War Sentiment

 

Yesterday. the German Chancellor announced a large budget for weapons, and today he is making a surprise visit to Israel. Elbit, a weapons manufacturer, became suddenly 7.5% more expensive, yet - or because - I bought. Also, South Korea is equipping its new Red Back vehicle. It is a bad day in the bourse, yet I am 5000 shekels ahead. Wars are good: America will focus on what is important, and forget its sick fixation with felling horseback statues. Welcome, Olaf. 

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Feeling unsettled

 I accepted a project of a gym studio that became a full country club and then gradually expanded with a swimming pool, a technical building with pumps and heat exchangers, and then the drainage of a large park and so on. I had invested months of hard work for three months and they were harassing me every day for more and more urgent changes. I gave up, having lost my time and my expected remuneration. I feel unsettled, from now on I shall accept only small projects (but this was a small project!) and define strict payment schedules. I am an old man and these failures make my BP rise. 

Salt makes the body hold on to water, putting extra stress on the heart and blood vessels. Salt -- and worry, and anger -- aren't the only things that can raise blood pressure. Although temporary "spikes" aren't necessarily a problem, numbers that remain high over time can cause serious damage.

Xi Jinping gives a lecture on Inscrutability

 

The Renmin Ribao reports a recent conversation between Xi and Putin.   

　　Xi Jinping pointed out that recently, the situation in eastern Ukraine has undergone rapid changes, which has drawn great attention from the international community. China decides its position based on the merits of the Ukraine issue itself. We must abandon the Cold War mentality, attach importance to and respect the legitimate security concerns of all countries, and form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiations. China supports Russia and Ukraine to resolve the issue through negotiation. China's basic position on respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is consistent. China is willing to work with all parties in the international community to advocate a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security concept, and firmly safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law.

Where stands China?  Who knows? They are inscrutable.  

P.D: A commenter says that Xi's message is crystal clear: "Abandon Cold War mentality", "Respect territorial integrity"... etc.  Xi is against the war in Ukraine. 

Commodities becoming more expensive

 

Apparently, I am still connected to reality, because all the stocks on TASE 35 are red except ICL and Delek. I had to pay 1.6% more for ICL but anyway, I bought and added them to my hoard. The Muscovite Rus  Великое княжество Московское  are back.

Sanctions on Russia

 I think Russia will have difficulties marketing its potash and possibly Bielo Russia too. Ukraine has mobilized its workforce, so its production may suffer. Ergo, ICL's stock will gain. First thing tomorrow: add ICL. Also, oil-related stocks will rise. The whole thing is senseless. It may give ideas to Xi regarding Taiwan. I hate this war. 

Peace and Prosperity Weakens

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the West has to work “very hard” to find alternative sources of energy beyond Russia

The Germans had worked themselves into a dangerous situation. They tried to develop "green" energy sources, phasing out "dirty" sources like nuclear and fossil. Now they depend on Russian gas and oil. Russian forces are poised to attack and they are paralyzed. 

The Woody Allen Paradox

 Woody thinks that the universe has no purpose nor sense, every hundred years humanity recycles itself and a new generation that knows nothing starts again.  And in the long term, the sun cools down and the planets disappear and in the end, the stars go out one by one. One wakes up each morning and goes to work, knowing that this is the truth, yet has to find a purpose in his own life. 

It is a paradox. Or self-deception. 

The Secret History

Ron Unz maintains that the Coronavirus that was discovered in Wuhan in 2019 was an American bioweapon, and it was first applied on the Persian government, and quite effectively, as many of its members died (I remember one sweating in the middle of a press conference and dying the next day). Then it extended to become a pandemia. Revealingly, the Chinese government imposed an immediate countrywide quarantine and Israel imported the Pfizer vaccine and immunized the whole population. Japan closed down all incoming ships and air traffic. The North Korean dictator disappeared and later he was discovered hiding in a remote location.  These vigilant governments reacted immediately and in force. Europe acted confused, England and the Scandinavians hoped that herd immunity will save them.

