Farmer Diaries

lets see: Hire Scaramucci, Hire John Kelly fire Scaracucci -- 10 days it took to go from "Hey I work at the White House" to "Hey can I get my job back at Eximbank".  He's after session Start a fight with the GOP and insiste that the Senate should do nothing else than kill Obamacare!  He said that he would sign anything, just anything that is put on his desk.  The reality of politics is killing Trump's agenda.  If he starts a fight with the Senate then what?  His projects were: "Kill I say kill Obamacare" -- I suspect that this is personal rather than philosophical Kill the Muller Russia investigation Tax reform Infrastructure project Reform immigration -- he suggested a point system (that's what we use in Canada) Aside from that he wants to make America great again, which is a good goal to have assuming he can.  I though it was idiotic of him to suggest that the stock market's rise is due to him, what happens when the stock m...

Well Whatever the Russians wanted to achieve in the American electoral system part of it has been a total success.  Is Trump (son) a bought and paid for shill for Putin, of course not.  Was he a fuc&ng moron to go to a meeting with Russians (connected to Putin) to get dirt on Clinton -- Yeah!  Was Manafort a moron too (the bate was just too attractive -- Trump had asked the Russians  -- on live TV to find dirt on Clinton)? Putin somehow destroyed the legitimacy of Trump (not that he was seen as very legitimate) by playing the Russian game of "look here, find the Cheese".  Granted Trump is probably the least qualified holder of the Oval office, on the other hand he's exactly what Ryan and McConnell were dreaming about -- a president that will sign any legislation he just doesn't care.  Trump is not that different from the other 7-9 Republican candidates (remember those). They all held similar views -- if anything Trump was at the left (better healthc...

The seriousness of the Senate, in fact of America's entire elected body was un jeopardy last night when the Senate Republicans drafted a new version of the health bill between noon and 10 pm -- to then reveal the health care bill for a midnight vote! Can American electoral system be more broken?  I am sure that this morning, the blame game will start in earnest; Trump will blame the Democrats -- after all they got 120 minutes to review the bill, but were not allowed to ask any question or make any amendement -- clearly their fault if the bill failed! This morning Mike Huckabee suggested in a Tweet that the 17th amendment should be abolished -- that Senators be elected not by the legislature, as it had in the past, but by the people (BTW this is not really unusual -- in fact the French Senate elections are by elected official in each district).  Still, the GOP's view is if we don't get what we want lets change the rules -- never for one minute thinking of the impact of t...

Soooo I had a very pleasant dinner with a very good friend -- a big cheese in one of Canada premier investment bank -- that has Canada's largest research budget...by far.  I mentioned, en passant, that Nomura had set an annual price of $120,000 for its gold plated research, and that I was thinking that few would pay that kind of money.   He disagreed fundamentally. In his view, research is not about paper but about access, access to special conference where every American tech CEO is present (you never hear about those conferences -- private and no journalists) they give "prime" investors the CEO's thinking -- that's privileged information (but legal).  Usually these conferences (Goldman has the best) are limited to 50/100 investors -- their top clients which is where the problem arises, in a sense, there are a lot more than 50/100 real investors, and for them this information simply doesn't exist! My very good friend only though of his 50 best clients -...

Obsolescence is a feature of the 20th and 21st century manufacturing process, but does our society require obsolescence.  The reason the question is intersting is a relatively recent TED talk with Elon Musk where we spoke about his new solar roofs -- one of the main features was that because the tiles are made of glass they don't wear out.  Essentially a solar roof made by Musk's company could outlast the house on which it has been installed. Modern cars have hundreds of moving parts (on average 1,500) a Tesla model S around 45...The engine has one moving part, the wheels and breaks account for a bunch more, trunks, door handle, steering wheel and pedals -- things that don't really wear out anyway. Musk's two main products (cars and solar roofs) seem to have very very long lifespan.  The often told story is that the first light bulbs were made to last for every, but consumer society allowed manufactures to make them disposable -- true but not for the reason most peo...

This is not original but it does explain why Trump is having such a hard time appointing people to serve his administration:  people just don't want to work for him! Trump fired Comey more than 2 months ago, and the White House said they would nominated a new head of the FBI within days, it took nearly 6 weeks to find a willing candidate and as far as I know the confirmation process has not even started...considering that Congress is in recess until September. That means that to replace one of the most visible figures in US law enforcement will take more than 7 months.  Its important to note that its not Congress that has been slow, the process is driven by the White House, they're not sending anything to Congress (although in Trump's reality its still the fault of Congress).  By this time, Obama had more than 200 posts filed in 2009 -- its even more for Bush and Clinton.  Trump, the number is 51, that it.  Right now there are only two or three names in the pi...

These are the forces at work in Italy right now: The path to Italeave is a difficult one, requiring a referendum and a constitutional change, but trouble is brewing on a huge number of fronts simultaneously: The Italian banking system is insolvent Another refugee crisis is brewing (this time via boats from Libya) Italy’s youth unemployment is a whopping 37% The ECB is the buyer of only resort for Italian bonds Italy’s debt to GDP ratio is over 130% to the consternation of Eurozone officials The global recovery is extremely long in the tooth Italy made no progress during the recovery The topic of Italeave is no longer taboo Any number of things could start a chain reaction making Italeave look good to a majority of Italian voters.  Political parties tend to follow (from the front), 2/3 of all Italians political parties are pro exit, in a sense the negociations between Europe and the UK are going to be key here.  Italy accounts for 12% of Europe's GDP and is Eur...

This was a line from an 1980's movie about a "meat head" who is called by a New York smart ass a Homo Sapiens...hilarity (and a fight) ensues!  Its the same for some un-name trump supporter who referred to Clinton supporters an a sign as "Morans". Yesterday was America's birthday -- literally it marks the day America declared independence "and the church bells of Philadelphia were ringing", against the reign of "mad" king George. Now, NPR, that hot bed of leftist crazies has for almost 30 years read out the declaration of independence, and this year, I guess having a bit of fun with the twitter madness that has overtaken the oval office has decided to tweet the whole thing 140 character at a time... Part of the declaration of independence refers the a people's right to abolish a government and form a new one...some true Trump supporter thought that this was a dig at Trump -- being completely unaware that it referred to King George...

Parents who object to the concept of evolution or global warming can now make sure that their kids will never hear such things!  This is the new law past last Friday in Florida.  The ideal is to shape the minds of young Americans to a reality where God is central and where science is banished to the sidelines. It used to be more complicated, and getting Harry Potter out of school libraries was a major victory for the Christian right (no joke) they also objected to Catcher in the Rye The idea seams to be removing anything "objectionable" from the young minds so that they get the party line early -- now American education (second most expensive after Luxemburg) and which ranks the US in 30th position in reading, math and comprehension, is rather bad at doing what its suppose to do.  Needless to say that top schools still teach important facts, but there too the rot is spreading.  Just last week a national TV presenter assumed that an aircraft accident had occurred be...