Thanksgiving!

It is 6:30am as I write this, sitting at the kitchen table as my wife hustles the kitchen for the big day. A fat turkey headlining the event, with family and friends joining in the festivities.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was my second favorite holiday after Halloween. I am amazed that today we still have a holiday centered around a slaughtered, roasting bird. How very politically incorrect.

Some of the insanity of the climate change/vegan folks (especially given the outing that the Climate Research Unit received last week for falsifying data, along with the fact that there are not enough carbon fossil fuel deposits left to inject CO2 in the atmosphere to meet the projections. You can't have it both ways, if we have limited Oil, NG, and Coal, then by mathematical necessity we DO NOT have unlimited carbon entering the atmosphere).


The paranoia so rampant in society right now stems at least partly from the fact that so many people lead a life sheltered from the reality of nature. They don’t see life the way it really is: the entire food chain sits at a huge banquet table, eating and being eaten. Such people begin to entertain strange ideas. For instance, if we would just quit eating meat, some of them think, many of our problems could be solved including not having livestock exhaling and emitting carbon dioxide. I think most of us eat too much meat too, but it is impossible to solve any carbon dioxide problems by getting rid of livestock, as some people seem to believe. Nature abhors a vacuum. Take the domesticated animals away, and the land no longer used to raise livestock would fill with wildlife. It already is happening and eventually something will have to be done about it.

Herds of deer, sometimes thirty or more in number, are now roaming at will over the farmlands where I live. If they were cows, people would be having fits. Eventually, if we quit eating meat, there would be just as many wild animals burping and farting as there are livestock now. I ask people affected by carbon-phobia how much carbon emission comes from squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, geese, deer, bears, elk, rats, birds, not to mention dogs, cats and horses etc. etc. etc. No one seems to know. The only concern at the moment is about getting rid of cows, as if these are the only animals that belong in the equation.

I have another question: how much less carbon emission would follow if the 6.5 billion human beings on earth would all just quit eating beans. The carbon phobic society doesn’t seem to have thought of that. They are too busy worrying about death from cow breath.
Is that a scream, or what? Gene, you can't debate with "true believers"...

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Gold and Silver have had a "melt up". The market has spoken, and it does not approve of the management of the U.S. currency. Before you do anything rash, just consider the "Gold/Cow" ratio. A decent Angus cow (yes, I mean livestock) sells for $1,200 to $1,500 per head. Let's go with the lower number. An ounce of Gold buys 1 Cow. In 2000, it took 4 or 5 ounces of Gold to buy 1 Cow. I can do this same trick with Soy Beans, Corn, Natural Gas...

You know what happens when you put 1 Bull in a field of 40 Cows (with a little mood music and candlelight)? Right, the next year you have 80 cows (steers) and 1 bull. Try that trick with 40 Krugerrand's and a Canadian Maple Leaf in safe deposit box.

That does not mean that a panic into Gold could not drive the price of Gold MUCH HIGHER, or that Asian Central Banks do not try to diversify their way out of US$'s into Gold. You are going to have to draw your own conclusions.

Right now, the Dairy market is in the dumps. Farmers are slaughtering dairy cows to cut costs and bring production in line with demand (which has been cut by the decline in restaurant meals served, because many dishes have a high cheese content). That is certainly affecting the price of Meat in the market place.


Given the U.S. natural advantages in Agriculture, this often comes as a surprise. But a cow can only bear 1 calf per year or so (twins are born occasionally, but rarely do both survive), so the supply constraints are obvious. This is not the case with Chicken or Pork, the price and supply of which is driven primarily by feed costs, as each can produce many offspring each year. Given that, it surprises me to see how small of a net exporter of Pork the U.S. is, especially given Asia's preference for Pork.

It will interesting to see how any decline in trade caused by lower Oil availability for transport affects this in the future.


A happy and blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours!