Lithium
Lithium is one of the key elements in the electrification of the world. The photo below shows a lithium ion battery stuffed into the frame of what will become a drivable electric car many hours later.
All this has the price of lithium through the roof.
Politicians in the rich world want to ban gasoline and diesel vehicles. Electric cars might be environmentally friendly but mining lithium is not. One form of Lithium mining uses 500,000 gallons of water to extract a ton of lithium.
Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and the United States have the world’s largest lithium reserves. Stripping out the lithium leaves a bit of a mess.
Here is a startling quote from a story in the New York Times on a mining project that would take lithium from a dormant volcano in Nevada;
“Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts.
The price of lithium and environmental concerns has a cleaner method of lithium mining being worked on in California. It would use less water and land, unlike the huge area pictured above. “We don’t think California, New York or Joe Biden will hit their electric vehicle goals without a technology like this,” says one of the promoters.
There are plans to mine lithium at an abandoned mine in Manitoba, near another producing lithium mine. Along with the need for lithium comes a lot of hype. One headline talked of Manitoba being the Saudi Arabia of lithium.
Mining promotion is not new. One is reminded of Mark Twain’s definition of a gold mine: “A hole in the ground with a liar standing at the top.”
Bonds 101
This past week was the 40th anniversary of the start of the bull market in bonds. On September 30, 1981 the US 10-year bond peaked at a yield of 15.84%. On Friday, it was 1.465%.
Why was it a bull market? Because bond prices rose as interest rates fell. That doesn’t seem to make sense to many people. Here is an easy way to figure it out.
Say you bought bond A for $100 that paid 10% or $10 a year. A month later interest rates have fallen to 9%. and bond B issued that month pays $9 a year. Obviously bond A paying $10 is worth more than bond B paying $9. You would have to pay a premium to buy the higher yielding bond. The last time I checked, the bond market, where governments and companies borrow money, is ten times the size of the stock market in dollar terms.
Even more extreme: a Canada Savings Bond in 1981
It was called a bond, but it was really a savings certificate. Its price did not change.
Making room at coffee shops
The sticky below is on all the tables at my favourite Toronto coffee shop, L’Espresso Mercurio.
The message is aimed at University of Toronto students who sit with one coffee in front of their Apple laptops— and they are almost always Apple— and stay for hours hogging the best seats by the window. The coffee shop is trying to rebuild after the long pandemic shutdown. Better to get bigger spenders to the tables.
There is a Starbucks a block and a half away where there is almost never a seat; U of T students take them all. Hard to know how that is a business model, but Starbucks marches on.
How fast is mobile wi-fi at the world coffee shops?
Come Fly With Me…
“You just say the words and we'll beat the birds down to Acapulco Bay…” When Frank Sinatra sang that in 1958 flying was a novelty, not the take your shoes off at security crowded cattle car that it is today. Which is why if you have the dough, flying private is more popular than ever, especially in what we hope is the tail end of the pandemic.
The Guardian’s Wealth Reporter’ s headline on the popularity of private planes:
“Demand for private jets soars as rich travellers try to avoid `mosh pit’”
Bombardier announced Thursday it has received an order for 20 of its new Challenger 3500 business jets, worth a total of US$534 million, based on current prices. That’s about US$25-million each.
The 3500, introduced on September 14, is on the small size in Bombardier’s fleet. It seats 10 and has a range of 6,297 kilometres.
Flying private is so popular that a company that sells small jet charters advertised in the Tempo Lac Brome, the monthly magazine where I am the editor. Seems the area has become rich enough that private jet charters are taking out ads.
Tempo Lac Brome, latest edition.
A subscriber comments on the anti-tax movement
A lack of fuel truck drivers equals petrol shortage in Britain.
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Essay of the Week
One of the more interesting books I have written is on the Dellelce family of Sudbury, Ontario. It is called Fare Fortuna, Italian for making a fortune which is what the Italian immigrantn family did, and continue to do.
In May of 2015 I went to the province of Abruzzi in Italy to see where the family came from. I travelled there with my daughter Kate and her husband, Arthur, and we wandered down to a caffe beside the Adriatic.
The Dellelce Family Roots
Olives and grapes don’t grow in Sudbury. On a February day, when it is -20 in Sudbury, it is +15 in Fossacesia and Villa Elce. Both places are beautiful in their own way; the stark wilderness of the Laurentian shield, and the Italian towns and hamlets ringed with mountains on one side, and perched above the Adriatic on the other.
Elce, or to be more precise, 34 Contrada Elce, is the birthplace of Tommaso Dell’Elce. The original house is no longer there; a modern villa stands there now. Fossacesia is the birthplace of his wife, Rachelina Masciangelo. The families never met each other in Italy, and given the remote nature of rural Italy in the early 20th century, the Dellelces would have little reason to travel from Elce to Fossacesia; the main centre for them was Lanciano, five kilometres away.
