Chinese Phenomena

Gold and bronze went to the Chinese teenager swimmers, and a doping scandal is developing. Some people is already talking about genetic manipulation. No doubt, we'll reach that in the near future.

Tel Aviv in Summer

Yesterday I took the bus  to Tel Aviv. I walked a kilometer in the sun to the site. The vegetable market in Hashmonaim St. and the parking in Ha'Arbaa street (pic) are big building holes, I cannot recognize the neighborhood. I walked back under the midday sun, temperature 42 Celsius and that was all I could do for the day. Slept 12 hours and am still tired. Tel Aviv is not for fat old engineers, the place is frenetic, the noise is deafening, the air is burning, so unlike placid European cities.

The game of evolution

Steve Hsu mentions an unsurprising result of evolutionary systems:


"The system evolved to give cooperative tribes an advantage over non-cooperative tribes, using punishment to give cooperation an evolutionary advantage within the tribe."


Simply said, it is the police. Well policed societies where trasgression is punished - work.   Singapur model works. Then why the Soviet Union, that was a terror society, failed? Corrupt police?  


The British Navy was very harsh and disciplined. It won battles. 

Tisha Be Av Lamentations: Yossi Sarid

Yossi in HaAretz: "Finally we have the privilege of hearing from  Sarid an admission of error and guilt, blessed be He who has brought us to this time. Finally even he understands that the settlements are "forever," may they continue to multiply."  The Hebrew version is superb, his Hebrew is pure, literate, inventive, the best Hebrew writer of our times, better than Amos Oz.

Erev Tisha Be Av

We are having an electric storm at home (four daughters and a mother - all and each one of them a neurotic sack of nerves) thus I had to escape to Nazi Germany: "The German Dictatorship" by Karl Dietrich Bracher.

One of the arguments of Prof. Kevin MacDonald that most impressed me was that Jewish psychiatrists have diagnosed Nazism as a mental disease, and individual Nazis as certified lunatics. MacDonald argued that Nazis were normal and Jews were reacting following their typical psychological self defense mechanism. For years, I could not dismiss the argument because MacDonald is a published psychologist with tenure in a California university. Suddenly I stopped reading Bracher: "In February 1933, Eicke was under psychiatric observation by Dr. Werner Heyde, the very man who later headed the euthanasia programme. Himmler brought him directly to Dachau from the clinic in Wurzburg. ... Eicke rose to the position of Inspector of Concentration Camps and SS Group Leader (July 1934)." Rudolf Hoss, the future commandant of Auschwitz, was among those trained by Eicke at Dachau.

Wait a minute! The Police Minister of Germany driving to an institution for mentally insanes to pick up an institutionalized fellow to install him as the commandant of the first concentration camp? Could one imagine Janet Napolitano, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, a member of the Cabinet, do something like that? Not even Edgar J. Hoover would do it.

Who was Himmler? Hitler, in his recorded table chats, always mentioned Himmler like ashamed of him, insinuating that he was sorry to have him in the goverment clique, "but I have a need for that kind of people". Himmler, among other crazy initiatives, organized the zoologist Dr. Ernst Shaeffer's expedition to Lhasa, to find the origin of the Arian race, together with the SS Ahnenerbe, an institute to investigate the occult. He believed he was the reincarnation of a German king. The man was crazy. MacDonald is not only a raging antisemite, but he is scientifically wrong: the Nazis were deranged.

But not only that. The mystical esoteric circles from where the NSDP emerged was full of strange characters. The many links between Hitler and the Thule Society are well documented. But the occult background of this secret society – the rituals and esoteric teachings of the Ariosophes – is never mentioned. I'll admit that all revolutionary movements have a crazy fringe and that under Hitler, the Thule occultists soon disasppeared from the bestial beer-garden battle scene. A few persisted and reached high positions and power in the Nazi regime, always loyal to the members of its heroic period. 


