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Why Hollywood Will Never Look the Same Again on Film: LEDs Hit the Streets of LA & NY

Alfred "Bill" EV Newman

Why Are Companies Sitting on Cash Right Now?

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  0:00  
One of the interesting articles that appeared in The Wall Street Journal is about the technology companies we're always talking about in the video, and we're talking about Facebook, or meta or Amazon or Apple, but looks like an old school name has come back to be popular. Yes,

Paul Truesdell, II  0:16  
everybody forgets how influential the energy industry is. But it keeps everything chugging including all the aforementioned companies that everybody is so obsessed with.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  0:25  
So we're talking about Exxon. Exxon is a company that has amazing strong demand, because the global economy is stronger than ever. And guess what? Because of Ukraine and the Middle East, and now Israel, and oh, gosh, everything that's going on the increase Israel in Iran escalation looks like oil prices are steady Yeti. Yeah, definitely. And sometimes old school companies tend to come back and smile.

Paul Truesdell, II  0:58  
Well, it's one of the it's a bedrock company, I kind of view it, you know, in more ways than one. Yeah.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  1:04  
I mean, look, everybody's been talking about falling inflation. I've been talking about bond yields. And, you know, listen, a lot of people in bonds got slaughtered few years ago. Yeah, especially. So you know, a lot of people, not our clients. Right now, not our clients, those of you who were buying bonds in the 0% range, or the 1% range, when inflation went up, and they lost value, if you sold them, if you hang on to them, you're doing fine. But problem is

Paul Truesdell, II  1:31  
a lot of people don't have the option to not sell because they own bond funds, whether they're mutual funds, or ETFs, or whatever. And those funds are forced to rotate based on certain criteria or whatever. And, you know, they lost value, purely because they the fund itself is a marketable security and speculation against the assets that they hold, causes the value of the fund to go down. So it's just a lot of people got screwed, no matter which way you slice it. You know, I mean, we've talked about this in the past. So few people own individual bonds, it's actually kind of scary. It's almost entirely funds and large institutions. And

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  2:15  
I've talked about extensively the cost for funds. I'll mention the name Carol who works with us. She said there when I did that thing like, man, you scare the hell out of me on bonds, because there's the cost of it. And the lack of of transparency is really substantial. Yeah, absolutely. So bond funds are bundled financial products, and very few people buy bonds. But yeah, basically, the Federal Reserve is doing what the Federal Reserve needs to do. Paul's doing what Paul's doing. But I gotta tell you, Exxon, ahead of Microsoft, and Apple and alphabet, Tesla has gotten slaughtered. We think about that. I

Paul Truesdell, II  2:56  
haven't done the analysis. But my guess is that Tesla's overly exposed, but just as expose on a kind of electric car, per capita basis, and in the drop in interest in them, a lot of people who've purchased them got them. You know, there's not a lot of switching back as far as I've seen, statistically, I mean, you hear about it, but most what is it in the us most? Was it most electric car owners are two car households and they own at least one gas engine vehicle. Still, that probably won't change for obvious reasons. Like you can work the math and like kinda understand the inconveniences of owning all electric for both of your cars. So you keep one and you keep another so you get the convenience of one and you get the convenience of the other depending on your circumstance. What is it uh, a lot of the what is it? Major car manufacturers have since substantially reduced or eliminated their electric or Evie rollout over the past? Six months to a year right? Yeah,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  4:05  
General Motors and Ford have both suspended as well as canceled all plants all plans to build new facilities. Both were designating few additional facilities to be exclusively battery and Evie assembly and they're done.

Paul Truesdell, II  4:25  
Because that's one thing people don't realize is it's you know, you build a new car and we need a new facility to manufacture said new car right because of different processes and assembly techniques and procedures, but the thing everybody forgets is EVs. They require more additional facilities to provide extra components that you don't need as many of or at all traditional vehicles. You know, car car companies have benefited from extreme supplier efficiency over the years with things like car companies don't make their own lead acid batteries. There's no point right? No Oh, so now they're stuck in a place where there's not enough production capacity to deal with to create the batteries. So they need to make them themselves if they're gonna compete at all now, you know, you have this domino effect going back downstream. It's kind of interesting. I the exuberance of to reuse a phrase that's common in this industry. The irrational exuberance. Evie market is something that even as it happened very much befuddled me.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  5:29  
Well, you know, I put on Facebook a a video where I was very sarcastic about a Green Party candidate running for the US Senate in New Jersey or New York or recall. Did you see that? No, yeah, this lady claimed that it was the man made in environmental change. Remember, used to be global warming, global cooling. Oh, was Al Gore. He was global warming, wasn't he?

Paul Truesdell, II  5:58  
I think it was global warming. Well, what is it was global cooling when he was in college, then it became global warming. And it became climate change. And they've they've done a lot of them. Let's call it rebranding of that. I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  6:10  
like that rebranding, rebranding of the climate. So

Paul Truesdell, II  6:13  
it's a rebranding of the of the outcome. The cause is still the same. Yeah,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  6:18  
look, before going back to gold. We forget this dangling a ying yang that's running for Senate. You know, ladies and gentlemen, Al Gore. I think he's a few years older than me. I'm not sure if we can look it up. I think we might be the same age. This guy. You know, we were in college. And I vividly remember studying and reading is one of the primary reasons I said, I'm out of here. I'm going back south global, the climb was going to cool. The natural trends. I mean, we actually study that

