July 18, 2025

Which Are The "Stranded Assets" Now?

July 18, 2025/ Francis Menton

How quickly things change.
It was only two years ago, in 2023, that I was writing posts compiling long lists of quotes from climate activists warning that all assets used for production of coal, oil and gas were about to become obsolete and “stranded.” After all, wind and solar were (supposedly) cheaper and cleaner for generating electricity, which could then power anything and everything. Therefore anyone stupid enough to make further investments in producing fossil fuels would lose everything. Here is one such post from June 2023, and another from February 2023.
If you look today, you can still find predictions in 2025 that fossil fuel assets will shortly become “stranded.” (Here is one from Bloomberg from March 6: “Investors Risk $2.3 Trillion of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets.”). But such predictions are becoming fewer and fewer.
Instead, what looks far more likely is that large portions, if not the entire business, of “renewable” electricity generation from wind and sun is likely to get “stranded.”

July 15, 2025

Argentina Economy Update: All Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen

July 15, 2025/ Francis Menton

Javier Milei (pictured above) was elected President of Argentina in October 2023, and took office in December of that year. He promised large cuts to government spending, bureaucracy, and regulation as the means to revive a long moribund Argentine economy crippled by government over-spending, over-regulation, excess unionism, and corporate cronyism.
But would Milei’s program work?
I last wrote about Milei’s implementation of his program in this post in November 2024. That post reported that Milei had succeeded in putting through substantial cuts in government spending and bureaucracy, but that the economy had experienced a recession during his first year in office in 2024. Likely much of that reported recession was not real, reflecting instead the removal from the GDP accounts of wasteful government spending that perversely had been counted as an addition to the economy. But would the economy then revive in 2025 as a result of the new program?

July 12, 2025

July 12, 2025/ Francis Menton

What does the future hold as to large additions to heavily subsidized wind and solar electricity generation capacity in the U.S.?
For those paying attention, the legislative back-and-forth of the One Big Beautiful Bill, as it made its way through Congress, has been something of a roller coaster ride. At this point, I am betting that the utility-scale wind and solar industries are near the end of their line.
This post reports on the latest development, which is an Executive Order signed by President Trump on July 7. But count on the wind and solar subsidy farmers to keep fighting to the last dollar of their government handouts.
Note that it is my view, from extensive study of the subject, that wind and solar generators of electricity are essentially useless, not to mention dangerous and costly, for a modern grid that needs reliable generation 24/7/365. Nobody will invest private capital in them without huge government subsidies.

July 09, 2025

July 09, 2025/ Francis Menton

Currently at the U.S. Supreme Court, the conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. While there are exceptions, most of the politically sensitive cases break along the 6-3 ideological lines.
Recent prominent examples of cases breaking in that way include Trump v. CASA (limiting the ability of district judges to issue nationwide injunctions against executive actions); U.S. v. Skrmetti (upholding Tennessee statute banning transgender surgeries on minors); and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (ending the rule that courts should “defer” to administrative agencies as to interpretation of their regulations). In these and numerous other cases, the three liberal justices (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) would have reached the opposite result.
But the 6-3 conservative majority is very much a result of happenstance.

July 06, 2025

July 06, 2025/ Francis Menton

On July 4 President Trump signed what everyone is now calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (Doesn’t it cease being a “Bill” when it becomes an “Act”? Not this one, apparently.).
The Act is a compendium of dozens of provisions relating to all aspects of the federal budget and taxation. As a result, many summaries that you may read focus on things like income tax rates and deductions, and other such matters directly relevant to individuals. That leaves some other important subjects of the Act getting short shrift, particularly the provisions dealing with various aspects of the ongoing green energy scam. So I will try to hit the highlights on that subject here.
I previously had a post on May 24 covering the provisions on this subject in the version of the Bill that had just been passed by the House. That post was highly optimistic that the House’s language, if it could survive wrestling with the Senate, could essentially put an end to almost all of the green energy subsidies. Unfortunately, as you might expect from the swamp of Washington, the final language will likely let some of the scam continue.
But let’s start with the positive news. For your reference, in case you want to read the actual provisions of the Act, here is a link to the Table of Contents, with ongoing links to each section.

July 03, 2025

July 03, 2025/ Francis Menton

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on June 30 (July 1 in the print edition), editorialist Matthew Hennessey advocates that “Capitalism Needs Champions.”
Reacting to the victory of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral primary, Hennessey says that the electoral result indicates that the defenders of capitalism are doing a poor job, and need to step up their game:
Let Zohran Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York serve as your periodic reminder that capitalism is in dire need of able defenders. Socialism has more cheerleaders than it deserves, considering its record of consistent failure. Markets need champions too. This is always true, especially now. . . . [T]he problem isn’t capitalism. The problem is complacency.
I don’t disagree. But there’s another problem for defenders of what its enemies call “capitalism.” The problem is that capitalism is not an “ism.”