Borrowing from usurers to pay debts

 
Aug 4 (Reuters) - Argentina's government agreed with Qatar a $775 million loan to use to make an International Monetary Fund (IMF) repayment due this Friday. The loan is to be repaid in 32 days and any default will be judged in Britain.

Argentina is grappling with a severe economic crisis with sky-high inflation and falling central bank reserves and is facing IMF repayments.

The Qatar loan will have the IMF's variable interest rate applicable to SDRs (IMF currency), which is currently 4.033% per annum. The funds will "fund the payment of Argentina's maturity with the IMF (for charges and surcharges) on August 4, 2023." The repayment will be made with a $1 billion bridge loan from the regional development bank CAF and $1.7 billion from the second tranche of a swap with China.

I know that Argentina is broke but asking for a short-term shark-loan from an Arab usurer is the road to debt-slavery. It will lose its independence and be sucked dry by those well-known Arab slave merchants. 

Potash, down 33%

Last year there was a general expectation that the Russia-Ukraine war will cause an undersupply situation in the fertilizer market, but then the Canadians sent increasing quantities and the price fell 33%. After a good year 2022, the potash stocks are in the "Strong-Sell" category. This market is cyclical, and I am waiting out this bad season without doing anything. Pic.: Potash mine.

Mr Meschugge

 Hundred and twenty years ago in Berlin, a Yiddisch musician was making fun of Prussian love of order and pomp. I don't even know his real name, it was much before my lived experience, but the concept hit a button in my mind. I must have been revolting and degenerate for serious-minded German bourgeois. 

China takes the lead

 

A car factory in China. Not a person in sight.

Buitre Funds keep picking on Argentina

Ever-rising legal costs and the inherent uncertainty of commercial litigation and arbitration create problems for companies that Burford helps solve. 

Burford is a New York legal firm that specializes in commercial litigation, assuming the risks and costs of the process. It appears that they have bought for 15 million USD the rights of Petersen (Esquenazi fly.) in YPF, which in an unthinking moment had been expropriated by the Kirchner Peronist Government. After fighting for a decade, a New York judge has established that the minimum indemnity must be 5,000 million USD, that is - Burford will profit 20,000%.  Burford is demanding 16,000 million dollars, which is more than YPF is worth today.  Pic: David Perla, the inventor of this scheme. 

The Sun is Overheating

 

The outside temperature is near 40 C which kills my mood for work. My clients are furious but the times when I could work 24 hs in summer are gone. The antigovernment demonstrations are continuing on the streets. The government is not falling for the opposition's provocations. From the outside it appears as if Israel is in chaos, yet, paradoxically, my shares are rising.

Next day: Minister Miri Regev (Likud) sent a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, demanding that an investigation be opened against former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Forum 555, on suspicion of "criminal gathering, civil disobedience, and an attempted coup d'état."   Forum 555 is an organization of a thousand retired pilots and navigators in Israel. It is getting hotter. 

Mysteries of the Human Female

Read an interesting theory on Twitter about the paradox that all the big apes have open, visible ovulations except the human female, who has hidden fertile days and even herself has no idea of it. The theory says that she loves sex and intimacy but hates and tries to avoid pregnancy and birth and being tied down with the baby for years. So nature "has to trick" her to get pregnant by negating her knowledge of her condition. Those women who learned to avoid pregnancy - had fewer or no children and were out-selected by evolution. Those blessed with ignorance or lack of power did reproduce and became the standard model. 

Primitive societies were organized to encourage or force women to give birth, but modern societies liberated them from this issue. So the problem of population decrease is only partially due to the males that do not want to marry. Females are responsible for much of this phenomenon. And thanks to the pill, now they are able to avoid pregnancy forever.