Paul Truesdell, II  6:47  
stuff. Okay. And I can prove to you that that is true, but it has happened is cooler. When you're a kid, you know, pick whatever you're it doesn't really matter. The early 70s. Late 60s, could we grow oranges and Marin County, Florida? Yes, yes, we could. Pretty close. Oh, yeah.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  7:05  
No, it's great. Going back to the days of Marjorie Rollins and all that, after Joe, oranges were growing up into southern Georgia, people don't realize that now you

Paul Truesdell, II  7:15  
can't grow them. You can't even grow them. You know, the Tampa area is probably now the barrier for that. Oh, yeah. Her her and even then they get enough Frost's and that just kills them. I mean, it takes it takes so many years to build infrastructure. We were talking about that with was, was that something we were talking about with Pat the oil? No, yo, smoke pot smoke pot to keep him? Yeah, he was. You guys were talking about that. And I had no idea. Because I mean, it's been I've lived here my entire life. And it's something that, like, I have a few remnants of orange trees like it's the orange state, but I have memories as a kid of seeing some orange groves, but they're all gone now. Yeah,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  7:54  
I think the girl's name the singer was Anita Bryant and she was our spokesperson for the Florida orange juice Association. Then she was very anti gay or whatever the word whatever caused her buddy get her underwear to bind at the time. And so she lost that that gig. So what Paul's talking about is I want you to think of a like a cannon ball. Just think of a cannon balls about the size. Well, maybe about 12 inches, eight inches in circumference. And the cannonball had a little fuse on the top that you would unscrew this thing and you'd Pour oil into this and it was a wick. You had a wick and you would light it on fire. Well, what is old fashioned The Beverly Hillbillies Earl do create smoke. And people think that the heat from the little thing the little oil pot was was what was going to keep the tree from freezing. That wasn't it at all? No, it was nasty smoke oil that would coat the leaves. And so as the temperatures began to drop that you get humidity, and you have ice. So you want for example, to save your orange trees. You have to turn sprinklers on and people are like, What are you doing? Turning spray? You're gonna kill the tree? Well, no, you're coding it. Because ice is 32 degrees. Yes, you don't want that tree to be in the 20s and teens. And your base

Paul Truesdell, II  9:15  
ice creates a thermal barrier does it's kind of seems like an oxymoron type situation here. But no, it's it's, it's it's interesting because the oil preserves the leaf. Right? Exactly. So it doesn't get frozen and break and prevent it from leaving. And then the ice creates a thermal barrier for further cold let's say yeah, it makes it makes a lot of sense.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  9:41  
But you know, I mean, if you're from up north and you come down here and you look at us dumb southerners and you say you know them poor old Beverly Hillbillies, folks with them orange trees, no wonder they're all gone because they put ice on them and smoke them. Yeah, no,

Paul Truesdell, II  9:54  
no, of course they also failed understand that, you know, orange trees. What they take Like, six, seven years to produce anything.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  10:03  
Oh gosh, so

Paul Truesdell, II  10:03  
useful. So you kill a tree in one frost and you're screwed for a decade as far as productivity because you have to tear it out. Replace it graft. That's another thing people don't realize is orange trees are not sweet naturally. You have to graft them. That's a whole thing.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  10:20  
Yeah, they grow Tangela tangelos grown grown naturally to

Paul Truesdell, II  10:27  
and bananas when you were a

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  10:29  
newborn, and I would go to Disney with you a lot. You were 10 days old. We first took you to Disney and going down the Turnpike, through Claire Claremont. I remember I'd always sneeze my eyes always water. It's always allergic to orange trees. No matter what. I just have an allergy to older orange trout anymore. They're all gone. Oh, yeah. That replaced by sticks and mortars and 55 plus communities. Yeah.

Paul Truesdell, II  10:54  
Because the frost just froze mountain farmers are awkward done. So sell it off to the villages or Disney or whoever. Yeah, I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  11:01  
had an appointment years ago with a farmer out there. He was a deputy sheriff and he was getting ready to retire. He had a he had a Gorringe growth. And we had to do some paperwork. He said yeah, come on out. I used to help wear blue jeans and in boots like, okay, he didn't tell me anything more. It's a great guy. He was I got there he goes, I'll sign whatever you want. We got to help me put these pots out. He was hauling ass with his, his tractor in his trailer and his his boys. Yes, that was good time. A little bit of whiskey, little bit of beer and a lot of laughs over that. So going back to my lady that's running for Senate. She actually said that the earthquakes. The big earthquake that happened in New York was the result of climate change. Well,

Paul Truesdell, II  11:44  
and then on the other side of the aisle you have, what is it Marjorie Taylor Greene said that this is a sign from God to teaching us or telling us to repent or something

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  11:53  
be healed in the name of me myself? And I say, but think about

Paul Truesdell, II  11:57  
that you have you have this religious response from now both sides of the spectrum. Okay,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  12:03  
now you need to describe the wild that as well. So what does it mean to have a religious response from both sides of the spectrum? Because I think this is great. Go ahead.

