Doomberg – Why Energy Is The Future For Humanity

[AARON] Porter, we haven’t been canceled yet.

[PORTER] We’re still here. We made it.

[AARON] I want to credit the crew for great editing. OK? And I want to credit ourselves for no gin and tonics.

[PORTER] No gin and tonics and, so far, I don’t think we’ve said anything that is going to really make people hate us.

[AARON] They may have neutered us a little bit.

[PORTER] Maybe we should try harder.

[AARON] Yeah, I’m actually starting to think right now–

[PORTER] I would love it if we came to the studio to film one day, and there were people in front of the farm protesting.

[AARON] Oh, boy.

[PORTER] (laughs) I want a picket line!

[AARON] (sighs) It may happen.

[PORTER] Death to Porter.

[AARON] We might have to do it one day. We might have to fire up the people out there.

[PORTER] We’re going to say something stupid, and we won’t even intend to. Just, people will go crazy.

[AARON] People are just sensitive.

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] It’s just kind of what it is. And we’ll get into some of that nonsense later in clown world. You just can’t make this stuff up. We do have a great guest on today. We’ve got Doomberg, who – you know Doomberg personally -phenomenal rise to success, right?

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] I mean, one of the greatest writers out there, period.

[PORTER] You guys are going to see, this guy is just phenomenally smart. And he’s an expert in one of the most important areas of the global economy, which is the energy markets. And he is fearless. He uses a pen name, Doomberg, and he also hides his face using a green chicken–

[AARON] Yeah! (laughs)

[PORTER] –picture. And you’re like, “Why would he do all that?” Well, he’s writing about these markets that are worth trillions of dollars and that involve foreign powers.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] And he says things that can get him killed. So I hope you’ll stay and listen for that interview. It’s world class content. And I want to go ahead and say, thanks for getting him. That’s a very tough get.

[AARON] And, of course, by the way, I can get just about anyone by saying, “Hey, man, I’m the marketing director for Porter Stansberry.” So thank you.

All right, Porter, now, we always like to give our listeners something of value.

[PORTER] Yeah, we don’t want to waste your time.

[AARON] No. In the last show, we led into a little bit of a teaser with our Biotech Frontiers newsletter that’s launching to our Partner Pass members, which are our lifetime members only. And I thought we teased it pretty well. But we didn’t really get into the nuts and bolts because we didn’t have the reports back from Erez.

[PORTER] Yeah, now we have the content, and it’s excellent.

[AARON] Now we have the content. And it’s funny, because we had a little bit less of a rapid time frame for Erez to release this, to release this newsletter, and get people on board. And he said, “Guys, you’re going to have to move this up a couple of weeks because–“

[PORTER] It’s happening right now.

[AARON] “I believe that my stocks are going to start seeing some action.”

[PORTER] It’s happening right now. We’ve already had a portfolio of 10 stocks, and, I’m going to say — we launched this two weeks ago now?

[AARON] Yep.

[PORTER] And we’ve already had one stock that’s up 230% and one stock that’s up over 50% out of 10. And so, once these stocks are move out of our buy range, Erez is then putting in a new stock. So there’s always 10 that are ready to go to buy.

[AARON] Yeah, which is fantastic. So, on January 23, on your X, it’s @porterstansb.

[PORTER] @porterstansb.

[AARON] Please follow Porter. He’s highly entertaining, as you know.

[PORTER] On Twitter, or X.

[AARON] But you did a nice thread on this. And you had a nice analogy going back to 1939, I believe.

[PORTER] Yeah, so the story that– first of all, let me just start a little bit at the beginning. What’s going on right now in biotech is exceptionally unusual. There are a very large number of high quality biotech startups that are trading for less than net cash. There’s something like 250 of them currently in the markets.

Erez is our biotech expert. I’ll get to his biography at a later point in the show, but a world-class biotech mind, studied at Stanford, studied at Oxford, and has been a VC in the space for the last seven years. So he knows all these people, knows these development companies.

These are situations where companies have great technology, they have great drugs in development. And they’ve done financings at say, $10 a share, $15 a share, well, now trading at $2. Why? Why are 250 companies in this position? Are all 250 companies going to become world-class pharmaceutical companies? No.

But, I promise, all 250 aren’t going to fail. So you’re going to see something like 10% of them fail. You’re going to see 50% of them get acquired. And you’re going to see a lot of them soar.

I have a whole history of doing this. We recommended, for example, Regeneron at $6. You can go see where it is today. We recommended Illumina at $20, see where it is today. So there are very, very few times in life where you see so many high-quality opportunities trading for less than cash.

And the only thing that I can think of like this, in the history of the markets, was back in 1939. John Templeton, who went on to found a business called Franklin Templeton, was, like Erez, a Yale graduate and a Rhodes scholar.

And he had traveled throughout Europe after college and realized that World War II was going to come. And so, when he was working on Wall Street, it was in the late 1930s. He’d been to Europe. He knew what was coming.

And he figured out that a major global war would mean a huge amount of new demand for America’s industrial businesses. So the stock market was still on, absolutely, on its ass because of the Great Depression. So the crash in ’29, the Great Depression that followed, all these stocks were trading for less than cash.

And so, what he did was, he borrowed $10,000, and he went to his broker, and he said, “I want you to buy the shares of every single stock on the New York Stock Exchange,” which is where the industrial stocks traded at the time, “where the share price is a dollar or less.”

And so, at the time, there were 34 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange that were trading for a dollar or less. And a number of them were actually trading in bankruptcy. And there was one, it was a preferred railroad stock, that was trading for $0.12.

He went on and sold that stock a couple of years later for $60 a share. (laughs)

[AARON] Oh, wow.

[PORTER] And so, he made an absolute fortune by doing this in 1939. And that fortune actually propelled him into creating Franklin Templeton. And that story is just one of the things that anyone who is a fanatic about finance will know that story. It’s one of the great investment stories that ever occurred.

As a coda to that, in the year 2000, when John Templeton was in his either late eighties or early nineties, he saw that the tech stock bubble had reached just completely unsustainable proportions. And so, starting at the beginning of the year, January of 2000, he shorted an equal amount of money into every new tech IPO that came out on the day before the lock-up expired.

[AARON] Oh, wow. Smart.

[PORTER] So every new IPO came out, he would go short a ton of the stock. I think he put a quarter million dollars short each one. And I think there was a total of 80 that he shorted. And, of course, he made a fortune on, again, on this trade.

