Should monkeys pick stock?

Breet Arends in Market WAtch writes:

Hedge funds are scary. They are complicated, confusing and risky. If you’re a rich investor — the member of a wealthy family, say, or someone running a big endowment — you need someone to help you pick the right ones and avoid the disasters.

To help you out, we’ve assembled two teams. On the one side we have assembled a highly professional group of investment advisers running a “fund” of hedge funds.

The team will greet you in their beautiful offices on the waterfront in Greenwich, Conn., or maybe Palm Beach. A beautiful secretary will serve you a beautiful cappuccino with just the right amount of cinnamon and nutmeg on top.

The members of your team boasts MBAs from Harvard and Stanford, and resumes packed with blue-chip names from Wall Street. They have wonderful PowerPoint presentations to show you how they will help you manage your money. They will impress you with their strict, “disciplined” investment process. They are tough on “alpha,” “beta,” and risk-management controls. They check out each fund thoroughly.

On the other side we put together a group of monkeys kidnapped from the local zoo. They hang off a tree while we feed them peanuts and bananas.

Which investment approach does better?

I'll not spoil the story by telling the result.

Numerus Clausus in Hungary

The Numerus Clausus ("Limited Number") decree in Hungary in the twenties (almost a hundred years ago) is now a subject of academic research. The idea of the decree was to restore a middle class existence to the ethnic Hungarian lower middle class, that had lost their public service positions due to the contraction of the country after WWI (Hungary fought on the losing side and it was dismembered). This declassé people were forming fascist parties, threatening the stability of the liberal government, so they had to be catered to. Jews were thrown out of the universities (as teachers and students), from the civil service, from middle class professions (like law). Something new for me: the Numerus Clausus excluded Jews but also women: they had to make place for males.

May be this was the reason why in Hungary the fascists never seized power as they did in nearby Germany. Only under German occupation these right wing political movements finally formed a government, and then only to carry out German orders. There is an endless world of "what if...?" My Grandfather in Jaszbereny believed that the Bishop of Szolnok will protect them, the Jewish Organization urged to be quiet and become invisible, it is quite possible that their calculations were reasonable, that the Red Army was very near and one million Jews dispersed all over Hungary cannot be killed so fast. They may have estimated that the most probable outcome was that WWII would end with the mass of Hungarian Jews surviving. But one man, Adolf Eichmann, made the difference. With satanic organizational skill, with no manpower nor formal powers, he packed one million Jews into the ghettoes and transported them to Auschwitz. The war had been lost, he didnt have to do it. My entire life I dream of the warm family of uncles and many cousins that I never had.

Hong Kong Tech U - Not What You Imagine

My daughter with her HK friends. Regarding the drag fattie - they are celebrating the Year of the Rabbit.

South Israel under Fire

Prof. R. Lynn Passes the Torch to the Chinese

"...up to around 1950, Britain was a very law abiding country. Crime rates were about 10 per cent of what they are today. Many cars did not have locks because it was taken for granted that no-one would attempt to break into them. An uncle of mine made a living as stamp dealer. He used to send out booklets of stamps each of which was priced to potential purchasers, who would take out those they wanted and send back the booklets together with a cheque for those they had taken. No doubt it will be amazing to the younger generation today that it was possible to run a business in this way.

Third, and again up to around 1950, Britain was an all-white society. I do not remember ever seeing a non-European before this time. This began to change as a result of two developments.

The first was the British Nationality Act of 1948, which conferred citizenship and the right to live in Britain on all members of the Commonwealth and Empire. The Commonwealth comprised Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, while the Empire consisted of the Indian sub-continent, about one third of sub-Saharan Africa, Hong Kong, Malaysia, most of the Caribbean islands, and a number of smaller territories. This act meant that huge numbers of non-Europeans—some 800 million—had the right to live and work in Britain. Curiously, the probable consequences of this act were not much debated in the House of Commons..."

Prof. Lynn is deeply pessimistic about the fate of the European nations and thanks the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans for taking up the torch of civilization. (From an interview with A. Kurtagic)

End of an Era

I am reading in Hydrocarbon Processing that Sunoco oil company is exiting the refining business. They contracted Suisse Securities consultants and decided to shift from manufacturing to logistics. In the last thirty years no new refineries were built in America. Europe too has a refining overcapacity. I have invested in BAZAN the Haifa Refinery and they are embarked in a vast modernization process. They are not going to pay dividends in the next 5 years, if ever.