Paul Truesdell, II  12:11  
Well, what I mean is that, you know, you have a literal religious response from what do you call it from Marjorie Taylor Greene, which is, you know, I'm sure she referenced some biblical something or another, but Okay, so that's not unheard of. But then you have a religious style response with regard to the the greenies like some of the stuff they say in the fervor in which they say it very much resembles some old school. It's called traditional religious, talking points. So

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  12:44  
by the way, you know, she has a special Bible. Yeah, she has the one with the book of Moses. And so if you've been read about how our water hurt in the waters and all that, yeah, I'm gonna get in trouble for that. But yeah, you got sciences, a new religion, we've got climate changes, new religion, we've got Marjorie Taylor Greene as a new religion and wow,

Paul Truesdell, II  13:05  
yeah. Well, anyway, yeah. So it's interesting, because the green stuff has followed this kind of this trend over the past few years and COVID. And, in particular, I think the source of the increased interest now, it was in that time period, but the thing that makes no sense about it is, you know, if you think about the Cote COVID, to, you know, the end of COVID period, right, one of the biggest issues you had was energy prices, particular natural gas, because there's, you know, could have total issues with everybody in the world producing any any energy at all, but then in particular, everybody's in their houses, there's a need to produce more electricity, as people were consuming more in some places than others, you know, just a total dislocation of resources and commodity prices and all this. And then, of course, you had the Ukraine conflict, and that created a huge, huge issue. What's interesting about that, as this all continued, in that time period, where energy prices were this high, in particular, with natural gas generated electricity, that's what I don't understand. Because in my mind the entire time I'm thinking, Well, that should kill the entire Evie industry for a while when it costs, you know, depending on where you're at a little bit more to substantially more to recharge your vehicle versus refilling it with regular old gasoline. I don't know that the whole thing never made a lot of sense to me. So it's interesting that it took basically high interest rates to destroy the Evie market first, because I guess people start doing the math and they realized, oh, maybe this isn't as efficient. The other thing that was crazy is

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  14:49  
this real quick, I have done the math with you. And we've talked about this forever. So everybody who is a client of ours, I have said forever. It's a cult of personality when it comes to to Tesla, there's no doubt that Oh, for sure, there's no doubt that they have made some amazing advancements and technological breakthroughs, because they

Paul Truesdell, II  15:08  
had to, they couldn't have done it without, they couldn't have made their, their vehicles without inventing a lot of this stuff because it didn't exist. And

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  15:15  
you cannot take that away from them. But it has gone from innovation and aha moments to like, I'm going to Don't let me forget this, I really want to get into this cult of personality when it comes to a couple of different things. So we're gonna continue with that a little bit.

Paul Truesdell, II  15:32  
Well, yeah, I mean, it's just it, a lot of people put away the common sense and the, in the facts of the situation, specifically with electric vehicles. And they went all in on this being the new thing. And I think, you know, like I was saying earlier, the math that never really made a lot of sense. Even the math they were talking about with regard to co2 emissions, and all those sorts of things, if you value a reduction in co2 emissions, sure, maybe there's a little bit less, but the thing you have to remember is you're you're, it's very much a NIMBY reaction, you know, you create most of the co2 upfront, and then you put it on the other side of the world and say that you're clean on your side of the world. There's, the net reduction is, I don't know it, at least the net reduction in your area Shores is great. But, you know, there's other issues at play, especially if you look at it, as far as the global impact. I don't know just the whole thing, there's so many little aspects of it that are just silly. And you know, then it just became a fad, where, you know, it's no different than yetis, or Stanley's or whatever the one that was before that, you know, everybody had to go out and get their cups and do their thing. And whatever. Well, they went out to go get him because everybody else got him because it's just, it's a social trend. So everybody chased electric vehicles, which is, you know, like any other any other commodity, they just they chased him, because this is the hot thing to get. And it propped up a lot of interesting companies. I mean, obviously, Tesla has, I think, some enduring staying power. They, electric vehicles, I think do will have a permanent place in our world, I just don't think they'll be as prolific as people think they're probably going to stay a luxury a luxury item, and a convenience item for a class of people that don't take particularly long car trips. But that's the thing people forget is the United States, by far as the longest or largest number of people that take car trips and drive the most distance one way, on an on an occasional basis than anywhere else in the world. So it's very much ingrained in our culture. And I don't see a lot of that changing, especially when it comes down to the the practical range of a lot of these vehicles. And I'm not talking about you know, the ones with fantastic ranges and all that stuff. I'm just talking about the things that normal people can afford the the EVS that they're talking about, that are going to be in the, say, 30 to $40,000 price range that compete with average everyday cars that people are buying. I don't I don't see it, you know, you're, it's a commuter car, you know, so that, that eliminates a lot of opportunity and a lot of cultural engagement that people would have. So anyway, it's just it's kind of an interesting thing, you just don't really, it's not thought out. And I'll just view it as a fad, that wanting to kind of see the repercussions of that kind of kick in the place. I will say that kind of shifting gears on that a little bit. The introduction of certain renewables and the technologies that have come from that solar and other methods have gotten much more efficient. Absolutely. That's one of the let's call it the upside byproducts of this, leveraging this battery technology to provide it's called to stop gap power for power losses in certain communities. The there's a lot of extra applications for these technologies that are very first world nature, but I think will have an enduring effect on how we build out our power grids and how we kind of think about sustainable or at least renewable energy going forward. So

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  19:22  
I'm gonna take a quick break. We're gonna be right back in just a few moments, and we're gonna talk about culture personality, we're gonna talk about California. We're gonna talk about some of the endearing qualities of things we're also going to talk a little bit about LED lights. And we're talking about movie making and yeah, I know movie making LED lights greens. Of so we'll be right back. Listen to the disclaimer and get a cup of coffee we'll see in just one minute.

