, whom I actually know. It’s a boy, this parent told me without me asking. But sometimes it’s a girl. Today it’s a boy, they said.
Damn, that sounds hard.
Does China go through this? Maybe. But they don’t make it part of their national planning sessions or add extra points for it in college entrance essays. It’s not a box to check off when applying for a job in the Chinese Navy, now the biggest navy in the world, as our men are now making makeup videos, and all the workout music videos on YouTube are full of fit women in their 20s with 15-inch guns.
Other than racism, I can honestly think of no secondary issue that seems to be more important to Twitter, the corporate press, and the House of Representatives, than the T in LGBT. (And only the T, by the way.)
Racism. Gender. Climate. It’s all that matters here. It used to be Get Rid of Trump, Racism, Gender, Climate, which were all somehow related to being in bad shape because of Trump. Now he’s gone. The other three are center stage.
Maher mentioned how the national conversation was all about Mr. Potato Head not being a mister anymore because it might be a woman. But wouldn’t that be Mrs. Potato Head, then? And if you’re trans, don’t you pick a gender? So the Mr. and Mrs. is gone so as not to hurt the likes of the blue-haired teen I mentioned, who isn’t playing with a Potato Head anymore and is unlikely to be offended. If so, mom and dad need to sit their child down and teach them some coping skills.
There is no school in China worried about this issue. If there was, believe me, the Guardian, BBC and The New York Times staffers there would have found it. You can bet your bottom yuan that they are looking for it.
“You know who doesn’t care that there is a stereotypical Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. Do you know why? Because they are a serious people. They are as serious as a prison fight. There has to be something between an authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do, and a representative government that can’t do anything at all.”
Maher again:
“There is a progressive trend to sacrifice merit for equity. You think China is letting political correctness get in the way of learning? Do you think China colleges have courses on surviving the coming zombie apocalypse?”
As someone who has been to China and has been covering China since 2011, the answer is no. They are not doing anything remotely similar to what the unemployable Amherst grievance studies majors and PhDs are doing to this country.
What is more amazing to me is that they are doing this with the backing of Apple, Starbucks, one entire political party, and one corporate political press that honestly does as good a China impersonation as The Global Times.
Maher missed that.
China’s state-run media will tell you that the Uyghur women are living something akin to emancipation, or the bra-burning days of the American 60s now that they are on birth control and not all having a bunch of babies. See, we’re good guys!
Daddy Warbucks’ e-commerce giant will tell you that they have great health insurance for LuvLuv, a transwoman. We ain’t anti-union importing patio furniture and sneakers directly from Chinese factories so Footlocker and Raymore and Flanigan can go out of business. See, we’re the good guys! It’s good for LuvLuv, but Amazon — like many global corporations — are waving their diversity flags and showcasing a United Nations cast in their ads to pull a fast one on you. Let’s be real.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is forecasting China-like 8% GDP growth in the US this year.
Is that for real?
I think it’s time to program my stop-losses on Goldman’s GDP call. Aren’t these the guys who predicted oil to $200 in 2008?
Wall Street Watercooler
Goldman Sachs is Wrong. Who Will Buy Tesla: A Prediction
Goldman Sachs today says the US will grow 8% in 2021. That’s 200 basis points more than China was forecast to grow last week by the CCP. Their forecast was for fourth-quarter 2021 over fourth-quarter 2020, so technically, they could be right if the China-style fiscal stimulus I’ve been blabbing about goes through the system quickly.
Problem is, the nearly $2 trillion stimulus is for what…five years? Ten? I forget. It’s not one. Fourth-quarter 2020 grew 4% with two stimulus checks and the Payroll Protection Plan.
Consensus is 4.7% GDP growth.
This is what Goldman is betting on:
“The elevated personal savings rate, now just over 20%, suggests that a large portion of stimulus will likely end up in consumers’ savings accounts. The onset of further stimulus will likely prime the economy for spending during a vaccine-driven recovery.”
Meanwhile, in more corporate elite crazy (though we like this guy), Elon Musk has changed his title in an official filing with SEC.
Here's a guess: Tesla is sold within 10 years to a China auto company. I suspect that if the Fisker Ocean takes off next year, its owner Wanxiang Group would be interested. But assuming Tesla will bring in a high price, then you go bigger like state-controlled SAIC Motor Company.