Another shocking data is that in the organizational framework of the German State, Eichman was really a very small screw. Just as he had said all the time. For us Hungarian Jews, he was the super-smart Satan that organized the deportation of 500000 people to their deaths in six weeks and without violence or opposition. Yet Eichman was an lowly bureaucrat in the Sicherheitspolizei's Section II-B. Section II-A was the most important and was charged with the extirpation of Communists and other Marxist groups; II-B was in charge of controlling the churches, the sects, the emigrant communities and ... the Jews. II-C was in charge of the reactionary right wing opposition, II-D was in charge of protective custody, II-E economic, agrarian and socio-political affairs; II-G supervision (police supervision) of broadcating; II-H party affairs, auxiliary organizations, II-J foreign political police (I dont know what is that); II-P the press, and II-S was the police's department to fight homosexuality (remember that the SS was a political police organization!) and abortion, and so on. Jews figured large in Nazi propaganda and probably in the nightmares of Adolph Hitler, but in organizational  resources and priorities - we were a side issue. Truth is that no German soldier died or was hurt in the mass killing actions, Jews had zero political and zero military importance. It is something that gives me stomach ache, but what can I do? Returning to Eichman's status, he was a nobody. After the Nazi defeat, he was smuggled to Argentina as thousands,  where he lived in a villa miseria without running water,  working as a factory mechanic. He arrived without a stolen gold coin in his pocket and was ignored by the wealthy SS "social security" organizations in Argentina. Difficult to digest, but that is my conclusion.

Another shocking thing is the whole Arian race thing of the SS was fake. No one, not Hitler nor Himmler, took it seriously. The SS was a political police organization that at certain point absorbed the regular police who ipso fact became SS racial master material. German police, like everywhere, is manned by decent lower-middle class people, no racial or intelligence tests were taken for admission to its ranks. The truth is that the large majority of the SS were just regular policemen. The SS groups exterminating Polish Jewry were WWI veterans attached to reinforce regular "order" police and then incorporated en masse into the SS and dressed in smart black uniforms. I suspect that some of these front fighters felt uneasy in their role, but the camaraderie of old front soldiers was so sweet and Pappa (the commandant) was a jolly good sausage-and-beer fellow, and then, what was the alternative? Volunteer to the Russian Front at age fifty?

I suspect that the Arian ideology never played a role in Germany. It was ignored in the Army, it was ignored in civil service. Only the admission to the SS was conditioned - for a short time - with a search for ancestry papers. I suspect that the image of the Arian SS soldier was to motivate rectruitment, as in the Marine Corps recruitment films we only see muscular he-men.

Could the Holocaust be avoided? I am most sure it could have been done easily. In the moment the Jews became aware of what was happening, the Vaad HaHatzalah (The Salvation Commission) was created in Hungary. It was very late, in 1944. Yet this Vaad, without any organizational backbone, through bribes and promises, saved half of Hungary's Jews from deportation (those of Budapest), influenced Himmler (with baseless promises) to stop the killing in Auschwitz, organized a safe train to Switzerland (!), and bribed Rumanian military to forget to deport Arad and other Transylvanian towns's Jews to Auschwitz. All this was done by a very small group without any organization in a very short time.  If the Vaad HaHatzalah would have been created in 1939 in Germany, the German aristocrats that hated Hitler and were ready to sacrifice their lives (but lacked focus and initiative - all what we had in abundance and could provide) - they would have saved Germany from total defeat and destruction. Germany would have been saved, and with it, all my family and tribe.



Conclusion: What the Jewish people in Europe did not have was an intelligence agency. There were thousands of religious, social, political, etc. organizations, money and influence was not lacking, but they had no idea what was happening outside and what were the dangers emerging. A people willing to live has to be observing the surroundings all the time and analysing if any danger is arising. I hope American Jewish community has learned the lesson, and regarding Israel, we have created a very capable intelligence service. Our lives depend of their alertness.


Pic: The mean alpha male baboon always sits alone on the hilltop screening the surrounding savannah while the troupe feeds. We had no watchman.

New Project

A former student of mine called me if I am available for a job. He is now some kind of project manager in a large contractor firm. What, me worry? Of course I am  available. Have PC and will travel. Now I am entangled in a monstruous building complex for years. My only hope to get free is to die  soon.

