Before the Army

Daughter finished school and had a few days before entering the Army. She spent it in Greece.

How to be a Spiv?

Macroman offers an idea that seems to me investable. What?

Be a spiv. We TMM started out trading high yield and other very lightly-regulated markets, we quickly learned that some clients seemed to be just "too good"and would have to be priced accordingly. Now, without the informational advantage afforded to others we have learned to watch the tape for the kind of moves that are a trademark of someone buying the bejeezus out of the market, knowing something you don't. For Kovner it was the Russians, for TMM it's anyone with a red phone. So when things break out on NO news and policy is uncertain - just chase it.

Now I only have to learn how to be a spiv. According to wiki, spiv it is a London Metropolitan Police acronym for Suspected Persons and Itinerant Vagrants (SPIVs). I know about iteration: I can solve any network using the Hardy Cross iteration method, but as for myself, I am too old to start itinerating. I'll just be on the lookout for silent breakouts.  

The Regular Nightmare

As many times before, I dreamt that I am travelling with twenty thousand dollars in my wallet. Which disappear and I am stranded somewhere in China without money. Sometimes it is the air ticket that is missing. I wake up tired like a dog.

Enigma

Clue: Carter was digging when a mud brick fell out the wall and through the hole, at the flickering light of a candle, the treasure of Tut Anakh Amon was revealed after thousands of years. Those magniloquent fellows at Langley seduce enigma-lovers to join them as modern Carters - discoverers of secrets and finders of hidden treasures. To those with spare time: Here. BTW, I think the fourth paragraph (not shown) is in german or yiddisch. This being a blog, I dont have to explain why.  

The "Leofric of Mercia" Scandal in Hungary

Szegedi Csanad is the second in command of Hungary's antisemitic Jobbik Party and Hungary{s delegate in the EU Parliament. He had written a book with a chapter on Hungary's Jewish Problem. That Hungary has a problem is obvious because every once and a while there are scandals and accusations that some politician is a "Jew". The problem is so acute that the Jobbik Party decided to carry out a massive campaign of genetic analysis of its members to ensure that the Jews had not infiltrated its ranks.


Szegedi (pic) was caught in the net: His father is a Volkish Hungarian artisan (specializing in hand carving of  peasant wood cradles and rocking horses) and deeply Christian, Csanad was brought up as a Nationalist-Hungarian Christian, but his Grandmother was Magda Klein, a Holocaust survivor, and his other ancestors were provincial Jews that - like many other Hungarian Jews - converted, changed names and deleted their roots. In an interview, Szegedi proclaimed that he has no ambition to become Jobbik's Number One, as if the position were still open for one like him.


I am sorry for  cousin Csanád. He is a talented yid who grew up in a Volk environment and become an important politician. I'm almost sure he focused on antisemitism because as a Jew in the province he felt very vulnerable. I remember living in constant terror in Jászberény. It is a (political)  tragedy for him (and for Jobbik) that his ancestors were ultra-Orthodox Yiddish speaking (and dancing, pic) Jews. On the other hand, he is lucky to have inherited a Yiddische Kopf.


This tragedy proves my late Father's thesis that assimilation (in addition of being fake and dishonorable) - never works. He never changed his Jewish name and identity. After the 1956 revolution, he read his "kader" (party file) and saw that he had been classified as "clerical" and denied promotions for enemy class origin and presumed political tendency. He said that the honest thing to do for Jews was to be full fledged synagogue-going Jews even if that means the loss of professional advance, or to make aliyah to Israel. He did not live to come to Israel, but he was a honest Jew all his life. I am trying to be like him.

PS.: Anyone giving one second of thought to the name "Szegedi Csanád" would suspect that it is fake Hungarian. Because it is TOO Hungarian. It is like a Pakistani Brit calling himself Leofric of Mercia, or Offa of Wessex or Eorpwold from Anglia. There are no such things in our days.

The Spanish Angle

The pic was censured in Facebook, etc.

European Banking Union: The Lessons of the Past

It is incredible how the European Unions's summit is being misreported. Is this because economic journalist dont understand the facts of the issue, or is it because they purposefully hide those facts? Ignorance seems the simplest answer.