The same magazine writes about the energy situation in Europe. All the investments in biofuels in Europe have been written off, locally grown and refined fuels cannot compete with hydrocarbons. The countries cannot go on subsidizing biofuel production. The low cost producers like Brasil cannot compete because ethanol is a low energy density fuel and transportation costs are prohibitive. A Finn refiner sells biofuel from Indonesian coconut oil, but it is trying to get out of the business because eco-terrorists dressed as orangutans are threatening it (to save the rain forest).

Europe has also tried to close nuclear reactors and generate electricity by wind farms and solar cells. When subsidies were discontinued, they were largely abandoned. Happily, the Russians are still pumping natural gas.

People loves to point out improductive investments in China. But what Europe has done to itself with the ecology movement is suicidal. China invests its savings, while Europe took out loans to develope alternative energy and they have to be paid back. Europe has enormous debts and no GNP growth. China has no debts and is growing 10% p.a. meaning that in only seven years from now, circa 2018, it will have an economy equal to Europe and America together.

Dura Lex Sed Lex

A Zimbabwean was brought before a judge charged with contra bonos mores sex (with a donkey). According to the Law Society of Zimbabwe Magazine, he claimed that it is not an ass but a bewitched prostitute. My source reports that the judge ordered the criminal to pay for the services rendered and appointed a Court Witch to dewitch animal: if successful, the money will go to the prostitute, if not, to the ass.

Calligraphy

I wanted to correct an old engineering drawing with pen and ink as in the original. My own Pellican calligraphy set has dried out for lack of use so I went out to buy a new set and discovered that there is none on sale in Kever Benjamin City. The computer driven printer has killed hand writing. I wonder if graphology is still credible as it was in my generation, when it was the personnel manager's favorite tool.

America: A Threat to the World (Der Spiegel)

German antipathy towards America is only growing. Now Der Spiegel found another reason to dislike America: its growing social inequality.

"Since around 1980, America has drifted away from that mixed-economy cluster, and traveled a considerable distance toward another: the capitalist oligarchies, like Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, with their much greater concentration of economic bounty."

Five years ago I noticed that America has acquired a demographic-racial structure similar to Brasil, so most ptobably it will re-organize itself on the Brasilian social model: racial harmony and a prosperous White minority. May be South Africa is also evolving along similar lines. Anyway, Brasil is not so terrible, in fact it is a very nice country to live in, and from the genetic pool point of view, its population (by silent and unresearched processes) is becoming whiter with each generation.

The Germans, who traditionally painted America as degenerate, negrified country, with all that jazz, have not really changed their feelings.

Occupy Gwen Lane

The Stock Exchange in Gwen Lane in Sandton is about to stormed by Malema's Youth March in Johannesburg. Malema says that parlamentary democracy is nothing without economic democracy. He told supporters that journalists should not be harmed as they were not the enemy. "You must know who is the enemy."

It is very hot in Johannesburg, many people marching is fainting.

Koko in Tears

Sitting poolside with my daughter the lifeguard, was watching athletic 90 years olds training for a senior swim competition. A good-looking girl was coaching a boy in the pool and then they sat near us. The boy opened a large plastic folder with colorful cards sticked in with velcro. Old Jews are permitted to talk to strangers, so I asked her what does he collect? No, it is not a collection, he speaks with plastic cards. Koko shed a tear remembering the times when she too spoke with cards. Is he by chance a talking gorilla, I asked. No, he is autistic. The cards are PECS, an alternative communication system. Today I learned that autists swim.

Lybia Occupied

“We have asked NATO to remain in Libya,” the interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chairman of the Transitional National Council.“We need technical support and training for our troops on the ground. We also need communications equipment, and we need aerial intelligence to monitor our borders.”

And what is more important, they have the money to pay for it.

Turkey's Project

Not long ago, till 1918, Turkey ruled the Middle East. This year marked the 100th year of Turkish withdrawal from Libya and Algeria to leave the rule of the lands to Italy and France respectively. And Palestine and the Trans-Jordan. Now the Turks are back.

