WhatFinger

Bob Hoye

Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.

Most Recent Articles by Bob Hoye:

When Authoritarians Dominate: Things Have To Be Done Twice


For thousands of years, society’s standard of living and longevity have advanced based upon a built-in drive to improve one’s condition. That’s for food and shelter and the improvements have been understood as well as enjoyed. And most advance themselves by providing goods and services that the market wants at an affordable price. Opposing this has been authoritarian movements by control freaks who are compelled to intrude upon other peoples’ lives. At a lesser level are union leaders and their rank and file who with strikes advance themselves by denying goods and services. Small but always disruptive. But the iniquities become huge when governments become authoritarian and are driven to control every aspect of everyone’s life. Which means disrupting the voluntary and natural way of market forces providing what is wanted to impose what may not be wanted. Such dictates may not be practical nor popular, requiring ruthless political enforcement.

- Thursday, June 1, 2023

Trudeaus' Controls: Once it was "French", Now It Is "Woke"


It seems that both PE Trudeau and JP Trudeau found socialism compelling, and both were driven to force controls upon Canadians. Now, would anyone in their right mind willingly subject themselves to servitude, confiscatory taxation and poverty? Dystopia needs to be guilefully and relentlessly imposed through the employment of fear. And lately it has been COVID and Climate and while the former is no longer motivating, bad weather caused by bad people has been the message. Petroleum energy is verboten and because of superstitions about nitrogen agricultural productivity must be reduced.

- Monday, May 22, 2023

Climate Hysteria: Greatest Mistake Since Witches Were Executed for Causing Bad Weather

An accused witch is depicted undergoing a trial in Salem, where she is dunked in water to prove her guilt, in The Duckingstool by Charles Stanley Reinhart (Bettmann - Corbis)

Yes, during the prolonged starvation and famines caused by the cooling trend during the Little Ice Age learned magistrates burned witches at the stake. In Northern Europe during the 1500s, thousands of innocent women were legally executed. Nowadays, the blame game for “threatening” weather is more democratic, with all women, men and children right down to the newly born being culprits in calamity.

Of course, the current “calamity” is the opposite – warming.

- Saturday, May 6, 2023

Global Warming Confusions

“We are somehow empowering ourselves to assure that the cycle of climate change will be benign if we only replace domestic sources of energy with foreign sources.”– Conrad Black, NP, April 1, 2023.

That Trudeau is determined to reduce domestic production of crude oil and natural gas is difficult to accept. Particularly during the discomforts of government’s essential role in imposing price inflation and still having the hatred on for fossil fuels. Sadly, the delusion extends to nitrogen which for a thousand years farmers have been replacing what is used for each season’s crops.

But not now as Trudeau is still fronting his controllers at the World Economic Forum.

- Monday, April 10, 2023

Main Stream Theories about Man-Made Warming: Not Working

When it comes to climate, it is appropriate to note that the United Nations’ IPCC has had a mandate to review only one thing. And as the CO2 Only “models” are overheating compared to now thirty years of temperature reality, the theories are not working.

Out of the myriad of influences upon weather and climate, IPCC is charged to study only Anthropogenic Global Warming which for drama segued into the formidable CAGW. Of course, the latter is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and then some genius at promotion came up with “Climate Change” whereby anything can be used to increase taxes and regulations. And the “cause” of any adverse weather is modern industrial society spewing out vast amounts of carbon dioxide.

- Friday, March 31, 2023

Democrat Compulsions About Political Novelties

In just going back to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrats have been pixilated by political novelty. Often trashing being sensible, but for Democrats—what is sensible?

LBJ was a “dirt-poor” teacher from a “dirt-poor” part of Texas, who when not picking up dogs by their ears or specifically detailing the next day’s bombing targets in North Vietnam, came out of office personally worth tens of millions of dollars.

- Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Climate Update: Say No! To Hysteria

Headlines screeching about the “Earth Frying” are still being published, despite the 0.75 C drop since 2016. This contrasts with fears about a 1.5 C increase, which with the general flat-lying trend for almost twenty years is refuting the dogma about “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”. The respected Satellite temperature record as seen above:

- Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Nihilism 101

As absurd as it is, political nihilists will push their destruction of the economy until, at last, repressed ordinary folk say: “Enough!”. That’s to in-your-face and in-your-wallet government. It would not be the first time and the last successful example took down the Berlin Wall in 1989, which was immediately followed by the collapse of formal Communist governments from East Germany to China. Deposed murderous leaders ranged from Erich Honecker to Pol Pot. One of the features of the “old” totalitarianism was that dictates were top down to households and individuals, all under Marxist theories.

- Sunday, February 26, 2023

Weather Rocks the Climate

Weather Rocks the ClimateThe term “Weather Rocks” brings to mind different things. Some folk may have a “weather rock” just outside, which when it is dry you know it is not raining. When it is black and wet, you know it is and when it is white there is snow. In getting into climate, weather really rocks, because we see it every day and it all adds up to climate. And the latter has become politicized in an unprecedented attempt to set the temperature of the nearest planet at 277 K. Of course, this has been the greatest audacity in the overly long history of bureaucratic scheming. As if this nonsense wasn’t glaring enough, there is earnest debate about whether it should be at 277.5 or 278.5. The smaller number is used for urgency about “tipping points” whereby all-of-a-sudden, the “Earth is going to fry!”.
- Saturday, December 17, 2022

What will Ottawa Ruin Next?

What will Ottawa Ruin Next?In reviewing the record of the federasts in Ottawa the question is what will they ruin next? Capable of providing virtually any amount of reliable and efficient energy, Canada's exploration, production and transportation of oil and natural gas has been restricted. Wherever possible. Why?  Reasons for the employment of fear will be reviewed below, but even weirder, is that in a time of food shortages, Ottawa's bureaucratic classes suddenly set out to reduce food production.
- Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Real Estate: The Post-Bubble Bear Market Could Run For Years

Real Estate: The Post-Bubble Bear Market Could Run For YearsA great mania in real estate erupted with the financial bubble and will likely be followed by a lengthy decline. Previous post-bubble contractions have prevailed for some twenty years, with the usual 3 to 4-year business cycle coming and going. The following chart shows the outstanding rally in the S&P Real Estate Sector peaked in late 2021. The decline has been impressive:
- Friday, December 2, 2022

COP 27: Climate Confab: Absurd but Lucrative Posturing

COP 27: Climate Confab: Absurd but Lucrative Posturing“Josh” is a cartoonist that covers climate hysteria with remarkable wit and his update on the series of “COP” conventions is appropriate.  It’s worth adding that he has been running this one for years, COP 27 is on now. Just to think that the climate promotion started in the 1980s in a relatively small way with some academics at Hadley petitioning for funds. This was the university where H.H. Lamb did his remarkable and lasting work on climate history. The corruption in going from Lamb’s prestige to promoting fear for a living is appalling. 
- Monday, November 14, 2022

Extreme Politics: Not Just Damaging Prosperity, But Damaging Political Parties

Extreme PoliticsIn a world of increasingly intense political conflict, gazillions of comments and articles have exclaimed just how crazy the other side is. This article diagnoses who are the crazies, points out that it is not just prosperity being threatened and is dismayed that informed opposition to the authoritarian rant is cancelled. Moreover, political fury has been provoked by ordinary folk saying "No!" to intrusion. Even at family gatherings such as Thanksgiving there will be servings of political strife. The Left lives in turmoil and demands that everyone suffers their angst. But as featured in a 1976 movie: "We're as mad as hell, and we aren't going to take this anymore". As history shows, authoritarians are never satisfied, never voluntarily quitting their intolerant drive.  Moderation requires outsiders saying "No!", and the left used to its own way for so long, launched into non-stop tantrums. However, the mess they make inspires popular uprisings that in being benign can accomplish a great reformation. Not widely reviewed is the damage being done to the political parties. History suggests two alternatives. One is that the bullying party declines or collapses. The other is that a prodigal party is reformed.
- Wednesday, November 2, 2022

CO2 Is Plant Food Not Pollution

CO2 Is Plant Food Not PollutionWhen the establishment can't, or refuses, to understand the difference between plant food and pollution ordinary folk have a big problem. Moreover, the "problem" is a political tool used to control people. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is essential to life. Below 140 ppm, and life on our unique planet would collapse.  The issue has been the promotion that certain molecules of CO2 emitted by modern industrial society can wreak havoc upon the Earth's weather and climate. However, there is no evidence that variations in atmospheric concentrations cause climate change. The Vostok ice core records some 400,000 years of real climate change, and the observation is that there is little correlation and no causation. If anything, the record shows that warming leads CO2.
- Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Political Calculation: Economic Calculation: Science Calculation