Fossacesia is a small town stretching down to the sea where there are coffee and ice cream shops and seaside villas. Elce is little more than a collection of houses in the countryside, with olive groves and vineyards. Elce is a suburb of the small city of Lanciano, a place where there are few foreign tourists, but many Italian visitors who come to see the Miracle of the Eucharist.
Both families would have known Lanciano, and there is a memorial for both World Wars in the square in front of the cathedral where both family names are listed. As you can see, the Dellelce name is spelled Dell’Elce in Italy.
Lanciano has three churches within a two-minute walk of the main piazza. On a Friday in May, the church of St. Francis, site of the Eucharistic miracle, is packed. The centre of the town is medieval, with narrow streets and buildings that are a thousand years old. Across the street from one church is a shop that sells mobile phones. On the periphery of the city, it is more modern, with car dealers, furniture warehouses and a little farther out, a Honda plant.
All this is in the Abruzzi region, 250 kilometres east of Rome, a spectacular drive on a four-lane highway through mountain passes and long tunnels. Today, the drive takes two and half-hours, but for centuries the region stood in peaceful isolation, a Mediterranean Eden.
Elce is a pastoral paradise, a lush mixture of grapes and olives framing the snow-capped Gran Sasso: at 2,912 metres (9,554 feet), the tallest mountain in the Apennine chain that runs down the center of Italy. One of its three peaks is named John Paul II. The Pope, now a saint, would secretly ski there, saying it reminded him of his native Poland.
It is hard to imagine anyone wanting to leave here, but then the economic conditions of Italy at the time of the First World War were horrendous. There was little work, and no opportunity for an ambitious person. Someone living in a Palazzo in Pescara or Rome probably owned these beautiful fields, not the people who cared for them.
Many Italian immigrants would have been shocked by the harsh weather and terrain of Northern Ontario. But, the Dellelces and other Italian families prospered in Sudbury, as they could never have done in Italy.
In the summer of 2016, Peter Dellelce and his wife Lisa visited Lanciano and Elce, driving there from Rome with a driver, Massimo, who translated for them. They were not there for long when they discovered a close relative through a conversation with a local priest.
Their next stop was a small hotel in Elce, operated by a woman named Lina Dell’Elce! Not only was she in the hotel business, but she had the same name as Peter’s mother.
The hotel had a big hall where they held weddings, along with a bar and a spectacular courtyard with a fountain. Sitting there, Peter and Lisa could look over the lush fields of Elce.
“She was in the kitchen getting ready for some function and they brought her out. She was a little woman, I would say in her 60’s, very distinguished, but my gosh, when she found out that Peter was a Dell’Elce, it was like a hug-fest, and a cry-fest, and they talked. She was a Dell’Elce, and her husband was a Dell’Elce,” says Lisa, sitting in Sudbury with Peter, two weeks after their return from Italy. Peter was still emotionally charged by the meeting.
“It was very emotional. We knew right away we were related. We hugged and it brought a tear to my eye,” remembers Peter.
The trip to Elce and the meeting with the Dell’Elce relative was one of those serendipitous moments in life, a direct link to a family that left Italy more than 100 years ago.
Early on, the immigrants from Lanciano kept in close touch with their relatives at home. Money went back and forth, usually, but not always, from Canada to Italy. The largest amount mentioned in the following letter is $174.50, which according to the Bank of Canada’s Inflation Calculator is about $2,800 in today’s money.
The letter is written to Tom Dellelce from one of his cousins, who appears to be visiting Montreal. A translation follows. You will notice his cousin calls him ‘Thomy,’ his nickname in Italian.
Mount Royal Hotel, Montreal, August 4, 1931
Dearest Cousin Thomy,
This is the last letter you will receive from Montreal, however, we will be in contact, as we always have been.
I am sorry that you were so disappointed that I didn’t come to visit, but, dear cousin, and the same goes for your wife, it’s not as you think—that I didn’t want to come—because I’ve never been concerned about the money, but it all had to do with the fact that my son and his wife wanted me to stay for another few months. So I told them they had to get married right away if they wanted me to be present. Everything needed to be done in a week. How could I have come there when I didn’t want to wait here any longer? Also, you said I had to come Saturday night so we could be together Sunday because you had to work every day.
Enough with this chit chat. It means nothing compared to the affection we will have unto our death. A heartfelt hug to you, your dear son, and your wife.
Page 2:
And so, dear Thomy, as you explained, I have to pay the 2,000 Lire to Filippo [following, perhaps his surname, is illegible.], Giuseppe Dell’Elce’s son-in-law [illegible]. I’ll pay everything once the truth comes out. The amount I have to re-pay you is $174.50 [unclear, could be $124.50]. I’m enclosing here, a cheque for $65, along with the 2,000 Lire that I had to re-pay you. There is still $3.50 outstanding.
You can reply to me in Italy, to these two words, just to let me know that you received this money, and about your health, and what you would like to do about the outstanding $3.50.
I think that is all. I believe all will be well. A heartfelt hug to you, your wife and your son. 1,000 kisses from me and my family.
Giovanni Dell’Elce (Achille’s son)
Lanciano, Chieti
Italy