Looking out from my window

 I see a 15 meter high fig tree, which is home to a population of fruit bats, and various birds of which the bright emerald green ring necked parakeets are the most notable. They are a recent introduction to Israel and have displaced native species. They cross the air like fighter jets in organized squads. In Argentina they are called loro barranquero and declared an agricultural plague. We have also the pigeons by their thousands, fat and mostly occupied in pecking and fucking each other. The good people of the neighborhood feed them (as they do to street cats). There is an overpopulation of pigeons and they are always desperately searching for nesting places, exploring my room and flying in if the window is open. 

Not Stock Exchange Mandrake

 I am having a free day with no one pressuring me to finish their projects. This is very unusual for me and somewhat unsettling too. So I looked up the evolution of my bourse investments and in ten years I had triplicated my savings (200% gain). Calculated that it means 11% per annum (compound interest equation) in US dollars. I had estimated dollar inflation to be around 3% but discovered that it was only 1.5%  in the last decade, meaning 16% loss in real terms. It is almost insignificant. The yield in real terms was about 10%. Since each month I added more stock, the real growth may have been only 5% and taking into account the 25% tax - around 4% in real terms. It should have been 6% if TEVA maintained its worth, but unfortunately I am losing 50-60% on that company. I also lost on my DELEK (oil) bets. I did somewhat better than the index but the bottom line is that I am no stock exchange magician.  

Suez Canal Out of Service

The  Ever Given cargo ship is blockading the Canal. It has a length of 400 m while the canal's width is 200 m. Its hull has a beam of 58.8 m, a depth of 32.9 m, and a fully laden draft of 14.5 metres . Ever Given has a gross tonnage of 220,940; net tonnage of 99,155; and deadweight tonnage of 199,629 tons. The ship's container capacity is 20,124 TEU.

The main engine is a low-speed two-stroke diesel. Coupled to a fixed-pitch propeller, it is rated at 59,300 kW (79,500 horsepower) at 79 rpm and gives the vessel a service speed of 22.8 knots (42.2 km/h; 26.2 mph). The vessel also has four straight-8 Yanmar 8EY33LW auxiliary diesel generators. For maneuvering in ports, Ever Given has two 2,500 kW (3,400 hp) bow thrusters Therefore it has not enough power to dig itself out of muddy bottom and sides of the canal. 

There are seemingly trying to dig out with JCB-like machines the front interred in the mud. I wonder why they are no pulling it with land cables and tractors. Now they are talking of discharging part of the cargo. Since they have an Egyptian pilot on board, I think that the responsibility falls on the Canal Authority. It will be a long fight to establish who pays the damages. The Europa Asia Pipeline (former Katzaa) will receive a large push with this disaster. 

Harvard Punishes Professor for Accepting Donation

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Claudine Gay announced disciplinary actions against Martin Nowak, professor of mathematics and biology, stemming from his connections to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Those connections were spelled out in a 2020 report: between 1998 and 2008, Epstein made gifts of $6.5 million to the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which was run by Nowak. (That figure made up the largest share of the $9.1 million in total gifts that Epstein donated to the University during that period.)  

Nowak is an Austria-born Catholic, who worked on evolutionary problems like cooperation. He is not accused of anything except his connections with a generous donor. In my experience, professors are encouraged and forced to seek financing for their projects, but this is the first time someone is punished for being too successful. My Father told me of the dilemma faced by Jaszbereny synagogue, when the owner of the local whorehouse wanted to donate: Should it be accepted? I do not remember what was the decision. Pecunia non olet, but that was in Rome. Harvard is still a Puritan Divinity School. 

P.S.: 

Harvard closes evolution center after finding connections to Jeffrey Epstein

 

Penis and Anus Whitening

I have reached the age where I am officially classified as "old", yet I am still learning new things every day, every hour. Important knowledge that I'll find useful should I be reborn as a Black. Such as procedures to lighten the skin of the genitals, anus or groin area. Laser bleaching of private areas is carried out by using a type of laser which damages or kills the cells that produce melanin - the pigment that gives skin its color. Most patients undergo a few laser sessions before achieving the desired result, and each session usually takes 10-15 minutes. Laser bleaching comes with risks of infection and scarring, and should always be carried out in a professional clinic setting. But skin lightening can also be carried out at home using a bleaching cream. Popularity of bleaching private parts has been linked to several high-profile celebrities, such as Kourtney Kardashian, publicly admitting to having these procedures done.

