Monday, April 24, 2023

Classic Bank Run


 Credit Suisse has revealed the scale of the bank run that triggered its state-backed rescue in March.

The Swiss banking giant said 61.2bn Swiss francs left the bank in the first three months of the year.


68.6 Billion US dollars. 


Switzerland's Foreign Currency reserves are about 800 - 1000 Billion US$.  The Swiss are very rich. They could have easily saved the bank.  But it was not worth saving. 

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Ohne Fleiss

 

No pain no gain. My first Austrian lesson. Wien 1956.

The Potash market is sinking.  Potash had a substantial price decline in recent months. Prices in Brazil dropped from $1,200/ton in April 2022 to just $600/ton in November 2022.

I speculated that with Ukraine and Russia busy in their war, K supply will fall and prices will go up. But the Canadians exploited the situation to win market share and are flooding the market with potash. 

I am losing a lot of money. 

Friday, April 21, 2023

Great Day for UP


I have urgent, easy projects on the table but am unable to sit down and work. It must be some kind of depression, but I have no cause for feeling bad. Just abulia, inertia, whatnot. In other words, a lack of will, drive, or initiative for action, speech, and thought. This term is derived from the Greek word aboulia, meaning “non-will.” 

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

WINDING UP KEY

WINDING UP! WHERE IS MY KEY?

We had here a week of Pesach work pause and it is mightily difficult for me to re-start work. On Sunday I traveled to Afula for Victory's new store, but I am unable to sit for long and work. How can I wind up to work? I do not need to work but I am afraid of the vacuum if I stop. Work maintains me in life. Or not. God, help me. Maybe too much valium makes me lazy as now I am.


End of the Credit Suisse Chapter


The defunct Swiss Bank not only destroyed records of Jewish deposits during WWII but also helped Nazis to steal Jewish monies. Not only helped them but actively hindered the investigation of its criminal actions. 

A committee of US lawmakers on Tuesday said troubled Swiss bank Credit Suisse Group CSGN.S hampered a multiyear investigation into the servicing of Nazi clients and Nazi-linked accounts.

Credit Suisse commissioned an investigation into allegations levied by a human rights organization that the bank held potential Nazi-linked accounts and failed to disclose them, even during Holocaust-related probes decades earlier. A Senate committee's recent investigation into the matter found the bank hindered the probe and "inexplicably terminated" an independent reviewer overseeing it.

The "information we've obtained shows the bank established an unnecessarily rigid and narrow scope, and refused to follow new leads uncovered during the course of the review," Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.

Now we are starting to understand how those Nazis that immigrated LEGALLY to Argentina after the war arrived with such large fortunes and could buy themselves estancias in Patagonia.  With the disappearance of Credit Suisse that chapter of the Holocaust is now closed and justice was not even remotely done. 

 

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Concentrate! Focus!

 

A whole week wasted without doing work. Pesach and today are Remembrance Day. Internet distractions! Maybe in the afternoon I can concentrate and work.

Bought some Kenon shares.It is 30% down this year, a real bargain (?). Kenon has a complicated corporative structure, lately, it bought  ekWateur - founded by Julien Tchernia, 

 "L’énergie est notre avenir, c’est pourquoi on ne s’économise pas ! Fournisseur d'énergie verte, gaz & bois."  Meaning:  "Energy is our future, that's why we don't economize! Supplier of green energy, gas & wood." That's idiotic, woke and imbecile; but Idan Ofer believes in it. Participez à la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique en passant à une offre d’énergie 100% renouvelable. Changez simplement, sans engagement et sans coupure : on s'occupe de TOUT.

Monday, April 17, 2023

Ma Chi Se Ne Frega


 Evo writes about Italy:  

Italians' mean age is 47; therefore, more than half are past the age of reproduction. With a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, the smaller "procreative fraction" of the population will fall by almost 50% with each generation. (If President Meloni adopts nationalist measures...) she will have to deal with the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the United States, if she does not respect the treaties on the management of immigration, Islam, free and undistorted competition, and the European Union's defense policy.  

If she is really very brave, she will carry on regardless and continue her policy. That is when the European Central Bank will deal with her. Indeed, Italy has become, thanks to Berlusconi, a beggar. It owes its survival only to the accommodative policy of the ECB, which massively buys its abysmal debt, and protects it from hedge funds. Remember that the ECB holds 780 billion [euros] of Italian public debt (30% of total debt), and that this is only growing. Italy's 10-year borrowing rates have already exceeded 4%, which is completely unbearable for the country's budget. Then it would be enough for the ECB to stop its purchases, or even to sell part of its stock on the market at a low price, to immediately raise this rate to stratospheric levels, and make Italy look like Zimbabwe.