Great Powers Politics weighs upon Israel

 

America has decided to combat China's progress towards economic supremacy and to punish Russia for impeding the expansion of NATO. Israel has international bidding to build the Haifa Nazareth light train line. Suddenly, the Chinese and Russian companies withdraw their offers or, probably, were rejected. Israel will pay more for this infrastructure and the quality will be inferior. This stupid blackballing is costing us a lot. But I understand that we must obey the orders of our leader - America. 

God Save Me from those Jewish Girls

 

Today there is a Flag Parade in Jerusalem. Thousands visited the Mosque up on the hill. The police were present to ensure that there was no violence. 

It was agreed that there would be no praying in the Muslim area. Anyway, some appeared to worship in the sacred spot.

Self Motivation

 

Sweating the Regulation

 

The permitting process in Israel has evolved and a monstrous industry of compliance with regulation has appeared. I am part of this industry and can attest that it has grown increasingly difficult to transit through. The preparation of the submittal for a small, rural coffee shop took me six months, with successive rejects and refinements. Even today it is not complete, the Ministry of Health demands proof of origin of the water, and the Client has not sent me yet a water bill. I am losing interest in this odious line of work. 

This book examines a range of different British regulatory bodies, including the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, the regulators for health and social care, and the regulators covering communications, energy, rail, and water. 

For the Record: 12.23 and I did not start even reading the Requirements דרישות of the regulator, dated December 13, 2021. And not I am going to take my siesta. I have no excuse.

PS: Went to the bed at 1.00 AM

Intrepid Potash

 
Intrepid Potash averaged $703 per ton for potash sales in the first quarter, more than double the $284 per ton it averaged on sales a year ago. Intrepid Potash shares have added about 79.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -13.3%. I think this year it will achieve 1200 US$/ton. 

I know what I have to do. 

Pic.: The Moab evaporation ponds. 

The first step is the most difficult

 

Another day. I have urgent work to do. It is 11 AM and still could not force myself to sit and concentrate and start working. 

Post Date: 19-5-22 1230 hs. Another day. Slept badly, dreamed that Ilana Ben Ami takes exams for my daughters and me, and Nomi fails but it is not important. OK, let's start the working day with the Moshav Matzliah bakery. The pills are working and I have a low BP of 100/65  and am without energy. 

Wasting time

When I went to school in Vienna, trying to understand the goings-on, the Austrian boy at the next desk gave me a present. Something like this, but bigger and painted with colors. That was in 1957. 

For the record: I did no work today. I measured my BP and it was low, like a young man. Fed mostly on bananas and spent the day at home. Now I am trying to force myself to finish the Azriel Cannabis project.

Ohne Fleiß kein Preis 

Studying Falkenstein

For years, my fav blogger was Eric Falkenstein, from Minneapolis, but lately, he stopped writing. One paragraph about the art of investment, not that I understand him fully:

While I agree with most people that many investors are ignorant and susceptible to biases, these suboptimal decision-makers are a poor explanation for equilibrium asset prices; their bad decision-making is mainly evinced by excessive trading. It doesn't take many smart traders to figure out that if they steel themselves against those risky-stock promoters they can make large risk-adjusted returns. It's not complicated, you don't have to tie yourself against a mast like Odysseus, just don't listen to conference calls or watch CNBC, and instead just crunch datasets where all you know about ABC corp are its objective metrics.  Then buy the wallflower stocks and sell the crazy/hot ones. Arbitrageurs should counteract behavior biases in asset markets with free entry.

He thinks that the investor's main motivator is envy and not greed.  

TASE Volatility

 After I finished helping my daughter to buy the apartment of her dream, I stopped following the bourse. Now I am lightly interested and amazed by the volatility. The shares I used to follow now lose 10% a day and then rise 10% the next. I never saw such volatility. The meaning is that the bourse community is uncertain and fearful: they do not know what to do. I think I may restart speculating again, this time without a goal, just because it is interesting and I am disgusted with the בודקי תוכניות (this is a new profession. The authorities have hired failed, misanthrope engineers to criticize the projects submitted for approval. These are bad people that enjoy rejecting projects. Now it takes three to five years on average to get a היתר בנייה aka building permit. Via Dolorosa.)

