Dios castiga y no con palo

God punishes but not with a whip. Credit Suisse was caught destroying the records of deposits by Jews killed in the Holocaust. Those condemned Jews deposited their saving in Swiss banks, thinking that the Swiss were safe and honest. They were wrong. It appears that evil acts are written down in some books in the high, and when the accounting is done, they get paid. Credit Suisse has been slowly agonizing for the last twenty years and today is starting to enter into a coma.   

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?