Diversity in Swiss Banking

In order to inject new ideas into the uber-conservative Swiss banking, the country's largest bank handed it to Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam, an athletic, talented Senegalese, who started a deep revamping of the organization.  The stock is down by almost half since Thiam took over in mid-2015, after he tapped shareholders for fresh capital. 

Worse, the bank's internal workings have been exposed as slightly un-Swiss, as its top wealth manager Iqbal Khan was spied on following an altercation between Thiam and Khan. Swiss bankers used to be dumb, boring and reliable. This is hardly good for business. In fact, a campaign for sacking Tiam is being fought, but that would look racist.  

Tunnels Under London

Under London there is a labyrinth of infrastructure: underground trains, WW2 antiair refuges, secret nuclear bunkers, power tunnels, Victorian era sewage tunnels and more. To install new infrastructure the bureaucracy is worse than the Israeli red tape, because under today's London there is the London of the Roman era, whose remnants are untouchable. The new sewage system had to be built under the river Thames and the paperwork comprised some one hundred large books. I have visited that work and shall write about it. But see the power infrastructure, which is most impressive. The English are still capable of large, complicated  projects.  I don't notice decadence.  

Kushnir's Peace Plan

Kushnir, President Bush's son in law, has proposed a peace plan for Israel that includes a map that is very similar to the Oslo accord, and sovereignty in all Eretz Israel this side of the Jordan. For all the good intentions, I think it will get no traction, first because the Palestinians plainly rejected it, and second, because the Israeli right and Israeli Arabs are fiercely against it.

Apparently, the Plan includes moving the frontier in the Triangle (that is the area where I live and am familiar with) so the three or four Arab villages (cities, in fact) would lose their Israeli citizenship and find themselves ruled by the corrupt and violent Palestinian government. I say that it will not work, since Israeli Arabs are aware of their privileged status, that includes an effective police, social security, free medical care, unemployment payments, and participation in Israel's dynamic economy, and will not accept any change. Most Arabs work in nearby Jewish towns and enjoy labor rights and high salaries - on the other hand, they fulfil vital roles as construction specialists and contractors, health care workers, supermarket cashiers and so. These cities have also developed a class of wealthy entrepreneurs (I did work for them and always paid me, something Jews … well, leave it) and a powerful political lobby.

Depriving of citizenship a large segment of the population, like Modi did to Indian Muslims, cannot be done in Israel. It is true that no one cares about the many millions of Indian Muslims, and no one really cares about Palestinians. But they care for the Jews and they hate us virulently. The whole anti-Semitic world is just waiting for an alibi to condemn us and much worse. We must avoid giving them a cause.

If the real intention is to restart the negotiations or to frighten Israeli Arabs, then it may accomplish its objectives. I assume Bibi would not have agreed otherwise.

P.S.: On the other hand, The Triangle is foreign body incrusted in the heart of Israel. Politically, it is passive today, and gradually integrating, but could become hostile during a Jew vs Palestinian war. As always, I am uncertain and undecided. 

China Closed

The picture of the deserted Nanjing Road in Shanghai shows the degree of the panic that seized China. The government decreed that the New Year holiday will be extended till Febr. 10. I do not know if the panic is justified but closing down a country is a tragedy in itself. The internet is buzzing with conspiracy theories, as it always does.

Anyone who has been in China in the last two weeks is turned back at Ben Gurion airport. Air crew included. Not nice, but this disease seems very nasty.

P.S.: Received a mail with a comprehensive updated report on the disease. Here 

Heaven is Withdrawing its Mandate

In the USA vs China confrontation, I am with the USA, but I feel sad for the suffering of the Chinese people (pictogram left). Now it is Hubei as the quarantine has been extended from Wuhan to the entire province.

The population is impatient and angry. The disease is a natural disaster, but in China the legitimacy of the rulers is function of the mandate of Heaven, expressed through good harvests. If the ruler follows the right rituals, Heaven favors him. Natural disasters are caused by the ruler's impiety.

Fuelling the anger was the publication of a new paper in The New England Journal of Medicine by a team of researchers affiliated with the Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Hubei Provincial Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Drawing on data from the first 425 confirmed cases in Wuhan, the paper states that "there is evidence that human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts since the middle of December 2019".

Chinese people online were incensed, asking why the government had waited until Jan 20 to inform the public that the virus was capable of being transmitted from human to human. "I'm about to explode, I need an explanation!!!!" Professor Wang Liming of Zhejiang University wrote in a widely shared social media post that was quickly deleted.

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P.S.: The epidemy is becoming a red hot sensitive issue on the internet. I do not want to be part of it and shall stop commenting on it. For now. 

The Incredible Year 2019

I don't think I remember such a good year in the bourse. The IMF blog shows 30% profits on USA stocks, and TASE is not far behind, IMF attributes the bonanza to concerted international monetary easing, that is, extra cheap (better than costless) credit. Its effect will be felt throughout 2020, so says the IMF. It is also planning macro counter-cyclical steps, because the world has entered the late phase of the commercial cycle.

In other words, a managed crash is being planned, and I should think to move my 2019 profits to safe assets. But I cannot find any.

There is no safety in our 3D universe. Only fools imagine that there are safe refuges somewhere. I am investing in evermore risky thingies. As the Mancal used to ask: What happens if the worse comes to worst? What can happen to me? 

Are Bats Birds? Are they Kosher?

The Wuhan virus was, before mutating in the Wuhan live animals and fresh meat market, a bat virus. Some Chinese cook, preparing one of those famous Chinese banquets with live monkey brain, swimming turtle soup, thousand years old eggs, and swallow nest soup, happened to buy a live bat and caught the virus. The rest is history.

This could never happen in Israel. Here, among the believers, bats are classified as birds and included in the Bible's list of impure animals that Jews should not eat. "These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture … and the bat."

In the old fig trees in my street live thousands fruit bats. Old men like me like to watch the street and the birds from the window. For some reason my bats cannot see the walls and in summer nights, they run into them, leaving their bat-shit mark. They are fewer than before as the invading Argentinian green parrots leave them few figs.