Why $4.50 Gas Is Only Half Your Bill

I can't stop thinking about a press release I read last week. It came from a federal agency you've never heard of. Three letters. DFC.

You're paying $4.50 at the pump. You know that part. I found the part nobody is telling you. The same government that cannot fix a pothole on your street just signed up for a new job. They are now the insurance company for every oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz. A lot of those tankers are headed to China.

I had to read it twice. Then I read it a third time.

The private insurance market ran away when the war started in February. Lloyd's of London pulled back. No insurance means no ships. No ships means no oil. So the White House made a call. They picked an obscure agency called the DFC. It was built to fund roads and clinics in poor countries. Now it is a war-risk insurer for the world's biggest chokepoint.

Every week, these strange white crates leave a high-security Tesla compound in Lathrop, California.

They're showing up near the Hoover Dam. At an Air Force base in Georgia. In the heart of New York City…

An estimated 4,000 of them are now spread across 48 locations in 14 states. And more roll out every week.

But you won't see this on CNBC, and you won't read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Because these mystery Elon crates have nothing to do with electric vehicles, space, social media, crypto, biotech, robots or AI…

But former hedge fund manager Adam O'Dell knows what's inside them…

(And he reveals it all in this urgent investment briefing) 

Which is why he believes they will go down as Elon's greatest-ever invention… his biggest ever disruption.

On July 22, Elon is expected to share this new venture with the world.

Once he does, this is going to be everywhere — from Fox Business to your family's group chat.

Adam believes investors who get positioned before that date could walk away wealthier than they ever thought possible. Everyone else will be reading about it after the stocks have already run.

I'd hate for you to be in the second group.

Click here to watch Adam's full briefing right now.

He'll show you exactly what Elon is building, what's inside these strange white crates… and he'll give you the name and ticker of one of his top picks to play it — completely free.

Watch it now while you still have time to position yourself.

The DFC sits behind big names like Chubb and Berkshire Hathaway. They have $40 billion of taxpayer money on the line. Forty billion. Our money. Our risk.

Here is what worries me. China is the biggest buyer of oil moving through that strait. If those tankers sail because Uncle Sam guarantees the cargo the boats heading east fill up first. A congressman from Texas said it looks like we are subsidizing oil for China. He didn't get a response.

I get it. Oil at $100 hurts everyone. I am not pretending the choice was easy. But I keep coming back to one question. Why are we writing the check?

Congress is asking the same thing. Almost every dollar of this money is going to high-income countries or China. The DFC is actually barred from supporting China. But here we are.

I don't think most people realize how much this could cost us. JPMorgan ran the math on what those tankers really need. The number they found was $352 billion. Our $40 billion is just a down payment. If a single tanker eats a missile the bill lands on the Treasury. That means hundreds of millions for one ship.

One mine. One bad day. Your money is gone to pay for a tanker carrying Saudi crude to a Chinese refinery.

You pay at the pump because the war is on. Then you pay again because we are the bagman for the tankers. Two bites. Same wallet.

I keep picturing a guy in a control room in a Chinese port. He is watching a tanker pull in. The oil is cheap because someone else took the risk. That someone is you. That someone is me.

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We used to be the customer at the gas station. Now we are the security guard at the door. And we are working for tips.

I am going to look into who else is hiding in this $40 billion pool. I want to know which other countries are getting a free ride on our dime.

More on this tomorrow.

— Lauren
Editor, American Ledger