Pax Hungarica Movement

Pic: A night demonstration of the Hungarist Movement in a provincial town. Hungary is a Nazi reduct in Europe. As the dream of European Union collapses, these groups (and there are hundreds of them) are proliferating. People is longing for the second coming of the Fuhrer. For Americans dismissing Europe, let them remember that Europe has the double of the population of America and its GNP is higher. Anon's comment is very relevant here: "Europeans have a long history of extra-ordinary violence, which is not a secret" And they are very angry, armed and dangerous.

Tourist Attraction

From the Golan Heights you can have a good sighting of Damascus, which is only 25 km far. Israelis (and Zionist Southern Christians) crowd old frontline former Syrian fortifications to have a look at what may be going on in Syria. There is not much to see with naked eyes, but the site could be turned into a valuable turist attraction if they would replace the old public telescopes or arrange a fast border "rectification".

I want it

Artist: Luis Jimenez, American (1940 - 2006)
Title: American Dream
Year: 1972
Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil
Edition: 150, AP 1/15
Size: 24.5 in. x 34 in. (62.23 cm x 86.36 cm)

Price: $3500

... where the students try to steal the exam papers

After the exam papers are collected by unsobornable former KGB agents, they are counted and signed by the university and then, in sealed envelopes, the lecturer takes them for grading. Last week, I was walking in the parking lot when was surrounded by a mob of students that demanded to see the envelopes. I told them not to come near me since we are being filmed (probably true) and every move would be misinterpreted and the whole exam annuled. I escaped with my life and exams intact. But they didnt give up. A girl phoned B. saying that Nataly (from the Exams Dept.) was on holidays and she was replacing her and please send in the graded exams. B. called Nataly and she picked up the phone. No, she was not on holiday. Now security is investigating.

Assad Acting Responsibly

So said Echud Barak, Israel's Minister of Defense. He has moved his chemical mass destruction weapons out of the rebel areas. He has left the Golan border with Israel undefended and moved its crack tank units to Damascus. He has not said a word against Israel or the Zionists. He has not lost its presence of mind and is fighting systematically the rebels. Most importantly, he has good taste in women (pic). He has what it needs to rule Syria for many years to come.

Batman Rises... Really?

Aurora James Holmes Batman shootings is producing a new generation of conspiracy theories. Some disoriented people thinks that everything they see in the media is staged or intentionally distorted. Yet the whole Holmes story is improbable. The boy was something of a scout leader or "madrich" in Jewish summer camps. You have to be very smart to lead Californian Jewish princes and princesses - and be rehired four times. If Holmes had shown the least sign of pedophilic tendencies (you know, Batman is homosexual) or some murderous craziness, he would have lasted less than five minutes in the camp with its precious inmates. From this I conclude that he is normal and his Batman act is most improbable. Crimes can happen by accident or drugs but never without a cause. Give me a reason why he did it?

The Guru Is IN

My daughter has opened her ashram in the Nitzanim sand dunes. Her tent is open to give free advise to teenagers' depression caused by kitchen "toranut", the unfeeling senile (21 y.o.) girl sargeants, those complex sentimental problems, and specially parents and sibling misunderstandings. Her accumulated life experience and wisdom has made her the undisputed oracle of the camp. The pic is with two of her new acolytes. I'm trying to tell her that her army job will be to write down a coherent judicial decision, not to give advise to or correct the judge.

Secret Motives

Nochi Dankner, the broke tycoon, has spent 100 million dollars to buy the Maariv broken newspaper. His directors opposed the investment, what the hell they need a losing paper in a fastly disappearing industry? I speculated that he wanted a media to channel his opinions, although he is notable for having none. Why, Nochi, why? Maariv was founded in the twenties by Oved Ben Ami (Dankner), a man (pic) I got to know in his old age. He lived in a tremendous penthouse in a skyscraper facing Netanya's sea. He was an early Zionist pioneer, redeeming the land and settling it. He organized the group that bought the lands of Netanya (with money provided by American phylantropist Nathan Strauss). As major of the new settlement, he founded its diamond polishing industry. He also founded Kfar Aharon, parts of Herzliya, and Even Yehuda. He also conceived and founded the port city of Ashdod. Most early pioneers died dirt poor, but not Ben Ami, left immense real estate holdings to his sons. Is there a sentimental link between Maariv and Nochi Dankner? Worth 100 million dollars?Is he crazy and will pull me down too?