And what I like about John Templeton’s approach was, he shorted every single one of them. He couldn’t take the time to study all 80 stocks, but he didn’t have to because he knew that 75 of them were going to collapse, and that that would more than make up for the ones that didn’t. And the same thing when he bought all the stocks for less than a dollar on the New York Stock Exchange.

And Erez’s approach right now in biotech is similar. We’re not buying all 250, but we are buying 10 because we know that 80% of those are going to explode, and we want to make sure we capture them. And so, if you have an interest in participating in some kind of an epic sector trade like this, this is the best opportunity that I have seen in my career to do so.

And I’m very excited about this. I think that in two or three years, or maybe sooner, we’ll look back on this trade and go, wow, that was just a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I hope if you have some cash to spare, you want to make some great investments, you’ll check out this work and our new biotech product.

[AARON] Yeah, and we’ll get into that after our interview with Doomberg. And I’ll give you the phone number to all of our listeners. And, also, you have promised our listeners a $2,500 discount before we start raising prices for this Partner Pass.

[PORTER] Seems fair.

[AARON]Very generous offer.

[PORTER] Seems fair. But let’s get to Doomberg.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] I really want to introduce you to this guy. He’s brilliant, as you will see. Can we bring him in? Work the magic.

[AARON] Let’s do this.

[PORTER] Let’s have the tech people use the internet to its full advantage and bring us someone from an undisclosed location. He’s hanging out with Dick Cheney.

[AARON] Oh, boy.

[PORTER] No, not really. But you know how the Vice President is always–

[AARON] I hope he’s not hunting with Dick Cheney.

[PORTER] The Vice President’s always at the undisclosed location.

[AARON] (laughs) Yes!

[PORTER] That’s where we’ll find Doomberg today.

[AARON] All right. Let’s jump into it.

[AUDIO LOGO]

[AARON] All right, Porter. It’s time for our guest, as we discussed earlier, someone absolutely brilliant.

[PORTER] Superstar.

[AARON] Superstar. We have Doomberg.

[PORTER] Yeah, Doomberg has started writing about energy on Substack, what, Doomberg, three years ago now?

[DOOMBERG) (voice modulated) Yeah, coming up on three years this spring. Gentlemen, great to be here and appreciate the opportunity to connect.

[PORTER] And just instantly a sensation in the financial literary space, the writing about finance and stocks and bonds. And your focus, of course, is in the energy markets.

I don’t know how many followers you got and how quickly it blew up, but you became the leading writer about energy, probably in the world, and seemingly overnight. How did you do it? How did you go from someone I’d never heard of in the financial world to someone who every single person that I know reads and admires in three years?

[DOOMBERG] Well, first of all, that’s very kind of you to say, especially coming from you. And, I think, you probably more than anybody understand that the first thing that goes into (laughs) becoming an overnight success, quote unquote, is a mountain of hard work, and effort, and relentlessness behind the scenes.

We have grown our subscriber base to over 200,000 which, again, compared to what you’ve been able to achieve is humbling.

[PORTER] Doomberg, that is extraordinary (laughs). I only know of three people in the history of the alternative financial press, if you will, that’s ever, ever had more than 100,000 subscribers. That’s really extraordinary.

[DOOMBERG] Well, I appreciate that. I would say, the inefficiency in the market that we identify, that we have been able to occupy, is in the context of energy which is, we think, the most important conversation in the financial markets because everything is a derivative of energy, that was lacking from the discussion the viewpoint of industry.

The vast majority of airtime is given to professors or people who have only ever worked at government agencies. And the industrial view is shielded behind teams of hyper-conservative public affairs professionals who are mostly concerned about not getting canceled, or saying the wrong thing, or upsetting one of their regulators. And we, of course, being independent authors with significant experience in the commodity sector are free from such shackles.

And, I think, if you peruse our list of subscribers, you would find many leaders from industry who are cheering us on but can’t do so publicly. And that’s rather unfortunate. But, at the same time, that opportunity was there. And then, of course, the collapsing credibility of the traditional media outlets to cover things like climate change and the proposed solutions have only added significant tailwinds to our efforts.

And so, it’s very clear to us that the opportunity was there. I would be the first to admit that the speed with which we have been able to occupy that ground has surprised us, much to our delight. I mean, this is America, and it shows that you can start a business with an idea. And if you work hard enough and go about it the right way, you can achieve significant success. And so, we’re very proud of the brand.

[PORTER] (laughs) But it also helps to have the right idea!

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, but in the same way you did as well, right?

[PORTER] Yeah.

[DOOMBERG] I mean, back in the day, you had the right concept. But I can tell you, the amount of work that goes into research, writing, editing, publishing, promoting, and defending all 250 pieces that we’ve written so far looks like it’s easy. But, in reality, there’s, like I said, a mountain of work that goes on behind the scenes to make that happen.

[PORTER] Well, those things, just that little introduction brought a whole bunch of questions up to my mind that I’m– and I just want you to know, I’m genuinely very personally happy every time I get the chance to talk to you.

There are very few people anywhere in the world that know as much about their subject matter as you do. And I would argue that there is no more important topic to the future of humanity than the energy markets.

But just allow me just one last piece of levity before we get into a more substantive discussion, which is, (laughs) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met with struggling publishers who defend their lack of success by saying that, “Well, we work really hard.” (laughs)

To which I say, “if you’re digging the hole in the wrong direction, (laughs) you’re not going to ever get to where you need to go.”

So, again, I just want to applaud you for figuring out that these conversations are the most important conversations that we need to be having, and then being a thought leader in this space. And I loved what you said about, “Hey, we don’t represent a government view. We don’t represent a regulatory view. We don’t represent an ideological view. We represent the underlying reality, the physics of the energy markets.”

And, on that basis, I wonder if you can just talk briefly about a couple of things that are in the news, most particularly what is the real-world impact of reducing the growth of LNG exports from the United States, which is, apparently, clearly Biden’s policy. He has suspended approvals of additional LNG export facilities. And I see this as a genuine threat to the Western world. How do you see it?

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, it’s a great question, something we’re publishing on here soon, obviously, because it’s the talk of the town in the energy world. For those that are unaware, the Biden Administration, we believe, quite cynically, ahead of the upcoming election, has signaled that the Administration will be putting a pause on the granting of new export licenses for exporting liquefied natural gas, which is the primary way by which excess production in North America finds its way to the global markets.