As the USA is abandoning Iraq, Turkey has occupied a "buffer zone" in the Kurdish areas. There is a war going on there. There is another Turkish expansion theater: Hatay Province, where camps are set up for those who escaped from Syria. Syria is collapsing, that is, it is up for redistribution. Egypt is also in a bad situation, it depends on imported grain to feed its population and its main resource, tourism, is dead. Turkey, resurgent, sees its opportunity. Erdogan may see Israel as a potential rival for regional hegemony and from there his hostility.

Things are changing, as always. We shall keep building and growing. Pic. Rahat Lukum, a Turkish delight.

Uncertainty

Oil refineries lost about a tenth of their market value yesterday. Nothing has changed but sentiment. How long can this uncertainty last? No one knows what is anything really worth. We must be undergoing an oceanic change of identity and we dont know who we are and what are we worth. Pic.: Stormy weather by the Dutch Master Mulier, Pieter the Elder.

Koko Reveals It All

We went to Acco's Fringe Theater Festival and when the show was about to start the manager came to stage to announce that the actors were joining some imbecile protest and the show is being suspended. People was walking out to reclaim their money when a girl from the public (pic) climbed on to the scene and shouted: RAK REGA! Wait a minute! I'll give you the show of your miserable lives! I am going to show you EVERYTHING!

"I see that now you are getting focused. MEFUKASIM! I am Koko born in sex and living since then in sex! You decide if want to stay and hear out Koko or ask back your pig-dirty money. I am Koko von Hochfeld zu Otjozond and you can check it out in the Social Security data base just leaked to the internet, my "von" is less for Prussian noblesse and more for pure bred dogesse. I warn you, some details may not be exactly true; in fact, I invented it all. I am the third millenium girl, the self-made uni-species but never unisex girl, the totally self-invented persona. I am the climax of the Pan species."

"What you see - see is not the word, you are mesmerized - is fantastically fake. I am a blonde teenager - and I am a female gorilla. You can laugh, you can applaud. I imagined myself all by myself and the surgeon magician Dr Murray cut me to design. No, no, I am REALLY a gorilla. There are two things I didnt allow him to touch - yes, my happiness, and then, my sagittal skull crest, the pride of my lineage. Come up dear and feel it; I mean touch the top of my head - up there, you bastard! - see the bone crest? Now get those dirty fingers off me, and stop fixing your eyes on me! We gorillas walk the jungle nude and feel no shame but you! animal abuser! look the other way!"

Then she told how she became famous as Koko the Talking Gorilla, how made her first millions at horse races and how since then lives the "bunga-bunga loca". Can this be true?

A Nice Illusion of Skill

Professor Kahnemann writes an interesting article in the NYT about the zero correlation between a professional money manager's stock choosing skill and alpha, the difference between his results and that of random choosing. Yet in the last days I bought Internet Zahav (because it was rising) that lifted 13% yesterday on the NASDAQ, and PLX - the carrot media biomed - that did 9%.

It is pure luck, I know.

Yet I feel better with myself.

The Real Cause of Ghaddafi's Death

Lybia has 200 Billion US dollars in foreign banks. All this money was accessible to Muammar Ghaddafi  either/or his sons. 

When the Bengazi tribes vacillantly rebelled, he could have hired mercenaries and pay 1,000,000 dollars per rebel skalp. What is say 1 billion dollars when you have 200 in reserve? What is money for?

But no, he took the honorable way of the desert Arabs. He led his army in person, with his sons, cousins and tribe following him. NATO, from 14,000 feet, bombed the sh-t out of his sons, his cousins, his tribe, his army.

His belief in warrior honor killed him.

We dont want her (?)

According to Jewish laws, Eve Zur is not 100% Jewish. The rabbis would not convert her so she gave up and took her revenge: she did not fast on Yom Kippur. (Thanks to the story, IHTG)

A Faithful Ally

Afghanistan would support Pakistan in case of military conflict between Pakistan and the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview on Oct.22.

British expeditioners in the 17th century wrote about a genetical disability of the people of this region: they are unable to utter a true word. We have forgotten it.

Englishman Mummified

Allan Billis is the first person in 3,000 years to be mummified in the same way as ancient the pharaohs. A pathologist removed Billis' organs except his heart and brain, and bathed his body in salt for a month. He was then dried out and wrapped with linen bandages. Koko proposed to deposit the body in the glass pyramid of the Louvre, Paris, or to rent an ancient but serviceable pyramid in Egypt.