What we have here is the classic situation where a society has ended divided into two opposite classes: the owners+creditors vs proletarians+debtors. The creditors are in Germany, Holland, Switzerland; the people that is hopelessly indebted are in Greece, Spain, Italy. Exactly like Greece before Solon, exactly like Rome before Tiberius Gracchus, exactly like Judea before each Jubilee year (49 years). Exactly like then, the creditor class is resisting fiercely any forgiving of debts and fights to keep enslaving the population, forcing proletarians to sell their sons and daughters to pay debts. What else is the migration of   young East Europeans to Germany's factories and brothels?

The media is like trying to convince Germans to forgive debts by diverse methods: for example, printing money and inflating the Euro would be a way to delete debts. The Germans say: Only over our dead bodies. Never. Another way is called fiscal union, by which the debts would be guaranteed by the whole community. That "solution" sounds terribly unjust to the creditors: What? I will have pay to HIS debts to ME? Do you think I am drunk or crazy?

In the past, these conflicts were solved by class war (like in Rome) or by a sage like Solon, or by a Jewish God ordering everything to start again from zero. War is improbable, Solon died 3000 years ago (if he ever lived) and the Jewish God... well, he never had much influence on Germans (vide "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett).

Keep Trying

Is there a link between the number of tries and number of hits? Sure there must be. Successful people never gives up and keep trying till they collapse on the ground.

It is too early to say when IDB Holdings will start winning back investors's confidence. Today it lost 5%. My losses are in the 30% range in less than a week.

Burning Money

IDB Holdings Serie D bonds are paying 50%. The reason is simple: no one wants to buy them. Why? IDB's net capital is minus 1,000 million shekel (250 M$) and worsening. Sales are decreasing. The shares are 60% down and that creates a problem: the bonds are secured by shares and today the market value of the shares is LOWER than the outstanding debt.

The situation is not acute, as the bonds mature in 2020 and pay 5% yearly indexed interest. The company is selling properties (like HBSC building in NYC and Nesher Cement) and is full of cash. According to Nochi Dankner, the company is liquid for the next two years. The problem is that the banks may call their loans secured by IDB Holding shares, that are very cheap.

Yesterday I bought some of its bonds. I think the risk is worth 50% profit. Pic.: Crazy Harry. PS: This morning bought MORE.

Is the Market Sold Out?

Where Schäuble Quotes Goethe

SPIEGEL: But you also seem to suggest that the design (of the EU. J.) is unstable.

Schäuble: Excuse me, but the desire for improvement is a basic condition of human existence. In "Faust," Goethe writes: "If the swift moment I entreat: Tarry a while! You are so fair! Then forge the shackles to my feet, Then I will gladly perish there!" That's how it is.


This is when Faust begs Mephistopheles to wait a second before he signs the pact by which he sells his soul to the Devil. In two days Germany will sign the new EU pact. What is Schauble insinuating? 



The painting is by Eugène Delacroix.

Klein Bottle Hats and Mobius Scarfs

Nice idea."These are the finest closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifolds sold anywhere in our three spatial dimensions."

Today's program

Brad DeLong illuminated the fact that US T-bonds are yielding - 1.5% and falling, while S&P is 12% higher from last year. Serious economists say S&P is historically low. My opinion is that there was a change in EU and thay are starting to increase liquidity, just like Bernanke. Greece and Spain default is behind us. Europe will muddle through 2012.

I am selling the "good" stocks and bonds, and buying "bad" corporate bonds paying 30 - 40%. I think that is the right thing to do.

The Face of Europe

Chinese leadership projects itself as a disciplined raw of identical serious men standing in front of a heroic paisage painting. Europeans are all different and the background shows faded medieval ruins. Israelis like to have Ben Gurion looking down pensively from the wall.


No American collective picture surfaces in my mind.

Self-Affirmation of Being

Brad DeLong writes about the economic consequences of fear. It is strange that a Professor of Economics thinks exactly in the terms that I think, and arrives to the same conclusions that fear is paralyzing the markets and creating (1) absurd situations where you pay for keeping your money and (2) dismissing perfectly conventional and profitable business enterprises.