This is a significant blow to the investors who have been constructing these facilities and lining up all the financing. These things take years of time and billions of dollars. And the one thing that crushes capital deployment is lack of investor certainty. And to the extent that this political decision does significant damage to that, I think the world does suffer.

The short-term impact of the decision is to trap natural gas domestically, which drives natural gas prices lower, which benefits Biden politically. So that means home heating bills will remain subdued, input costs for fertilizer plants and chemicals will remain advantaged on the global scale. Electricity prices will remain low.

And, in fact, we believe trapping natural gas in the US, in a perverse way, can serve to cover up the inflationary impact of the forced introduction of intermittent renewables like wind and solar at a time when such disruptions would be particularly politically sensitive to the Biden Administration.

And none of the medium to long-term effects will manifest before the election. And, if Biden wins, then he’ll have to deal with the consequences thereafter. And, if Biden doesn’t win, then it doesn’t really matter to him what happens after that, at least politically.

Now, the conservative media is trumpeting up the connections to some TikTok influencers and some environmental extremists. But, as we walk through in the piece, there are many so-called free market conservatives who have just as much blame to share in this disastrous decision as the environmentalists do.

And, in fact, we chronicle how the chemical industry and power producers have been lobbying against the LNG export buildout for the better part of a decade. We quote from a letter they sent Rick Perry back in 2017, practically begging him to intervene and stop the construction of LNG export terminals.

And then, just last week, the day before the election was announced, this industry organization called Industrial Energy Consumers of America, wrote a letter to Jennifer Granholm saying all but the same thing. And, I bet, if you peruse the executive leadership of those companies, you would find many who vote Republican.

But, when push comes to shove, or, as we like to say, when push comes to wallet, there are no capitalists amongst the captains of industry. And the hypocrisy of those who stand to benefit financially from this serious act of government intervention is something to behold.

[PORTER] Doomberg, the growth of LNG exports in the United States has been rapid over the last 20 years.

And I can show you a chart of it. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It looks like a hockey stick. But that has not had any material impact on the prices of LNG for local industry because the production of LNG domestically has also soared.

I just wonder– by the way, I recognize, of course, that you’re right. If you reduce the amount of exports going forward and production continues to increase, it will benefit the chemical industry, it will benefit the local power producers. I get that. But only because LNG prices are going to collapse, (laughs) which will not– and even in the medium-term– serve their interests. Because, shortly thereafter, production will collapse, and the prices will return to where they are economic to extract.

My point is that we have such an enormous bounty of natural gas in the United States, and so much of the natural gas production is a byproduct of other energy production, that exporting the excess capacity that we have and energy is a wonderful thing for our economy, and our country, and the world. How can people be so dense to believe that retaining an amount of gas that we cannot possibly consume would be helpful to anyone ever?

[DOOMBERG] So let’s put some numbers to the problem. So just a point of clarification. We produce pipeline gas domestically. And, in order to get it out of the country, we liquefy it, and that becomes LNG, and those are our exports.

The U.S. is currently producing about 113 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and has about 14 BCF of export capacity. And the projects on the books would add another 6 BCF to that. So we’re not talking about a huge amount of gas. But, of course, with highly inelastic commodities, a couple of percentage point swings in expectation can cause prices to collapse or double or triple.

Now, just to put some context to it, in the shale regions of the country, the Marcellus and in the rest of the shale patch, the U.S. has added 60 BCF per day of production in the past decade–forget the past 20 years. So, 10 years ago, we were producing 55 to 60 BCF, and now we’re at 115, plus or minus.

That gas has to go somewhere. And, as you said, much of it, especially in the Permian Basin, is known as “associated gas.” You’re drilling for oil and you get the natural gas for free.

And natural gas, of course, is very regional. If you don’t have pipelines and/or LNG export terminals to do something with that gas, you can see natural gas prices going negative. And, in fact, on the same day that California natural gas was trading for $55 per million BTU, natural gas in the Permian Basin in Texas was trading for negative prices. People were paying you to take it.

And so, to the extent that government encourages investment in the efficiency of the pipeline network, including global LNG import and export terminals, and we get a unified price of natural gas spread consisting merely of just logistical costs, that’s super beneficial to the world.

And, by the way, at $3 per million BTU natural gas in the U.S. today, that’s the equivalent of $15 a barrel oil. U.S. natural gas is the single cheapest source of hydrocarbons in the world, which is one of the reasons why the U.S. has narrowly avoided a recession, in our view. Countries that are swimming in hydrocarbons, and running large fiscal deficits, and have an accommodative fed ahead of an election, tend not to fall into recessions.

And so, this is a cynical decision but a politically shrewd one. And, by the way, we’ve long known that Team Biden has a keen pulse on the commodity sector because, when we were in the industry, we used to refer to “Senator Biden, DE [Dupont],” the guy represented Dupont’s interests in the Senate religiously.

[PORTER] Oh, that’s right, of course, from Delaware.

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, exactly. And he knows exactly the importance of, say, the price of gasoline at the pump to his re-election chances, which is why he drained the SPR last year.

This is all part of a pattern of the Biden Administration sticking it to our primary energy producers when the political necessity dictates such decisions, the medium and long-term consequences be damned, because they’re not a popular group anyway. They’re an easy foe politically.

[PORTER] Yeah.

[DOOMBERG] And when you tell people, “Would you rather have lower heating bills and lower electricity bills and cheaper fertilizers? Or fatcat executives in the fossil fuel sector get to have bigger bonuses?” it’s a political winner. And this is why we call out the Republicans-In-Name-Only who played a big role behind the scenes to convince the Biden Administration that this was politically palatable.

[PORTER] Very interesting. One last question about global LNG before, I think, we can move the conversation along. It has occurred to me that a war between Iran and the West would inevitably lead to massive destruction of the great, I think it’s called, North Field, which is the Qatari natural gas basin that it shares with Iran.

And that area of the world, which lies right halfway between Iran (laughs) and Qatar, supplies much of the world’s LNG. I think that if you–you would know the details of this. But their export capacity and our export capacity are roughly equal. And then there’s some–there is maybe half as much capacity coming from Russia in terms of LNG. I’m sure you would know the exact numbers.

But my point of all that is, if there’s a wider war with Iran, and those facilities come under attack or de facto embargo, what might happen to the global price of LNG? And how might that benefit, at least in the short-term, the companies from the United States that can still export LNG?

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, it’s a great question.