Eastern Hunters

Today I bought more IDB bonds, this time from a serie with 79% yield. Local and foreign investors are panicked because the IDB conglomerate is - on paper - broke. I speculate that it will pay its debts, because IDB is a going concern with an excellent management team. If currently owes more than it owns - that means nothing. They are ups and downs in life, they are down but intact and desperate. I dont care if they are broke, they are the very best people hunting in the local jungle. I bet my savings on them.The pic show a chimpanzee with a captured antelope. Chimps, like men, hunt and kill cooperatively and good teams have no trouble in feeding their group. Nochi Dankner and his chimp troupe may be hungry this morning, but I bet they will provide dinner.

The Sound of Silence

Seven Israeli turists were killed yesterday in a terrorist attack in Bulgaria. The UN has condemned Israel thousands of times for being impolite with Palestinians. Am I reading her face wrong when I feel she is rather unimpressed by Israelis blown into pieces?

Persians in Hungary

Those ancient, long forgotten ethnic identities are reviving in Europe. I was born in Jaszbereny, a village in the Tisza-Zagyva floodplains, peopled by the Jasz ethnic. Now the Jasz are searching for their roots and are becoming aware (they always knew but it was left in the background) that they have little to do (genetically) with the conquering seven Hungarian (Turkish-Mongol) tribes but they are ... Iranian refugees. They had forgotten to speak Persian and they had assumed they were Hungarian. I wonder to where will this searching for a thousand years old roots craze lead.

Infantile Bureaucracy

From HaAretz: "Nearly six years after Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, some of the farmers who were evacuated from their homes in Gush Katif remain without a source of income, and they say the government and its laws are at fault. The problem is that they are prohibited from building greenhouses and packing plants on the lands they purchased or were given in the wake of the disengagement. One example that illustrates the difficulties these former Gaza residents are facing is taking place in Kibbutz Zikim in the northern Negev. In 2007 the state agreed to purchase agricultural lands from the kibbutz so that it could transfer ownership to former Gush Katif farmers. But those farmers were later told that they could not build greenhouses and packing plants on the land, since Mekorot, Israel's national water company, refused to approve the construction due to the presence of drinking water wells in the area." To build anything in Israel or to do any kind of business you need dozens of different permits. I am sure no one imagined that Mekorot (in fact, it is not Mekorot but the Ministry of Health responsible for the water quality) will forbid building. No one has a complete map of wells in this country and its "radius magen" - the area where activities are forbidden for fear of contaminating the well. I did solve these kind of problems with imaginative chicken coops built in the air - on columns (no kidding). Stupid and expensive, but the bureaucrats liked them. The illustration is from a children's book, my projects are industrial.

Empty house

My youngest daughter went today to the Bakum (Army Rectruitment Base) and she is starting her military service. She will be assigned to a military court. It is a very dangerous place for a 18 y.o. girl, not because of the fact that most defendants are Palestinian terrorist suspects (pic), but because the lecherous judges and horny military attorneys. The courts are most dangerous places.

Our Ante Bellum Era

The Middle East is in turmoil, is falling apart. The largest country, Egypt, has no organized government and is sliding toward chaos and civil war. Lybia is re-organizing itself. Syria is already in a civil war. Iraq is divided and its central government is either imaginary or ineffective. The stable ethnic states in the region are Turkey, Israel, Iran and possibly Saudi Arabia (although its robustness have never been tried in war). If Europe gets itself organized, this region is ripe for re-colonization.

Anatoly at 140

Anatoly Karlin speculates on the IQ of Russian leaders. In his analysis, they are witty geniuses with first class academic certificates. Anatoly so loves Putin that assigns him the same IQ level he gives to himself: 140. The reason: Putin's brilliant academic carreer. Wait a second, Tolya! What academic carreer? Putin is a professional political policeman, and in Russia (like in Israel) at certain level they are sent to special university courses to grant them prestigious PhDs that, academically and otherwise, mean nothing. The academic achievements of Putin's circle prove they are policemen marked for advancement but not necessarily smart.