Political Calculation: Economic Calculation: Science CalculationPolitical Calculation has been destroying sound Economic and Science Calculations and dictatorial distortions are forcing hardship. This contrasts with the Platonic notion that government being run by the genius of a philosopher-king can know what you need tomorrow and can provide it. Ironically, today’s unprecedented shortages of goods or services are the result of central planners imposing omnipotence, while pretending omniscience.
- Sunday, October 16, 2022

Monolithic Media Will Change: First Reduced, Then Reformed

Monolithic Media Will Change: First Reduced, Then ReformedEvery great experiment in authoritarian government has attempted to monopolize the media, which is essential to the functioning of the one-party state. Freedom of speech, assembly, trade and even thought must be controlled, or by today’s usage “cancelled”. Regrettably the intensity grows as governments run by political bullies go mad with power. Their disasters have been seen in small countries in Africa or South America, or in the big ones such as Eastern Europe and China; but there have been three times when the senior and most prosperous country succumbed to the ambition of control freaks to, well, impose control. “They” destroyed the wonders of Roman civilization, and the next regrettable example ran through the 1500s, when the Church was corrupted into a venal and murderous police state. The next, and lately becoming unrelentingly intrusive experiment, began in the early 1900s as the politically ambitious set out to impose utopian dictatorships.
- Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Peddling Fear



Peddling Fear

Climate reports by control freaks continue their departure from reality. Of course, the main reason for peddling fear is to establish permanent political control. This is beyond the schemes by individuals to earn a living or fame by getting on the bandwagon. As Goethe observed in the early 1800s:
“Most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, but they will worship error when it affords them a subsistence.”- Goethe
- Sunday, October 9, 2022

Quo WEF? To the dustbin of history

Quo WEF? To the dustbin of historyThe World Economic Forum (WEF), with grand conferences held each winter in Davos, some thirty years ago was a prestigious but apparently benign organization. Now it is being increasingly seen as a fascist promotor of authoritarian, if not totalitarian ambition. Of interest is that it has been funded by huge corporations and has been calling for one-world government. Which is remindful of an elegant definition of fascism: “The combination of big government and big business”. Of course, the question about why some insist that everything must be controlled cannot be answered, but the results in any century of power for the sake of power has always been hardship for the masses and high-living for the control freaks. Somehow these driven people can never understand that prosperity goes with freedom and by their compulsions force political and economic disaster upon ordinary folk.
- Monday, October 3, 2022

Monarchs Had Nicknames: One For Charles III?

Charles The WokeGoing away back to Saxon times, many of England’s monarchs had nicknames. From Alfred the Great to today’s Charles III, with the latter, as Prince of Wales already earning one as Charles the Woke. Alfred reigned over Wessex from 871 to 899, and in being a strong warrior in battle against the Vikings earned his status. This contrasts with some European examples, ranging from Vlad the Impaler to Vladislaw the Elbow-High. Opposite to the latter was Edward I, that because of his height was called Longshanks.
- Monday, September 19, 2022

Trudeau Has Fallen For The Global Warming Promotion
– Hook, Line And 'Thinker'

Trudeau Has Fallen For The Global Warming Promotion
– Hook, Line And 'Thinker'Ever loyal to his authoritarian compulsions, Canada’s PM Trudeau has fallen for the “Global Warming” promotion – hook, line and “thinker”. The latest gaff included stiffing Germany’s representative who is seeking desperately needed supplies of natural gas. Instead the conversation was about hydrogen. Which is an extremely low density form of energy. Not only an inefficient source of energy it is difficult to store and transport, and beyond that highly explosive. Another is that Canada’s Arctic region is suddenly vulnerable to a sea-borne invasion by Russia. Despite Putin’s extraordinary blunder and rapidly disappearing funding Trudeau discovers a threat.  One can imagine Spetznaz troops attacking “Tuk-Tuk”, with its two “super markets” and a crafts store. Just what would Russia’s interests be? Regrettably, it seems a fanciful tout to keep Climate Hysteria at the forefront.
- Sunday, September 4, 2022