And you’re correct: The North Field in Qatar is the single-largest natural gas field in the world. And the most important piece of energy infrastructure that nobody knows about is a site called Ras Laffan, R-A-S L-A-F-F-A-N. If you Google that, you’ll see billions and billions of dollars of modern chemical and petrochemical infrastructure on this tiny little part of Qatar that is situated right in the dead center of the Middle East.

And if a hot war truly were to break out and, say, terrorists were to attack that facility, it would truly be an energy catastrophe. Qatar is investing to bring their LNG export capacity up to 17 BCF in line with where the U.S. was going.

But, again, there’s probably only 65, 70 BCF of LNG export capacity in the world. So that float, as a trader, as you know, you got to you got to keep a keen eye on the “pumpamentals.” And a low-float stock is something that is susceptible to a short squeeze. And it’s no different here with global LNG, which has thus far served as a harmonizing force once the energy crisis in Europe passed. If we lose a Qatar, boy, it’s incalculable to imagine where the prices could go.

And it’s a simple example in Europe now, less than two years ago, natural gas was trading for $100 per million BTU, which is the equivalent of $600 oil.

And, boy, if we lost a Qatar–but forget Qatar. You’ve got Saudi Arabia right there too, of course. It’s a very small radius, probably a 500 by–a 200 mile by 200 mile square is an enormous artery of the global economy.

Which is, frankly, why we still have the U.S. navy there, even though we’re de facto protecting energy shipments to China, which is something we’ve written about. But, yeah, if we lost a Qatar or the House of Saud were to fall because of domestic unrest because the locals were perceived that the government wasn’t doing enough to fight the evil empire of the United States, things could get ugly pretty quickly.

And that’s why, when you see people like Lindsey Graham on Twitter, demanding we carpet bomb Iranian refineries, we think that’s very, very dangerous and very reckless talk.

[PORTER] (laughs)

[DOOMBERG] And somebody like him should know better.

[PORTER] Where are the adults in the room?

[DOOMBERG] Indeed.

[PORTER] Well, if we can move on, the other topic that I’m really fascinated about is how the introduction of intermittent supplies of energy–and I’m talking mostly about wind and solar. The introduction of those to the power grid not only raised the cost of energy for the average American household but actually make the power grid more unstable and can, going forward, cause a serious threat to our economy.

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, I think we should start by pointing out that modern electricity grids, which as I’m sure you know, are what we would call “classic non-linear systems,” which are susceptible to difficult-to-model interdependencies. And one challenge and in part of the grid in a rural part of a state can throw New York City into a state of darkness in ways that are actually quite challenging for even the smartest people in the world to model and predict.

And the need to perfectly match demand with supply is a big challenge. And, in order to do so, operators of the grid do miraculous work. I mean, they have to safely interconnect a wide array of power sources, each with their own unique ramp profiles, and safety protocols, and operational procedures.

And one of the underappreciated inherent advantages of traditional power sources, like coal, and natural gas, and nuclear, is that thermal generation involves the spinning of large generators, which creates inertia. And things in motion tend to want to stay in motion. And large spinning turbines continue to spin unless some significant force interrupts that.

And this inertia, this tendency towards continued rotation, allows traditional power facilities to ride out short bursts of voltage, or frequency, or variability in the transmission lines that traditional– that the new forms of electricity simply don’t have.

There’s no spinning turbine at a solar plant. It’s an inverter-based resource. And, in fact, that’s the terminology that utilities use to hide the fact that this is actually just about renewable energy. Wind and solar– well, wind has the spinning turbines, but they still go through an inverter.

And so, inverter-based resources have no inertia. And, as a consequence of that, as they gain more penetration, we find small disruptions cause these individual renewable energy facilities to protect themselves by coming offline, and then that triggers the next one to– the need to come offline, and so on, and so on, and so on.

And so, a typical “burp” in the system that could easily be handled historically — and we covered a couple of examples of this in a piece we wrote called “Inverted Priorities,” — can lead to gigawatts of power coming offline and threatening the entire grid.

And this is a real challenge. There are solutions that involve a huge amount of investment. These costs, of course, are excluded in the crazy, almost-fraudulent levelized cost of electricity calculations that are used to promote the lie that renewables are the cheapest form of electricity when, as you correctly articulated, they are, in fact, the most expensive by a wide margin.

This is yet another issue that is percolating under the radar that has professionals in the electricity generation industry very, very worried. We’ve seen a couple of huge near misses. And we believe, especially as the wave of investment as a consequence of the Inflation Reduction Act finds its way from financing to commissioning, this is going to be a much, much bigger story for years to come.

[PORTER] What part of the country do you think will see a real — a very, very material serious grid collapse where people have a hard time getting the power to come back on for days?

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, so that’s another scary thing, which is this concept of a black start. And, for those that don’t know, if you take a whole grid down, it becomes really challenging to bring it back up safely. And we have, of course, many contacts in the energy industry, people who aren’t allowed to speak publicly. And several of them have reached out to us to speak off the record about a certain set of simulations about a black start that didn’t go so well.

That is part of the underlying reason that we’re beginning to see complaints about inverter-based resources and lack of inertia in the grid because there’s this fear that if we lose an entire grid– and the US has many grids – but a handful of major ones, if a major one were to go down in its entirety, forget days, it could be weeks. And if it’s weeks, you don’t want to be in a major city because it wouldn’t take but a few days for things to get pretty hairy.

And so, this is a real challenge. And, to your specific question, look, a tree fell in Ohio and knocked out New York City’s power. Who knows where the ultimate challenge will lie? But if you ask me to guess, it would be either California or Texas where we have seen the most frequent incidents that give people concern.

Texas, in particular, has, believe it or not, invested an enormous amount in wind and solar. And this is–the ongoing struggles they’re having with their grid during the coldest times of the year is no coincidence.

And, of course, California, as we all know, is the home of all crazy energy policy. And so, that would be probably our second-best estimate for where things might become serious.

But, to everybody listening: Nobody is immune from this. We all depend on the electricity grid for the efficient operation of our homes, for the operations of our businesses. And it’s the type of thing that you only appreciate it when it goes out. And when it goes out, you appreciate it a lot.

And so, we have raised the flag of caution to our subscribers and even had an entire piece about what you can do as an individual to build redundancy and robustness into your dwellings. And I think it’s high time we get about doing that, because I wouldn’t trust many in the current government to cut my lawn, let alone be on the critical path of my family’s safety and well-being.