Unz suggested the zoonosis that decimated China's poultry and then swine industries were American attacks. He also says that the current Russia - American tension is an obvious hoax and the issue is the NordStream gas pipe to Germany. I don't know and did not form any opinion. 

  

TOWER

 I was among the very first investors in Tower Semiconductors many years ago. The company needed more capital and every three months or so they diluted the stock and I needed to buy and pay more. After two three years I lost my optimism and sold it. Then it appeared that they were starting to move and they bought Jazz and I entered again. The company never paid dividends so I slowly sold this hopeless stock. Pic. Russel Ellwanger, the American Mormor manager, persisted and kept on building this Tower miracle.  Ofer who founded the business lost faith in it and sold his shares to insurance companies. Now after 17 years TOWER caught me with a few stocks that after merging with Intel are worth a lot. The same is with Bezeq and the Bazan the Haifa refinery, I buy and sell after a bad spell, but I should hold them through the dark times till the bourse rises again.  

Body Weight Management

 I am very fat. Prof. Baron on youtube said that losing weight lowers blood pressure 20-30 mmHg, so I decided to try. This morning almost fainted and could not work. My last long fast was ten years ago, ate every two days and lost 15 kg. But now I am much frailer. 

Krach!

 The world bourses are falling. TASE is 3% down and some stocks are under -10%. The speculators fear the Fed's rising interest rates, Europeans (and America that is indebted 100% of GNP) fear the correspondingly higher debt burden. I have no such fears but I don't like these oscillations. 

To the left, is a graph comparing 1927 and today. I am uncertain this superposition is valid or not. 

Sax Rohmer: "The hand that held my arm was bony and clawish; I could detect the presence of incredibly long finger nails--nails long as those of some buried vampire of the black ages! Choking down a cry of horror, I opened my eyes... and looked into the face of my guide. It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

The Opium Wars

The Manchu emperor sent his best to confront the English invasion, a direct descendant of Ghengis Khan who had passed the exams (special exams for sons of princes) and assigned him thousands of troops. They knew that the goal was Ningbo, so the Mongol prince built tall walls to stop the invaders. He was convinced that the English could not run nor climb the wall because of their heavy woolen uniforms so that if they fell they could not get up again. The Brits climbed easily the wall and planted their flag. The Chinese ran away and the Brits (Irish, Scots, Hindus, etc.) found an empty city. That was 160 years ago, one wonders if the Chinese have developed better martial skills in the meanwhile. Foto: The battle of Chosin Reservoir, Korea, Chinese prisoners, 1950. 

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir took place in November and December 1950 in North Korea when 25,000 American Army soldiers and Marines were surrounded by 150,000 Chinese forces.

In “The Battle of Chosin Reservoir: Surrounded, Not Defeated,” a symposium, these brave men share what it was like to fight against overwhelming odds in extreme temperatures (as low as 40 degrees below zero) and the struggle to bring out their dead and wounded.

Jews in China

 During the Tang dynasty. Very nice piece. 

Gary Chambers, the Senator from Louisiana

Gary - smoking marijuana - may be Louisiana's next Senator. Chambers said it is "long past due that politicians stop pretending to be better or different than the people they represent." What will the meritocratic mandarins on the other side of the Pacific Ocean think?

Virtuous Cycle

There is full employment in the West but Central Banks keep injecting liquidity. The new money is invested in high tech like Intel's fabs, but some find their way to the bourse. The growing demand for liquid assets fuels rise and the machines, that make the decisions in most funds, play the momentum. As Soros explained in his reflectivity theory, this attracts even more money creating a virtuous cycle that ends with the explosion of the bubble and recession. Prices have reached a permanently high plateau and inflation will keep them there indefinitely. Or not. As for me, although depressed, I play the game. One Hindu guru explains that money can be and is created, and inflated, people look for assets that cannot be created from thin air, like gold, silver... and bitcoin. Illustration: Dutch master Rubens. 
 

