Green Copper
Copper turns green when it is exposed to the air. Green copper roofs on churches, houses and ornate public buildings.
But the important use for copper is electrical. The best conductor of electricity is pure silver but copper is number two. Since silver trades at $23 an ounce or $732 a kilogram and copper trades at $0.27 per ounce or $4.71 a kilogram, the world is wired in copper, not silver.
Copper is also key to the green revolution. It is used in solar panels, parts of windmills and electric cars. Chile is the world’s largest producer of copper. Chile also has the largest copper reserves followed by Peru, Australia, Russia and Mexico.
“The greening of the world is going to be a renaissance of copper mining,” said Pierre Lassonde, a successful Canadian mining entrepreneur said in a recent interview. “There’s no choice….if you want a de-carbonized world, the energy we’re using, which is today petroleum based, will have to electricity based and the only way to carry that electricity is copper.”
If the picture above gives you the shivers, learn to live with it says miner Pierre Lassonde: “If you want a greener world you’re going to have to accept that you’re going to have far more mining in the world.”
What a tangled web weave
As part of his spat with China, Donald Trump banned clothes made with cotton from the area famed by the persecuted Uyghurs. The Chinese adapted by buying cotton from the United States and exporting clothes back to the US. That has driven up with the price of cotton to a ten year high and made clothes more expensive in the United States.
Where is the stock market going? Ideas from a friend:
Bearish Arguments (why stocks should go down):
- Depending on what metric you use, valuations are at or above levels seen in the dot com bubble.
- The US is bumping up against their debt ceiling. Instead of this being an argument between Republicans and Democrats, this appears to be an argument between moderate Democrats and the progressive wing of their party. Is the progressive wing really going to care that much if there is a debt default? Maybe not.
- Inflation can be beneficial for certain types of stocks, but generally it is not beneficial for the stock market as a whole (especially now given how many securities there are, which we don’t own, that are trading at nosebleed multiples)
- The higher inflation rates are going to cause central banks to withdraw liquidity and increase interest rates.
- Companies will miss their third quarter earnings numbers due to supply chain issues and increasing inflation.
Bullish Arguments (why stocks should go up):
- The worst of Covid seems behind most of North America (although who knows).
- Compared to interest rates, valuations are cheap.
- Pent up consumer demand and a need to rebuild inventories should lead to higher earnings for companies.
- Household balance sheets (especially in the US) look great. The amount of money sitting in bank accounts earning nothing is at record highs – that could theoretically make its way into the market. Bank balance sheets also look strong, which should lead to more lending to households and businesses.
- Kind of an oddball argument and something that is more for a couple of years from now, but it appears as though Donald Trump is going to make another run at the White House. Does anyone from the Democrats or mainstream Republicans want the economy in a recession when running against Trump? Wouldn’t a recession in 2023-24 essentially seal a Trump win? Therefore, if it looks like Trump is gaining steam, I suspect politicians will throw everything they have at this market.
- Chinese stocks appear to now be uninvestible for a lot of investors given how they have decimated a few of their industries in recent months. Theoretically, managers should be moving investments in Chinese companies into companies in other regions.
Truth in Advertising?
This old advertisement— maybe from the 1930s?— says a litre of wine has the same nutritional value of a five eggs or 585 grams (1.3 pounds) along with large amounts to milk and bread. The Comité National de Propagande (Literal translation, the National Committee of Propaganda) was established in France in 1931 to promote the use of wine.
Wine consumption in France is declining. In 2007 annual wine consumption was 50 litres per person. That’s a litre week for every man, woman and baby in France. Obviously some drink a lot more than a litre a week. Not to be too puritanical, but I am a non-drinker who used to drink well over a litre of wine a week, sometimes downing that much in a day.
Today annual consumption in France is down to 40 litres a person. Only the Portuguese drink more wine per person than the French.
France has a high rate of deaths from alcohol related deaths, particularly among men.
Article on alcohol related deaths in France
Fall colours
Happy Thanksgiving.
