Trump the Puppetmaster

Trump sent out a short tweet that suggests that the USA vs China trade war may not turn into WWIII. The world financial markets, depressed for the whole last week, suddenly received an injection of adrenalin and NASDAQ is jumping 1%. The whole world has been hypnotized by Trump and is trying anxiously to read his lips. That's power. Yesterday I commented to my wife that TEVA seems to be bankrupt, closed my eyes and visualized TEVA's worldwide distribution network and asked myself: If that is not a moan, what is a moan? and bought more of the same. Today there were some good news about its former opium pushing business and lifted strong.

I am working hard. Remembering Trotsky's comment that he felt most happy in the prison cell where he was incommunicado while well supplied with paper, ink, journals and books, and he could write all day and night. I have the same temperament.  

HaAretz fishwrap horrorized: Israeli college separates girls from boys !

Today's Front Page news. 

HaAretz discovered a college that against Ministry of Education's orders has separate sitting arrangements for male and female students. Myself attended the all male Mariano Moreno college in Buenos Aires, and the girls went to the mysterious Liceo Numero Tres a few blocks down street.

If all the progress achieved by humanity in the last fifty years is mixed colleges, well, I for one don't see much or any progress. So much ado about nothing, so much fury and fuss over a trifle. 

Tyler Cowen explains negative interest rates

"Some of the negative nominal premium comes from the fact that you need these govt. securities for collateral, REPOs, clearinghouse margin, etc.
That doesn’t explain *the change*, but this point is often overlooked and it makes the puzzle somewhat less mysterious.
In part, negative nominal (and real) rates reflect a scarcity of good opportunities *at the margin*, but of course inframarginal opportunities may be fine.
If you wish to try a further de-weirding of this, it may reflect a truth about agency problems rather than absolute pessimism.
If capital is relatively plentiful, and talent is super-scarce, and you don’t know how to find marginal talent, you may be stuck just storing your money.  But when talent and liquidity are combined — say Mark Zuckerberg — it will earn phenomenal returns, the other side of the coin.
In other words, this may all be a kind of correlate to income inequality and massive returns for founders…
…you have extra money, you really would like to lend it out for a real productive investment, rather than storing it at slightly negative nominal interest. [savings glut, a’la Softbank]
But whom to trust? Who is your local Mark Zuckerberg? You just don’t know. The uncle you might give it to will just rip you off and he is a dope anyway. [tech talent harder to spot because you can’t rely on traditional credentials]
If the agency wedge is larger, because the talented are already occupied for the most part, you might just have to store it.
This implies mega-returns for good talent spotters, which in fact we observe as of late."

J wonders what are "agency problems".

• Agency problem is a conflict of interest inherent in any relationship where one party is expected to act in the best interest of another. Agency problem arises when incentives or motivations present themselves to an agent to not act in the full best interest of a principal.

But it makes no sense in Tyler's context. May be he is referring to scarcity of able manpower aka talented Jews. If so, try the Har Bracha yeshive (pic). 

I learn something new every day. 

San Francisco-On-The-Hadas

Hadas is the name of the only "river" near my beloved city of Kever Benjamin. Hadas is a winter stream that flows from the pond behind the Ushiland Shopping Center (pic), receives the treated wastewater of the Kfar Saba WWTP and flows on to feed the Yarkon River.

The only thing common to San Francisco and my place is the rejection of development: the Municipality will invent the most bizarre reasons why no new buildings may be built nor apartments added to the existing ones. The recently elected major "froze" two important projects in the downtown that already had their permits, and wove that no new developments - approved or not - will pass. The obvious result of this policy is an immediate jump in real estate prices. As owner, it benefits me, but on the other hand, I would love my daughters buying and settling near. Prices are not yet at the infamous San Francisco range (after all, this is a town bordering with knife-wielding savages), where hi-tech millionaires can only afford a mobile home, but we are not far.

Frightened by the financial media talk about recession and crash, I had been looking for investable real estate nearby, and a 4-room 40-years old apartment costs about 700,000 dollars. And going up fast.

I am wondering if current prices are... cheap. Maybe I should take a 25 year mortgage and buy. The bank doesn't care that my probabilities of being alive in 2044 are nil, they would love to lend me the money, just ask dear J. 

River Mismanagement and Sinking Cities

Let's forget the damming of China's big rivers and the channeling of the high Himalaya flows to feed Beijing. They don't appreciate criticism. Let's look at the Mekong. Soon there will be no Mekong as we knew it through old Vietnam War films.

The big cities in the world are sinking. Tel Aviv is not so big but the Coastal Aquifer below is overpumped and buildings have to be reinforced and/or collapsing. Jakarta's subsidence is 20 cm a year. Much already is flooded. Manila, Dhaka, Saigon, Venice, etc. and nearer to us, Alexandria. If the icebergs keep melting, most coastal cities will have problems. Much infrastructure will be needed, more work for the water engineers of the next generation.

I know, we the Jews will be blamed for all these problems. So let pre-empt them: YES! We did it! 

Huszar Aladar the Chief Sheriff of Hungary

The Polish Jewry had been "liquidated", the Germans had already lost the war and the Russian army was approaching and Eichmann was organizing the deportation, yet Hungarian Jews lived in the illusion that the evil will pass them. Now I see that they had some basis for hope, since many decent Hungarian politicians and churchmen courageously protected the Jews. One of them was Huszar Aladar, pic., his title was Fo-Ispan, which means Chief Sheriff. He ended in Dachau.

The EU is emitting a memorial Euro with the pic of the Losonc synagogue. My Grandfather Duved came from there. He suffered a lot when the Hungarians (Horty) demanded he prove his Hungarian roots going hundred years back. Or be expelled to fascist Slovakia. Anyway, he was deported with the whole family to the poison gas chambers of Auschwitz. If I had a son I would have called him David. His name lives on through David Libermann of Melbourne.

BTW, the Neolog Synagogue in the bill is NOT our synagogue. We belonged to the extreme Orthodox community.

Israel starts to evict Philippine families

Many Philippine caretakers had affairs or found partners in Israel and have children born and raised in Israel. Up to now, the Supreme Court forbid for humanitarian reasons the expulsion of these children and their mothers. Those who care understood that the our Judge-Gods are not for the people but for hyper-altruistic humanism, and worked to elect sober ones. We are seeing some changes. Judges who are not slaves to the foreign media but take into account the survival needs of this embattled country.