Anatoly equates the fact that someone was admitted to a prestigious Russian university with brilliance. Nonsense. At Ariel University I have hundreds of Russian colleges who were discriminated against in Russia (for being "Yevrey") and were admitted only in Alma Ata or Birobidjan. They are (were) the cream of Russian intelligentzia. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are prestigious, and I admit they are good and not third world, but you dont have to be a genius to be admitted.

Thirdly, there is the amazing fact that the few Jews remaining in Russia are so salient and get rich and famous so easily. That must mean that the competence is very weak. The people Anatoly calls geniuses are being measured against a very poor background.

Lastly, Anatoly describes his idols as witty and full of humor, a sure sign of high intelligence. Russian humor? Jew bashing produces horse laughs on TV and the street, but "humor"? The boychik is drunk or suffering from the Stockholm syndrome.

Is EPA - Israeli?

"The Environmental Protection Agency has slapped a $6.8 million penalty on oil refiners for not blending cellulosic ethanol into gasoline, jet fuel and other products. These dastardly petroleum mongers are being so intransigent because cellulosic ethanol does not exist. It remains a fantasy fuel. So far this year, just as in 201l, the supply of cellulosic biofuel in gallons totals zero."    ...   This sounds like Israel. Have Israeli bureaucrats taken over the EPA or the EPA is the puppet-master of Israeli public administration? 

Today's Action in IDB Bonds

I bought in the early morning, but the end of day rise is not me but some fellow who was unsure of himself and waited to see the developments till the end of the trading day. This is starting to look good.

It took two years...

Illegal African infiltrators are being discouraged and only 64 did cross into Israel last week, compared with a previous rate of  at least 500 a week. "To compare, 1,000 infiltrators crossed last month. In May, there were 2,000,” said Netaniyahu. 

Real Danger Signal

The real danger signals appear when stock market news moves from the back to the front pages of non-financial newspapers. Illustrating this point was the alarming appearance of mutual funds as a Playboy magazine cover story at the height of the 1990s stock market boom. When stocks replace scantily clad young ladies with large mammaries in the most honoured position of a magazine such as this, logic has clearly taken a back-seat. (from S. Vimes).

Betting the farm

IDB Holdings has money to pay its debts for the next two years and has a lot of valuable properties such as 3% of Credit Suisse and 40% of Makhteshim Chemicals (the 60% has been purchased by the Chinese Chemical Monopoly). Yet its D Bonds are paying 60% and are valued as if IDB Holdings were broke and could not pay its debts. 

I beg to disagree. Concerns and countries base their finances on recycling their debts, not to mention all banks. If refinancing is not going smoothly, they ALL go down. Yet, almost miracolously, refinancing is being done smoothly and automatically and everything works out well.

Except when not. European banks have hit one of those rare events when market fail to refinance their debts. The reason is panic caused by Greece's default. Now that we have some kind of european central bank and collective promise of helping out temporary problems, things will regularize once again. It cannot be otherwise.

The problem of IDB  Holdings is Profesor Stanley Fisher, the Bank of Israel. In the light of the panicky mood of world financial circles, he concludes that Israeli banks should have larger capital base and less exposure to unstable financial pyramids like IDB Holdings. So IDB Holdings's credit lines suddently dried up and cannot recycle its debt as normally would do. The computer models say that without refinancing and recycling debt, IDB is broke and kaputt. It bonds and promises to pay ten years from now are worth nothing. 

I am an optimist and am betting the farm on IDB Holding D Bonds payable in the next ten years. Let me explain my reasoning with a Jewish story. A Jew was accused of stealing the horse of a Polish officer and was being carried off to the hanging tree. "Dont worry, everything will be all right!" he said to his crying wife. "But Moyshe, how can you not worry when you are being going to be hanged?" "Rivkeleh, that is far away in the future, in the meanwhile the horse may die, they may find another horse, the nobleman may fall from the horse, the judge may receive a heart attack or they'll find another Jew to hang. Something may happen so there is nothing to worry about!". 

I mean that the current credit drought cannot last three years. Something will happen and all will be ALL RIGHT !

Purified Genotype Races

Steve Hsu quotes and interesting study that seems to demostrate that Northern people has less recent mutations than people living in the Southern latitudes.  It is as if those people has more stable molecules and natural selection has eliminated the mutated (wrongly reproduced) genes. Nordic people are therefore genetically healthier (and more uniform) than those living South. Those living in the South have less stable molecules and are full of genetic mistakes. 