Speaker 1  19:51  
You are listening to the Paul Truesdale podcast to Paul's in a pod. It's time for a coffee break and a seventh inning stretch Due to our extensive holdings and our clients you should assume that we have a position in all companies discussed and that a conflict of interest exists by listening reading or using this document video podcast and or website in any manner you understand the information presented is provided for informational purposes only and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Public and group informational items should never be considered professional advice nothing said written or otherwise communicated should be construed as an offer recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell a security.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  21:56  
And we're back Listen, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, morning all thanks for the short little break had to get a cup of coffee. You had to go the restroom and I was thinking about our favorite funny guy, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And when you think about this for a second because I'm gonna tie these guys together. With Tesla, you have Elon Musk and he is a cult of personnel. You have these Elon fans and fanboys will do anything you have FANBOYS. Also for things like apple. Let's see Steve Jobs is dead. No. And there's not a cult of personality when it comes to. What's his name?

Paul Truesdell, II  22:33  
Tim Cook, Tim Cook, or as Trump called him. Tim Apple,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  22:36  
Tim apple. It No, let's go to Biden. There is no cult of personality around

Paul Truesdell, II  22:44  
Biden. Not really no, no.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  22:46  
I mean, honestly, I would love to have a beer with a guy. I would have a beer and spend hours with him. I think you'd learn a lot of stuff about world events, just like you would have with Nixon. Oh, yeah. You know,

Paul Truesdell, II  22:58  
the guy's been around so long. I'm sure his anecdotes are interested in the same. Oh, god.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  23:02  
Yeah. I'd like to have been that sergeant. Remember when Obama got elected and they had a cop had to do something. A beer summit, the beer summit. Yeah, get rid of Obama, like kind of many things to come out of many things. Okay, so So Trump has a cult of personality. Tesla. Elon has a cult of personality. You have Apple, Steve was a cult personality. There's a lot of those cults of personality. I would argue that in a weird way, because he's such an oddball guy. Bill Gates was a cult of personality. Like people just like, how did how did Alfred E. Newman. Create Microsoft?

Paul Truesdell, II  23:40  
Yeah, I there definitely. Well, there definitely was a cult of personality back then for sure. But I've always very, very different from what we would think of today, though. Oh, no,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  23:52  
but but but think about this. You know, I grew up in the era of Mad Magazine. Sure. Bill Gates looked like Alfred E. Newman when he was younger. Absolutely. And I think a lot of it was like, Okay,

Paul Truesdell, II  24:04  
this guy can make it. I mean, he kind of looks like it today. So still does, he looks like meanwhile, meanwhile, the best ones to go look at our go look at Elon, because he very much looks like that, as well. Well, not done. But you know, in the 90s, early, late 90s. And then, same thing with Bezos. And you compare him to today. It's like who? What happened to these guys? What's the point a lot of TRT

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  24:32  
Joe Rogan would know a little bit about that. Oh, yeah. Here's the thing, guys, when you have a company and you have a CEO, who is a cult of personality, what happens when that person dies? A lot of times a company has a real hard time. Yeah, depends. It can be run really, really well. But when it comes to stock pricing, a lot of people buy based upon stupidity. So when you're doing investment advisory work, you've got to take that into consideration. shouldn't just like green has become a cult. And we call it a religious a science. Now, here's a couple of things, the data, the data simply doesn't pan out, for example Tehsil has, well, they don't know if they've officially canceled. But for all practical purposes, all research shows the Gigafactory they were getting ready to build in Mexico is done. Okay. So they're done with that. And then on top of that, you've got California always comes, you know, just saying a nonstop Oh, well, you've got 50% green energy, but they still are using fossil fuel energy. They're using well over 50%. But the thing is, they're drawing energy from out of state. And they don't count that. Oh, of course. Yeah. So they're drawing power from the surrounding states. Because other than state of Texas, what do we have? We

Paul Truesdell, II  25:52  
have a, they just count what they what they make a quote. So yeah, yeah.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  25:56  
So, you know, they're using 10 gigawatts a day of fossil fuel based energy, just in the LA basin, just in the LA basin, which is larger than most small countries. Yeah. So my consideration and thinking is this. If you've got a company that's based in California, it's just a matter of time before the laws, rules and regulations of Gavin Newsom, and his party of crazies is going to hit your bottom line. Yeah,

Paul Truesdell, II  26:27  
it depends. It depends a lot. I mean, in all these places, there's a shift, right? The thing I was thinking is is with, with with the whole, Elon, the market for EVs is going to continue in places like China. Well, there's a reason for that. Yeah. Because China doesn't have the fossil fuel based energy that most of us do. And it's all imported. Right? Right. So EVs are gonna stay popular purely because it's a rational response, since they're building lots of electricity plants. And that's, that's a national security thing for them, their their logistics are going to have to, I can totally see them going the California route, mandating all electric on everything, partially to help with the smog and pollution and all that sort of stuff. But also to keep stuff working if they get oil embargoed, like Japan did in the previous century.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  27:24  
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, I want you to correct me. I do believe China while they lack Beverly Hillbillies oil. They do have copper, they have lithium, they have graphite, they have a lot of the raw materials that are needed to make batteries. And so it would make sense that they would be doing nuclear power. So if you've got Atomic Energy coupled with electricity, absolutely, that makes sense. Yeah. They also don't drive from all the while a Big Bang to Zam boom. I mean, they're not