[PORTER] Doomberg, it’s been great talking with you. I learned so much just in this conversation. And I already knew a little bit about these matters. But your knowledge of these things is genuinely encyclopedic.

Can you tell our listeners, who may want to read more from you, how they can find your work? I know it’s on something called Substack, which is a new platform for writers.

But how does your subscription work? Is there is there a free version of what you do? Is there a paid version of what you do? How does your business work?

[DOOMBERG] Yeah, all of our work is at doomberg.substack.com. If you just google Doomberg, it’ll come right up.

We have free subscribers. They get a preview to every article that we write. And, also, they get access to all the podcasts that we appear on. We keep a dedicated page. And we like to share the work of other content creators when we’re fortunate enough to be invited as a guest.

Our paid newsletter is about $300 a year, and we publish between six and eight articles a month, so roughly two a week. We keep that cadence up. It’s kind of fun.

And then we have a Pro Tier, which is $1,200 a year. And, in addition to our articles, they get more direct access to the team. And we also do very deep dives once a month that we call them Doom Zooms, where we will, say, look at the [AUDIO OUT] in its entirety, it’d be like a 40- to 45-slide presentation dive deep for our pro subscribers.

This month we’re doing a long presentation on the short-, medium-, and long-term outlook for oil and why we think cheap oil is largely a myth and so on. And so, those are the three tiers.

And, as I said at the top, it’s been a real honor to be here with the king of the newsletter industry. We certainly look up to your work and appreciate all the kind words that you’ve said about us. It means a lot coming from you.

[PORTER] Well, again, thanks for being here, Doomberg. And if there’s a king in this room, I have never met him.

[laughter]

[PORTER] So but, listen, it’s wonderful, always, talking with you. And I’m sure we’ll be in touch again. But, again, thanks so much for being here today. It’s just, it’s so much fun to talk to somebody who knows their subject matter so well.

Because, as you know, on a lot of these content places, they’re sort of posers.

There’s people who read some Wikipedia pages and now are experts. So it’s great to talk to somebody who actually knows what he’s really–really what he’s talking about. So thanks again.

[DOOMBERG] Appreciate it.

[AUDIO LOGO]

[AARON] Porter, that was amazing.

[PORTER] Yeah, I wish every guest was that good. (laughs)

[AARON] You’re normally doing 90% of the talking because you’re steering and you’re guiding.

[PORTER] Didn’t’ have to do anything.

[AARON] It was the complete opposite.

[PORTER] No, he just knows so much about what he’s talking about. And I got so many good ideas–I’ve been trying to find a way to explain to people what’s the problem with wind and solar. And I had never thought of it that way, that it’s inverted power.

And I thought his point about inertia and the traditional power systems, I think that’s really important. And I don’t think that–

I’ve never heard it explained that way. So I don’t think that’s part of the conversation yet. But it is a really significant issue and something that I think could help people understand why these other forms of energy are not compatible with the grid system.

[AARON] Yeah, I found it fascinating. When I first saw the Biden Administration announcement of not allowing more licensing for offshore LNG exporting, I said, “Oh, they’re just doing it for climate stuff.” No, no.

[PORTER] It’s Dupont.

[AARON] It’s–yes.

[PORTER] If you lower the price of domestic natural gas, Dupont makes a whole bunch more money.

[AARON] Yes. And going into election time, people don’t feel it as bad for their energy.

[PORTER] And Biden is the Dupont senator.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] (laughs) He’s the Senator from Delaware.

[AARON] It makes perfect sense.

[PORTER] It does make sense.

[AARON] Always goes back to the money.

[PORTER] (laughs) Always. Yep. “Cui bono?”

[AARON] That’s right. All right, Porter, well, look. Let’s jump into some of our other segments that we have.

You know, look, X.com – it’s just clown world. One of the subjects that I like to talk about, and so do you, is DEI.

[PORTER] Yes.

[AARON] One of the big ones recently–and we do these shows once a month. So we’re not as cutting edge as a Tucker Carlson or whatever. But did you see the IBM stuff with the CEO and that James O’Keefe, who does a phenomenal job, of him uncovering the CEO basically saying that “You need to hire Blacks, Hispanics, but not too many Asians.” And the managers’ bonuses would be paid on this?

[PORTER] Yeah, so it’s a huge problem in our country that people have, once again, begun to define other people solely by race. And the Supreme Court ruled this year that Harvard in North Carolina can’t do that in the admissions processes for those colleges.

Those same legal precedents eventually are going to be applied to corporate decisions like this. Because if everybody deserves the equal protection of the laws. No one should be discriminated against in a job application or for a promotion based on their race. And isn’t that obvious?

[AARON] Of course, it is.

[PORTER] But there is an entire cult out there of people who want to continue this kind of racism. And the reason why they want to continue it is, well, think about how many people are hired today based on their being the DEI coordinator for such and such. How many assistant deans of DEI are there in the world?

[AARON] Those are big money roles too.

[PORTER] I found out recently that there are even, in the local schools here, coordinators of DEI in the preschools.

[AARON] I can’t believe that.

[PORTER] It’s true.

[AARON] I honestly can’t even believe that.

[PORTER] It’s true.

[AARON] What’s to teach at a preschool?

[PORTER] (laughs) It’s mind-boggling. And then, think about how this may relate to the incident at Boeing.

[AARON] Yes. That’s on my list here.

[PORTER] So is it possible that if you promoted engineers to design, build, and inspect door systems, and you selected them primarily on the basis of their race or their sex, instead of on their experience or their knowledge, that maybe you would see a breakdown in the quality of your engineering?

[AARON] Well, it’s happened, and it’s happening, and it’s concerning. I fly those from Columbia. That’s pretty much the only plane that I fly from American is that 737 Max. So here’s what I don’t do. I’m not sitting next to any of the exit doors.

[PORTER] (laughs) It’s probably a good idea.

[AARON] Yeah, for sure.

[PORTER] And, of course, same thing with the pilots. We’ve seen–

[AARON] Yeah, well, and United is big on this right now.

[PORTER] Yeah, and, apparently, the CEO of United–and I can’t swear to this because I wasn’t there–but is a drag show guy?

[AARON] I’ve seen rumors of that, allegedly, where we got to step lightly. But it was the same thing as Zelensky who did these kind of drag stuff back in the day as well. It seems to be this political leaders–

it’s almost like–

[PORTER] Well, he was at least an actor.

