For today’s edition of Inside Wall Street, I recorded another short video update for you instead of my usual written commentary.
I visit Washington a lot. And I regularly have meetings with members of Congress and their staff. Face-to-face meetings cut through the media noise and the bipartisan politics.
And they often provide some very useful insights into how and when key decisions are made on the Hill. And how funding is allocated.
These insights help guide me in determining my investment decisions under my five key investment themes – New Energy, Infrastructure, Transformative Technology, Meta-Reality, and New Money.
Today, in this short video update from outside the Capitol Building, I tell you about some of the exciting discoveries I made on my latest visit.
I asked the lawmakers I met about the projects on their wish lists… and the obstacles they’re trying to overcome to get them done.
Just click on the image below to watch it. I’ve also included a transcript underneath if you’d prefer to read it.
I hope you enjoy the video. Let me know what you think at [email protected].
Happy investing, and I’ll be in touch again soon.
Regards,
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Nomi Prins
Editor, Inside Wall Street with Nomi Prins
Transcript
Hi, everyone, Nomi here.
Right now, I’m in Washington, D.C. There’s the Capitol Building over there behind me. The Senate Office Buildings and the House Office Buildings are located nearby. It’s like all the buildings of power are obviously located very close to each other.
What I wanted to talk to you about today is some of the discoveries I have made from my meetings here.
And also, one main takeaway, which I’m going to get to in a moment.
I spoke with Congress people and their senior staffers from both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, from the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New Jersey, Florida, and California.
Most of them have positions on transportation, energy, or infrastructure-related committees that are directly relevant to some of our distortion themes.
What I wanted to do was explore their thoughts in these areas. And then consider what they mean for our five sectors… and for your money.
To cut to the chase, I decided to make it all uniform by asking the same two questions to open up all of the meetings I had. Those questions were:
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If you could have all the money you needed and a project done yesterday, what projects would you have wanted funding for?
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What’s the biggest challenge you and your state face in building infrastructure, now that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has been passed?
There was a method to my madness. Because I think we can all agree that the process of the government allocating money and getting anything done is completely full of inefficiencies. There’s no argument there.
But what I wanted to do was cut through the media noise and the bipartisan politics to see where there was common ground. Especially regarding New Energy and Infrastructure projects, in particular, on this visit to Washington.
I come back here quite a lot. I’ll talk to you more about other visits and what I find.
But for now, as you can imagine, a lot of Republicans simply want to reduce red tape in getting things done. That’s fair.
And also, both Democrats and Republicans consider it super-difficult to get the federal funding down to the local community level, without it getting completely hijacked somehow along the way.
They didn’t exactly say this to me, that it was because of corruption specifically. But we can read between the lines.
The reality is that the big companies get the best contracts. And sometimes, they don’t even have to bid for those contracts.
Here are some more things I discovered in Washington…
One Pennsylvania congressman, who’s on the subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, supports building electric vehicle charging stations.
But the cool thing is he’s actually exploring projects in curbside types of charging systems. And putting them at places like shopping centers, where people are more up to spend time using them than in gas stations, where no one really wants to spend a lot of time.
A congressman from Georgia, who sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House, is focused on upgrading some of the public transit to connect some of the smaller counties into the cities. Especially with a lot more people working away from the cities and from home to make economies more efficient.
Then a congresswoman from Texas – whose staffer I met at Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue, near Capitol Hill, where lots of officials and staffers have their coffees away from their buildings. You can get tons of interesting information and chatter from that… a story for another time – says the biggest problem in her district is drainage and flooding.
Then there was one Republican representative from New Jersey, who has this really neat, large portrait of President Lincoln on his wall behind his desk. He sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
What he wants to do – of course, he’s from New Jersey – is repair some of those old bridges there that are in disrepair. And also focus on dredging projects.
He also wants the environmental review process to have less red tape, in order to get things done more quickly.
A Republican congressman from Florida thinks Florida needs more agricultural funding in a particular area – the Everglades.
He also wants projects to create cleaner water streams. And less red tape in getting them done.
And I think we can all agree that clean water is important for everyone.
Finally, there’s a congressman from California, who wants to fix its collapsing bluffs. He also wants the process of getting funds for projects to be easier for smaller companies and local communities.
The upshot from all of this is that there is bipartisan support – and that’s rare – for both New Energy and Infrastructure projects.
And what that means is that there’s going to be more private money flowing into these areas.
And that’s going to benefit, for now, the medium and larger companies that are involved. But hopefully, the smaller companies as well, in the future.
The other main takeaway for me that I want to share with you was that there was one California representative who said there could be bipartisan support coming for a new clean energy-oriented bill.
This is in addition to the most recent infrastructure bill. And that’s going to affect our New Energy space.
I’m going to be watching for that as it’s very promising for that sector. It’s another reason that I think there’s huge potential in the clean and renewable energy space.
We’re going to continue to guide you through all of our five sectors – New Energy, Infrastructure, Transformative Technology, Meta-Reality, and New Money for the months and years to come.
With the first of the Fed’s expected rate hikes of 25 basis points out of the way, as we predicted… and the next Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting not until early May… I also think we could see a period of a bit of calm in the markets.
That’s despite all of the global turbulence we all face and that we’ve seen so far this year.
I hope you like this video.
As always, please send me your thoughts, and also your questions, to [email protected].
Happy investing, and I’ll be in touch again soon.
Like what you’re reading? Send your thoughts to [email protected].