Farmer Diaries

 Trump a good old mercantilist has decided that raising tariffs on merchandise trade is a good idea.   It achieves two goals it created a break with Nato countries which he considers "community" as opposed to his friend Puttin.   It looks good politically, at home. Now the infamous 30% tariff on "dryers" did not work the way Trump wanted, but he did not care which shows what he wants, to make his billionaire friends happy and richer.   The tariff did not lead to less foreign competition, just higher prices for washing machines and dryers.    That means higher margins.  Part of Trump's problem is that he forgets that America is a HUGE exporter of services.  You can draw your own conclusions...tariffs on services are far deadlier! The cabinet of incompetents doesn't matter, the people who he nominated with one or two rare exceptions are just there to kiss his ass, have no real competence and will face a reluctant civil service, thing ...

 I told this story a few months ago, my ex-employer aka a fund manager for high net worth investors had a few mainland Chinese clients.   One family was finally able to "get out" 2023 -- when the COVID restriction fell away, and they had sold their business to a bunch of PLA generals and other officers.   The price was almost irrelevant, what the general gave them was far more valuable:  exit visas for the entire family. The family owned 19 properties purchased between 2002 and 2018.   All the properties had been purchased around Shanghai, some of the country's most valuable and desired real estate.   It encompassed 90% of all their domestic savings.    The family sold the entirety of their property portfolio.  On real estate they purchased between 2002 and 2015, they realized an average of 5% ROE.  On the real estate they purchased between 2016 and 2018, they lost 30%, 50% and 80%, of their capital.    It i...

China's sovereign debt at 25% of GDP is one of the lowest in the world and speaks volumes about Bejing's ability to keep expenses under control....NOT. China's sovereign debt has to take into consideration the debt of the states.   When that happens the debt/GDP ratio climbs to more than 80%, and if you add on its pension obligation, then you are in the Japanese nosebleed level of 400% to 500% of GDP.  China is hardly alone in playing games with its balance sheet, Mexico is infamous for excluding from its sovereign debt burden any of the mega projects it has built in the past six years, or the debt of the state oil and electricity companies.    China's problem is fundamentally incurable., and will have to be forgiven one way or another.   The problem is that virtually 100% of China's debt (direct and indirect) is held by its citizens (individual and corporate).   The government thought they were smart when they made debt sales price secret, t...

 They've been gone for a few years now, yet somehow they are still the subject of weekly articles in the gutter press.   thinking of you The Daily Express.   For now, they live in the US and seem to be planning an exit in case Trump feels like kissing the ass of the King of England...,(which begs the question why).  The fact that he is married to an American means that he should be able to get a US passport but never underestimate the hypocrisy of the American media and that there is a big move to kick him out.     If the news is correct, Harry and Megan bought a massive property in Portugal...

A drone built in Kyiv costs between $300 and $5,000 for the larger longer-range models.    The cheap battlefield drones are already changing the nature of warfare because drones are more polyvalent and extremely cheap in their simplest format.    The reality is that Ukraine was able to shut down airports around Moscow last weekend with its drone, which is 1,700 miles from the Ukrainian border.     The question is therefore is America's war machine geared to the war of 30 years ago or to the war of today.   A swarm of small drones could lay waste to the flight operation of an aircraft carrier, and while the F35 is a fantastic platform it's hard to justify the capital, and manpower when a drone costs 1.000th the cost can do about 95% of its mission.  How many American war vessels are built specifically for drone operations?   How about none!   Of course, the firepower of an aircraft carrier can be unbelievable but it ma...

 The four biggest ticket items in the US Federal government Report are Social Security, defence, healthcare, and interest expenses Social Security is an expense, but it is also something for which people pay directly form of insurance. A certain amount is deducted from your monthly check, which will become your payment once you retire. The reality is that most Social Security in the United States are "pay as you go" as the money has been used by governments in the past.. The reality is that cutting Social Security would be a very easy thing to do most retirees are already Republican and they’re not about to vote Democrats anyway worse, they won’t vote at all so who cares? The second is more complicated defence spending has two aspects. The first is the cost of running the world's single-largest army, but there’s also the VA and other retirement benefits for past soldiers. There’s not a lot to cut here if you’re gonna be strong on defence, it’s hard to see how you can cut ...

