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You may have heard that an Italian scientist by the name of Rossi has twice demonstrated what he claims is a device that generates a great deal of energy through some sort of chemically-assisted nuclear reaction using hydrogen, nickel, and some catalyst(s) that he is keeping secret until he can get a patent on them. Apparently the demonstrations were rather convincing. He is in the process of producing a scaled-up version of this device that will be able to generate 1 megawatt of power and which he has committed to installing in an industrial facility in Greece as a demonstration of the commerical viability of the process. From what I've read, he plans another demonstration this October at the factory he owns in Florida where he is producing the device.
Ok, let's start by granting that this is in all likelihood as spurious as all the other cold fusion claims have been for the last twenty years. So please don't bother responding to this with what would undoubtedly be very reasonable skepticism. We all know all the reasons why it is probably not for real.
But in the interests of scanning the horizon for possible significant investment opportunities -- the kind of thing E.J. and some of us did a decade ago that got us into gold -- let's just do a thought experiment and pretend for the moment that this demonstration comes off successfully in October and the 1 megawatt version is actually installed and operating in a Greek factory next year.
What would be the investment implications of a new, virtually limitless source of clean electrical energy? Here's an article about the Rossi device which explores some possibilities.
It seems to me that if the device actually was the real thing, it could be construed as a great big sell signal for precious metals.
If energy prices drop dramatically - say, to 1/100 of what they are now - the costs of goods and services would drop dramatically because so much of their cost is energy-related.
If the costs drop dramatically, profits rise dramatically. The prices of goods would come down. People would find they had a lot of income freed up to service their debt, or pay higher taxes to service government debt.
The debt load people, companies, and governments are carrying would become dramatically easier to service.
If the private, commercial, state, and federal debt, and the debt of countries around the world becomes manageable, the money printing stops. If the money printing stops, the need to protect oneself by investing in precious metals largely disappears.
If energy becomes radically cheaper, it seems to me that the most valuable thing becomes land and commodities. If energy is boundless, then the limiting factor is finding the raw materials and land to use that energy upon to create the stuff people want.
I imagine the price of oil would plummet, perhaps to the single digits. Natural gas would become very cheap. (Or perhaps the global warming crowd would get large taxes imposed on them and on coal to discourage their use.)
But it seems to me that the price of land and industrial commodities would skyrocket. Previously unusable desert might become usable with desalinated water.
Or might commodities drop in price because with very cheap energy, it might be economically feasible to mine deposits that weren't worth it before? Or even separate them from the contents of landfills?
I imagine the stock market in general would go on a hellacious tear upwards.
So it seems to me to be worthwhile to at least keep an eye on news related to the Rossi device and be prepared, in the admittedly unlikely event that it is the real thing, to dump precious metals and jump into the stock market and perhaps to load up on industrial commodities and land.
Anyone have a different take on it?
Ok, let's start by granting that this is in all likelihood as spurious as all the other cold fusion claims have been for the last twenty years. So please don't bother responding to this with what would undoubtedly be very reasonable skepticism. We all know all the reasons why it is probably not for real.
But in the interests of scanning the horizon for possible significant investment opportunities -- the kind of thing E.J. and some of us did a decade ago that got us into gold -- let's just do a thought experiment and pretend for the moment that this demonstration comes off successfully in October and the 1 megawatt version is actually installed and operating in a Greek factory next year.
What would be the investment implications of a new, virtually limitless source of clean electrical energy? Here's an article about the Rossi device which explores some possibilities.
It seems to me that if the device actually was the real thing, it could be construed as a great big sell signal for precious metals.
If energy prices drop dramatically - say, to 1/100 of what they are now - the costs of goods and services would drop dramatically because so much of their cost is energy-related.
If the costs drop dramatically, profits rise dramatically. The prices of goods would come down. People would find they had a lot of income freed up to service their debt, or pay higher taxes to service government debt.
The debt load people, companies, and governments are carrying would become dramatically easier to service.
If the private, commercial, state, and federal debt, and the debt of countries around the world becomes manageable, the money printing stops. If the money printing stops, the need to protect oneself by investing in precious metals largely disappears.
If energy becomes radically cheaper, it seems to me that the most valuable thing becomes land and commodities. If energy is boundless, then the limiting factor is finding the raw materials and land to use that energy upon to create the stuff people want.
I imagine the price of oil would plummet, perhaps to the single digits. Natural gas would become very cheap. (Or perhaps the global warming crowd would get large taxes imposed on them and on coal to discourage their use.)
But it seems to me that the price of land and industrial commodities would skyrocket. Previously unusable desert might become usable with desalinated water.
Or might commodities drop in price because with very cheap energy, it might be economically feasible to mine deposits that weren't worth it before? Or even separate them from the contents of landfills?
I imagine the stock market in general would go on a hellacious tear upwards.
So it seems to me to be worthwhile to at least keep an eye on news related to the Rossi device and be prepared, in the admittedly unlikely event that it is the real thing, to dump precious metals and jump into the stock market and perhaps to load up on industrial commodities and land.
Anyone have a different take on it?
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