Paul Truesdell, II  27:55  
us. No, they don't do that. I mean, I mean, there's their pedal power. There's a lot of there's a lot of transportation, long distance that goes on in China, but it's all public transportation. Yeah. The The other thing about what I was saying, you know, so you take this into effect, and you consider Tesla's interesting relationship with the Chinese government. That's something that I would keep an eye on. Because you see a lot of let's call it ignoring obvious things. I eat Alonzo public commentary is comical at times. He was very mad at a what Brazil for banning X or something recently. Yeah, he said it's the most draconian thing that has happened anywhere something really it's like, interesting because, or interesting bedfellow in China with regard to Tesla bans x in its entirety. But I never saw any place where he got mad about that. That's just, you know, some little, little small, I'm sure totally, totally schizophrenic, paranoid conspiracy observation on my part. Sure. I'm sure it's I'm sure I'm just making this up. situational

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  29:08  
ethics, I guess. You know, what, here's the thing, the thing that also and I'm going to continue to harp on this and you know, what's kind of nice about it, is we're sitting here in our studio, and we're having a conversation. We haven't apologized and said to people, I know it's gonna upset you yada, yada yadi, just like when we were talking about COVID, it's like, I don't kill me over this. But it's, you got to understand the difference between RNA DNA vaccine versus a genetic modifier. You know, I think people are beginning to really realize that now. Okay, box mix. Nobody's gonna do anything about it. Nobody has the guts. But the big thing is, I think one of the things we have to realize is that a lot of the transformers and cables in this country, the electrical grid hasn't been updated for 75 years. Yes. And it's not because of us. What I want to say for neglect is just some things you just can't upgrade easily. Which I think it would be interesting to talk about Los Angeles. Let's talk about making movies in Los Angeles. Yeah, we

Paul Truesdell, II  30:14  
watched a very interesting little documentary, where the sky reviewed a few seminal movies in over the past, I don't know. 2030 years, I guess it's been 30 the old hat was the Tom Cruise movie. Yeah, collateral. And then there was a, there was a Hong Kong based movie, anyway, but the point was, is the guy kind of reviewed and went through and showed that the effect of street lighting and how it how it affected movie making, and and the perception of, you know, the environment and you know, whether it was doom and gloom, or a seedy underbelly, and whatever. And then it was very interesting, though, because he went through and he explained, you know, the evolution of film and how couldn't shoot at night, because it just required so many so much light. And, you know, at at a certain point, film got fast enough that they could actually start to perceive something useful out of out of the nighttime shot, actually outdoors. And then as time went on, you know, the film stocks got better and better and better. And then we got digital. And then anyway, you got this fantastic little history on the the evolution of streetlights, and lamps and all of these things, and how they evolved from, I can't remember what it was in the 60s, or I'm sorry, the 70s and 80s. But basically, it went from these arc lights to these really inefficient incandescent bulbs, and then the oil embargo. They got replaced with I can't remember the name of it, but anybody that was alive back then it was very, like cold and white and kind of almost green. They had those yellow sodium lights. Well, that's what came later. Yeah. But what I'm talking about as the the efficiency needs and the energy crisis of the 70s drove forward the the development of in the in the release of these this other style of light wear, they weren't as good as the incandescence, but they consumed a tremendous amount less energy. And anyway, then they turned into what sodium vapor lights, and then obviously those things got replaced with LEDs, the sodium vapor lights being the very yellow kind of dim, not nearly as blue lights that I think most of us have a have a kind of mental image of when you think of a streetlight, right. And, of course, in the transition to LEDs, I think everybody in the country, especially if you've traveled a little bit, even if it didn't happen in your backyard, you'll know of a place where it did when they started replacing these things. They were I don't know if they were cheap knockoffs or what the deal was. But these certain brand of lights got installed all over the place, and you can still see it in some cities, where they're basically purple. Yeah. Oh, yes. It's horrible, horrible. It's it's it there. You know, I love the place I'm thinking of where there's entire areas of the of the city where they're still purple, and they were replacing them. They were still in the process of replacing them within the past year. It was like what is this whole like district the Is this the prostitution district now because it's all it looks like a nightclub or a strip club. Like that's the kind of lighting you get, but it was everywhere on the streets is so creepy. Anyway, it's, it's basically this drive for efficiency, right? You know, want more lights you want to be able to see at night obviously, a lot of that is affected by the fact that there's a lot more cars on the road and no matter how good the lights are for your vehicle. streetlights make it a lot easier to drive. Some of that's changed with LEDs, but still it's it's omnidirectional, right? So you know, you can only see what you're shining out. Anyway, it's a very interesting thing. But there's a the effect that had on the way people view certain styles of cinema is huge. But yeah, digital film, digital movie production really took it up to the next level. And that was one of the things they showed us. The movie collateral with Tom Cruise is a I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  34:42  
have a collateral suit. Remember that? Yes. Yeah. So if anybody wants to know I have a I have my black. Why have a white shirt but works really great with black but I have a suit that is tailored after collateral. All of this stems from one single thing it goes back to the 7374 Yom Kippur war. War. And just so you know, Richard Nixon was proud of the United States back in the day he hadn't resigned yet he would resign in 74. And of course, you had the Saudis were very upset that we took the side of the Israelis. And we had the the organization of Arab, it was not OPEC. It was oh, a P E. C, the organization of Arab producing states, and they cut everybody off and shut it down. And so then you had 79, when the same thing happened again, but do you make an argument? Well, we, we picked aside and got involved, and we paid a price. And that includes all the way down to streetlights. I mean, it does it, here's what it is.