[AARON] There’s a bunch of dirt–

[PORTER] Maybe it was a role.

[AARON] That’s a good point. Maybe it was a role. I don’t know. But I see a lot more of this stuff from CEOs, to politicians. And it’s disturbing.

[PORTER] I don’t know. I can’t–I don’t really understand all that. There’s something about that I don’t quite get. But I’m maybe a little old fashioned.

[AARON] Oh, we are definitely old fashioned because we don’t understand it at all. Another DEI thing. I don’t know if you saw where Mark Cuban was defending DEI, and he got a bunch of heat. And then Elon Musk jumped in to it. And Elon had a quote, “If mental gymnastics were an Olympic sport, Mark Cuban would be a perfect 10.”

[PORTER] Yeah (laughs). When you start asking any of the people involved in these things simple questions, they can’t answer.

[AARON] Never.

[PORTER] Because if they say what it is, it makes them sound very dumb and racist.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] So Mark Cuban has said that he favors DEI, and he also is going to hire the best person for the job. To which I, and many other people said, well, “I don’t see the power forward on the Mavericks being a–

[AARON] 5′ 6″ Asian, which is–

[PORTER] –being a short Latina woman anytime soon.

[AARON] Right. Which is– that’s just not going to happen.

[PORTER] It’s not going to happen. Right. And so, I don’t quite understand what is the big deal by recognizing that everyone has genetic differences, and those genetic differences play a role in how they fit into the economy. You’re not going to have a 5′ 1″ Latina woman being the power forward for the Dallas Mavericks.

[AARON] As absurd as that is to Mark Cuban, because he–somebody was challenging him that it was something like that. Well, go ahead. Prove it.

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] Do it. He’s like, that’s just absurd and stupid. And O’Keefe–actually, James O’Keefe confronted him at a gym. And he’s like, you’re just being stupid. And he’s like, “Yeah, but that’s exactly your argument of the DEI stuff. For us, it’s just stupid.”

[PORTER] Right, it’s you’re just being stupid. Now, the same thing, by the way. You don’t see a lot of–I haven’t yet seen a lot of women complaining that they don’t get hired in certain jobs. So you don’t see them protesting that they can’t get a job in construction.

[AARON] No.

[PORTER] But 96% of the people who frame houses are men.

[AARON] Right.

[PORTER] And why is that? Well, because men are stronger and can do harder physical labor. And that’s a very physically demanding job. So, I think, isn’t it obvious? Why isn’t the rule simply that anyone who can perform the job can have the job?

[AARON] That’s the way it always was until recently.

[PORTER] And now what you have, in a lot of places, is people changing the demands of the job to meet the applicants.

[AARON] That’s exactly right.

[PORTER] Well, that’s just inverted.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] That’s just stupid. It’s like, I try to tell people all the time that work for me. I’m paying you.

[AARON] (laughs) Right!

[PORTER] No, don’t bring your problems to work.

[AARON] Right.

[PORTER] You’re here to solve my problems.

[AARON] Exactly.

[PORTER] You’ve got this all backwards.

[AARON] Right. “Make my life easier.”

[PORTER] That’s why I don’t have any respect for people who take the H.R. function of the company and try to make it into a leading center of the business. HR people are important. It’s important that people get their benefits.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] It’s important that people get their paychecks.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] And when people have to get fired, it’s important that someone’s there to help them transition into a new role.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] I get all that. But making your Director of HR a senior executive in your company, it’s not a good idea.

[AARON] You’re asking for trouble.

[PORTER] You’re asking for trouble. And the other thing I say all the time is, we’re all different. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different families. We all have different priorities. We all have different ideas. We’re all different.

But the moment that you let our differences get in the way of our common goal, which is serving our customers and earning a profit for our shareholders, you can’t work here anymore. It’s hard to get along.

That’s why, in polite society, you don’t talk about politics, you don’t talk about religion.

You just say, “Those things are unique to every individual, and we’re not going to discuss that at work.” Or, I believe, at school. It shouldn’t be about those things.

[AARON] That’s right.

[PORTER] It should be about the things that you have in common. And, if it’s at work, that’s serving the customer. If it’s school, that’s at learning math.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] There is no there is no racial component to algebra.

[AARON] No, not at all. And I think, when it comes to companies, one of the things I really enjoyed, when you started Porter & Co., is you had thought about these things a long time ago.

You had your seven Porter philosophies. And it’s all centered around serving the customer, having the best editorial, not rewarding marketers and copywriters because they’ll look after themselves. Once again, that doesn’t serve the customer, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that’s why we’ve been so successful and, thanks to everybody that supports us. And I know that we repeatedly get feedback about that. We get feedback about, “Wow, it’s great to see you back.” We don’t spam our lists.

And we put all of our content out on Fridays at 4:00 PM. We’re treating them the way we’d want to be treated.

[PORTER] I love that David Ogilvy, who was one of the best copywriters ever–

and, of course, built Ogilvy &Mather into a major advertising agency before selling it and retiring to France–

if you ever want to know anything about copywriting or advertising, you can still find his books. They’re brilliant. It’s the one that I recall right off the top of my head is, “My Life in Advertising” by David Ogilvy. It’s a wonderful book–great to read.

Anyways, Ogilvy said, famously, well, clients would come to him, and they’d say, “We really want to beat Procter & Gamble in this particular consumer item area. We want to launch a new soap. We want to launch a new cleaner. We want to launch a new version of Tide. And we know you’re the advertising guy that can do it. And we’ve got a big budget.”

He would always say, “If you want to beat Procter & Gamble, you have to start with a better product. And, I don’t know about you, but there isn’t a better product than Tide.” (laughs)

So it doesn’t matter how–

[AARON] It’s my go-to.

[PORTER] It doesn’t matter how good your marketing or your copywriting is. If you don’t have a better product, you’re not going to succeed. And so, when we started Porter & Company, first step was, “Oh, we’re going to write about distressed debt. Who’s the best in the world at that?” Marty Fridson.

[AARON] Marty Fridson.

[PORTER] Well, let’s go get Marty. And instead of spending so much money on spam and advertising, why don’t we spend some money on the editor, the writer? If we were going to ever write about energy in a full-time way, we’d have to find a way to recruit Doomberg.

[AARON] Have to.

[PORTER] Because there’s nobody better.

[AARON] Right.

[PORTER] And if you have–that was my vision, to have a brand for independent research, focusing on finance, where every single person in the tent is the best in the world at what they do.

