Bank Run

 The Silicon Valley Bank experienced a run last week and closed down. The FED promised to cover the debts. Now the Republic Bank is falling 60%. Israeli financial system stable. 

Overall, I AM optimistic. For a long I was saying, that to get the economy moving, the only solution was a good war. That's the way capitalism works.  Marx said so 140 years ago.  The Ukrainian war is starting to consume all the old ammunition and tanks of Europe and America, and they need to be replaced. There is another war coming in Taiwan. So there is demand, capitalism's chronic problem, and it will absorb excess production.  

Planning the future

 

My friend Chat GPT reports that an individual with my profile has 7 more years to live. If so, I can make a 4 years plan with a reasonable probability of completing it. What can be my goal, if not to enrich my grandkids?  The problem is that money, generally, makes little or no difference in their generation. Food, shelter, money is not a problem for them. How will my next four years best spent? Sex is only a memory. I hate purposeless hobbies and tourism. 

P.D.: Today I wasted surfing the internet, writing comments no one reads and pays for. 

Hard Times

 Many important populations find it impossible to maintain their numbers. Their health and prosperity are appearance.  We are living in very hard times. Peoples are dying off. 

My Bet on America

 
The Chinese practiced thousand of years a rigid promotion system through competitive exams. The system produced intelligent, competent governance. The Anglo-Saxons promoted through free market competition, giving little weight to formal titles. The French copied the exam system (Grand-Ecole). After 200 years we see that the French became static, conservative, and prudent like the Celestials. The English became dynamic, expansive, and adventurous. Communist China follows the same imperial system most strictly. America is free and chaotic. The past predicts the future, so never bet against America. 

Omohundro meets Reality

 "Artificial Intelligence/robots/Omohundro: Problem: intelligent entities must act to preserve their own existence. This tendency has nothing to do with a self-preservation instinct or any other biological notion; it’s just that an entity cannot achieve its objectives if it’s dead. According to Omohundro’s argument, a superintelligent machine that has an off switch - which some, including Alan Turing himself, in a 1951 talk on BBC Radio 3, have seen as our potential salvation - will take steps to disable the switch in some way.

Thus we may face the prospect of superintelligent machines - their actions by definition unpredictable by us and their imperfectly specified objectives conflicting with our own - whose motivations to preserve their existence in order to achieve those objectives may be insuperable."

This argument does not need superintelligent machines, it reflects the reality of each one of us in this world. No animal nor human is ready to die (to change the switch on "OFF") and it will strive to keep going. AI is frightening, but no more than an unknown stranger. 

Bloomberg Warns against the Russian Fertilizer Weapon

 

Israeli fishwrap HaAretz translates a Bloomberg article about the new Russian danger: Fertilizers. Russian fertilizer is stuck in European ports (because of the sanctions) and cannot reach the countries needing it, creating a worldwide famine risk. The African Development Bank warns the lack of chemical fertilizers may cause a 20% fall in food production. 

Bloomberg is not stupid but the title is misleading. The fertilizer cannot be delivered because of  European sanctions, and Bloomberg blames Russia? Or it is only HaAretz?

Room in the Market

NUTRIEN the largest fertilizer company in the world, says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to disrupt global food chains.

Nutrien said it plans to increase its production this year to between 13.8 million and 14.6 million tonnes — up from 12.5 million tonnes in 2022, saying that rising crop prices are offsetting rising potash prices.

Looking more broadly, chief executive Ken Seitz said the conflict in Ukraine has created challenges for both Belarus and Russia, which together have accounted for 40 per cent of global potash production. The result is immediate and long-term effects on the market, Seitz said.

“If you look at the new production that was to come to the market over the next five years, 60 per cent of that outside of our own increases was to be coming from Russia and Belarus,” said Seitz, “and that we believe those projects are delayed.”

More immediately, he said Russian production would decline 15 to 30 per cent in 2023, while Belarusian production would decline 40 to 60 per cent. Already, he cited reports that Belarusian production had declined 50 per cent in recent months due to challenges shipping out of tidewater ports in Ukraine.

“So it all has the effect of creating room in the market,” said Seitz.

The Saskatoon YMCA where I spent time in the winter of 1969. I was young and didn't suffer from the cold. The YMCA rooms were overheated,