TOWER

 I was among the very first investors in Tower Semiconductors many years ago. The company needed more capital and every three months or so they diluted the stock and I needed to buy and pay more. After two three years I lost my optimism and sold it. Then it appeared that they were starting to move and they bought Jazz and I entered again. The company never paid dividends so I slowly sold this hopeless stock. Pic. Russel Ellwanger, the American Mormor manager, persisted and kept on building this Tower miracle.  Ofer who founded the business lost faith in it and sold his shares to insurance companies. Now after 17 years TOWER caught me with a few stocks that after merging with Intel are worth a lot. The same is with Bezeq and the Bazan the Haifa refinery, I buy and sell after a bad spell, but I should hold them through the dark times till the bourse rises again.  

Body Weight Management

 I am very fat. Prof. Baron on youtube said that losing weight lowers blood pressure 20-30 mmHg, so I decided to try. This morning almost fainted and could not work. My last long fast was ten years ago, ate every two days and lost 15 kg. But now I am much frailer. 

Krach!

 The world bourses are falling. TASE is 3% down and some stocks are under -10%. The speculators fear the Fed's rising interest rates, Europeans (and America that is indebted 100% of GNP) fear the correspondingly higher debt burden. I have no such fears but I don't like these oscillations. 

To the left, is a graph comparing 1927 and today. I am uncertain this superposition is valid or not. 

Sax Rohmer: "The hand that held my arm was bony and clawish; I could detect the presence of incredibly long finger nails--nails long as those of some buried vampire of the black ages! Choking down a cry of horror, I opened my eyes... and looked into the face of my guide. It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

The Opium Wars

The Manchu emperor sent his best to confront the English invasion, a direct descendant of Ghengis Khan who had passed the exams (special exams for sons of princes) and assigned him thousands of troops. They knew that the goal was Ningbo, so the Mongol prince built tall walls to stop the invaders. He was convinced that the English could not run nor climb the wall because of their heavy woolen uniforms so that if they fell they could not get up again. The Brits climbed easily the wall and planted their flag. The Chinese ran away and the Brits (Irish, Scots, Hindus, etc.) found an empty city. That was 160 years ago, one wonders if the Chinese have developed better martial skills in the meanwhile. Foto: The battle of Chosin Reservoir, Korea, Chinese prisoners, 1950. 

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir took place in November and December 1950 in North Korea when 25,000 American Army soldiers and Marines were surrounded by 150,000 Chinese forces.

In “The Battle of Chosin Reservoir: Surrounded, Not Defeated,” a symposium, these brave men share what it was like to fight against overwhelming odds in extreme temperatures (as low as 40 degrees below zero) and the struggle to bring out their dead and wounded.

Jews in China

 During the Tang dynasty. Very nice piece. 

Gary Chambers, the Senator from Louisiana

Gary - smoking marijuana - may be Louisiana's next Senator. Chambers said it is "long past due that politicians stop pretending to be better or different than the people they represent." What will the meritocratic mandarins on the other side of the Pacific Ocean think?

Virtuous Cycle

There is full employment in the West but Central Banks keep injecting liquidity. The new money is invested in high tech like Intel's fabs, but some find their way to the bourse. The growing demand for liquid assets fuels rise and the machines, that make the decisions in most funds, play the momentum. As Soros explained in his reflectivity theory, this attracts even more money creating a virtuous cycle that ends with the explosion of the bubble and recession. Prices have reached a permanently high plateau and inflation will keep them there indefinitely. Or not. As for me, although depressed, I play the game. One Hindu guru explains that money can be and is created, and inflated, people look for assets that cannot be created from thin air, like gold, silver... and bitcoin. Illustration: Dutch master Rubens.