[AARON] Just like we talked about at the beginning of the show, we talked about biotech. We talked about Erez, and we talked about the new Partner Pass offer that we have coming out, which is going public, and it’s–we’re going to charge more. These people aren’t free. Marty Fridson is not free. Erez Kalir is not free.

[PORTER] No.

[AARON] When you go recruit the best in the world, they have plenty of options.

[PORTER] Yeah, of course. And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong at all with paying someone for the thing they’ve spent 30 years of their life figuring out. I mean, Erez has studied at Stanford, he studied at Yale, he studied at Oxford. There isn’t anybody, that I’m aware of, that knows more people in the development space than he does.

And when you ask him about these companies, he’ll say things like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where Dave works,” or “That’s where Mike works.” Or, “Yeah, I know him from Oxford.” And so, it’s really cool he’s actually plugged in to all of these new businesses.

And the thing that I’ve been so excited about this opportunity is that the bear market that we have had in this space for the last two-and-a-half years has rendered these companies as cheap as you’ll ever see them. It’s incredible when you go and look at these companies. They did financings at $10, at $15, and they’re trading at $2.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] And it’s like, the people who did those financings were senior venture capitalists who know what they’re doing. They’re willing to pay $10 a share for it, you’re now going to get the chance to buy it at $2. Ooh, that’s a pretty good opportunity.

So there’s a– Erez calculated, there was something like 250 of these net-nets out there, meaning that the stocks today are trading for less than the value of their net cash, which means you get all their technology, you get all their patents, you get all their people, you get all their existing research for free. Which is–

[AARON] And we’re never going to see that again, most likely.

[PORTER] I don’t think we’ll ever see this many net nets in the biotech sector again.

[AARON] And I want to remind everybody, as we teased earlier, you’ve authorized a $2,500 discount right now for any of our listeners.

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] I want to give the phone number out. It’s 1-888-610-8895.

You can ask for Lance, he’s our head of–he’s our concierge of Customer Service & Sales. 1-888-610-8895.

And I also want to reference what we discussed earlier. You can go to Porter’s x.com and look at that Twitter thread, which was from January 23, where you started talking about this biotech.

[PORTER] So if you go to Twitter, you can find me. And there’s a long thread about our biotech project. So I encourage you to go and read more if you want to.

Or you can, of course, just go to our website. And you can also just call us and sign up.

[AARON] Yep. Also, you can send us an email as well at [email protected].

[PORTER] Holy cow. (laughs)

[AARON] I know. I know. We’re making people jump through hurdles.

[PORTER] [email protected]. Wow.

[AARON] Remember, we don’t make it easy, but it’s worth it.

[PORTER] No, we don’t. We want to make sure you really want it. (laughs)

[AARON] OK, Porter, let’s jump into, “”You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” which I’m calling “Clown World” now.

[PORTER] “Clown world.”

[AARON] This is scary stuff, actually. Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million in a defamation case to E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her, and he called her a liar because he had never met her. And she was seeking $10 million. But they decided to award $83.3 million.

[PORTER] Yeah. So the weaponization of the judiciary, it’s fascinating.

[AARON] That’s a real thing.

[PORTER] They created a law specifically to go after people this way.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] They created a law that said, if you file a lawsuit by such and such a time, then the statute of limitations will not apply. And so, you had people getting sued for things that happened 30 years ago, like the lead singer of Aerosmith, I think, also got caught up in one of these lawsuits.

[AARON] There’s been so many lately. I didn’t see that one.

[PORTER] Yeah, these are gross miscarriages of justice. And let me just say, I have no idea whether or not–I don’t have any idea what happened between this woman and Trump.

[AARON] I don’t have any idea either.

[PORTER] I got no idea. But my point about all of this is, if you haven’t sued somebody for over a decade, it must not have meant that much to–

[AARON] It wasn’t that much trauma.

[PORTER] And the other thing that I find is a gross miscarriage of justice is that this lawsuit–apparently–and, again, I’m only knowing this from what I read in the newspaper. So what I read in the newspaper was that this guy, Reid Hoffman, was the financial backer of these claims.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] And it just seems like this whole thing to me is just an exercise in political utility. It’s not it’s not justice. It’s almost kind of like the America’s version of the Russian show trial.

[AARON] Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s exactly what it is.

[AARON] Canadian police warn residents on X about thugs stealing packages. So you need to get your Amazon packages, and they’ve had a big theft problem lately. It’s sitting on your doorstep and, obviously, you can’t have guns there, you’re not protecting your territory. So they’re concerned.

So what happens is, neighbors get together and they say, “Well, how can we stop this?” So they start posting– they do security camera and post on social media, “Hey, be on the lookout for these types of people.” Right?

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] That might be in your neighborhood. Well, police officer comes on and he says, quote, “You cannot post these images. We have a presumption of innocence. And posting that could be a violation of private life.”

[PORTER] So you’ve got a video of somebody stealing a package off a porch, and you’re not allowed to broadcast that because you have to presume the guy is innocent?

[AARON] Yes, you have to protect him.

[PORTER] Huh.

[AARON] Because he has a right to that.

[PORTER] I wish that if you wanted to do that you could make the packages explode. And then people would stop doing it.

[AARON] I saw somebody had done that in, I think it was California or something. Of course, it was a long time ago, because now you’d definitely get sued.

But it was something–and they’ve done it to bicycles too. I’ve seen these clips where as soon as they sit on the bicycle, but they ride a little bit, it pops, and they fall off and they’re just (laughs) they’re hurting, they’re rolling around in pain. And, I mean, I think, I agree. It’s not yours. Don’t touch it.

[AARON] That’s the rule.

[PORTER] These are things that you learn in kindergarten.

[AARON] Well, that’s, not any more with diversity education.

[PORTER] Don’t put your hands on other people.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] Don’t take other people’s things.

[AARON] That’s it. It’s simple as that.

[PORTER] Basic rules.

[AARON] Totally. OK, Porter. Have you ever heard of what a dink is? D-I-N-K?

[PORTER] A dink?

[AARON] A dink.

[AARON] D-I-N-K. So Gen Z and millennials are embracing the acronym dink.

[PORTER] DINK, double income no kids.

[AARON] You have heard of it? You have. (laughs)

[PORTER] No, I just, I was thinking yuppie.

[AARON] Well, that’s amazing.

[PORTER] Yeah, double income no kids. Yeah. Is that what it is?

