Farmer Diaries

Well it seems that my analysis was correct, it appears that Boing has been holding acquisition talks with Embraer for some time -- therefore its actions against Bombardier make sense.  if you want to acquire a 100 seat aircraft manufacturer's whose product is now 10 years old, and you know that the US airline market is "hot for the type" either you buy one or the other, but you ensure yourself that the competitor is excluded. It has been widely reported that Boeing was in talks to acquire Bombardier's C Serie of aircraft, these talks failed, but to Boeing surprise (maybe it was a strategic move to lower the price), Bombardier went to see Airbus who say this a perfect fit in the construction of aircraft in the US.  Moreover, the US content of the C series is already higher than that of Boeing B787 aircraft. Anyway, what Boeing could not get via a contract it is trying to get via the government

There is no doubt that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was done for two reasons:  (a) Fulfill a campaign promise to the evangelical Christians and (b) a bit of "realpolitik" in that for Israel, Jerusalem is the de facto capital -- the idea of the international community has always been that the world couldn't recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Isreal because of the UN's "two-state solution".  This "solution" has been on the books for decades and neither Hamas nor Israel want that outcome. The first reason that Trump decided to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel is a political, no cost, promise he made to the evangelical Christians.  The big question is why the evangelicals are so keen on having Isreal as the capital of the country.  Several years ago, 60 minutes had a segment on the evangelical movement -- at the core, it is this: The great world war which will engulf the Middle East at the end of the age is

Imagine a world where tasks are assigned in a company by a sophisticated AI (Artifical intelligence) that instead of user preferences for certain employees use an elaborate system of staff selection?  It sounds improbable and far-fetched, but is actually real now!  Imagine a very complex engineering project that has multiple areas of work and and work delegation outside of your expertise -- you are the team leader and are a material engineer specialist (Yeh that's what you know and trained -- but now you are the boss) when it comes to electrical issues you are less comfortable on the best employees and most efficient method of doing the job...guess what there is an intelligent system available TODAY for that. A few months ago I was reading about Ocado that can fill 90% of  a grocery order in less than 5 minutes -- while a human would require 30 minutes (after some serious training...) This is not only a very repetitive task it's boring and subject to lots of error, while th

Well, it's not like I didn't warn you that I tended to be wrong.  For the life of me, I still cannot believe that the GOP passed its tax bill and at the same time killed Obamacare (the removal of the individual mandates will have a huge impact on the system).  I never thought that the GOP would sink as low as it did, the final document (out of the Senate) was unreadable, with notes in margins -- they didn't even retype the document in their rush to meet their deadline. On Sunday, FOX News blame the Democrats for not supporting the legislation -- being very very careful never to state that the document was made public to all Senators (i,e, the Democrats) about 4 hours before the vote.  The GOP has paid off its masters.  Most Americans earning less than 100,000 will be worse off, if you earn 100,000 you will be better off to the tune of $100.00 -- so one nice dinner.  However, carried interest and flow through are stronger -- you even get bigger deductions if you own a pr

For those who know me that I would talk about the National Football League will elicit surprise.  I've never watched a football game on TV (or maybe while surfing channels years ago on a rainy September...) and I think I want to one game (the Montreal Alouettes) in the 1980s -- free tickets or something at the Montreal Olympic stadium. In a nutshell, I don't follow American football at all (I don't follow any type of organized sports) but the NFL is an interesting economic beast.  In a country that has outlawed slavery "players" are being bought and sold, there is clearly a huge concussion problem in the NFL (its a problem in many organized sports) that the NFL has been downplaying for years.  The NFL was the embodiment of masculinity with big arms tight asses...well you get the picture.  It was also a sport in which the team leaders (quarterback) were all white and the guards and "muscle" were all black. The concussion thing is a huge problem that h