Palestinian Agency

The English are the most intelligent commentators of world politics. They lament the disappearance of the Palestinian cause from the Arab consciousness and the failure of the Boycott Israel movement that could not grow out from a minor issue in American campuses. The Palestinian Liberation Movement is reduced to clan rivalries and local politics: the Palestinians have no agency. The Brits are feeding the Apartheid accusation, trying to destroy us just as they did to Rhodesia and South Africa. The internet allows me to hear them in podcasts and lectures, and I confess that am in love with the language, civilized tone and subtle humor. But they are dangerous, they appear impossibly unaware that they are striving to destroy and rule.   

Marxist interpretation of social reality

From a Marxist point of view, of class-war dialectics,  zero interest rate has the effect of increasing the worth of non-reproducible goods such as real estate, stocks, commodities, etc. Since only 5-10% of the population owns these goodies in any significant quantity, they are the sole beneficiaries. That is, zero interest rate policy increases the gap between  the owner and the proletarian classes. Parallelly, the outsourcing of the mean of production, of factories, of industries, weakens the working class and empowers the propertied class. Dr Faber goes one step further saying that democracy, one vote for each, means that the votes of the 5-10% (the owners class) has no influence in the results of the elections, so for these class, democracy is unjust and unfair. Since they are cheated of any voting power, they feel that manipulations and faking are justified and even they are imperative.  

Are negative interest rates good for bankers?

 The case for negative rates.

I am a banker and my only real product is debt.
Who can I load up with my debt products?
You’ll do.

How many of the banker’s debt products can an economy take?
Let’s find out.

At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6
Economies fill up with the banker’s debt products until you get a financial crisis.
1929 – US
1991 – Japan
2008 – US, UK and Euro-zone
The PBoC saw the Chinese Minsky Moment coming and you can too by looking at the chart above.

Lower interest rates and you can squeeze a few more of the banker’s debt products into your economy.
The bankers have reached market saturation globally.
No one can take any more of their debt products.

“Go negative” the bankers
That’s why we need negative rates so we can squeeze more of the banker’s debt products into our economies.

Stolen from Sound of the Suburbs    The photo shows Joseph Safra. He was a successful banker. 

P.S.: I know what low interest rate does to people like me. It tempts to enter risky investments. Money is free and abundant, what can happen? Risk means that the investment carries a high probability of failure, and failed investments end in bankruptcy. Enough failed investments and we are dealing with a recession. Ergo, negative interest rate may lead to a temporary flareup and lasting depression.   

Unfriendly Architecture

People in Buenos Aires were filling the spaces under the bridges with homes built with waste materials like wooden boxes, carton and so. Later they built permanent  walls and installed shops under the bridge. The  Authorities gave them formal names, like Villa 514. See pic below. 

Architectural creativity solved the problem. See pic above. It also helps to avoid crossing lanes under the bridge. This is the Argentine version of Brutalist Architecture. 

 

ORFEO - Beautiful Nonsense

 This last wasted Corona epidemic year forced me to spend time on Youtube and so learned to appreciate baroque music and theater. Music was an elite entertainment, elegant and graceful, abstract and unrelated to the daily misery of our lives. Look how the girls dance! I started to love opera, like my father z"l. The small Jewish community of Jaszbereny produced several famous opera singers - baritone and bass - and we had their opera albums and vinyl long plays. As a child, I was amazed at their exaggerated makeup, and their "operetta hero" fantasy dresses.

 In his times good music was a precious resource, they had to travel 60 kilometers to Budapest to go to the opera. Free music like this youtube was a luxury unimaginable. Only in the High Holidays one of the opera singers performed in the synagogue, his powerful bass reciting the sacred texts, and that was memorable event to comment for months ahead. I must be turning senile.