The Myth of China

I'm reading the Opium Wars book and it upsets the Leftist/Communist myths. Opium was not introduced by British imperialists, it had been extensively used as an expensive medicine forever.  The Brits in India produced better quality and cheaper opium, and the Chinese bought it. See left. 

Manchu-occupied China was suffering severe financial stress, as silver was its sole currency - taxes and army salaries were paid in silver, and from 1805 the South American silver mines were exhausted and the continent was undergoing a generation of chaos (rebellion against the Spaniards and post-independence civil wars). The silver inflow from Mexican and Peruvian mines had stopped. In this situation, the Qin state fell into semi-paralysis and European iron gunboats encountered feeble resistance.

Chinese imports of Bombay opium were bleeding Chinese silver, collapsing the Manchu imperial state. The myth that British imperialists drugged impotent Chinese does not represent all the truth about China's collapse, because the Manchu regime was already in an advanced state of decomposition. The Manchu ruling conquerors were 0.3% of China's population. They ruled by terror and bureaucracy.

BTW, now I understand why the exam to be recruited into the bureaucracy - the eight-legged essay - was just a composition about a classical poem or saying. Literacy was the key skill of an efficient bureaucrat: the Chinese writing system was incredibly complicated, and all the business of the large Empire was done by detailed reports and letters. 

Flower children in Israel

Not long ago it was the Age of Aquarius and many Jewish flower children sang with Rav Karlebach and settled in Israel.  One Dati-Leumi Aquarian turned up as a client, they live in a Hungarian-speaking moshav and tried to work the land in the highest, purest, Earth-friendly, ecological husbandry. Very nice idealist Americans. 

They refused to connect with the municipal services and built a wetland to recycle the water. They have ducks swimming in the black stinking pond and goats to graze the polluted swamp grass. They are paying religiously the municipal sewage fees although they never used the service. They decided to clean up that overflowing eco swamp and connect the house to the mainline. That requires planning and permits, my trade. 

When in Berkeley, California, in 1970, I befriended on the street a traveling group of "hippies", something resembling the "Hair" movie. Being the serious idiot I was and am, I failed to avail myself of the free sex they were famous for, and dropped off and continued my travels with the Greyhound bus.  

Cities are sinking: Solutions.

HO CHI MINH CITY: Nguyen Van Cu is a construction engineer whose specialty is raising homes. That means he has been busy of late. He recently put the finishing touches to a house he had lifted by more than two meters. A few years ago, he raised a 6,000-tonne church. The Mekong delta is sinking and Saigon is subsiding 8 cm per year. The cause is overpumping the aquifer but mostly the rising of the sea level. The idea of rising buildings is interesting. 

Epidemy in Israel

 

The COVID19 virus has been mutating for two years and now new and effective variants are infecting everybody, from the government mandarins to the last nomadic goatherd. Hospitals are full and there is nothing to do. The plague is on us, again. 

This morning I checked my BP and it was normal. It has to be measured twice and the second is always lower. All my childhood (male) friends are dead. Their goyishe kids (over fifty y.o.) keep writing me. 

Are we stupid?

 "...the Covid-19 vaccine is linked to the excess mortality, and months of vaccine injury reports were now spilling over to actuarial data - which is beginning to show, among other things, that younger, working-age people began dying in greater numbers as vaccine mandates hit - for a disease which primarily kills older, non-working age individuals...." A long article in Zero Hedge

The rise of the English

 I am reading about the formation of the world's first stock company of London merchants that eventually took over India. Their advantage in the existing world commerce was solid union, they had faith in each other, could work at large distances and long term, could work with large capital. Except for the Dutch, no one could compete. 

Mosaic rises 9%, ICL rises 5% in NASDAQ. ICL was falling for weeks but I estimated that the market is wrong, and see, my opinion on ICL is being fulfilled. 

Fear in Stockton

 

I remember Stockton as a nice town in the Central Valley of California. That was 1969. Now fear and insecurity reign. A food truck owner panicked and drew his 38" gun and shot the uniformed firefighter captain. The killer is an elderly mulatto and the captain was a Latino. Not young gangsters on drugs. Insecurity itself kills.