 The last time I look, the stock was down 20%. There’s an old saying in the business by the rumour sell the news. The truth is that Donald Trump right now couldn’t care less about true social. He’s the president he has to support of the Senate and the representative and the judges he doesn’t need anything from anybody. It is almost certain that all his court cases will go into Supreme Court review and he will be found not guilty of anything that’s America today. as for truth, social the fact that they announced their third quarter numbers the day of the election tells you everything you need to know about their results. They were horrible just simply horrible. How this business is worth $5 billion working with almost no revenues and no plausible source of revenues is mind blowing.  But it doesn’t matter those who bought true social by political conviction Will get hosed those who bought it based on trend probably made a lot of money assuming they bought it right

 The only question is how lazy Trump will be in a second term. He has strong majorities in both the house and the Senate and he can recast the United States more or less the way he wants. Obviously, the first step will be to continue his reform of the judiciary system with appointments of strongly pro-Republican judges in terms of healthcare American expects the removal of the Obama care and replace it with nothing, which is what the Republicans want anyway. I suspect that Europe can put even money that NATO will be shut down within the next 18 to 24 months. Donald Trump has never liked European countries and would prefer a line with With President Putin, then with the European nations, he has greater affinity with that man than he does with a German, the French or the Brits. I think it’s fair to expect massive increase in tariffs and massive reduction in taxes. America should be ready to see a removal of the Department of education and social services and removal of about four or ...

 The Americans have chosen Donald Trump. He won decisively he even won the popular vote why Donald Trump won is an interesting question. A few weeks ago, a man found an old shopping list of 2018. The price of fulfilling that same order today was nearly 4 times as high in the last 12 months general mill has increased the price Cereals by 20% because of higher expenses or they failed to say, of course, was a massive soldering increases that the senior management of general Mills gave each other in In the order of 300% the reality today is that the US stock market has never been higher because profitability by US corporations have never been higher I have not eaten at McDonald’s restaurant for more than 20 years but when I heard last week that a big Mac french fries and a Coke was $17 it was evident that something was very wrong. Price gouging has become the norm in North America. The true lack of competition makes it possible for delivery points to jack up their price dramatically wi...

 2024 will probably be our best year ever.   The numbers for the third quarters are now in, and while prices are on track with 2023 figures, the budgeted volume is almost 25% higher than last year.   Undoubtedly, the increased volume of produce and our new-ish high tunnels have had a major impact.   Demand from distributors remains strong and we are entirely satisfied with this segment, but where as in 2022 it represented nearly 80% of our volume, this year it was down to 45%, excluding the business that is channelled via our wholesalers but is destined for our subsidiaries.    One thing I had not counted on was the quick reproduction rate of our pigs, first pigs are very very good at reproducing, and that has increased our labour costs, but our direct-to-consumer business there has proven very successful and the 44 hams we have aging, are looking delicious.   Not the AAA equivalent to what the Spanish produce but a very attractive ...

 So for some bizarre reason our farm has become a bit Of an outlier, what happened is that our farm is no longer tied to the electric grid. The reason has little to do with the cost of energy electric in particular and everything to do with our slurry and waste treatment plant that has become a bio digester. The new European rules on clean water are such that when we built our farm installing a bio digester was a very reasonable solution to a ongoing environmental problem It was not so much out of conviction that green energy was better, but we needed to transform the slurry into something that was useable and non-toxic, especially we need to make sure that the water was clean before it went back into the water system That is a big advantage of a Bio digester The reality is that all our cattle produce enough waste at our farm, produce enough waste that it made sense for us to have some redundancy and two bio digesters with the waste gas we heat our high tunnels, the houses, and all...

 we were in London last night, enjoying dinner with friends acquaintances, and it turns out friends of friends who are not our friends. We were having dinner in a relatively well-known eatery in Soho when the friend of a friend starting talking about the greatness of the American healthcare system, needless to say this front of a friend is loaded. He thought that the NHS Was a tyranny and that the public sector was no good to provide healthcare The interesting commentary was that his only experience with healthcare was a boob job and a nose job for his daughter He had always been healthy, and therefore no experience of the healthcare system that didn’t stop them from having an opinion on everything The questions becomes Do you answer to such ad hominem attacks or do you let it go and leave early? That’s the question in the end we chose the Latter and went home early. My wife asked me why I didn’t Confront this hard I told her that I didn’t feel like getting to an argument with some...