El Dinero No Vale

Globes says that American investors are buying up Tel Aviv (pic) apartments, driving prices to crazy levels. Biden's trillion something stimulus will create much liquidity in the USA, which will lift the NASDAQ (valuations there are already lunatic) and in Israel (we are at post-corona time). Conclusion: Now is the time to buy real estate here. If governments are able to create money from thin air,  then money is worthless or so. 

No equilibrium anywhere

 George Soros in The Alchemy of Finance says that there is no equilibrium in the markets, and there is no tendency toward a stable state. The market is always flowing. And the market is an imperfect allocative mechanism. (But other systems are even worse). On the same token, I say that there is no equilibrium in evolution, there is always some development and change. The universe itself is not in equilibrium, it is expanding and progressing toward some unimaginable state.  

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Raanana County

The Electrocution (sorry, electroconduction) test gave positive, meaning normal. In Argentina this test is well known but it is called "picana electrica" and was the favorite torture method of the military dictatorship of the late seventies. I stood impassible the electric shocks till they tired and not once revealed any secret to the physician. The next world frog jumping and  jockeying championship is in May.

 

Tomorrow I'll Jump like a Frog

The sciatica pains are almost gone. My legs are weak after two months of disuse. Yet the doctor ordered an electro conduction test for tomorrow. I feel that I am well but there is no escape from the health bureaucracy machine. They may punish me if I do not appear at the Lewinstein Clinic. My wife surely will. Luigi Galvani discovered that even a dead frog will jump when given an electric shock and called the phenomenon "animal electricity". He wrote up the discovery in his "De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius". It used to be a classic school experiment till the league against cruelty on animals delegitimized and forbid it. Yet it is still practiced on unfortunate fat old Jews.  

I have been thinking

 The stock exchange is at all-time height and many Israelis and foreign Jews are having extra money to invest. Given the political unrest in America, the number of apartments bought in 2020 by American Jews is growing. Many prefer their children to study in Israel, integrated with Jews and it is also cheaper. Given the insoluble scarcity of land in Israel, as well as of good construction workers, prices will keep rising. Rent from second apartments is in practice tax free, as the tax is unenforceable and it is not being collected. I'll proceed with my project of a second property - not for me, but for my poor hardworking daughters. 

David Irving examines the Holocaust

 I just read Irving's thesis about Hitler and the Holocaust. He says that after the war the Germans (including in Nurnberg) decided to blame it all on a mad Hitler. But there is no record of Hitler ever giving extermination orders, on the contrary, it was the German and other European peoples' overenthusiasm to punish and kill Jews. Irving, basically, agrees with Arthur Koestler's conclusion written closely after WWII, that the cause of the Holocaust was the passionate desire of European peoples to get rid of the Jews. That there were many opportunities to save Jews even in the middle and the very end of the war, but they did not want to save them. Hungarian Jewry could certainly be saved. The Nazis stopped when meeting with the slightest opposition, like in Albania, Bulgaria, even early Horthy. BTW, I wanted to re-read Unz's article, and can't find it.  

(Still) Waiting for My Man

Leo Leiderman surprised

 

"I was surprised by two main findings. Israel is rated in first place in macroeconomic stability indices. This impressive result reflects fiscal and monetary discipline enforced here over the years, as reflected in sustained low inflation and a substantial reduction to 61% in the ratio of public debt to GDP. The second surprise is the extent to which Israel actually has at least two economies: the technology industries and all of the rest, leaving us in only 45th place overall in the rate of technological adoption. The great paradox is linked to the question of whether we really are the startup nation."

Leo thinks the bourse is not overly expensive relative the low interest rates. Prices will not fall while interest rates are close to zero. He has such a strong Cordobes (provincial) accent that I could not stop laughing.

