I was sitting in front of the fire reading research at my waterfront estate at Lake Tahoe when the phone rang.

The Secret Service was calling from Reno, Nevada asking if I wouldn?t mind guiding someone on a hike in the High Sierras.

?Who, pray tell, was coming?? I asked.

?Sorry, need to know? was the predictable reply. I would find out when the event came off.

The next morning six black GM Suburbans with tinted windows drove through my front gate.

A minute later, I was introduced to Annie Kaine, wife of Tim Kaine, the vice presidential candidate with Hillary Clinton.

Annie is a native of Virginia and a Harvard Law grad, who put in time as a civil rights worker, and later as a judge in her home state. She was the First Lady of Virginia from 2006-2010.

Annie had never visited the Sierras before, but had long known of their beauty. While her husband was campaigning in nearby Reno, she took the day off to check off an item on her bucket list.

I guided Annie up the Incline Village Flume Trail, one of my favorites, to the Tahoe Rim Trail at 8,500 feet. We paused to stop at the place where Mark Twain first caught sight of the crystal clear lake.

A half dozen Secret Service agents, in their thirties and in incredible shape, followed at a respectful 50- foot distance, periodically providing radio updates to an unknown supervisor.

No pictures were allowed.

I related the local history and mentioned that my ancestors had ties to Virginia?s Tidewater area before they moved on the Kentucky, Missouri, and ultimately, California.

Then I launched into a long discussion of presidential politics, not the current race, but the first one.

I remember the first presidential election like it was yesterday.

Back in 1788, George Washington was so popular that he ran unopposed. Then the battle was for the vice presidency which was elected separately.

Our current electoral system did not come into place until the passage of the 12^th amendment in 1802.

John Adams won handily, a flinty attorney from Massachusetts, edging out John Hancock and John Jay.

Adams helped write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, obtained crucial loans from the Dutch during the Revolutionary War and negotiated the peace treaty with Britain.

Adams favored a strong central government. He went on to be elected the second president in 1797.

Political parties did not yet exist, nor did opinion polls or focus groups. ?Candidates were either Federalists or anti Federalists, being for or against the constitution. The Federalists won with a 90.5% margin.

There was no single election day. Instead, voting stretched over a month, from December 15 to January 10.

This was so voters could walk or ride a horse long distances to get to the polls. Since government was new, there were few roads or bridges to cross rain-swollen streams and rivers.

The weather on the east coast is often frigid and snowy that time of the year. Candidates would greet voters with a side of beef roasting on an open spit and a cup of spiced rum. Drunkenness at the polls was a common problem.

Only white men of property could vote, limiting the turnout to only 1.3% of the country?s 3 million population.

Virginia was the political powerhouse of the day, with 12 of 95 votes in the Electoral College. The state then was much larger, and included the lands that later became West Virginia and Kentucky.

Virginia?s political impact was further increased because it was given additional seats in the House of Representatives equivalent to three fifths of its substantial slave population. This practice continued until the Civil War.

Only ten of 13 states voted because New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania had not yet ratified the constitution. Only six states allowed any popular voting at all, relying on their electors to make the choice.

A lot has changed since the first presidential election 228 years ago.

Since then, the numbers of eligible voters has steadily expanded.

African American men won the right to vote with the passage of the 15^th Amendment in 1870, but they didn?t get full voter?s rights until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.

Women achieved the right to vote with the 19^th Amendment in 1920. The voting age was lowered to include 18 year olds with the 26^th Amendment in 1971 (that one I really DO remember, and I voted in 1972).

I?m keeping the letter short today so everyone has plenty of time to get out there and vote. So get out there and do it. It?s a privilege and a right, so use it.

I told Annie Kaine to come back any time she wanted, and next time, bring her husband and her skis. She said she would love to, as long as I didn?t mind a larger Secret Service detail.

I replied that I didn?t mind at all.

Vote for Me

For the first time this decade, I did not care a whit about the monthly Nonfarm Payroll report.