Paul Truesdell, II  35:45  
But you fast forward to today. And, you know, despite the kicking and screaming of certain political persuasions, and all of this, the United States has finally, really it it. If you look at the timeline, it really happened under the Obama administration became energy independent. Yep. And that's true. Other politicians like to take credit for this, but not not particularly accurate. I mean, we can we can mark the X on the on the chart where, where it officially happened. But as we know, you know, things take a long time to develop, you can't just pop an oil in the ground and say your energy independent overnight. So anyway, but if you look at the outcome of the crane conflict, and all this, the United States, as of around 2022, became the largest one of the largest oil exporters in the world. And it's crazy to see the skyrocket over the past couple of years where we have this tremendous production capacity. And now we're exporting it. And we're on the opposite end of that story. Right now, back to the way we were in, you know, around the 1930s and 40s, where we were net energy exporters and we were sending oil to other developed parts of the world are no longer dependent on cheap Middle Eastern oil, propping them up for dubious economic in.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  37:19  
Yeah, and you know, just, I'm gonna say it again, I think that there's a lot of opportunities when you are listening to us. And I want you to think, what are the opportunities for those of you who are interested get a hold of me, we can talk about this. It's a venture capital type thing. But movie sets, movie studios movie soundstages audio? soundstages? I mean, there's a huge demand contents, big demand for content. But my suggestion to somebody is to think very seriously about what we said about lighting. And if you go to, for example, Universal Studios, and you go to Disney, the backlog tours, folks, you need to be able to take your streetlights down, put other street lights up different types of bulbs for different kinds of effects, because you can not get it with CGI, you can do all you want to do,

Paul Truesdell, II  38:09  
you can get close, but it just doesn't look the same. The real, there's a reason you know, some of it is called the The uninitiated things that, you know, certain things people go through a tremendous effort to replicate the past and do things is purely just a waste of resources. But there's just certain aspects of film in particular that you just can't fix, or replace or redo the same way get the same result without the same kinds of lenses and the same kinds of film. I mean, there's there's some movies that have been filmed and they go back and they have to have to find the right specific kind of era reproduce reproduction film to get the same level yet, as you know, just the way the light captures on the actual film stock. It's not the same. And you can see it and that's what makes a lot of that's what makes a lot of movies in particular really well. Really popular movies. such interesting time capsules, because they they capture more than just the story. There's so much other there. It's mean a good example is go back and watch. Blade Runner, the original one. Okay,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  39:19  
I wouldn't have thought of that. We did that.

Paul Truesdell, II  39:21  
I mean, we watched him. No, I did. We did but wouldn't watch the original one versus versus the new the sequel or follow up or whatever you call that same. And it's not about that it's not the same. There's different movies like one requires the other. It's the same universe. It's the same story. But it's it's very interesting, especially when you see them side by side anyway, and because it very much captures what was capable back then. Its state of the art for moviemaking and how much the real world affected a movie that was supposed to take place in the future. We were

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  39:57  
watching this and I had to thought I lost it while we were talking about it, it came back to me. I'm going to describe something to you. And it's literally my first shooting. Um, you know, imagine it's humid, and you're outside, and your skin is moist. I mean, you think it's raining, but it's not. It's beating up that much, right? Yeah, you have to walk very carefully. Because no matter what kind of shoes y'all have, it's very slick. And of course, the ground is full of urine and crap everywhere. You're in a really wonderful urban environment. You got the smells, you can feel that right. You can sense that whole thing. And you've got those, those orange lights, you got it. And you're not quite sure what you're seeing a contrast is not great. So when, you know, when Roscoe decides to go, boom, boom, boom, and you decide to go back at him. It is what it is. Right. But that that thing we watched with collateral when they're going through that? There were a couple of scenes, I was like, Oh, God, it brings back memories. Yeah, it just does. Yeah. So well, it

Paul Truesdell, II  41:01  
is interesting. And that's one aspect of this, this little documentary, I'll give you the link, we can put it in the show notes. The guy talks about how sometime in the past 10 years how la started to make this transition to LED lights. And one of the things they did is they they thought they found the optimal temperature for lights to use. Ended up pleasing, like, like 3000 Kelvin or something. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I could have told you immediately like, that's Wait, wait way too white. It's not yellow enough people will hate it. And when they first installed them in certain places, people said, Oh, great. I now live in a prison. I've got prison lights outside my house. And it's just so now they've optimized it and brought it back. Not as much towards that old sodium vapor. Really yellow. But Sam in between? Well, I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  41:51  
haven't done any research on it. But I'm really quite comfortable in saying that the reason why people cannot stand Uber bright lights that are white at night is that it's a shock to your I'm going to get my word screwed up circadian system. I mean, like, it's nighttime, it's evening, you know, I'm beginning is there's a different tempo? I'm not articulated very well. I think there's probably a lot to do with it. Yeah,

Paul Truesdell, II  42:16  
it's it's the blue light spectrum, impedes or melatonin production.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  42:22  
Exactly.

Paul Truesdell, II  42:23  
It keeps you awake.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  42:25  
Well, that's pretty cool. What else you got there, otherwise, we'll start wrapping it up. I'd really like to talk about, I'd like to talk about cash. And cash is important. As we talk with our clients all the time, you got to have enough cash. Absolutely. And there's some really great articles. Finally, after all these decades of me, basically splitting into when were people begin to realize that those who use Investment Advisors based on assets under management, you know, we're going to talk more about that, how they have screwed people for getting early social security and taking pensions and not have enough cash. And Bob, I'm not going to do this. But there's a problem. There's way too much cash sitting on the sidelines, some of these big companies.