Old and tired

I worked all weekend. People arrived back from sukkot holidays to their offices and demand to receive drawing, plans, etc. I am tired.

Ghaddafi's Lynching: Pls. Dont Kill Me

Steve Jobs's Secret

An unknown facet of Steve Jobs is his meeting with Koko in India. The 18 years old Jobs went to India along with a friend, Dan Kottke, after dropping out of Reed, a private humanities school in Portland, Oregon. He soon embraced Buddhism, shaved his head, wore loose-fitting Indian clothing and experimented with LSD and other substances. On the first day he gave away all his clothes and money to the poor and traded it for a lungi that wore throughout the stay in India. He survived on food given as alms.

Jobs and Kottke met a baba (Neem Kairolie Baba) who promised them enlightenment, took them to top of a mountain and shaved their heads. The guru was a Hanuman devotee and his ashram was dedicated to the monkey god Hanuman, a relative of Koko. When Jobs and Kottke arrived, she had been living several weeks in the ashram, having taken over teaching from the ailing old Baba, who was to die soon. It was Koko who gave Jobs his personal mantra: "Äpfel". This photo was taken during that time.

Solution to the Debt Problem: Exile the Jews!

A lot of people is asking the question of how the European debt problem could be solved. The above graph (in millions of Euro) shows the amount of debt maturing in the next three years, that will have to be refinanced. 1.7 trillion euros. There is no doubt that not a cent of the debt will be paid off, but it will have to be exchanged by new loans. Someone has to give these new loans, and that can be only Europe's Central Bank. How can Europe keep giving loans to itself?

The debt will never be paid back. Some mechanism will be found to make it go away, and the easiest is inflation. Another is bankrupcy and renegotiation of the debt aka "haircut". Another is forced savings, like war bonds. Europe also could sell itself to China.

In the past, Europe had always the Jews at hand to solve the debt problem. When the common people was feeling that they were working like slaves to pay the debts owed to Jewish moneylenders, and that everything was owned by the Jews, they could annul all the debts owed and expropriate all the property owned by Jews. They were also exiled so their long faces would not ruin the festivities. Then, when credit was needed again, they would be recalled. France in the 12th Century did it, England in the 13th, Spain in the 15th and Tzarist Russian in the early 20th Century. Hitler started well and Germany's Jews were let to emigrate with a suitcase alone, but then ruined this solution for several centuries ahead. Europe today has no Jews to be expropriated or expulsed. They will have to pay the debts owed to themselves.

But America still has the Jewish option. Should things become desperate, "Wall Street" could be nationalized and the "financiers" (in the widest sense, including analysts, accountants, statisticians, attorneys, etc.) encouraged to make aliyah. It would provide an historically proven solution and what a coincidence! it would also prove Theodor Herzl right.

Realist Idealist vs Industrial Eggs

LA Times's columnist "The Realist Idealist" rejects the cruel, industrial, mass produced egg so she went out to humane, earth-friendly home chicken raising. Excerpts:

That's when I inadvertently became the Inspector Clouseau of urban farming, bumbling my way through the process at unnecessary expense. Raising the birds yourself isn't about saving money, it's about detaching oneself from the industrial food supply and enjoying the products of your pets -- the fantastic-tasting eggs and an unfathomable amount of fertilizer.

I spent, $100 for two birds at L.A.'s North Central animal shelter, $379 for the hutch and run, $31 for a feeding system and $34 for a few month's worth of grit and mash. I could gobble the most expensive, free-range, organically fed, hand-massaged Whole Foods eggs for years and still not spend the $500-plus I put out for my rig.

Cats and dogs aren't the main problems; raccoons, opossums and hawks are. My hutch and run weren't prepared for these intruders, which is why I ended up living with chickens in my bedroom ... After all the time and money I'd spent, the last thing I wanted was a clawed beast feasting on my expensive new friends.

She is my hero! The next idea is a cow in her bed, so she can enjoy natural milk each morning. Not that synthetic-hormone fed genetically-engineered inbred-cow exudant. And the warm, fresh, natural, unfathomable fertilizer!

They executed the Colonel

He made the mistake of giving up his nuclear program.

Even Duke Leto Atreides, when he moved to the desert planet Arrakis to take possession of the melange monopoly, took special care to keep his family atomics. And that in Dune, the Father of all environmentalist fantasies. (Thanks Dave and IHTG for the correction).

