Thursday, December 7, 2017

New Hope in TASE

TASE the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is changing directors in hope it will recover from the disastrous decision in 2010 to change its classification from developing to developed nation. Anat Guetta is TASE's next hope. She is from Libyan Jewish extraction. Which demonstrates that we Austro-Hungarians have lost the control of Israeli finance.

Anat, for those interested in these things, was the name of a forgotten Hebrew fertility goddess, the counterpart (wife) of Yahoo. That was before he become sole King of the Creation.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Jews Arrogantly Continuing To Exist, Prosper

Initial efforts to eliminate Jews as a people first occurred during the latter half of the sixth century BCE.

Jerusalem, December 6 – Despite thousands of years’ worth of efforts to eradicate them and demonstrate the world does not want them, Jews persist in arrogant defiance of popular will by remaining in existence, and in many cases doing well, reports indicate.

Initial efforts to eliminate Jews as a people first occurred during the latter half of the sixth century BCE, historians note, and have continued on and off until the present, but have seen only mixed success at best, owing in part to what scholars call a conceited attitude on the part of Jews as individuals and as a community not to bend to the manifest preferences of those around them that they disappear or be destroyed by violence if possible.

“It’s unheard of for anyone to sustain arrogant defiance for so long,” remarked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a leading proponent of efforts to convince Jews to consent to extermination, by force if necessary. “It has to give, since arrogance is one of those flaws that eventually destroys you. So it has to be merely a matter of time before the entire flimsy edifice of Jewish pride comes crashing down. Perhaps we can even install a countdown clock in Tehran to help anticipate that day.”

Others noted the antidemocratic implications of Jewish insistence on continuing to exist, let alone reestablish an economically advanced sovereign state in their historic homeland. “This goes against the will of the majority of nations,” argued Mahmoud Abbas, a noted practitioner of democratic norms. “The Jews make a big deal of maintaining ‘the only truly democratic state in the Middle East,’ when in fact the very existence of that state violates the democratic principles they invoke in the process. The arrogance and hypocrisy are astounding, and the international community has not done enough to counter it. By the way, any solution that involves sidelining me and my cronies or depriving us of our economic fiefdoms is a non-starter.”

Part of the problem, analysts explain, lies in the piecemeal nature of the efforts to force Jews to acquiesce to the will of the majority. “It takes concerted effort to overcome such powerful arrogance,” noted Maurice Papon, who studied French WWII policy. “Only the Nazis managed to induce much of Europe to get rid of Jews, and even then they were only able to destroy about a third of them. Then the survivors went and built a state that’s an economic and technological powerhouse. We can’t let that accomplishment go to the Jews’ heads – what does it say about the rest of us?”

Good. Copy/Paste from Source

A Rainy Day in Tel Aviv

After years of nudging, the American President accepted Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State. Thanks, Mr Trump.

TASE, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange dropped in anticipation of widespread protests and violence in the chaotic Middle East. The NASDAQ also dropped a little but probably for other reasons, such as rotation to companies expected to profit from Trump's reduction of taxes.

I worked all day on the Rehovot project, the regulators demanded the detailed design of a garden fountain and a fish pond. The things exist and are fifteen years old, documenting them is absolutely useless. If the regulators happen to dislike the design, the owner will need to destroy or rebuild them. This is the same regulator that once demanded from me to hire a lifeguard for a hotel jacuzzi.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Currency Speculation

The Marker has an article today about taxing the bitcoin. The government considers the bitcoin a taxable object, so any transaction has to be invoiced and charged 17% VAT (מע"מ). Purchase/Sale profits are taxed at 25%. Since bitcoin transactions are anonymous and evade the bank system, they are invisible for the taxman and the tax cannot be enforced.

The Marker says that it would make sense to consider the bitcoin a currency. FOREX profits are normally taxfree. The problem is that the crypto has no Central Bank and it grows wild in the internet sphere.

My insight is that today the only profit that escapes taxation is currency speculation. Soros made his fortune betting against the British pound, and our Fishman lost the Alliance tire factory by being careless in his speculation against the Turkish lira. Macro-theoretically, it would be enough to look at the foreign trade deficit of a country and interest rates to predict devaluation, but of course economic theory is useless in this field too.

In current environment of competitive devaluation, what is to be done? I have to think.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Chip Stocks Falling

Breaking a two year trend, chip stocks tumbled this morning. I had just rotated from General Electric to Nvidia and others in the cloud and the artificial intelligence sector. The robot analysts say that it is because of fear of oversupply (?!). I think that it was Donald Trump who caused the debacle by reducing the taxes in America, so that the robot investors sold chips and moved to areas that would benefit from the tax cut. Anyway, the sheqel is so strong that in dollar terms I am winning. 

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Emma Cline about Teenagers

She wrote a book about two teenagers involved in a Charles Manson-like cult and sold it for two million dollars. Now her own bizarre sex life is coming out, which for this old Jew is quite shocking. She had been actively seeking porn adventures and casual sex for years, all registered in her computer. She had planted the spy program on her own computer to spy on her boyfriend who occasionally used it. 

In the pic she looks like an angel. I hope she is not Jewish, although she may be because writing successful porn books is a Jewish trait. 

Privatizing Building Permits

The minimum time required in Israel for a building permit is about two years, while in many cases, like the famous Jerusalem Towers, it took ten years and complicated Jerusalem's major, chief engineer and the architects (several successive designs were submitted following the Committee's capricious demands). Some of them spent two weeks in jail suspected of offering and/or requesting bribes. The major was condemned because it was discovered that the entrepreneur had donated money to the Major's favorite philanthropy. So the Government decided to privatize the permitting process. Several engineering groups are being examined to become authorized "Examiners" (בודקים). One of these groups needed an expert in water/sewage and I was invited to join. The fruit plate was in front of me on the meeting table. The pic was taken BEFORE I started to examine it more closely.

The authorization process is managed by the Chemical Laboratories Office on the British model (they all traveled to London to learn how it works there). I easily passed the first exam. The next day we met in a 14 store apartment building complex (106 units) under construction, but when they climbed the very dangerous temporary stairs to the roof (there was no lift yet), I remembered my idol Nero Wolfe. The genius never left his office and employed young Goodwin for the dangerous footwork.