Not an iota, a scintilla, a modicum, or even a speck.

That?s because no matter high or low the number came it, it would be vastly overshadowed by tomorrow?s election.

Nationwide voting is not the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It is the 800-ton gorilla in the room.

Like everyone else in the country, I feel like I have been the subject of a vicious child support battle between warring parents.

I just want it over.

The big question about the Federal Reserve is not about its possible move to raise interest rates in December. It?s whether our central bank will exist at all in the New Year!

Will Janet Yellen be demoted to washing Tesla windshields on street corners in Berkeley?

As it turned out, the Employment Situation Report could not have been more boring, missing the consensus by a mere 12,000.

The October Nonfarm Payroll Report came in at 161,000, versus a consensus expectation of 173,000.

The headline unemployment rate fell to 4.9%, a decade low.

The hourly earnings jumped an eye popping 0.40%, bringing the year-on-year gain to 2.8%, the largest increase since June, 2009.

Are these the early seeds of inflation? One can only hope.

The back month revisions were big, with September bumped up by 9,000, and July goosed also by 9,000.

Professional and business services led by 43,000 jobs, health care with 31,000, and government, mostly at the local level, at 19,000.

Hurricane Matthew seemed to have caused a drag on the numbers coming from the Southeast.

Another shocker was the U-6 long-term structural unemployment rate, which plunged to 9.5%, another ten year low.

Traders will certainly have their hands full this week.

The polls close at 8:00 PM, and network projections of the winners of the obvious states should be out a few minutes later.

However, it?s the battleground states that count, and the early results will be misleading.

Clinton?s support in the cities is overwhelming which will report first. Trumps voters are largely rural, and results will come in slowly.

So don?t be fooled by reports of an early Clinton landslide win. Trump will make up the gap as the night wears on, but not enough to win in the Electoral College.

Nate Silver?s FiveThirtyEight has the best long-term record of predicting election outcomes using mathematical models (click here for his site at? http://fivethirtyeight.com/?ex_cid=2016-forecast . As of Friday, he had Hillary winning by at least 58 electoral votes (see map below).

I think the margin will be much wider, as the polls are missing millions of Hispanics who have never voted before.

This will give Hillary the majority of the battleground states, especially Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, Virginia, Arizona, and Nevada, where I voted, and was presented with a ballot in Spanish.

Evan McMullin, a practicing Mormon, could take Utah, depriving Trump of a further 6 electoral votes.

That?s why I dipped my toe in the water by adding a modest 5% position in the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV) at the close on Friday, a bet that the Volatility Index (VIX) goes down.

Once the markets get a whiff of a Clinton win, it is going to be really hard to sell the Volatility Index (VIX) fast enough. Time to put my money where my mouth is. If the (VIX) rises on Monday, I?ll double up.

This renders all economic data releases for the coming week essentially meaningless. But I?ll go through the motions anyway.

Monday, November 7th at 8:30 AM EST, we get the Gallup Consumer Spending Report.

On Tuesday, November 8th at 6:00 AM EST we get a new update on the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index.

On Wednesday, November 9th at 7:00 AM EST, the MBA Mortgage Applications are published.

Thursday, November 10th we learn the Weekly Jobless Claims at 8:30 AM.

On Friday, November 11th at 10:00 AM EST we get the October Consumer Sentiment, and 1:00 PM delivers us the Baker Hughes Rig Count.

I hope everyone gets out there and votes. This time, it really IS the most important election in history.

The Internet has recently been abuzz about a revolutionary new discovery that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethanol.

Readers often refer me to new, incredible, and earth-shattering technologies which often turn out to be nothing more than investment scams. The cold fusion boom of the 1990s comes to mind.

As a reformed and non-practicing biochemist, I decided to check this one out.

What I discovered blew my mind.

Scientists at the US Department of Energy?s Oak Ridge National Laboratory literally stumbled across a process that could become a game changer for the entire energy industry.