One question once I tried to discover is the rate of defective births among the different races, but things like cousin marriage affect that rate. If the theory is right, defective babies should be rare in Norway and frequent in Equatorial Guinea. I have no data if that is true or not.

IQ or intelligence is also a sign of genetic health. Northern peoples should have more of it. Yet Southern Indian Brahmins and Parsis and of course Southern Chinese seem to have higher IQ levels. Hong Kong and Singapur are almost on the Equator and have people of very high quality.  Slowly, also these questions are going to be solved and then become irrelevant, as we are turning ourselves into a synthetic life form.

Daban horz!

The European Union is worried about (de)population trends and consequences. The epicenter of the phenomenon, in my opinion, is in Hungary. Latvia and Bulgaria have lost more people, but it is because of emigration of the younger generation. Hungarians are not moving out but ethnic Hungarians from Ucraine and other borderline countries are moving in. Even so, Hungary has lost 10% of its population in the last decade and the emptying out of the country is accelerating.

Have Hungarians lost their will of life? It can be argued that there are symptoms of self-destruction, like one of the world's highest suicide rate, widespread alcoholism, unimaginable sexual freedom (Hungary is Europe's porn industry's center) and so on.

Will Hungarian become a dead language? Should I start writing down old Jasz-Kun Magyar words of my childhood before the language goes extinguished? 

Daban horz ! Good Morning!  But I cant write it down (pic).

One thing is sure: the brilliant world-plays of "Juda-Pest" are no more. The youth speaks and sings vulgarly. Hungary may sink to the Bulgarian situation where, so I am informed, the literate generation has died out.

J checks his geography

My daughter's friend is in Japan and his hosts feel most honored to have an Israeli from Baghdad visiting them. I have such faith in the Japanese people that I decided to google the question: is Baghdad in Israel as the Japanese say or should I believe in my memory. It appears that Baghdad is a city divided by the Euphrates, which is Israel's frontier (the red line on the map). So the people living in the Western side of Baghdad are Israelis, but those in Trans-Euphrates are not. Our honorable Japanese friends were half right and half wrong, just like J always is.

Hadrian the Humane Emperor

Circumcision was frequently prohibited by enemies of the Jews such as the Ptolemys and Antiochus IV Epiphanes (2nd century B.C.) It was again banned by Hadrian. Their edicts specify that Jews and their customs are odious to humanity and must be forbidden. Now comes this German judge prohibiting our tribal custom NOT because he too hates Jews, but because he LOVES us and wants us to avoid harming our little babies. Out of pure humanity.

Der Kuss

The Wiener Kunstmuzeum has an exposition of Klimt. It is so hot here (35 Celsius) that I dream of cool Vienna.

We want Silvio back

Italian President Silvio Berlusconi had to resign because Ruby (sex with a prostitute). A boring eunuch whose name nobody remembers took over instead but he doesnt enjoy the job and has resigned. Merkel (daughter of a protestant Prussian pastor) and the other tightass Germans who run Europe find Silvio undignified if harmless, so they have decided to let him back. What is the EU without his Bunga-Bunga parties? With Koko among Silvio's  intimates, his fourth presidency will be documented in this blog.

Unpunished Political Criminal

Five years ago, the Attorney General ordered a preliminary hearing of an American Zionist activist. The man was old and very sick, clinically demential, and after being transported to Israel, he gave a very confused account how important he had been in his Brooklyn street and how he had collected donations to help Israel. He did not remember any details but suggested he had given envelopes full of dollars to Shula Zaken, Israel's Prime Minister, Echud Olmert's secretary. One the basis of that confused account, Olmert was suspected of taking bribes and was "resigned".  New elections were held and Bibi Netaniyahu won.

After five years the veredict is in: Olmert is 100% innocent and not only that, the fantasy-man had not provided any tangible fact or a credible story. It was the Attorney General - Lidor (pic) - who had trapped and felled Olmert. It was a political putsch. Today I heard calls on TV to Lidor kill himself. But he doesnt want even to resign, the bastard.