Israel Prospering

 

S&P, a credit rating company confirms Israel's credit rating: AA minus. The main characteristics of the State of Israel's credit rating are a diversified and robust economy, strong external accounts, an optimal debt structure alongside increased geopolitical risks.

S&P expects the Israeli economy to grow at a rate of 5.5% in 2022, after in 2021 the actual growth was 8.2%, higher than the company's original forecast of 6.5%. The company points positively to the strong external accounts with a surplus in the balance of payments and high foreign exchange reserves, supported by a strong high-tech sector. Russia-Ukraine war has zero impact on the economy.

The Coalition: Ra'am, the Islamic Movement's Bedouin Party, is part of the governing coalition. Reacting to the police beating of Palestinian demonstrators on the Temple Hill, it retired it support for the government. To come back, they demanded a large bribe. Bennet would not agree, so they stopped negotiating with him and demanded to speak with Liberman, the corrupt but smart Monies Minister. They found a common language and in no time, the Bedouins are back in the government. The Torah forbids us to wage war repeatedly against the same enemy, so they will not learn to fight. Seems to me that we have been bribing the Bedouins for so long that they have learnt the mechanics of successful blackmailing and are better at it than we are. Abu Something their leader declared that good things are coming soon to the nomad encampments.

Shura will decide

 

Tomorrow will be the vote in the Knesset about the dissolution of the government. If the Ra'am Islamic party decides so, the Bennet government falls. Ra'am has convoked consultations (Shura in Arabic) and they will decide the fate of Israel. Presumably, millions will flow into the pockets of the Beduin leadership and Bennet will have a respite.  

Life expectancy

 

According to the US Social Security calculator, I have 11.6 years to live. According to John Hancock Insurance, I'll die at 97.  I'll look like this fellow Hungarian Jewish refugee. Not nice. 

Anyway, I have to work out a quinquennial plan. 

Discovering the Pokemon Universe

 

Arbel has a big Pokemon cards album and demonstrated to me what each critter does. Could you believe that this superannuated grandpa had never heard of the Pokemon universe?  Springtime for the always-learning saba J. 

A Fresh Face in the White House

The new American Press Secretary is a very nice Haitian lesbian.  
 

A New Calamity

 The environmental craziness has found another way of stopping development. From The Economist:

Nutrient neutrality came suddenly to Herefordshire, a pretty corner of western England, in 2019. “We had no warning. We just got a letter in the post,” says Merry Albright of Border Oak, a local house-builder. Like others, Ms Albright quickly discovered that she could no longer obtain permission to build homes across two-fifths of the county. She now travels across England, as far as Essex in the south-east, to seek work.

The rules that have paralyzed house-building in Herefordshire are designed to protect rivers and wetlands. Nutrient neutrality means that no development likely to draw people to an area, from a new home to a campsite, can be approved if it will result in more nitrates or phosphates entering a protected river. That is a severe limitation, since water-treatment plants do not remove all pollutants before discharging into rivers. In practice, the rules make building much harder.

Shanghai Refugee Museum.

 

A statue outside the Shanghai Jewish Museum.

A relative, Dr. Kovacs, was there. He came to Argentina with many Chinese artistic artifacts. 

Big Steps in China

 

A sculpture of a giant person walking stands still at the entrance of the Super Sample exhibition in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province. One of the largest artworks produced in China in recent years, Walking Person by renowned artist Su Xinping depicts a person taking big steps forward, raising a series of questions for viewers to think about: Where does he come from? Where is he going? Why is he in such a hurry?

The Forbidden City

Those who entered Beijing through the Beijing port have to undergo 10 days of centralized quarantine and seven days of home quarantine, and those who entered Beijing through other Chinese cities are allowed to enter the capital after 14 days of quarantine in the entry cities. Otherwise, they are not allowed to enter Beijing. 