Living in the Era of Post-Proliferation

My office used to be near Tzahal's book shop in HaArba'a St. in Tel Aviv. Prices were ridiculously low but there were few buyers. This bookworm - moi - used to spend lunchtime searching for something readable and bought some books. Today I found Emmanuel Wald's The Owl of Minerva at the bottom of my library and started to read it poolside. Dr E Wald is a Tzahal coronel and professor in the War School. After two pages I remembered why I never read it in the last ten years: I dont like it. Wald proposes systematic, mechanical military thinking.

I understand that the military all over the world have a problem, they have to formulate a defense strategy in a world with new players and new weapons. For example, who the hell are the Salafists? What will they do if a nuclear weapon fell into their hands? Wald has no answer, neither do I.

We'll have to leave some challenges to the next generation. If not, their life would be boring and uninteresting.

Rothschild Blvd. vs Occupy Wall Str.

The differences between Israeli and American protest movements are becoming more defined.

The Israeli protesters designated a Committee of Experts formed by left wing academics to formulate their demands: there were left wing professors of urban planning in charge of formulating policies to reduce the price of apartments, professors of social work on how to improve the fate of the poor, etc. The Government designed a counter-Committee of Experts formed by not less notorious academics led by Prof. Trajtenberg. The dialogue was between this group of professors with the Government professors. The students did not melt into the general protest movement but negotiated through their organizations (pic: Itzik Schmooly, head of the National Student Union, and Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg). Netaniyahu promised to implement Trajtenberg Committee's final report. There were media events, Trajtenberg went to the Rothschild street encampment to talk to the protesters, etc. The food companies feared the boycott of their products and reduced prices, the corporations started to dismantle and reduce profile, and apartment prices started to stabilize as the Government promised to change the rules. The Israeli protest adopted from the very beginning a coherent goal-directed form, and designed a purely academic leadership.

On the other hand, the Occupy Wall Street movement emphasizes direct action and leaderless, consensus-based decision-making, most clearly embodied by its General Assembly, in which participants in the protest make group decisions both large and small, like adopting principles of solidarity and deciding how best to stay warm at night. They oppose the emergence of any form of formal leadership because "you cannot create freedom through a tight cadre of revolutionaries".

I never heard of a leaderless movement to achieve anything. Its fate is that of the Children's Cruzade.

Darúmadár

The grey cranes are leaving Jászberény in the Hungarian lowlands, announcing the coming winter. Drunken Hungarians like to sing about the melancholy sight: "Magasan repül a darú.." (High flies the crane...)

State of Israel Bonds

I have some. It yielded about 10% last year. Israel's credit rating has been upgraded recently and the bonds reacted nicely, thank you for asking.

These days, Israel sells bonds for only one reason: to maintain credit lines open so they can be tapped when we really need money.

But what about a politically motivated investor boycott against Israel, for example by pro-Palestinian European countries such as Norway or Belgium? There is enough money in the world that is seeking Israeli diversity for its investment portfolio. Israel's last offering in Europe, in March 2010, demand totaled €13 billion, the offer was €1.5 billion. There's a lot more demand for Israeli bonds than we need.

Su Shi Poem

The Yang Tze flows east
Washing away a thousand eras of great men
West of the ramparts --
People say --
Are the fabulous Red Cliffs of Chou
Rebellious rocks pierce the sky
Frightening waves rip the bank
The backwash churns vast snowy swells --
River and mountains like a painting
how many heroes passed them, once ...

Class Wars

Pic from Al Fin blog. This people are not serious. They are playing class wars. Saul Alinsky and Barak Obama paid hardball class wars, mao-maoing the corporations. This is frivolous street carnaval.

Inspector Cao Chen Gets Laid

This Shanghai mystery tells the story of Comrade Chief Inspector Cao Chen who, assisted by his loyal sidekick Yu, embarks in a dogged investigation to discover the killer of a beautiful National Model Worker. As he closes on the son of a high level functionnaire, his superiors try to get him to abandon the chase, but he is incorruptible. His collegues at the bureau distance themselves from him, he is suspended, and about to be sacked. Incapable of stopping him, the Chinese Communist Party changes direction and a national campaign is announced against the Children of High Level Officials corrupted by Western ideas. Chen is kicked upstairs and the case is taken over by Internal Security. A show-trial is organized, the young playboys are executed and justice is served. The Party regains legitimacy in the eyes of the people but the rol played by Cao Chen is never mentioned. A Confusian puritan, while he had escaped the many girls offering themselves along the novel, in the end he too breaks down and gets laid. End.

