I’ll begin with something I tweeted out last night:

Well, there ARE words, but this is a G-rated website, so I’ll refrain. In any case, thanks to Tesla TSLA, the entire electric car space has gone absolutely berserk.

As a serious student of financial history, I am reminded of the widely-repeated fact that in 1989, the Imperial Court in Tokyo (remember when Japan was supposed to take over the world?) was ostensibly worth more than the entire state of California. The notion marked to the millisecond the peak of Japanese prosperity, and they’ve been grinding lower for the past third-century, propped up only (as we have been) by a solicitous central bank.

We’ve truly come full circle, because the kind of absolutely insane, lunatic, eye-popping valuations being assigned to companies that are in fact virtually worthless will be one for the history books.

The nuttiest of these is Rivian, which perhaps you read yesterday surpassed Volkswagen in market cap. So Rivian, a company with ZERO revenue and has sold ZERO assembly line cars (just a few prototypes) is more valuable than one of the oldest, best-known, most successful automakers on the planet, which by the way has been around nearly a century and has all the infrastructure, expertise, and brand recognition such a thing affords.

I see that RIVN is starting to sell off, but I suspect it would need to go down another 99.9% before it reaches a sensible price. I’m telling you, if I ever update my Panic Prosperity and Progress book to update what has happened since 2009, it’s going to have to be twice the size.

(Click on image to enlarge)