Russian Venom

Early morning my wife took me the country club and I watched Russian TV news while paddling on the walking machine. The announcer took out a roll of toilet paper printed with Euro notes and simulated cleaning his ass with them. Then he explained the LIBOR scandal in pure cold-war terms: the capitalists push down interest rates to help speculators, to reduce the working man's salary and to exploit in myriad ways the rest of the world. The female announcer asked: But LIBOR is a bank thing, why they rob banks? In the background appeared the pic of noted bank robber Sutton, who was quoted "Banks is where the money is". Then he extracted a toy tommy gun to visualize Sutton robbing banks.  Why guns? Sutton: Because charm and personality does not work on banks. The joker-announcer: Sutton was wrong! Diamond from Barclays had no need of violence. Russian TV is venomous anticapitalist propaganda just like under Stalin, although more entertaining.

Why is people investing in funds?

Everybody by now knows that there is no alpha in the funds. Yet fund managers make a good living. Steven Hsu has an answer:

 I think many people are irrationally overconfident. So they think they can pick the one hedgie out of many who actually has alpha, even though they may understand (at the rational level) that most do not. It doesn't help that the hedgies are very good at portraying themselves as having special magic.

Why do admissions people at elite schools think they can predict college performance better than a simple linear combination of SAT + HSGPA? (When in fact the opposite is true.)Why do economists think they can understand/predict the economy when empirically it is clear they cannot?

My son thought he had a way of rolling dice that increases the probability of his desired outcome. I got him to look at the statistics but he's only six, after all ;-)

Eriphyla is in poor health but her arithmetic is correct

I am publishing the second page of Housman's poem found in an old Classic.


Housman was probably trying to reconstruct the lost play Alcmaeon in Corinth, a tragicomedy. In a fragment, Alcmaeon says that he "killed his mother, to put it in a nutshell." Another character asks: "Was this a consensual act, or were you both reluctant?" 


The story is about Eriphyla, the daughter of Talaüs, and wife of Amphiaraüs, whom she betrayed to Polynices for a golden necklace, for which she was slain by her psychotic son Alcmaeon. 


Why should this poem fall in my hands? why indeed? I have no notion why.

Jews Not Welcome

How do they look those evil, supersticious villagers of Kunmadaras that attacked the few Jewish survivors returning to their homes after the war? I dont know what I expected to find but it was not two ruddy peasants in their Sunday bests proudly annuncing the new signpost in old Hungarian runic writing. In the roadless floodplains of the Tisza river, time stands still.

The 1946 Kunmadaras Pogrom

K reminded me the environment of my hometown Jaszbereny in the post war years when the memorial tablet (see below) was set up in the synagogue wall for the 600 Jews assessinated at Auschwitz and the Forced Labour Battalions. That very year, 1946, not far away in Kunmadaras, there had been a bloody pogrom  inspired by a rumour that Jews were making sausages out of children. Three Jews were killed and fifteen were injured. 


Rajk, the Minister of Interior (later hanged for "Zionist"), immediately dispatched a mission that jailed eight perpetrators. In the trial that followed, two of the leaders (a teacher and a provincial bureaucrat) were sentenced to death and the others, all poor peasants, to up to eight years. The Kisgazda (Smallholder) Party came out in defense of the criminals, and the case became entangled in a political battle between the dominant conservative forces and the minuscule group of Jewish Communists that had not yet strengthened their hold on power. In the end, no one was punished. 

Poolside Meditations

Having mentally undressed all the attractive girls sunbathing poolside (most are almost naked anyway), my mind wandered to the conundrum why the large pool's water is cooler than the shallow childrens pool. The pools lose energy (heat) by evaporating water, and the surface/mass ratio is higher in the shallow pool, so it should be cooler. Yet the opposite is true. The shallow children's pool is warmer and stinks of piss. May the heat contribution of the urine (36 degrees Celsius) cause the temperature paradox?


Yes. In the early morning, after a night of irradiating long wave energy and no hot piss additions, the shallow pool is cooler than the deep one. Yet around 0900 AM the relation reverses itself, and the children's pool becomes a warm nitrification reactor. Also the fact that the deep pool's volume is about 800 cu.m. vs 50 cu m of the children's pool affects the rate of temperature change. Next time I'll calculate the denitrication rate at different chlorine concentrations.

