Betting on America

 

There is a desperate fight to the death in the chip (processor) arena. INTEL, the aged Alpha Male, lost its edge and is unable to produce the 7-nanometer processor already sold by its competitors Taiwan Semi and Samsung. America is pouring in billions to catch up, as do the Asians to keep their advantage. Israel is a member of the American team and will benefit from the coming technological revolution. I hold INTEL shares - should I sell as the experts suggest? 

Pic.: the INTEL complex in Ocotillo, Yavapai county in Arizona. The place has zero AfroAmerican population. 

Jewish Poverty

 The poorest people in Israel are a large (500,000 person) group of Haredi (religious) people.  The men study in yeshivot and at age 18 marry and continue studying. Not that they are inactive, because caring for a large family is work and to fulfill the innumerable religious customs up to their tinfoil extremes (see the pic of a Haredi kitchen during Pessach) is work, but they do not hold regular jobs and live off Social Insurance. They are Jews, a people historically linked to commerce and money management, but the Haredim choose to live an intellectual life and material hardship. 

This holy poverty also characterized the halutzim, pioneers, who left Europe to dedicate their lives to manual labor in the Holy Land. Their extremism went to the point that they had no personal property nor even shirts. They lived in communes permanently exposed to cruel criticism for bizboozim (wasting resources) such as putting too much sugar in the tea. 

Jewish mass poverty exists, and in our days it is a choice. Other peoples have fakirs and mendicant monks, but our poor are a mass movement. Myself feel the call to holiness too, but for me it is late. Maybe the next time. 

Belt and Road

 

The Belt and Road initiative has been running for a couple of years so it is possible to form an initial appreciation of what it is about. It builds infrastructure necessary for Chinese exports. It is financed by easy loans, tempting the countries to go into debt. This resembles the British Empire's policy in South America in the 19th Century. The republiquetas were unable to pay even the interest, and it was followed by "gunboat diplomacy" such as British banks taking over the customs of Venezuela. Apparently, it is benevolent, like a usurer giving loans to poor people who most probably will not be able to return the loan.    

The China I like

The video clip shows a sanitary worker cleaning a dam,

a rather dangerous job, in Yun Taishan Nature Park. I recognize his accent as the Henan dialect - so different from the unnatural, upper-class Mandarin spoken by officials. This is the China I know and like.  

 

Caveat Emptor (when dealing with Swiss banks)

Lost my balance and hurt my right hand, so I have spent the day studying the markets. Anglo-Saxon banks are scrupulously honest, but Europeans are highway robbers. African banks are chaotic, Asian banks - I am unsure. The Chinese, in my experience, are dishonest. Credit Suisse, my personal bête noire, is being sued in the Greensill affair, which at last understood.

It is like this: Credit Suisse froze $10 billion of Greensill's funds, causing its insolvency as it found itself unable to repay a $140 million owed to Credit Suisse. Incredibly, Credit Suisse continued to market Greensill funds as a fully insured, low-risk product despite a decision by insurers to discontinue coverage. All that knowing that Greensill was broke (they had caused its bankruptcy, did they?).  Seems to me a clear case of fraud.

Did I write Sullivan's Speech?

 

Reading the transcript of the American-Chinese meeting in Alaska last week, it jumped into my sleepy brain: I wrote this thing, did I? 

SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and welcome to Director Yang and State Councilor Wang. It's fitting that we're meeting here in Alaska. We may be far from the continental United States, but there are few places that are as quintessentially American: big-hearted, resilient, intrepid. This is truly a fitting place for us to host this meeting.

Prof. Moshe Many, President of Tel Aviv University, had to speak at a Board of Governors Meeting and asked me to write him the opening speech. I wrote "It's fitting that we are meeting here in TAU campus, in Israel..." etc. I too used the recherche word quintessentially. The speech was a great success and I was paid 200 dollars. Prof. Many was Syrian Jew who specialized in venereal diseases and travelled frequently to Saudia to treat King Saud. Since then, I keep finding my rhetorical inventions recycled on the most unexpected occasions. For example, in every Annual Meeting since then. "This is truly a fitting place for us to host this Annual Meeting of TAU's Board."

Th. Nöldeke and Allah

Th. Nöldeke, a German academic specialized in the Quaran, writes:   A closer investigation of the apparent Jewish and Christian elements in the Koran will lead to the conclusion that the primary elements shared by Christianity and Islam are of Jewish colouring. For example, the familiar Muslim creed: 

 is derived from a Jewish formula; verse IISamuel 22:33 = Psalms 18:32  מבלעד יי השה מי-אל and appears in the Targum as ליחא להא אלא יי