[AARON] That’s literally what it is.

[PORTER] Oh, yeah.

[AARON] I hadn’t heard of this.

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] And so–

[PORTER] So this is Shawn Goldsmith.

[AARON] It’s this new trend–

[PORTER] It’s my pal, Shawn.

[AARON] It’s this new trend that, basically, they’re going around on TikTok videos, and it’s a hundred million views. And now they’ve got–their followers are like, “I want the dink life. I want to be able to go to the movie. I want to buy the nicer car. I want to be able to buy the food at Costco I want because I don’t want to sacrifice for kids.”

[PORTER] Right. So, yeah, so Shawn Goldsmith is an entrepreneur who’s building out a new beverage business in Atlanta, which is–there’s also another big beverage business in Atlanta.

[AARON This is a tough competition.

[PORTER] Well, he’s doing–it’s going very well.

[AARON] Excellent.

[PORTER] He’s got some incredible funding from some major companies.

[AARON] Oh, nice.

– So he’s got a pretty prestigious, pretty successful career as an entrepreneur. And his wife is an open heart surgeon.

[AARON] That’s right, yes.

[PORTER] And obviously very talented. And they clearly have lots of income.

[AARON] Yes.

[PORTER] They have two incomes. They live in a nice city. They have nice things. They go on vacations all the time.

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] The dink life.

[AARON] They’re the king and queen of the dinks.

[PORTER] They’re the king and the queen of dinks.

[AARON] Because the dinks on TikTok are like, hey, “I could go buy this item at Costco you can’t. I can go on this vacation to Mexico you can’t.” They’re the king and queens.

[PORTER] I would imagine that the vacation those folks are going on to Mexico is not the kind of vacation we would want. (laughs)

[AARON] No, exactly. And that’s–

[PORTER] All inclusive in Cancun?

[AARON] Yeah. Never.

[PORTER] Yikes.

[AARON] No thanks.

[PORTER] No, thanks.

[AARON] I don’t ever want to do that. I did that when I was 20, and I hated it then. I’m sure I’d definitely not do that now. But, anyways, I think it’s a disturbing trend of this whole idea that everybody has to be self-serving these days. It’s all about not carrying on the future of humanity.

[PORTER] Well, that’s because the people who think this is just because they don’t have kids that–kids are the very best thing you can do with your time and your money. It’s endlessly rewarding.

[AARON] But it’s swaying people to follow this dink culture, and I don’t think it’s great for America or the future of America.

[PORTER] I think those people just haven’t had enough buyer’s remorse yet. Everybody knows this. As soon as you can afford something, and you go out and you get it, you’re like, “Oh, this is not that great.”

[AARON] That is very true. That’s very true.

[PORTER] So once you go through that enough times, then you’re like, “Oh, OK.”

[AARON] All right, let’s knock out a couple of–

[PORTER] Oh, by the way, I can tell you something. (laughs) That is not true with private aviation. (laughs)

[AARON] You still get the same enjoyment?

[PORTER] There is never a time I walk onto my plane and I go, “Oh, jeez, this isn’t that great.”

[AARON] You mean you don’t miss TSA groping?

[PORTER] No.

[AARON] You don’t miss the lines?

[PORTER] No.

[AARON] You don’t miss getting packed in and sitting on a tarmac for hours?

[PORTER] No. And I would say the same thing is true about Ferraris.

[AARON] And sport fish.

[PORTER] Private planes and Ferraris are–there is no buyer’s remorse.

[AARON] Sport fishing as well.

[PORTER] Oh, I mean, of course.

[AARON] Because you get on that, you’re excited to see what you’re going to be able to take on, which is amazing.

[PORTER] Anyways, I don’t want to sound like some kind of crass consumer, but–

[laughter]

[AARON] Hey, you’re no dink. Mailbag, we received a lot of feedback about your idea to watch 60 Minutes, remember?

[PORTER] Yeah.

[AARON] When you challenged our listeners. So a lot of the feedback was, “Yeah, it’s really hard for me to stomach watching it. You can totally see the liberal agenda.”

[AARON] “Great episode. I too watched the last episode of 60 Minutes and shared Porter’s sentiment regarding the alliance with the left-leaning agenda.”

“The show has been that way for some time now. And every time I give it another chance to be viewed, I find myself saying, it’s only gotten worse. Keep up the good work. You have a great follower in me. Thank you very much, Keith.”

We also have Carrie. She’s close friends with residents in New York City firefighters and NYPD. Remember, we were talking about their pensions, right?

[PORTER] Yes.

[AARON] So I had forgotten about this part, but you’ll remember. And your retirement is determined in part by your income for the last few months. So they have an organized system where retiring workers pick up everyone else’s shifts and get huge amounts of OT and double time before retiring and it substantially spikes their retirement.

“I know 45-year-old FDNY retirees that live in New York but have Dallas Cowboys season tickets. I live in Dallas and can barely go to a game once every five years. What a grift.” So, yeah, it’s a good grift to wait till the very end, get your buddies involved, get that OT so you can get that pension.

[PORTER] Right. So you have a six-month period where you get a crazy amount of income because you’re working all this overtime.

[AARON] And that’s where they freeze it.

[PORTER] And then they’ll also give you a promotion right before you retire.

[AARON] So you get an extra bump.

[PORTER] So your pension is based on a rank that you never actually had–

[AARON] Yeah.

[PORTER] –and an income level that was heavily inflated.

[AARON] Yes, absolutely. It’s a grift.

[PORTER] Yeah, I think it’s good work if you can get it.

[AARON] Yeah. If you can–if you can keep it, right? Because pensions may get cut one day.

[AARON] Once again, thank you, everybody, very much for watching the show. We really appreciate it. And–

[PORTER] Very much.

[AARON–[email protected]. We love to hear from you guys. We wouldn’t be here without you. Thanks.

[PORTER] Aaron, let me just say, I think you did a great job on the show. Ever since we’ve come back, it’s gotten better and better and better. I think everyone out there should send Aaron a round of applause.

[AARON] Well, thank you very much.

[PORTER] And, man, great job on getting Doomberg on the show. He’s a very hard get. So thanks very much for all you’ve done to make this podcast really good.

[AARON] Well, you make my life enjoyable. It’s great to be back with the man.

[PORTER] It’s also great to be with you guys. Thanks for tuning in.

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ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Porter & Company Black Label Podcast with your hosts Porter Stansberry and Aaron Brabham. We’ll see you soon.

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