Life is Uncertain

Hidden among the pages of old books I find letters, poems and notes from long dead people. This is a fragment of a Greek tragedy about the uncertainty of life. Somebody considered it worth keeping.

Instant Decision

Memorial to Jaszbereny Jews

Add caption

One small village in the Hungarian swamps. All my family.

Translating Difficult Concepts

Redlichkeit means probity, honesty, integrity in Frankfort. Do they have a word for it in London?

Rigging the LIBOR

Interest rates in foreign currency in Israel are always LIBOR plus. The plus could be negotiated, not so LIBOR that descended from Har Sinay (where God resides in a burning scrub). Now we are notified that LIBOR was not the sacred word of God but of a cabal of cheating goyische pirates. We (I mean all the world) were being robbed all the time. The Economist: The rigging of the LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) betrays a culture of casual deshonesty. London as a financial center is kaputt.


What now? The money will look for a secure place and honest guardians. New York is the best, Frankfort is    good, Singapur will take Asia. . 

A Stable Political Organization

 In 2008, Reuters reports, a survey of east Germans found 52% believed the free-market economy was "unsuitable" and 43% said they wanted socialism back.

The Guardian has a large article on the revival of Marxism. Socialism offers equality, job security, free medicine and education, and a larger, trascendent, social narrative. With computers, even Quinquenal Plans make sense. The fact that Cuba, with all its poverty, is Socialist after fifty years, is a point of reflection. 


Apart from the verified promise of organizing a stable (if less dynamic) society, Marxism has the best explanation of how societies work and evolve. Societies divide themselves in two classes: the exploiters and the exploited. From the unavoidable dialectic conflict between the two, progress is synthetized. The idea is simple and obvious. 


The English concept of free market where competition's invisible hand  will deliver the unplanned optimal solution is conceptually difficult to seize and reality rarely behaves like that. Even the British dont believe in it and since the forties they have regulated, centrally planned, quasi-socialist economy. 

Witness to History

Yesterday I had a meeting in the management floor of the Vaad HaPoel, the Israeli Workers Union. The meeting was agitated as people interrupted and left the table, phones and messages, some big drama was playing outside of which I was unaware. Then I understood that the union leadership of the Railway Company (pic.) had been sacked en masse. I assumed that the Ministry did it (it is a Government owned company) as there is a conflict regarding Bombardier wagons, that need less personnel. The Union had vetoed the purchase and the Railways has to pay large penalties to the French.

But no. It was the Histadrut (the national union) that had intervened the Railway Union and sacked the delegates and designed a more pliable leadership. The 2000 railway workers decided to retire from the Histadrut and joined a competing, more combative Union. The new Union - "Power to the Workers" - is "democratic" - which is almost synonym of communist. This is a battle of historic consequences.

I hope my project will be not affected by the war between the unions.

Before Euphoria

The Panic/Euphoria model seems to prove that we are before a strong rally. We certainly "enjoyed" a very long period of panic. It stands to reason that the mood is about to change.

The futility of the managed portfolio

That hideous fishwrap HaAretz has a good financial supplement called The Marker. In it, a permanent page of a managed portfolio written by two prominent professional managers (see left). It has the rare quality of being almost honest and almost allowing long term comparison between a well managed portfolio and an index portfolio, After six years,the managed portfolio is 28.4% higher in nominal terms, while the index portfolio is 25.9% higher. Apart from the overall miserable yields, I can see no alpha anywhere. With transaction and management expenses, the result is negative. And these two are probably the best managers in TASE. They apply all the textbook rules of diversification and risk managements.

About ten years ago I abandoned managed funds and invest by ornithomancy (the fly of the birds, specially blue ones). My results are not worse than The Marker's.

Camping Out in Protest

Today I had a meeting in the Vaad HaPoel in Tel Aviv. The heat was enervating, equatorial, exhausting, draining out the vitality from the obese old man I am. In the fresh shade under the trees, in Park Arlozorov, young people demanding social justice (see yellow sign on the tent) were protesting while taking a siesta (pic). I saw a shapely girl taking out a frosted pitcher of cool lemonade from a fridge and serving it in glasses with ice cubes. Maybe I was hallucinating.