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Essay of the Week
This week I am including the first two chapters of a book I published five years ago on Sam Ciccolini. He came to Canada from Italy in 1956. He and his brothers later started a small insurance agency, which is today Masters Insurance, a large insurance firm. Sam is a member of the Order of Canada for the volunteer work he does.
Here are the first two chapters of the book.
Chapter 1
Early Life in Italy
Salvatore Giovanni Ciccolini was born on July 3, 1944, in the village of Pescosolido in the foothills of the Apennine region southeast of Rome. Pasquale and Filomena (Sarra) Ciccolini had six sons, one of whom died in 1939.
Pescosolido is not prime farming country; it is rough terrain, with fields of wheat and corn framing the olive groves and vineyards on the rocky hills. The scenery is spectacular, sitting on the edge of the Abruzzi National Park; so special it is designated as an area of natural beauty by the European Union.
Sam was born the last year of the Second World War and July 1944 was the peak of the fighting in Italy, in his region in particular. The mountains made ideal defensive positions for the German army. The famous Battle of Monte Cassino took place nearby and the Ciccolini family watched as aircraft from the Allied side made their final bombing runs to attack the monastery that they mistakenly thought was a fortified German position. After the war there were a lot of unexploded bombs in the area, some in the Ciccolini’s own village.
Pasquale Ciccolini, Sam’s father, was a soldier in the Italian army. When he returned home he found his country, and especially his village and region, even poorer than before. There were shortages of everything and foreign armies, British and American, enforced the peace. The country was often near civil war as partisans, many of them Communists, exacted rough justice on their former enemies, real and imagined.
Pasquale eked out a living owning and driving the only taxi in the area, a Balilla*, a pre-war sedan noted for its relative size if not its beauty. “He could sit seven or eight people inside and then about 14 hanging to the top of the car. It was like one of those films from India,” recalls Sam Ciccolini.
This may be an exaggeration of a childhood memory. The Balilla was the nickname for a Fiat 508 and even the four-door version was relatively small by today’s standards, though it dwarfed most tiny Italian cars. It was big enough to carry goats and sheep on occasion, and in 1956, driven by an uncle who had taken over the taxi business, carried four members of the Ciccolini family the 140 kilometres from their village to the Port of Naples.
*Balilla" was the nickname of Giovan Battista Perasso, a boy from Genoa who, in 1746, threw stones at an Austrian officer in protest over the Austrian military occupation, starting a revolt.
The Frosinone province in the Lazio region was one of the poorest in Italy. Pasquale’s father died before Sam was born and his mother ran a tiny bar in the middle of the village of Pescosolido.
Sam’s branch of the Ciccolini family fared better than most since they owned some land. Filomena’s father had spent a decade working in Detroit, Michigan, and returned from the United States a relatively rich man. He bought farmland in Pescosolido; Sam and his brother Max estimate it would have been as much as 50 hectares, about 120 acres. Some of it was deeded to Filomena, even though her father objected to her marriage to the poor Pasquale. His objections were so strong he refused to attend their wedding. Pasquale was a quiet, handsome man and Filomena loved him; the marriage took place without her father’s approval.
Sam, his brothers, and his parents lived in a house squeezed between the homes of his grandfather and an uncle. There were animals downstairs; some cows, a donkey, and a few pigs. Every Christmas two of the pigs would be slaughtered in the barnyard, providing meat for the year. There was corn and wheat in the fields, but the valuable wheat was sold to earn cash and the family ate corn bread.
“We lived quite modestly to poor. We never went without food but everything else was rationed, as it was for everyone else in the village,” says Sam. The Ciccolini boys were also well dressed as Filomena was an accomplished seamstress. Like most rural Italian women of her generation she only went to school until grade three, but she was a clever and ambitious woman, the matriarch of the family and the driving force behind the future success of her sons.