Carbon dioxide is passed over a carbon and copper catalyst, energized with a jolt of electricity, and ethanol comes out the other end. How nice is that!

Ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is the kind of alcohol we drink, and is found in beer, wine, and spirits. It is not to be confused with methanol (CH3OH), known as rubbing alcohol which is lethal if drunk in quantity.

Ethanol boils at 78.4 degrees centigrade, compared to 64.7 degrees for methanol, which is how home distillers and moonshiners keep from killing themselves.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is no slouch when it comes to energy research.

Built in Tennessee in a huge rush during 1942, it used to be one of the most secretive research institutions in the world.

Its original mission was to produce highly enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb, known as the Manhattan Project. Many of my college professors worked there during WWII.

In recent years, it has broadened its mandate to include materials science, artificial intelligence, systems biology, and national security. It possesses the Titan, one of the world?s most powerful super computers.

Since President Obama came into office, it has received an infusion of cash to explore new forms of alternative energy.

To visit their website, click https://www.ornl.gov .

The key to their method is how the copper is arranged. First, the researchers create a scaffold made from carbon and nitrogen. The surface is covered in tiny spikes, each about 50 nanometers high.

The researchers then deposit copper particles onto the surface which acts as a catalyst for the reaction.

When electricity is run through the material, the reactions are concentrated?at the very tips of the spikes, providing the energy required?for carbon dioxide dissolved in water to break apart and reform as ethanol.

The?reaction achieved an efficiency of 63 percent, using a power supply of just 1.2 volts at room temperature.

Of course, the process is still years away from scalability and mass production.

But the fact that this process can take place at room temperature and requires only small power inputs means it could become economically viable.

The long-term possibilities of this new technology would be momentous.

Previous carbon capture and conversion plans were wildly expensive. Carbon dioxide is one of the most stable molecules in the universe. Until now, breaking it apart required huge amounts of energy.

That is why the end products of all combustion are CO2 and H2O. There is nowhere else for a chemical reaction to go without help.

It would cost more than $1 trillion just to convert America?s existing coal fired power plants (to read more, click The Price Tag for Clean Coal).

This new technology could capture the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants, convert it into ethanol, and then burn the ethanol, all in a closed system. Nothing would reach the atmosphere.

Solar cells could be used to produce the ethanol during the day, which is then burned at night.

Ethanol could also be used to power cars. In most states about 10% of the gasoline you purchase at the pump is comprised of ethanol.

The new process could extend a lifeline to the beleaguered coal industry (KOL) which has been in free fall for years.

Many of the biggest firms, like Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, and Walter Energy, have gone bankrupt.? It is unlikely that another coaled fired power plant will ever be built in the US again.

About 70% of America?s coal output is now exported to China, much of it in rail cars rumbling past my home late at night.

Coal's problems have become so severe that the plight of unemployed coal miners has become an issue in the presidential election.

The big loser from this technological breakthrough (there is ALWAYS a big loser) is a farmer in the Midwest who grows corn (CORN).

About 40% of the total US corn production is now used to make ethanol for fuel, an activity heavily subsidized by the government (for more on that sensitive topic, please read The Great Ethanol Boondoggle).

If the carbon dioxide conversion process goes mainstream, which could happen sooner than you think, it could trigger a collapse in corn prices, by half or more.

Maybe that is what the price of corn has been trying to tell us. For a host of reasons, it has been one of the world?s worst performing asset classes for the past four years, down some 67%.

Mind you, converting carbon dioxide to ethanol is no panacea. Burning ethanol puts plenty of CO2 into the atmosphere as well, just not as much as gasoline. It is an improvement, but not a solution.

Sometimes, markets can sniff these things out sooner than we mere mortals can. And I can tell you that my nose, in particular, is finely attuned to the scent of alcohol.

Should Jack Daniels be worried?

To read more, click ?High-Selectivity Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Ethanol?

A Carbon Nanospike