Our conclusions diverge: As behooves to a heavy weight professor and mandarin, he reflects on the defectiveness of the macro organization of the world's finance sector, while this lazy machine weights the opportunities to take personal advantage of the panic. The pic illustrates the issue: a giant frightened by a nano-shark. Now, what I need is courage of my (and his) convictions. What is courage and where to get it? Paul Tillich: "Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being." You said it, Paul.

It is always a pleasure to find errors in our better's calculations. Prof. DeLong says the imaginary investor in the SP index will end with 11700 dollars. Ha! The correct number is 10711.25 dollars.

A Frightening Act of Terror

Explosives were found on a forklift truck at Sweden's Ringhals nuclear power plant Wednesday. The suspicious material, found by a sniffer dog, was confirmed as an explosive. Who would want to sabotage a Swedish nuclear plant? And why? Ill.: I cant read Swedish but "varning" must mean something.

Northern Gold

It appears that Iceman, a mummy found in the high Alps, was killed while en route to his (presumably, tax-evading) clients in the Northern forests. He was a proto-Swiss bullion trader. In Gessel, Lower Saxony, 117 pieces of gold were found stacked together in a linen cloth. The treasure is about 3,300 years old.  The 1.8 kilograms of pure gold consists of wire spirals tied together in chains of 10 spirals each. Pic.: This isn't jewelry, but gold bullion.

Is TASE cheap?

Israeli banks are selling at 70% of their capital. Israel's largest holding company, IDB Holdings, is selling for almost nothing and its bonds pay 50%. AMPA, the owner of the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline (currently sabotaged), is worth nothing and its bonds pay 300%! Kardan, the holding company (among its holdings: TAHAL), is rated BB minus and its market value is 80% lower than a year ago. The country is stable and in relative peace, the economy is booming, so why this pessimism? I am heavily invested in "risky" thingies, should I risk MORE? I love risk and I am a contrarian, but should I worry?

Magyar Vizilabda

Hungarian Waterpolo.

They are very good.

I think they will take the Olympic gold.

The fourth time.

What happens if you eat rotten meat?

Nothing.

Yesterday I was hungry and bought some smoked meat that ate on the way home. It was too soft and warm (it came out from a display refrigerator) but felt nothing. At home threw a bone and some meat into the trash can. Next morning, wife reports that it was covered by maggots or worms. 

It is too hot in Israel. The refrigerated food chain is breaking down yet people seems healthy. The theory that early humans fed on half decomposed carcasses left over by lions and hyennas in the African savannah may be true. We will eat anything. Our physical make up and capabilities betray what we really are.

Jewish Conspiracy

Today's HaAretz fishwrap arrived with a color supplement dedicated to "refugees" (pic). It is terrible to say but has to be said that the great number of Africans that managed to infiltrate Israel has made our life here worse (and more stressful) and that we would be better if they went home. In Europe and in America they are accusing the Jewish lobby of promoting mass African immigration. But here, whom can I accuse? We are doing it to ourselves.


I cant read part of the supplement written in Ethiopian or other African languages, but I presume they inculcate the idea that Africans that happen to find themselves in Israel have the right to be here like anyone else and that the State should spend the same amount of tax money on them as say on "our" mentally retarded and defectives, which is very much, including special education for children and adults "with special needs" and treatment for the diseases (like AIDS and antibiotic resistant TBC) they come with. I frequently see classes of half-mongolic children in the swimming pool: they are four teachers for each ten children, and they work hard to make them play and feel well, but it is extremely painful and pathetic to watch those grotesque creatures in the water.

I am disgressing. What I want to say that the HaAretz material is perfect anti-Israeli propaganda, it proves convincingly Jewish indifference to humanity's suffering and its racism. I am sure it will be widely used for that very purpose. It is written in English and Arabic and Ethiopian and other languages - the propaganda is directed toward the wide world. It is like the authors of this document are willfully undermining our country, denigrating it, fomenting the hate against Israel and the Jews. They hate us. Why are they doing this to us? It is a mental disease. I have no other explanation.

Something To Consider

What's Up Down Under?

To change the subject, it is early morning in Australia. But Nursemyra's admirers cannot sleep. They comment:

"Nice necklace."

"The Catholic relic imagery on the necklace says you’re a good girl. The see-through top and visible nipple piercing says you’re a very, very good girl."

"Speaking purely from an engineering and architectural standpoint, has anyone mentioned you’re built like a brick factory complex? Just an observation from an engineering and architectural vantage . . . . ."

Answers Nursemyra: "but this was last weekend…….it’s handcuffs this weekend x".

Lord Likely had the last word: "I am in love!"

Credit Suisse Headaches

Nohi Dankner's pyramid conglomerate is based on the ownership of 2-3% of Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank has lost much of its market worth, causing headaches to those, like me, invested in Koor and IDB bonds. In fact, the bonds bought only month ago are worth today half of what I paid for them and are yielding over 50%. At this point nothing can be done. 

Credit Suisse is a disaster. It lost much of its private bank business, and is failing in its attempts to settle a U.S. tax probe over allegations it helped wealthy Americans hide their money through hidden Swiss offshore accounts.

CS is involved in a number of proceedings and it took net litigation provisions of 68 million francs in the quarter, but estimated the range of possible losses not covered by provisions at zero to 2.3 billion francs. Swiss bank secrecy is Kaputt. What else Swiss banks have? 

Kanazawa Commits Sepukku

No, instead of committing sepukku or harakiri as behooves a honorable ronin, Prof. Satoshi Kanazawa has recanted. Like a honorless peasant. Having been disgraced and defrocked by the bien-penseé for insinuating that African girls are less attractive than blondes, a fact of life that any porn entrepreneur will confirm, Kanazawa lost his nerve and writes a shameful "mea-culpa, mea-grandissima-culpa" in the Economist.

He tries to pacify the angry beasts by saying that intelligence (aka the very thing that the beasts lack) is not so important, in fact, it is unnecessary and even harmful.  "Actually, less intelligent people are better at doing most things. In the ancestral environment general intelligence was helpful only for solving a handful of evolutionarily novel problems." The IQ-less beasts - he says - are better at everything, they are more relaxed and self-assured, and (remember the Black female disaster) they are infinitely more beautiful and natural. Only they know how to make friends, conquer a girl and be good parents. 


 "More intelligent people are more likely to be left-wing liberals" - and we all know that left-wing liberals are all vegetarians and sexual perverts. Let me quote him: "They are more likely to be homosexual, because humans are evolutionarily designed to reproduce heterosexually." One wonders if they are human at all. They are certainly not normal. 


"My point is that ...  that more intelligent people consume more alcohol more frequently." Not only alcohol he reminds us, but all evolutionarily novel addictives like tobacco and psychodelic drugs. At this point one wonders why intelligent people is allowed to walk on the streets, endangering innocent normal children. 


When Kanazawa dared to deny that "Black is Beautiful", I liked his manly frankness, his standing up in front of the world and saying what he saw as a professional psychologist. It was a very un-Japanese thing to do. And I appreciated him the more for it. But now it is time to end this embarrasing spectacle of self-abasement, this shameful recantation, and do the honorable thing, the Japanese thing. He knows what. 

Investments

Another textbook I picked up from the University Library trash table is Bodie, Kane & Marcus's "Investment". It is a good textbook, uses relevant examples and explains clearly how synthetic stocks are built, how to build hedges and arbitrages, what is active portfolio management and so on. The book is very heavy in statistics and equations, which I like, but they misapply them wholesale.

For example, Chapter 27.6 explains how calculate to the second decimal point the forecasting accuracy of analists, their coefficient of bias and its variance, and how to discount each analyst's forecast. Unfortunately, accuracy yesterday does not predict accuracy tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I am also skeptical in general about the relevance of past events to the future in investments (I must be wrong on this point, but let me be). Also portfolio manager's alpha seldom continues for more than one cycle.

The book asks the student to provide retirement advise. For example, a 50 y.o. engineer with one adult daughter and with 900,000$ savings. The student must explore the investment objectives of the engineer: Do you plan to retire at age 55 or 60?  Ha! Here I am an Israeli Water Engineer at the age of Mathuselah and the idea of retirement looks so remote like Alpha Centaurii (pic). Hm!

Nursemyra's Art

Clever blogging has moved to Australia. From Nursemyra(pic)'s Blog:

"Nero did not fiddle as Rome burned, the fiddle had not yet been invented. But he did consider himself an accomplished lyre player and singer and when in his twenties, gave a public recital. He worked hard at rehearsals and was prepared to suffer for his art. To reduce his weight and improve the quality of his voice, he underwent enemas and severe diets. Some days he ate only chives preserved in oil, and never consumed apples as he felt they harmed his vocal chords.

The concert took place in Naples in a large amphitheatre. The programme was very lengthy and the performance dragged on and on. No one dared show any sign of boredom or dissatisfaction as his spies were everywhere observing faces for a lack of enthusiasm. Nero had packed the amphitheatre with a claque of 5,000 youths to make sure he had a good reception. He was reportedly so pleased by the rhythmic clapping of the Alexandrian sailors that he sent across to Egypt for reinforcements.

No one was allowed to leave before the end and several babies were born during the performance. People tried desperately to escape. Some climbed the wall at the back and risked the long drop to the ground. Others collapsed in a heap and feigned death, hoping to be carted off for burial. Nero, thrilled by the tumultuous acclaim, embarked on a series of repeat performances over several days. The concerts were finally brought to a close by a small earthquake that destroyed the theatre.

From Brian Levison et al.

Understanding Panics and Stampedes

Since I am suffering from the effects of the current panic in TASE (generated by Europe's three year old on-out panic - it may be worthy to spend an hoour of this Saturday morning meditating on the phenomenon. How can it be that if everyone does what seems best to him in the market, the end result will be disaster for all. It is rational to buy when prices are increasing by the day, because profits can indeed be made. But the more people make that individually rational choice, the more irrational the whole thing becomes. It is like a stampede to an exit door in a fire. Each person's individual best choice is to get out as quickly as possible. But if you allow that psychological reality to play out, people will be trampled to death at the door. Moreover, the corpses will block everyone else from escaping. Panic is the worst behaviour for tghe collective and for the individual, yet it seems inevitable. Pic.: The Duisburg Stampede. 50 dead. Addendum: Why a system goes from a stable mood to the disorderly panic mood? Say I am a front raw hoplite in a battle. I look to my right and left and see that everybody is advancing steadily towards the enemy line. My best chance of survival is to go with the line and not to run away. When I see disorder to my side and people running frantically from the enemy, I dont know exactly what is happening but the signal is clear and from that point everybody may be running away and the last one to run away will be captured and killed. From the instant of collapse the optimal behaviour is panic. As a corollarium, the leader must be always alert to signs of panic and he must kill it before it has time to go viral. The same in the bourse: when there is a selling panic, it can be stopped and reversed by a large buyer.

All the Geniuses are in America

No one seems to have noticed that Benzion Bernanke has saved America from a serious depression. Against conventional wisdom that "helicoptering" freshly printed money on the country will cause hyperinflation, he did it and it worked. There is no inflation and American economy is stable and puffing ahead. With a three years delay wasted on following the German school of economic self-starvation, the Bank of England and the Treasury has decided to follow Prof. Bernanke's doctrine and is cutting off Britain from the European Union and deploying a series of "unusual measures". The central bank has purchased £325 billion ($505 billion) U.K. government bonds with freshly created money in an effort to boost demand. It also has kept interest rates at 0.5%, a record low for the bank's 317-year history. It is a conceptual revolution. A hundred years ago, Europe led the world in economic theory. Today it is an intellectual wasteland wshere I cant find ONE original thinker. Only America has them and only in America there is a living free debate in economic theory. It seems that the last three generation of dysgenics (including the Holocaust) has decapitated European intelligentzia. This seems obvious in Russia, Poland (pic: The Kathyn massacre of the officer ranks of the Polish Army) and Hungary, where intellectuals were persecuted and killed for generations and the Jews, exterminated. It shouldnt be so in Italy, France, Holland where there were no major guillotining except in the trenches of WWI, so it may be that natural processes of differential reproduction are the cause of their current intellectual weakness.

Escalating EU Crisis Hurting ME

It happened. The unstoppable earthquake of the EU's debt crisis has at last shaken my savings jar. And I had imagined that I was far away and protected. "Shares of Israeli investment company Koor Industries Ltd. (KOR.TV) closed down sharply Thursday after Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), of which Koor owns 2.48%, was urged by the Swiss National Bank to halt dividends." This is the second or third round of increasing their capital adequacy required to protect themselves against escalating risks in the European banking sector. IDB Holdings, Israel largest corporation and owner of Koor, is practically broke. Its bonds are yielding now 50%. Pic.: California.  

Galut strategy

It is saddening to see us adopting a Galut strategy to deflect hate. "We are aware of public issues in Norway" said an Israeli diplomat (meaning that Norwegians hate us so violently that they cant see us without feeling an urge to hurt us.)  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is sending a non Jewish team to represent us in Norway: a Druze professor as the Israeli Ambassador and an Arab Christian career diplomat. Knowing Avigdor Liberman - a proud, outspoken, courageous Jew and Zionist - he must be feeling uneasy too. Antisemitism in Scandinavia must be worse than I imagined. The ill. does not imply that all Norwegians are bad, they are not. 

Collar Them All!

Shellie Zimmermann (right) was jailed while her husband (left) is awaiting trial for murder. One doesnt have to be a Lombroso to know that these two moon faced specimens are congenital criminals. His sister is still free but not for long as the judge is decided to collar the whole Jukes-like clan to ensure the safety of Black burglars scouting the neighborhood.

Am I wrong about IDB Bonds?

Last month I bought some IDB long term bonds yielding 17%. IDB is Israel's largest holding corporation and  it is unimaginable that it will fall. Yet it lost 50% of its market value and now yields more than 35%. The problem is its extreme pyramidal structure, Gandan, Nochi Dankner (pic) holding corp at the top of the pyramid, owes about 200 million dollars while the value of its stock on TASE is half of it - so the banks are holding its lifeline. It is difficult to calculate, but some say that IDB has negative net worth. But in a living ongoing business that is not fatal, and it may revive. As for now, I am losing but very optimist. Should I buy more these cheap bonds? Is this an investment opportunity? 

Urban Infrastructure Art

Japanese manhole. Source Urban Art.

School for Concubines

The Topkapı Palace Museum is presenting the first harem exhibition in Turkey. The museum’s director, İlber Ortaylı, says the exhibition’s purpose is to correct misinformation about the imperial harem as opposed to misrepresentations. ‘The harem was a center of education for concubines,’ he says.

What was the syllabus? Did it grant a diploma of  "Doctor of Philosophy in Concubine Sciences"? I am always interested in learning, may be I could attend.

Africans in Israel

Yesterday I had to design a food factory near the Ramle Market and saw hundreds of Africans waiting in front of the Government Building (Kyriath HaMemshala). Probably they were asking for staying permits from the Ministry of Interior. Ramle is about 20% black, if judging for the color of the people on the streets. It is one of the few mixed Arab Jewish towns in Israel, as contrary to Lod, some Arab clans choose to collaborate with the Palmach in 1948 and they were allowed to stay. The typical Arab bazaar was inherited in 1948 by Oriental Jewish refugees. They have developed the shuk as one of the cheapest of the country and many food factories have sprouted from it. I found my client (a North African clan) very stressed because they had been cought by Health inspectors selling "black" foodstuff, that is, from unapproved sources. Once I liked the schwarmah of Ramle, but I learned to avoid eating in that town. The man waxed indignant "What is the Government business from where I buy my stuff? What if I buy it on "black"?" Innocently, I tried to explain him the dangers of uninspected meat. He didnt pay me attention nor my advance. Pic.: The Shuk's Committee forbids the employment of undocumented persons.

Justice

Judge Al-Sheykh (pic) has rewritten (falsified) a protocol so that it appears that a lawyer she hates had done something improper, and she submitted it with a complain to the Ethics Committee of Israeli's Attorney Association. She was trying "to get" him for some personal reason but The trick backfired, and now she is being investigated by the Chief Justice Gorlick. Is this typical of how the Israeli justice works? I dont know nut sure it is difficult to maintain Western standards in the Middle East with Middle Eastern people.

Credit Suisse

Koor of Nohi Dankner (one of my favorite stocks) owns 3% of Credit Suisse Group AG, a Swiss financial services company. Currently there are two analysts that rate CS a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and one rates it a hold. Only TheStreet rates CS as a sell because of its deteriorating net income, generally weak debt management, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. Yes, CS pays good dividends.

Tel Aviv Parade of Exhibitionists, June 2012

Carnaval time on the beach. Mostly teenager girls in bikinis.

Panic

The UK 10-year bond yields 1.54 per cent, the US Treasury 10-year 1.47 per cent and the German 10-year 1.17 per cent on June 1 2012.Official short rates vary from zero in the US and Japan to 1 per cent in the eurozone. The world is in panic and depression. Why?

 "Experts" can find numberless explanations and resonable reasons for the fear that is seizing world markets. China growing slower (say 6% pa), Europe's simmering crisis (now three years old), America's unemployment figures (nothing terrible), Kondratieff curves, etc. Truth is that there is no reason for such pessimism and fear.

I think fear is the killer. For example, about 10% of the people at the start line of swimming marathons stays on the dry and dont start. Almost always there is some competitor drawning or dying without any reason. Later they will find thickened heart walls (we all have yet we dont die suddenly) or atheriosclerosis (who is free of it? Only sucking babies). Also in war, many soldiers die before the battle or without any visible injury. Fear kills them. Mass panic as we have today can only be dissolved by confidence in leadership.

I have the best story of how it is done. A Child suffering from fear and panic consults the famous Magician. Tell me what are you afraid of? The Child is unable to define his fears. The Magician gives him paper and pen and says "Make an exact and complete list" and leaves the room. Later he returns and reads the long list. "Something may happen to me in a storm". "There will be nothing to eat." And so on. The Magician, serious, reads the list item by item. "I am a most powerful Magician. I promise you that Nothing will happen to you in the storm. You can depend on me. Food. I shall make it so that there will be enough food. " and so on.

 We need the Magician to assure us that everything will be all right, and nothing bad will happen. Obama's magic is not powerful enough. Merkel has no magic at all. Fortunately we have Netaniyahu, who is a Magician but his magic stops at Israel's border.

Street Attack on Hungary's retired Chief Rabbi

Rabbi Schweitzer Jozsef, age 90, retired chief rabbi of Hungary, a much respected scholar, was verbally attacked on a Budapest street. Hungary is undergoing a severe economic crisis and is starting to lose its nerves. As usual, they turn to their fascist heritage and antisemitism. My late Father disliked Hungarians, specially the military. I'm starting to feel like him. Pic.: Protest in front of the Parlament. I like that girl.

Exam Time

Today was the last class of the semester. The Administration has scheduled the exams where I have to be present all at the same hour distributed in 12 classrooms. The exams are open, that is, the students can bring and consult books, notes, pocket calculators, etc. In that format, cheating is almost unnecessary and impossible. The pic does not illustrate Fluid Mechanics (we have no girls with fat legs. We have no girls.). Yet, as Alex Tabarrok wrote in his blog:

I sometimes find evidence of cheating on exams but I rarely take action, I don’t have to. Almost invariably the cheaters get abysmally low grades even without penalty. Some people I know get annoyed when students without evident handicap ask for and receive special treatment such as extra time on exams. I comply without rancor as the extra time never seems to help. Over the years I have had a number of students ask for incompletes. None have ever become completes.I call this the law of below averages.

A Nation of Loosers

A monument was inaugurated to Admiral Miklos Horthy, the dictator who allied Hungary to Nazi Germany and ordered  200000 Hungarian troops and 50000 unarmed Jewish Forced Labour men to the Don battlefront to fight the Red Army. The Russians massacred them. Horthy delivered half a million Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in sealed cattle wagons. At Nurnberg, he declared against his German Nazi allies and was never prosecuted as the war criminal he was. 

Hungary's resentment for finding itself war after war in the side of the losers is boiling over. The Vicepresident Kover is touring Romania promoting Hungarian minority nationalism and the dismemberment of that country. Fascist criminals are being rehabilitated and monuments are erected to their memory. Antisemitism is once more in fashion. I can find valid reasons for, say, a Palestinian disliking Jews, but it case of Hungary 2012 it seems a mental condition. Pic.: A painted wood full body statue of Admiral Miklos Horthy. 

The Ugly Hungarian

The Municipal Theatre of Eger (a Hungarian provincial town) forbid the visit of the Budapest Madach National Theatre because one of its actors is .. Jewish. They (or maybe it was only the papers) said that they were only applying the1920  Law of Numerus Clausus, that among other restrictions forbid Jewish actors's access to national theater, journals, films, etc.

Az MSZP numerus clausust emleget

Above (in Hungarian): "The MSZP remembers the Numerus Clausus". The MSzMP is the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, otherwise known as the Communist Party that ruled Hungary between 1956 and 1989.   The Communist Party of Hungary was founded and manned by Jews who had repudiated their religion and their national origin. I expect all Hungarian Communist Jews still living to repent and to meet them in the synagogue at Yom Kippur, beating their chests begging the community's and God's pardon for their errors, crimes and sins. I am glad that my Father z"l was not among them. 

Sending the Woman to Work

Among my latest catch is S.D.Goitein's book on the Cairo Geniza documents. Goitein notes that in the 10th century Jewish women never worked outside of their homes, but in the 11th they started to "uncover their faces" and earn money as seamstresses or tending small shops. This social change is reflected in the marriage contracts (the ketubah) that started to deal with the issue if the wife's income was hers or to be administered by her husband. Goitein finds no signs of an early feminist movement demanding gender equality;  the cause of the change is other. Poverty. Jews living in Muslim lands were becoming less prosperous to the point that the taboo of women going out of the home to earn money could not be maintained anymore.

What about our times? Women in the nineteen fifties and sixties rarely worked. But nowadays a couple cannot survive without two incomes! Is this generation poorer that their parents and grandparents? How could that be possible when they have larger homes, more cars, color TVs and spend their vacations in Europe, etc.?

My conclusion is that the current generation is poorer, since they need women to work outside and even so they barely can afford a child. There is no other name for it. Poverty.

Scots at Risk

One man has died and 15 other people were listed in critical condition following an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Edinburgh, Scotland. Authorities believe the disease may have been spread by a whisky distillery or cooling towers. (BBC)

One more reason to drink vodka.

I have been in Edinburgh (pic) but never understood what's the point of cooling them towers.

Byzantium as Asimov's Foundation

I lifted another batch of University Library books. Now they are cleaning the Medieval history stands and I got much material about England and Merovingian Europe. Henri Pirenne's Medieval Cities is interesting, if very poor in hard data. He says that after the destruction of the Roman Empire, no commerce remained in all Europe, not even regional fairs. The revival started in Venice, an inaccessible group of villages built in the marshes by refugees from Aquilea (a large Roman city destroyed by the Huns). Why them? Because they had sea connection with Byzantium, where the Antiquity's accumulated knowledge had partially survived. From Byzantium the Venezians adopted commercial law and techniques such as borrowing capital for maritime ventures. Then the same format spread to other North Italian cities and then to all Europe as the hansa and the guild. Pirenne's thesis is that social forms (such as loans and contracts, etc.) developed through the centuries in the Eastern Mediterranean were the key to Europe's revival, that it takes two or three milleniums to develope the social forms (like organizing a commercial expedition) that allow economic development. Once you know how to do it, everyone can do it. Europe had lost all memory of the past, but fortunately Byzantium had conserved some and seeded the Renaissance. Pirenne's thesis reminds me of Asimov's Foundation scifi fantasy, only that Asimov imagines the planned creation (by Hari Sheldon) of the seed of the future revival of civilization. It is astonishing that for Byzantium, we should have forgotten all Greek philosophy, theatre and science. Pic: Asimov with his IBM Selectric.

Soylent Green Crackers

Age gives one perspective, if nothing else. In our overfed world combatting the fat epidemy people cannot even imagine how the world looked forty years ago. Then, people had nighmares about an overpopulated, dying world, with food riots in New York. With a Communist-like police oligarchy managing food rationing. When the government assigned you an apartment, it always came with beautiful "furniture".

It did not happen and it never may, but many still think as if this scenario is realism and imminent. But no worry, today anyone can buy delicious, nutritive Soylent Green Crackers in the supermarket, made of deep ocean plankton (pic). That is true.

Celebrating 80? You are invited to visit Soylent Green Corp.

Robert Benmoshe, CEO of AIG said that people must work till age 80 and only then retire. AIG is one of the largest insurance companies. Insolvent, as all of them.

BTW, what was the age of mandatory retirement in the Soylent Green dystopia?