Primary school in rural Italy ran from early morning until one in the afternoon. Then the children would go home to help their parents--in Sam Ciccolini’s case, helping to tend the fields and animals. Though they were poor – Sam never wore new shoes, always hand-me-downs, until he came to Canada – there was a warm family life. That warmth can be seen in the character of Sam Ciccolini and his brothers to this day.
Sam grew up in a close-knit family and he makes a point of going back to Pescosolido every year to visit them and re-affirm his belief in family unity.
“There are a number of uncles, aunts and cousins who are like brothers and sisters to me,” says Sam, as he remembers their names.” I have a great rapport with them and an abundance of love for them all: Francesco, Rosina, Mario, Antonietta, Giulio, who is deceased, Anna, Zia Maria, Lella, Donato, Francesco, also deceased, Terry, Rosanna, Mariella, Aurelio, Paola, Palma, Osvaldo, Renzo, and Rita.”
His love for those family members and their children still in Italy are the reason he returns every year to the village where he was born, making a point to see them all.
Chapter 2
The Seminary
Italy is still a Catholic country but in the 1950s it was even more fervent, harbouring a faith of such intensity that was matched in just a few other places in the Christian world, perhaps in Poland, Ireland, and Quebec.
As the second youngest of six sons Sam Ciccolini was chosen for the priesthood. In 1952, at the age of nine, he was sent from his village of Pescosolido down the hill to a seminary in the cathedral town of Sora, six long kilometres from his home. Putting a nine year old in a seminary may seem startling to some people, but no more than a young boy being sent to boarding school on a scholarship.
“In our area there was a lot of poverty so if you were picked as one of the ones who were a little brighter, you were sent to the seminary, because your parents couldn’t afford to send you to further higher education,” says Sam. “One of the reasons I went was we have a history of priests in our family. The rector at the seminary, just before I entered, was one of my father’s cousins and the priest in the town, Don Lino Ciccolini, was a second cousin. He’s still a priest and he’s 92 years old.”
Sam remembers his three years in the seminary with fondness. It was perhaps the most intense period of learning in his life, and certainly much more rigorous than what he would later face at Clinton Street Public School or Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto. At the age of 11 he could speak and write Latin, something few, if any, high-school Latin teachers could match.
There were about 20 boys in Sam’s class at the seminary. Days started at 6:30. The boys would rise, wash and bathe in cold water--there was only one bathtub, no showers--then they would put on their long cassock that had many buttons from the neck to the ankles. The boys would also wear a biretta, a black square clerical hat. They were dressed like little priests, as they expected to be dressed for the rest of their lives.
Mass was at 7 a.m. without having had breakfast since they would have to fast before taking communion. Then at 7:30 came the first meal of the day, almost always a brioche and coffee, though Sam says that as a young boy he didn’t like coffee.
Class would start at eight o’clock. The study was rigorous. The teachers, all priests, ruled with strict discipline though there was little if any physical punishment; the novices knew their place and that obedience was their lot in life. It was not a totally cloistered life: they were allowed walks in the street, they could talk with each other, and there were long periods of play, extended recesses where boys could be boys.
“The priests believed in physical activity and health,” said Sam, who was athletic as a boy and an adult. “The one thing that the seminary taught you was discipline. It’s a great trait because then you’re not scared of anything. It gives you a lot of self-confidence and I think you’re better off than someone who is timid.”
The young seminarian was certainly not timid; his personality was already fully formed and young Sam Ciccolini exhibited the self-confidence and exuberance that sometimes got him into a bit of trouble.
“Sam was in the seminary in Sora and he was always being reprimanded because he always wanted to do everything and sometimes he would even get into problems,” remembered his mother, Filomena, in an interview in 2003 for a video tribute to Sam.
Sam left the seminary on November 5, 1956, and within a week was sailing to his new life in Canada. But the lessons he learned there stayed with him for life. It may even account for his self-confidence and ability to speak with ease in front of large crowds. It certainly implanted a solid value system.
“I think my life, my faith, and the way we comport ourselves even when we lost our daughter comes from my upbringing in the seminary and it [his Catholic faith] is a bit of a soft spot in my heart,” says Sam.