 for nearly 200 Years the reinsurance market has been the place where regular insurance company have come to protect themselves again catastrophic events. In the last decade or two that market has proven to be harder and harder to be profitable Some very good friends. I’ve been involved in the market for over half a century. They have said they have not seen things as bad as they are today ever. Names are quitting the business right left and center. There is a seven year Exit window in the Lloyds insurance market. Names are quitting as they see that the last decade or so have generated no profits. The catastrophic weather destruction of the past few weeks in the United States are largely absorbed by The reinsurance market, And when the Payout exceeds premium by nearly 200% this is not a good business. Watching the destruction in North Carolina and today in Florida, just confirm what has been known for a long time that this is an insane market that is in and not an acceptable Risk....

 Twitter was never great. It was a place full of rumours innuendos and stupid stuff. However, it was still a place where experts were local people could exchange information that could be valuable was not always valuable but could be valuable. Twitter is no longer that first it’s called X and not Twitter anymore, but it seems to be only there to amplify the crazy thoughts The crazy talk and devoid of any useful purpose. When they only voice you hear in the public Square is fire fire fire you stop paying attention. The evidence is overwhelming that X Is something new but is it something anyone has any use for? The funny thing is how much of the Internet is now useless. Most news aggregators are full of nothing. The news is the headline and the headline is the news. There is no analysis. Nobody no thought clearly all produced by robots. All this is is to show that the Internet is finally growing up. Paywalls are back at full strength.  After years of not paying for the news, the...

I dare anyone to listen to any random speech given by Trump in the past two months to afterward things that this is a sane and coherent man. Never mind the fixation on Hannibal Lecter, or more recently the reenactment of the movie the purge the man makes no sense. It’s not one speech. It’s all of them which speaks the question or what basis are people supporting him? He has no policy on inflation, healthcare defense, except that he’ll make things better in terrible terrible world that’s his policy. He’s got a great idea and he’ll tell us as soon as he elected. It begs the question how can he be still so popular after being so insane? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a large fraction of the population that Is so angry with the establishment that they would like to elect someone who is completely crazy who would destroy everything and give them blank slate not really understanding of caring the implication of this.

 Claudia Sheinbaum starts her term as president of Mexico today. She was selected by the outgoing president to replace him in his quest to make Mexico in the image of Venezuela. Some readers will believe that I’m exaggerating when I’m saying such a thing but I’m not that’s exactly what he has said in numerous speeches. in the past six years, the Mexican federal government has spent nearly $100 billion on vanity projects a new airport in Mexico City replacing a nearly completed airport a tourist train in the Yucatán for more than $20 billion. A refinery is still not operational despite being open for 18 months.  all this has come to the expense of the people who supported the most this is possibly the most amazing thing to witness. The people who got screwed the worse by the current Mexican administration are the ones that support him the most education legal reform, all issues that concerns, poor Mexicans the most have been basically ignored or defunded.  The new presiden...

 Any shockingly close election considering how insane Donald Trump’s rhetoric is it is amazing to watch the ground effort that is being deployed by the GOP. For some obscure reason, they have been relying on third-party professional get out the vote gimmicks instead of using volunteers and local people. It’s not entirely clear why the JP is doing this, but considering it seems to be a widely used tactic clearly comes from the top. My American acquaintances involved in GOP politics tell me that they’ve been cut out by These professionals. this is the first time anyone has seen such a thing it is normally expensive. It is hard to see how we will work. It seems part of the problem. Is that a lot of people inside the GOP who organize the GOP as opposed to doing the groundwork art deep disenchanted with Donald Trump‘s candidacy, his policy and his sheer madness entirely possible that the GOP head and brain thrust has decided that they local GOP cannot be trusted to deliver the votes on ...

 for a while on the campaign Trail, Donald Trump kept on referring to Hannibal Lecter, the character in the movie silence of the lamb as a real person. Over the past few days he’s now being referencing the movie the purge which is a 2012 movie where basically the world goes to hell, the very least Donald Trump’s movie reference are getting more in the millennial zone instead of the baby boomer zone.  What is fascinating is that it seems a campaign is not even trying anymore to rain in his more wild and crazy opinions. The man talks about flies in the middle of speech and no one finds that strange. The unhinged and incoherent message out of Trump would be on the front page of every newspaper if it had been uttered by Joe Biden, and yet no one pays attention to the orange one. The truth for most of the media is that Trump is his own worst enemy, and they see no reason of discouraging his crazy talk even this week. He was furious at Fox News for airing the speech by Kamala Harris...

