I was struck in reading the Financial Times the other morning that the paper ran three articles that touched on Trump administration policies.

–The first is that the world’s reserves of just-in-case petroleum are being depleted at a rate that suggests being completely tapped out occurs in about a month. No one knows for sure what will happen to the crude oil price then, but it will presumably not be a decline

–Number two is that the oil majors have told Washington that they won’t speed up their drilling plans because of the Hormuz crisis. Strange–but for this administration probably more like par for the course–no one seems to understand much about the way the world works or to have done enough contingency planning to approach them before attacking Iran. The reality is, though, that all extra drilling or faster extraction from underground would do would be to wreck the fields–meaning reduce the amount of oil ultimately recoverable–where faster pumping might be feasible

–The third is that the administration seems to be taking extraordinary steps during this possible crisis to shut down alternative energy sources. Kind of like planning to ensure an energy shortage happens no matter what rather than to prevent one. My read is that this is not a Machiavellian plot from the administration, but rather that no one is driving the bus. A more depressing thought would be that no one knows how to drive

The chief economic result of the administration’s escapades to date, as I see it, has been to crush the dollar. Yes, everyone’s poorer, but it’s hard to put a finger on who’s responsible or why this is happening. $7 a gallon gasoline is different, I think, because it’s much more concrete.

It’s unclear to me where the safe spaces are to hide. My initial reaction is that it makes AI even more attractive, because everything else will be so much worse off. The one thing that the last few weeks’ trading has indicated is the market belief, initially at least, is that the negative impact of higher crude prices will be worse outside the US than in. If so, in a weird way US tech companies are that much more attractive.

…this by the government that also gave us ICE deportations, a huge fall in the value of the dollar, the war in Iran and a looming oil price crisis.

why I think it’s a really bad idea

the data are readily available

We’re living in the 21st century. Even the smallest companies have had easy and cheap access to sophisticated management control software for decades. Maybe some of this involves trade secrets–things like a country-by-country breakout of a multinational’s sales and profits–but for a long as I’ve been reading them (close to half a century) this level of detail is not required and companies have long since become very good at muddying these waters. So I don’t see reformatting the readily available data to fit SEC specifications as being an incredible hassle.

So whether you release data four times a year, or twice or once is more or less how many times a company pushes the “SEC format” button.

foreign companies, British, Australian, Irish for example, have steadily been relisting in the US.

…this despite the more extensive disclosure required here, well more than double what may be required in their home markets. The reason, I think, is that the increased disclosure leads to higher PE multiples placed by investors on company earnings. That’s because they have greater ability to assess what the company is really worth.

most growth companies compensate key employees primarily through stock options

So if I’m correct that less disclosure leads to lower PEs, and I’m very sure that this is right, the simplest response to the company-damaging move to less disclosure would be to relocate–to, say, Canada.

why would anyone choose the less disclosure road?

… especially given the possibility that in a less disclosure world companies would be worth less, not more. The only reason I can come up with is that there are firms whose operations for whatever reason can’t stand the light of day are chomping at the bit to raise equity capital.