Paul Truesdell, II  43:06  
Yeah, the lot of companies. Well, Apple at one point had a net cash stockpile of like $260 billion, some insane amount. And they Facebook now has 570 billion and well, but the companies like Apple and Facebook and stuff.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  43:23  
I'm sorry, let me It's my bad. The parent companies of Google and Facebook together have collected 570 billion I misspoke. Yeah. So

Paul Truesdell, II  43:34  
but the thing is, you know, Apple only has a net cash stockpile of like 50 billion 60 billion, because they've they all these companies have leveraged tremendous amounts of debt. So they maintain a lot of cash on their books. But you know, it cancels out with a tremendous debt load as well. And companies like Apple, they've, they've in particular, had a lot of money stored overseas, they brought it back by basically using debt, cheap debt to do it. And then they pay dividends with. And so there's a lot of very weird or unusual tactics, instead of just spending your money on paying taxes. They do all these unusual, let's call it financial engineering. So they don't have as much as you would think when you when you when you can't when you even get out against debt obligations. But it's still they still a tremendous amount. And yeah, one thing I didn't see on that list is who was a Cisco, at one point had a huge cash pile? I don't know what they've done with it, though. I haven't paid attention. We

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  44:37  
have a real vigorous discussion before we went in to studio a couple of days ago. And one of the things I have always said, I'm gonna say it again, the United States federal government in Washington, DC, the senators, the congressmen and women. The President United States, I don't care who it is, it could be Uncle Joe or what's his name? Donald Trump. Look, when you continue to tax dividends by publicly traded companies the way they do it, there's no incentive to pay out dividends unless you have some of these old, you know, dividend history companies like Ford, I'm not gonna go into a lot of the details on this. But the bottom line is, Gosh, darn, it shouldn't be nice if you would just pay out profits. And instead of everybody focusing on, you know, growth, growth, growth, stock value, how about focusing on profits? Are you making a profit, and the laws are just designed to, I'm not gonna get into the details, but Apple, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon net, even Exxon, Berkshire Hathaway Bank of America, Wells Fargo, at&t, they all have boatloads of billions and billions of dollars of cash. How about a return of my money before I get a return on my money? Pay me my dividends?

Paul Truesdell, II  45:54  
Yeah, I agree. The probably two big things that do that would help alleviate this issue is well bring it back to before that, this is a huge indicator of a lack of competition. In my mind. If these people were spending money, and fighting the good fight, as it were, this money could be deployed, if if you had real competition, instead, they hold on to it because they don't have any place to use it. Right? Because these companies are just so tremendously huge. It's insane. So that's one thing. But the other thing that's interesting is exactly what you're saying. I do think that if you had a corporate tax deduction for if you if you paid your profits out as dividends, you would alleviate a lot of this. But in particular, I think you also need to optimally make this work, especially for some of these large multinationals need the same thing with regard to getting a foreign profits back as well? Because that's a huge problem, too. I mean, that's one of the reasons. I mentioned earlier that Apple does financial engineering to borrow money cheaply and domestically against their cash piles overseas. Domestically, they don't have a ton of money. And one of the reasons is because it's tax less, and they've they've done all these things to avoid taxes. That's one of the reasons they have accumulated all this money. So in general, it's it's very, it's a very interesting problem. I mean, at one point, I mean, on one hand, you don't really want to reward people that are skirting tax obligations, but at the same time, you want to get the biggest benefit for shareholders. Because at the end of the day, a lot of the the majority of the shareholders are US based their companies or people. So that money is going to be taxed on income on an income basis on those people. So it's just it's weird. I mean, I think in general, I definitely do agree. I mean, you have some good companies out there like a lot of the industrials, oil companies and stuff like that, that still pay huge heavy dividends. You sent me that thing the other day about a Stanley Black and Decker, which owns DeWalt. And tons of these other DOD. Yep, steady Eddy. And they've they've paid and they've been they had what increasing dividends every year since 1968, or something huge. I mean, they're a old school, traditionally minded company, and they're paying their money out as dividends, but look at their you look at their financials, and they pay a ton in taxes to do so. So it's, you know, on one hand, would you rather more people pay more income taxes, if you're the government? Or would you rather suck it all from a couple of the big sources, like companies, at the expense of a lot less companies paying out tax paying out dividends? I personally would opt for the former because, you know, but there's multiple more money in more people's pockets makes more sense in my mind, but

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  48:56  
if there's multiple ways of paying it out, I'm thinking about doing an animal house, just real quickly. So I want to go back to you know, John Belushi Animal House, you got that, and we're gonna wrap up in just a minute, guess what, in 2010, Steve Jobs was alive. And he said, Holy cow, we had a $40 billion cash pile. Now, there's no doubt that Steve Jobs has watched Animal House like me a few times, because he said, Yes, let's have a giant toga party. Yeah. So maybe that's what we need to do so.