Beijing announced it would conduct three more rounds of district-wide nucleic acid testing from Tuesday for 12 districts, and the first round of testing collected samples from 19.9 million people, and three tubes which mixed 10 samples in one tube tested positive. 

Beijing has basically figured out the hidden community transmissions (ed.: It is public buses and they closed several stations and public toilets.)

From Global Times. 

Israel GDP per capita overtakes Germany

SOURCE. 

This is the time to remember my friend Benno Gitter, who dedicated his life to Israel's economic independence (and making much money).

 Benno Gitter lied that he was born in Amsterdam in 1919. In fact, he was Romanian. In 1942 he and his family fled to Argentina, where he resumed his career in the leather business. In 1954 he emigrated to Israel. Since then he has been closely involved with the economy and industry of Israel, especially the Israel Discount Bank Group and CLAL, of which he was co-founder and with Tel Aviv University. 

Jews in Euphoria

 I tried to take off the weekend but cannot. The Jews here are in euphoria, everybody and his dog are starting businesses and adding factory space, and phoning me every hour to get plans and permits ready. They are sending me money to make me work and I am unable to refuse. Last Friday I completed transferring the large amount promised to my daughter for the purchase of a luxury apartment in Hod Hasharon. She wanted a view of a green park, how can a father say no? 

Independence day today. Tomorrow the clan will have a barbecue. The weather is nice. People are in euphoria. 

Israel in the New World Order

 Reading Chinese papers I was surprised by a mention of The Epoch Times publication, which I had never heard about before. I went directly to its website and spent an hour watching a Victor Hanson interview. The professor is very pessimistic, the post-WWII American order is collapsing and the Ukraine war can easily evolve into a worldwide conflagration. Yet he ends with an optimistic vision of America leading a Western alignment, which is much stronger than China alone. 

Alone among Western gurus he said some very ugly but true things about the Ukrainians. For example that half-million Ukrainian volunteers defended the Atlantic coast and when Americans landed, they were "welcomed" by Ukrainian-speaking Wehrmacht soldiers. Putin is right about them being Nazis. It is somewhat amazing to watch the Jewish comic actor hired by the Nazi forces to play the role of their Leader. 

Anyway, some of the remaining Ukrainian Jews that are part of the 5 million Ukrainian refugees are making aliyah instead of moving to Switzerland. Source.  

In 2021 there were some 30,000 new immigrants, and the wave is growing. Israel's population grew 2% year-to-year and we are approaching 7 million Jews here. Natural increase is rising - there is hope ahead. American Jews (as all decent city Whites) are feeling increasingly out of place. Whites are evacuating in mass the cities because of the physical violence, the third-world cultural and political environment, the education centered on woke ideology, the oppressive taxation and legislation. Some Jews are already thinking this it is not for them and their families. 

Shanghai Mystery: Is it Martial Law?

The Authorities have quarantined the whole population of Shanghai, 25 million inhabitants, forbidding them to go out of their apartments without a medical pass.  It is a fantastically well-managed operation. The pic shows the new Baimao makeshift hospital for those identified as infected by the COVID-19 virus. It is an architectural marvel, built with identical factory-made containers, with sanitary installation visible. All rooms air-conditioned. All very standardized and clean. Compare with the leaking tents set up on hospital parking spaces we had here in Israel.  

The mystery is why the Chinese leadership has adopted this total, fanatical quarantine policy, unique in the whole world. Hanania says in a podcast that the reason is that they are unable to produce the immunization vaccine. That is ridiculous. (*) Others say that the Chinese must know something. I know nothing but respect the Chinese and am going out the minimum. 

(*) Maybe it is not. There is no answer for the Omicron variety, and others are certainly evolving. 

P.S.: Maybe the government is preparing the population for the event of a biological attack. Say a new deadly strain appears and there is no time to prepare the immunization vaccine. 

The lockdown also is a form of martial law while convincing the population that it is protecting them against the epidemy.