No, We Dont Have SARS 2 in Israel - Yet.

It appears that the Wuhan coronavirus (SARS mutation) have not yet arrived in Israel. What we have is a very cold (for Israel) and rainy winter, and plenty of regular "shapa'at" killing old people. I got vaccinated, and it is working. The new SARS (pic.) is of unknown origin, the old one was caught from the Asian civet (pic.). When working in the hill country of Yunnan, the engineers with me stopped the jeep in a roadside minority open market and bought beautiful puppies, that were cooked with rice on open fire in a nearby "kitchen". They invited me but declined and arranged a separate room where I ate only rice. No one got sick, but the driver got drunk and almost killed all of us, proving that Chinese eating habits can be dangerous. Selling live animals is forbidden in Israel, and there is a special police to protect wildlife.

The Wall Street Journal writes that pneumonia deaths in China are not being registered as caused by the new SARS, suggesting that the epidemy is much wider than reported. No kidding, the new coronavirus is more infectious than the one that caused SARS . 

What to Do when Deflation Hits

The European Central Bank decided to continue buying financial assets to stimulate the economy that is in danger of falling into a Japanese style deflationary spiral. The pumping of liquidity into the markets has increased the stock exchange values some 25% in 2019 and 2020 appears to be similar. Can deflation be warded off? If not, when it will start? What to do to defend my savings?

Which Japanese player has survived and prospered in these last twenty years of deflation?

Somebody advised leveraged long real estate. Another said diversify internationally. Any ideas...?

Soros in Heightened Awareness

Working myself through Soros' Alchemy, wonder why journalists mistranslate his name. Soros, in Hungarian, my mother tongue, means "The Next One" i.e. the next in the queue. Victor Niederhoffer calls him the "Palindrome".

His critics accuse him of profiting from the expropriation of Jewish businesses in Budapest under the Nazis, forgetting that he was fourteen years old and living in mortal danger, like all the Jews. No Hungarian Jew ever blamed him of collaborating with the Nazis. We dislike him because he never gave a cent to Jewish causes, yet he gives untold millions to combat European nationalism. He is still fighting Szalasi and his long hanged Fascist Nyilas party. A sick obsession, for sure.

In the book Soros explains in detail how his philosophy allowed him to predict the movement of currencies and stocks. His graphs tell me a different story, he simply bought rising stocks and knew when the trend-chasing herd's sentiment was about to turn around and sold in time. He says he lived focused on his speculations and in a state of heightened awareness. I believe him, he may have been on Benzedrine as most in Wall Street.

I do not know if it is out of self-hate, but he rejects all link to the Jewish people, but that - unfortunately - is unexceptional - Budapest Jews were/are like that. His philanthropic foundation is nothing less that the mythical BuSab (Bureau of Sabotage), it organizes and funds all kind of destructive political movements, including Palestinian anti-Israeli subversion. He has convinced many (like the Malaysian President) that there is a real, evil Jewish conspiracy. In the positive side, he lives a normal family life and has five children, which is exceptional for his class. For me, his idée fixe is wrong and rather pathetic.

Notable Quote: "Created in an emergency, can survive only in emergencies, creates for itself a constant state of emergency." 

Love of Foreign Conflicts

Erdogan, President of Turkey, has sent expeditionary forces to fight for one of the sides in conflict in Libya. If successful, Turkey will own (or have a dominant influence) Libya, an important energy source of Europe.

Now Erdogan is leading Turkey into another foreign adventure. Somalia offered Turkey an offshore  concession in its presumed territorial waters. Any involvement in the project risks pulling Turkey  into direct conflict with neighboring Horn states such as Kenya, as the oil blocks in question are in the disputed maritime zone — a long-running quarrel which is yet to be resolved in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The disputed area is approximately 100,000 square kilometers and is known  to contain significant deposits of oil and gas.

No Western oil company is willing to return to Somalia because of the conflict and because the country's instability. In 1969 a military regime came to power and adopted Scientific Socialism as its ideology, thus becoming un-accessible. In 1977 Somalia invaded Ethiopia and was defeated. Somalia then entered its darkest era: lawlessness, anarchy and the absence of a central authority.  

George Soros Reflexions

Bought and read the Hungarian Jewish Speculator George Soros book The Alchemy of Finance. (Pic from 1962 on Wall Street). Much philosophical ruminations typical of Budapest coffee houses of the thirties, when people had no money but had much free time. Only when analyzing international finance he speaks about something he knows but it is difficult for me to follow his reasoning because things have changed so much.

Soros describes in detail his "experiments" in financial speculation, trying to discover the reaction of the market and then, if succeeds, to speculate in force. He explains that experiments in natural science work because nature has objective laws, while markets are the result of the wrong (distorted) opinions of the participants. Even after reading it twice I am unable to extract operational advise from his method.

He focuses on the 1987 Crash, which is actual for him, and is impressed by the Japanese reaction. In the middle of the panic, the Japanese government phoned to investment houses and brokers to buy and sustain the stock exchange, and so they escaped the crash. Soros reaches the conclusion that the social stability of Japan, a closed society, is superior to America's open society, and that Japan will supplant America and the yen, the dollar. (*)

Of course that did not happen. Japan entered a phase of deflation and debt, and show no signs of competing with America. A new power emerged, Communist China, a development Soros did not see. China is ten times larger than Japan, and it aims to eject America from Asia and become a world power. Chinese stock exchanges follow the Government orders, and they seem stable. Till now, China seems happy to get rich in the shade of American military superiority. May be war can be avoided in the next decades.

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(*) Subsequently, Soros created his Open Society Foundation which focuses in liberalizing Eastern Europe. In 2019 Hungary concluded that its activities were harmful and expelled it. Hungary is now trying to strengthen its national identity and increase natality. 

Lurking Danger II

From Europe, the war in Lybia looks different.  The least of their worries is oil and gas. Di Maio, the most active European, Italy's Foreign Minister, says that "Europe stands to lose the most in the Libya conflict. Just think of the 700,000 migrants in the country. If the war escalates, the humanitarian plight will also worsen, and many will come to Europe."

He most fears thousands of Africans sailing to Italy. For some reason, those well-armed Europeans feel impotent against naked beggars. 

What is the purpose of life?

Oy...!