Haifa

Today I was in Haifa to rent a room for my daughter, who is returning from Shanghai. I also saw a project in the German Colony, just below the Bahai Temple. In the 19th Century, a German protestant sect called Templars established settlements in the Holy Land but they were deported by the British to Australia when Rommel's army was approaching. The Templars left nice houses (pic) which are well preserved. My project is to redesign one as a boutique-hotel.

DESKAS: 13.5% Today

Yesterday bought DESKAS Discount Investment stock and even wrote it down here. Today it jumped 13.5%. I wish my Father was alive, he had a special talent to see ahead these things. He was very proud of himself when was sent by the Hungarian water planning company to graduate studies (it was Communism and he had a "black" burgeois class origin). The Company's Chief Engineer examined him and posed a problem related to roulette, and my father gave a non-intuitive solution.

Probability book says probability does not exist

I received Prof. Murray Spiegel's book and got stuck in the first paragraph. He classifies things into two categories: (1) things we can control and predict, and (2) things that we cannot predict even when we control the variables. These are ruled by probability.

So everything we can control is not probability but everything we cannot control is probability. The difference is the reach of human control. THROW UP A COIN: If we could control all the variables (force, direction, temperature, wind, atmospheric pressure, etc.) then we could predict the outcome and there would be no probability.

Probability then is an effect of the limitation of our capabilities. As humans improve their capabilities, they are also restricting the space allowed for probability, till presumably one day probability will disappear and everything will become certain and clear.

Without offending anyone, probability is for morons. As soon as we become intelligent, probability will be as if never existed. Ultimately, probability does not exist, only that we are too stupid to see clearly.

Now, why should I tire my two remaining neurons reading Spiegel's book on something that does not exist? Better I have lunch and a glass of vodka.

Tennis in Shanghai

One of the girls is my daughter. I'll not say which one to protect her identity.

One of the boys is Jewish. Go ahead, set free your inner racist and guess which one: the blond blue-eyes or the big nosed swarthy fellow?

Sewage floods Gaza City

Once more, Gaza's sewage system broke down and is flooding the city. They are lucky that the summer is over and there will be no cholera epidemic. It was the Romans who discovered that a healthy city needs drinking water and sewage disposal infrastructure. That knowledge has yet to reach the Hamas in Gaza, where a million and half persons live in a strip of 70 square kilometers.

Universities in China

I gave a few lectures in universities in China, like the famous Nankai U (Chu Enlai's alma mater) but I was so excited that didnt pay much attention to the terrible state the country was after the Cultural Revolution. Ten years later I am still digesting my impressions. The students seem to have been herded into my lectures, some slept, others seemed bored. There was no real interest, no questions. I forced them to activity by direct questions, but I didnt follow up to avoid losing them face. I visited libraries and they were empty shelves, extremely poor. Examined textbooks and I was shocked by the low quality of the printing - they were like toilet paper. I'm a bookworm and bought up a quantity of cheap (for me) Chinese textbooks (mostly for the pictures) and they were thirty years behind. That was surprising because many of the best textbooks in my area are by Taiwanese professors. Attendance in China's universities is not obligatory, many appear to never had the opportunity to choose what they study, professors are underpaid and have second jobs, the teaching is frontal from a textbook (the teacher reading from the book, no one asks anything) and the all-important exam follows the textook. That was then, the universities had been destroyed and paralyzed for ten years, they were in a very bad shape after the Cultural Revolution. Hopefully, now are better.

Euphoria in Ehad HaAm Street

The announcement that Europe's leaders decided to follow the despised Americans and provide ilimited guarantee to European banks is causing euphoria in Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. My MBA daughter felt it coming - a week ago she mentioned some losing company's stock. Today I sold it with 10% profit. I tried to give her a Krugerrand but she didnt accept it. She never saw one. I'd like her to focus on a baby and not on the stock exchange. I bought DESKAS aka Discount Investments.