It’s not unheard of: China buying a big brand auto company.
Geely is a major shareholder of Volvo and they just put out their Polestar, which looks like a Tesla.
When Tesla is sold, Musk will change his title again, this time to Chief Cyborg Lord Master when he retires to take his Nueralink public. That’s when the tech guys have gone from mining your data for money to mining your body. And, don’t lie, you’ll take the upgrade.
$150 a month cell phone/internet/cable bundle
$1,500 a month mortgage
$120 a month electricity
$150 a month oil/gas for heat/hot water
$900 a month food
$350 a month injectable upgrades.
Oh, this is a business. Bet. And not just for those with a medical condition.
Hopefully, China doesn’t dominate all of our supply chains otherwise paying that on social worker and service sector paychecks will suck.
According to China data released overnight, their industrial production grew by over 35% year-over-year in January and February. Germany is on lockdown. The media wants the US on lockdowns. China will work for you, don’t worry.
The data showed strong year-to-date growth in export manufacturing across most categories. That’s stuff coming to the US, to Europe. At least the Euros have Eurovision.
My Street friends were fretting over China tech and healthcare in decline. My inbox was full of it. Others, the most bullish, were trying to keep me happy by saying, “but look at value stocks in China!”
“If you want to be cyclical and move into value, we like China bank valuations in particular. They are trading at attractive levels. Within growth, we like select digital economy names exposed to long-term themes like 5G, fintech, and Greentech like solar, EVs.”
Hint: I would only go after China life insurance names like — China Life Insurance (LFC). I don’t own it. It’s down nearly 9% over the last six months and is underperforming ASHR. I’m going to always recommend KraneShares China Healthcare (KURE) because I think it is sanctions-free, geopolitically safe, and its main market is domestic.
Despite the positive data, mainland stock markets ended Monday's session lower as growth stocks continue to sell off in favor of guys like LFC. China Life was up on Monday while all of the big China ETFs were down.
From one of my Street guys:
“Ken, is it me or are you seeing ads all over YouTube by these retail traders telling you to subscribe to their stock picks? I see that and crypto ads all over the place and it’s making me nervous. This is the snake oil money.”
Yeah, I’m seeing it. I love that phrase: snake oil money. That’s a new one for me.
If you’re up over 100% in stocks (like I am on LUV and CAKE), it might be time to at least cash in what you’ve invested and play with the house money. I am not going to stay too much longer in my post-lockdown portfolio, but others, like KURE, are long-term and I can wait for years and keep buying, thinking like an investor, rather than a retail gambler on Reddit.
We Think We Are Star Trek, by Smartypants
Star Trek has always been the favorite sci-fi series among the tech crowd. It was a socially aware series with a diverse crew. This is still the case with the reboots and new generation series. Today, the programmers, the gamers, envision a Star Trek-like world. It is their Star Trek ideology that they bring to modern times, let’s say. But they have made an unholy alliance and one in which the crew of the Enterprise would never make. In the episode The Cloud Minders, the crew is off to find an antidote, or something like a vaccine, or a mineral that will cure a disease back on Earth that is affecting the food supply. They go to this planet to get this material. They notice that the societal divisions are quite stark. You have what equates to our Hollywood/Media/Silicon Valley and managerial elite class living in these glamorous cloud cities, and you have the lumpen masses toiling away, or revolting against the opulent few in those cities. Ironically, the troublemaking revolutionaries were called Disruptors, a favorite tech start-up term and probably pulled from Star Trek episodes for all I know. Today, in the real world, the disruptors are the oppressive elites living among the clouds. In our times, they are the ones in control of the disruption, or who co-opt and shut down the disruption as soon as they can. They are the ones who go after the revolutionaries and seek to punish them.
Thank you all for spending five minutes with me today. I hope I was entertaining and gave you something to consider. Enjoy your day and remember to workout. Sitting is the new smoking. ; )
Closing Credits
Bill Maher is back….
“Half the country is having a never-ending woke competition….and the other half thinks the lizard people are eating babies. China sees a problem and they fix it. They build a dam; we debate what to rename it. We binge-watch; they binge-build. We’re not losing to China. We lost.”