The Chinese Nail Murders

A Robert Van Gulik early Judge Dee story. I identified the next victim of dog-official Dee in the first pages: Wealthy landowner Chu, a nice fellow with 8 wives and no children. Dee carefully investigated him and in open tribunal presented the case against him, Chu feigned madness to escape death, Dee explained that Chu, having no children, must have some body defect and everybody knows that a man like like him cannot be mentally sane. The management of Chu's business affairs passed to the Tribunal, which sent away the wives with some money and one can imagine what happened to the rest of his fortune. The Magistrate's three wives had travelled and the sex-crazy Dee got complicated in several bad women affairs, to the point that he lost his authority and had to resign. The wife of the pharmacist saved him and the Judge accused her of a murder (hammering a long nail into her husband's brain). Dee is so straight that for him, "Justice" is blind. Chinese stories are sport but I am done with them.  

Les Indes galantes. Les Sauvages

Forêts paisibles,

Jamais un vain désir ne trouble ici nos cœurs.

S’ils sont sensibles,

Fortune, ce n’est pas au prix de tes faveurs.

 

(Chœur des sauvages):

Forêts paisibles,

Jamais un vain désir ne trouble ici nos cœurs.

S’ils sont sensibles,

Fortune, ce n’est pas au prix de tes faveurs.]

 

Dans nos retraites,

Grandeur, ne viens jamais

offrir de tes faux attraits!

Ciel, tu les as faites

pour l’innocence et pour la paix.

Chinese Belt Project

 The Chinese are offering us a grand infrastructure project linking by rail the Port of Haifa (which they are building) and the ports of the Arab Gulf. It would reduce Egypt's income from the Suez Canal, but open profitable trade opportunities for everybody. In fact, China is taking up Imperial Britain's role of organizing world trade, and no one in its right mind would stay outside.  

Spain: 25% less births in 2020

 Spain is one of the countries with negative population growth, each year its population is a million persons lower and in average, more aged. When it was imagined that it cannot fall lower, it did. All European countries have been affected by the epidemic. A catastrophe. 

Caesium-137 storm

Former atomic experimental sites in the Sahara are releasing Caerium 137 dust, which is penetrating to Europe. It is a highly toxic material, people will be advised to stay at home. Ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and reduces the biological half-life to 30 days. Pic.: France (It looks like Paris, the Montparnasse? Mais non, c'est Lyon) -  today. The dust avoided Israel but Turkey is alarmed. 

Tuba Skinny

Good Company

Austria, Denmark and Israel launched a cooperative project to produce anti-corona vaccine. I could not choose better partners for Israel. We are in good company. 

The Bell Imperative

 Clark published a new research paper concluding that "aspirations that by appropriate social design, rates of social mobility can be substantially increased will prove futile. We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth."

Clark studied the genetic changes in the English population on the basis of surnames. In a few hundred years the surnames of lower/criminal class have disappeared, replaced by descendants of the upper/richer classes. In our generation, it seems to work on the reverse. 

Why this happened in South East England and not in Bulgaria? England was/is a stable, well-governed society for centuries, where violence does not pay. Bulgaria was a frontier lawless region, where violence and brutality was survival necessity.  

44 billion dollars stolen

 Alberto Fernandez the President of Argentina ordered a criminal inquiry against the government of Macri. In 2018 Macri received a 44 billion US$ loan from the IMF. Fernandez's incoming government received an empty Treasury. This is, he said, the largest public funds robbery in memory. "De acuerdo con eso, instruyó a las autoridades para que formalmente inicien una querella criminal contra quienes fueron "partícipes de la mayor administración fraudulenta y malversación de caudales que nuestra memoria recuerda". This is unprecedented in Argentina, incoming governments never investigate former administrations, so THEY will not in turn be investigated. 

Mobs Braying

Paul Singer, "El Buitre", thinks that the Fed’s current iteration of quantitative easing paired with trillions of dollars of stimulus to counter the pandemic are setting things up for a fall. Rampant inflation will shock policy makers, stock pickers and bond investors, alike.

“‘Trouble ahead’ is signaled by a rare combination of low-quality securities, staggering valuation metrics, overleveraged capital structures, a scarcity of honest profits, a desperate dearth of understanding evinced by the most active traders, and economic macro prospects that are not as thrilling as the mobs braying ‘Buy! Buy!’ seem to think."