Paul Truesdell, II  49:25  
But it's interesting, though, because that that comment is, is, you know, can be taken as flippin and not serious. But I think it much like the lights we were talking about earlier. There's more to that statement. They've analyzed it. They don't know what to do with it. Like, you're so successful and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, okay, we have all this money. What do we do with it? And, you know, this is why you see a lot of successful people, they build big businesses, they do whatever, they're highly successful for one reason or another, and they kind of just not competing because what's the point like, Okay, I've got $5 billion. I've aggressively done all the things I ever wanted to do. And I still have all of that left like, what? What the hell do I do with all this stuff? I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  50:12  
do super giant monster gargantuan yachts. Oh, yeah. And they build bunkers and are investigating cry Nautics are crying that and headaches, whatever

Paul Truesdell, II  50:21  
it even that I mean, unless you go absolutely crazy. A lot of these things you just get to diminishing returns as far as how much money you can spend on stuff. So now we're talking about, you know, individuals or estates that are worth, you know, couple billion dollars. What do you do if you're a company that has $100 billion in cash? That's few dollars, right? The only thing you can really do is just buy other companies. I mean, companies like Apple, you know, you can or any of these companies really, I mean, you could buy a country in Vidya. All the all the big tech companies, oil companies, whatever, you can look at their r&d budgets, it's basically infinite. They spend whatever they think they need to within reason, of course, they still it's just, it's a rounding error. I mean, you know, apples r&d has exploded over recent years and included their wacky experiment trying to build a car and all kinds of other stuff, waste of money. And but even then, their r&d budget is only like 5 billion a year or something. It's just It's nothing. Yeah, I mean, true r&d, like stuff that anyway, it's very, when I say true r&d, what I mean is versus like a tax deductible r&d, which can be, you know, it very much depends on how you classify things. But anyway, it's very interesting to consider because it is, it is a serious problem that you use. I've thought about a long time. I mean, I've thought about it going back to those days when Steve was still alive, but what do you do with that kind of money? Especially if you're apple and like, you know, it's it's hard, it's really hard to imagine. And then Apple has a very weird strategy because they don't buy big companies. No, I think their biggest acquisition ever is like two 3 billion something like that. It's

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  52:00  
the primary acquisition is for people. And that's the thing few episodes ago, we talked about the reality in life is there's only a handful of people in the world that are actually super crazy Brainiac. So when I mean a handful of people, for every 1000 people, you're lucky to get one or two that really have a massive, incredible IQ and capability to doing the things that need to be done. We know that that is what it is, which is

Paul Truesdell, II  52:22  
wacky because the some of the things I've read about Apple's extremely stingy nature, yeah, with regard to employee compensation compared to some of the other big companies

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  52:33  
fanboys, even though they may be brainiacs, they're their fanboys, you know, that,

Paul Truesdell, II  52:38  
that the loss of talent at times is just insane. Because, you know, you've got companies like, open AI and Nvidia and stuff that suck, you know, like you said, you know, very, very, you know, we have one of 20 of these people on the planet, and we, we ordered five of them because we were able to hire them away. And now three of them are leaving, because, you know, Nvidia is willing to pay him, you know, million dollars a year plus no different than the historian responses. Well, you should just enjoy working here because it's apple, it's like,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  53:12  
well, that and that's what happened. We went a little longer in this, but that's what happened with blackberry Research In Motion. I mean, that guy least he had the fortitude to go, I will pay you, whatever, I'm backdating options, they all got in trouble. But they needed to people need to pay him Well, enough story. They were successful.

Paul Truesdell, II  53:30  
Well, yeah, with employment strategies. I mean, that's, that's one thing that's interesting to consider is there's, there's the hire lots of people scale out, you know, horizontal is as far as you can and just get an army, right. But then there's also the strategy of hiring the absolute experts paying them as much as you can or are willing to. And, you know, having the extreme Brainiac talent to do the r&d. And in recent years, the one who gets credit for most success in that arena is open AI. That's what they did. They, I can't read the names of the people, but they hired a couple of people pay them like a million plus dollars a year of absolute experts in their fields. And that's what a lot of open AI is. advancements have come from, as, you know, a couple of really wild brainiacs who understood this extremely niche technology. We're gonna

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF  54:27  
wrap it up, but that's not something new. We did it with NASA. We did it with the atomic bomb. We've done it many, many times. But again, I'm gonna say it might be one of the least controversial uses of extreme excess capital is a national toga party. So if you're interested in having a national toga party, give me a call at 212-433-2525 that's 212-433-2525 and say, I want to talk a party. You can text me as well and we'll see if we can get this thing going. My name is Paul Truesdale. The elder join Meet today is my best buddy, my guy that we made a few years ago. Who is it? Called the owner? Paul the younger Paul the elder without typically new Tyler to. We're out of here. Now.

Speaker 2  55:11  
You've always seen your grade point average. Well, have you?

Unknown Speaker  55:14  
I have, sir. I know it's a little below par. It's

Speaker 2  55:17  
more than a little below par. Mr. Hoover. It's thinks it's the lowest on campus. It's the lowest in favorite history. Well,

Speaker 3  55:25  
sir, we're hoping that our midterm grades will really help our average. laugh

Speaker 2  55:30  
now, because you clowns have been on double secret probation since the beginning of this semester. Secret probation. And that means one more slip up one more mistake. And this fraternity of yours has had it favor

Unknown Speaker  55:52  
Well, that was pleasant. nice of them to stop by. Don't you think we've

Speaker 3  55:55  
got to do something? He's serious this time? I think he knows about the exams.

Speaker 4  55:59  
He's right. You're right. We got to do something. Absolutely. You know, we got to do Oh, good party.

Speaker 3  56:04  
We were on double secret probation, whatever that is. We can't afford to have a toga party. You guys up for a toga party. Tom. I think they like the idea of Otter, please don't do this news for you pal.

Speaker 4  56:17  
They're gonna nail us no matter what we do, but we might as well have a good time dog.

Speaker 5  56:51  
You have been listening to the Paul Truesdale podcast for additional items serious to humorous wisdom to occasional outrage of various degrees. Visit Paul truesdale.com That's Paul truesdell.com.

Speaker 2  57:19  
Grant trees down. Roger that dust off in fire

Unknown Speaker  57:30  
on the board now