Spain: 25% less births in 2020

 Spain is one of the countries with negative population growth, each year its population is a million persons lower and in average, more aged. When it was imagined that it cannot fall lower, it did. All European countries have been affected by the epidemic. A catastrophe. 

Caesium-137 storm

Former atomic experimental sites in the Sahara are releasing Caerium 137 dust, which is penetrating to Europe. It is a highly toxic material, people will be advised to stay at home. Ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and reduces the biological half-life to 30 days. Pic.: France (It looks like Paris, the Montparnasse? Mais non, c'est Lyon) -  today. The dust avoided Israel but Turkey is alarmed. 

Tuba Skinny

Good Company

Austria, Denmark and Israel launched a cooperative project to produce anti-corona vaccine. I could not choose better partners for Israel. We are in good company. 

The Bell Imperative

 Clark published a new research paper concluding that "aspirations that by appropriate social design, rates of social mobility can be substantially increased will prove futile. We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth."

Clark studied the genetic changes in the English population on the basis of surnames. In a few hundred years the surnames of lower/criminal class have disappeared, replaced by descendants of the upper/richer classes. In our generation, it seems to work on the reverse. 

Why this happened in South East England and not in Bulgaria? England was/is a stable, well-governed society for centuries, where violence does not pay. Bulgaria was a frontier lawless region, where violence and brutality was survival necessity.  

44 billion dollars stolen

 Alberto Fernandez the President of Argentina ordered a criminal inquiry against the government of Macri. In 2018 Macri received a 44 billion US$ loan from the IMF. Fernandez's incoming government received an empty Treasury. This is, he said, the largest public funds robbery in memory. "De acuerdo con eso, instruyó a las autoridades para que formalmente inicien una querella criminal contra quienes fueron "partícipes de la mayor administración fraudulenta y malversación de caudales que nuestra memoria recuerda". This is unprecedented in Argentina, incoming governments never investigate former administrations, so THEY will not in turn be investigated. 

Mobs Braying

Paul Singer, "El Buitre", thinks that the Fed’s current iteration of quantitative easing paired with trillions of dollars of stimulus to counter the pandemic are setting things up for a fall. Rampant inflation will shock policy makers, stock pickers and bond investors, alike.

“‘Trouble ahead’ is signaled by a rare combination of low-quality securities, staggering valuation metrics, overleveraged capital structures, a scarcity of honest profits, a desperate dearth of understanding evinced by the most active traders, and economic macro prospects that are not as thrilling as the mobs braying ‘Buy! Buy!’ seem to think."