Rothschild Boulevar Protest

The Rothschild Boulevar protests that started two months ago are being copied: in New York they camped in Wall Street and so in Italy. The same vague demands of equality and social justice in a nice summer camp environment. We have started a worldwide trend.

I dont think this model of protest will succeed in New York or everywhere else. (1) In Israel it was a summer protest and it was nice to camp out in the park with other young families. In Europe it is already cold. (2) It was a family outing, no drugs and no looting. In the West young families are generally apolitical. (3) The protest was focused: there is a severe shortage of housing and the government was impotent, food prices have been inflated because of oligopolies, Israeli economy is being structured into a pyramide dominated by 5 - 6 families.

The results in Israel are visible: food prices have fallen (I do feel it!), the monopolies are being dismantled (I think we need them, only large firms are capable of competing with international corporations) and suddenly there is much building (The main bottleneck was permits and manpower, and I am seeing many Chinese construction workers around. About permits I should know but dont).

Towelheads

Koko feels that she too deserves a Nobel Prize.

I told her to wear a turban.

Boil Water Advisory

An item of interest for Israeli Water Engineers:

A failure at the Climax Pump Station in the Navajo Community neighborhood of San Carlos resulted in the loss of water pressure in a portion of the area, leading to yesterday’s boil water advisory. Whenever pressure isn’t maintained, there is a possibility of water siphoning back into the delivery system from household and landscape plumbing, so a boil water order is issued until pressure is restored and tests confirm water quality.During the outage, city workers connected a portable pump to nearby hydrants to maintain pressure so that faucets would still function.

Here, someone proposed to save water by reducing the pressure in the net.

An Equitative Deal

Speculation and Oil Price: No Link

Did speculation drive up oil prices? Speculation in oil futures was forbidden in 2009 because it was thought to cause artificially high prices and world recession. The 2011 October bulletin of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas concludes that it was market fundamentals and not speculation that drove prices. All those Congress testimonies that I read so carefully looking for the actual mechanisms they were talking about, were, now we know, pure expert bullshit.

Water Serpents

Klimt.

Demolish Los Angeles !

The campaign to stop pumping the Sacramento River's waters for agricultural and domestic uses (to protect the habitat of the smelt sardine) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a persistent, massive green effort to restore the "natural" environment of Southern California that amounts to no less than bulldozing and depopulating the metropolitan area of Los Angeles, that depend for their subsistence on a complex system of dams, reservoirs and pumping stations.

I'm surprised once and again how passionate is environmentalist hate of humanity. Lets take the campaign to save the Santa Ana sucker, the local variety evolved to survive in what is now Los Angeles. The massive Seven Oaks Dam, a flood-control dam on the Santa Ana River, damaged the habitat of the sucker, eliminating the boom-and-bust hydrology of this river’s flashy hydrologic system. Environmentalists are campaigning for habitat renewal, fish reintroduction, dam removal and ultimately, re-desertification. But making Los Angeles safe for this fish (pic) is not the war's goal:

"Our efforts to protect the Santa Ana sucker are part of a larger campaign to restore Southern California watersheds for the benefit of the Pacific lamprey, unarmored three-spined stickleback, southwestern willow flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo, arroyo toad and dozens of other imperiled species."

To this water engineer, the meaning of "Restore Southern California watersheds" is clear: remove dams and canals, stop the pumping, send back the people to where they came from (this idea must have been copied from the Palestinian program for Jews) and bring back the Yuma Indians dining on arroyo lizards and toads.

The Allana Investment Opportunity

Ethiopia's potash resources are of similar scale to the Saskatchewan and the Russian basins. A Canadian / Chinese partnership with about 30 million dollars capital has started to explore the Allana mine and rumors say that the venture may be taken over by BHP Billiton. The share price (in the Canadian stock market) has jumped 23%. Potash development requires 5 - 7 years and political stability, which is not one of the Horn of Africa's attractions. An uncertain enterprise with illiquid stock.

Thousand Arabs = One Jew

I dont like the Gilead Shalit swap. Israel will free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in 2006. Among them 280 convicted terrorists sentenced to life. What is the message of this political act? That Jewish blood is so precious that it is worth a thousand Arabs? That Jews are so attached to life that are ready to pay a suicidal price for it? because a thousand terrorists are being set free to take revenge on Jews. That Arabs are cheap, almost worthless? That Israel lacks the political will to carry out its sentences - an Arab terrorist who put a bomb in a crowded pizzeria in Jerusalem and killed dozens (pic) can safely expect to be freed in the next exchange? That killing Jews carries no punishment? I think we are sending out a message of weakness and in this neighborhood, that is fatal.

Burundanga ¡Qué Lío!

Once in a time Cuba was the wealthiest Latin country and La Habana ruled Latino culture and music. Burundanga is an Afro-Cuban word meaning a mess and the song tells the story of how Songo hit Borondongo who hit Bernabe and then Muchilanga threw out Morondanga and so on - a big mess. Refrain: "Abambele... practica el amor" = Make love.

Addendum: I got curious about the ethymology of the word "burundanga". It appears that this African-Antillean word also refers to a drug extracted from a plant that produces a tranquillized state called twilight sleep with loss of memory typical of the zombies of Cuba and Haiti.

Minnesota's Problem with the Bottle

Two campuses in Minnesota have banned the sale of plastic water bottles: Macalester and St. Benedict College. The Earth-friendly initiative is spreading to other campuses. I mix my vodka with tap water so (for the time being) I am safe from the crazies.

The Fishy Delta Smelt Affair

California is undergoing a long cycle of drought. Farmers have gone out of business for water restrictions and severe municipal and domestic water saving measures are in force. All that only vigorized California environmentalists that succeeded in stopping freshwater pumping from the Sacramento River and allowing its discharge into the ocean, all to the supposed benefit of the "endangered" Delta Smelt. This holy fish is undistinguishable from the common sardine.

In a surprising turn of events, Judge Wanger writes that employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service acted in bad faith, giving an incredible testimony "riddled with inconsistency." Then he told them to stop activities they claimed would save the Delta Smelt. Zetland from Aguanomics comments:

I long ago gave up trying to understand the details of this mess ... but I understand that "bad faith" means lying (bad move) and getting caught (worse move).

Why would public servants willfully sabotage California's agriculture and impose restrictions on the public (like forbidding washing cars, watering the garden or building swimming pools)? Elemental, Watson. POWER. They exercise power by forbidding things. Not for nothing "Green" was always considered a sick colour, a sign of unhealth.

Scandinavian Anti-Islamists Attacked

Even in apparently democratic Scandinavia, one cannot voice anti-Government opinions and expect to escape punishment. Fjordman is one of the most prolific and articulate anti-Islamic immigration blogger, and he is being punished: he has lost his job, had to leave his apartment in Oslo and has no money. He writes: "The message that is now being presented in the mass media after the atrocities committed by Anders Behring Breivik is that critics of Islam like myself are the Nazis of our time." He reminds us that Scandinavian media consistently promotes the building of mosques in Europe (he mentions Cologne) and offers friendly platforms to blood-thirsty antisemite Islamic Brotherhood leaders. One of the Peace Nobel Prizes awarded last week went to a "sister" of the Brotherhood and it was not a mistake but a conscious decision of the Committee.

Comrade Chief Inspector Cao Chen and the Beggar's Chicken

Now I have the whole series of Cao Chen mysteries. It is mostly about Shanghai bureaucracy and food. Now I know that he is only nominally Chief Inspector but is in charge of the Special Section of politically sensitive cases alone, and has no jurisdiction over the whole department - although the former boss has retired and the position is vacant. This ambiguous, indefined arrangements are very Chinese and sound true.

His friend and business partner Overseas Chinese Zhu present him with a Beggar's Chicken, which is a stuffed Saskia chicken in lotus leaves baked in mud. We used to eat fish like that in Argentina. Chen grows extatic sipping the hot soup in Chinese pigmeat-filled dumplings and other "delicacies", but in my opinion only one who grew up during hungry years can feel that. Quoting a poem of mine (I made it up a moment ago), "You cannot sense the true (poor) taste of dumplings/ Because you are Chinese." The Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo said it more lyrically:

"You cannot see the true face of Mount Lu,
Because you are in the mountains."

Arab Wars

As predicted. Egypt is falling into ethnic civil discord and the military is in disarray. 26 dead yesterday, mostly Coptic Christians (pic: Coptic Pope). Egypt is busy with itself, divided, in no position to make war on Israel. The "Arab spring" weakened Arab power and we are left in peace. What is what we desire.