 Well, this year, at least the United Kingdom has lived up to its reputation as been rainy and wet the whole year we have been battling wet fields and trying to cope with excessive water. All creeks are maxed out. Ground is completely saturated and we are luckier than most as we sit on a bit of a hill.  Thankfully, it’s not as bad as the spring. We had a pretty dry August, but some of our neighbours are still finding it difficult as they tend to have a bit of flooding in their stables our biggest challenges that we have only just recently. Harvested the wheat we planted with our neighbour we fulfilled our contracts and generated Modest profit it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been better. I’m not sure gonna do this again, but we did have the Free land and it was very low cost operation to us. it’s amazing to think that virtually 3/4 of the year is over as far as the farm is concerned, our revenues are much more spread out than other farms. We are less dependent on summer cro...

 when you first hear the story of the exploding pages the first thing you think of is, this is a bad spy movie storyline. Unfortunately that is not the case. It is a real thing and the odds that the Israeli Secret Service are behind. It are probably very near to 100%, Hezbollah  Has relied more and more On Pages to invade Israeli bombing runs, however the fact that all these Hezbollah fighters were in Lebanon as opposed to being in Palestine education that the very least the conflict is about to grow, I am almost certain that the White House is furious with this escalation but the White House does not run to show up there The truth The conflict was always going to grow Hezbolah has made it clear that their intention is to drive Israelis into the sea. The leader has said so in so many words Israelis have no interest in being driven into the sea, and therefore a fight to death is predestined. The question is will the fight grow and include Iran and America directly or will it re...

 for the past three months, the China Academy of science has released partial information, not only on the estimated real birth rate over the past two decades, but also on the composition of this birth rate what seems to have emerged is that for variety of reasons state governments have lied to their Composition and number Births. The trend is not new. What is new is the formal articulation that there is a serious and balance between men and women of reproductive ages the Academy of sciences to be believe the difference is around 10%, which means that there are too many males for two female. The disparity has been underplayed, not only at the state level, but even in families who have resorted to abortions even late abortion to sue towards having male children to support families in their older age. The world bank has estimated that by 2100 China’s population population could be as low as 800 million assuming that it starts at 1.4 billion today. Part of the problem course is that i...

 Two things of the last few days first Trump yesterday was against almost assassinated maybe and secondly, the man is clearly unhinged. It’s evident that his closest advisor have been telling him for weeks if not months that Taylor Swift was on his side. It’s more than likely that it’s advisor to avoid conversation they need to be pointless that Taylor Swift had supported Biden in the past and she was unlikely to support Donald Trump. He was clearly so convinced that she was going to support him because his advisor probably telling him so to keep him quiet about it, ordered or had manufactured merchandise that look very much like Taylor Swift’s own concert merchandise. More importantly that Donald Trump hates Taylor Swift is somewhat irrelevant. Donald Trump is not part of Taylor Swift demographic he’s a 78 year old white man who taste of music are probably closer to Burt Bacharach than they are to Taylor Swift. A number of things are emerging in the campaign that becomes so obviou...

 well, the debates been over for nearly 2 hours now as morning comes up United Kingdom the results of this hour and 35 minutes conversation between the two participants to the 2024 presidential election has been interesting as presenting too very different vision of America. What is evident is that Trump has the dystopian view of America at the edge of a precipice towards Armageddon where is Harris has a very different view of the world and America and place it hope and happiness it’s unclear whether Miss Harris will prevail, but It remains that Mr. Trump has an issue with reality and the truth miss Harris was not the best debater, but was clearly ready to talk about the subject. Where is Donald Trump was easily baited and evolving into conspiracy theory. The reality is Trump convinced no one, but his supporters will vote for him. Whatever he says the problem is the independence and their Harris had a much better position in the entire debate will change the election map. One thing...

 I will let you dear reader discover who McNamaras Morons were.  The bottom line is the result of that little game created a law, where the US military was prohibited from accepting people with an IQ of less than 75, or about 12% of the population of any country (100 is average..).  These McNamarra Morons are Trump's core MAGA supporters.  In Trump, they see someone they understand (aka word salad guy) and who speaks to their anxieties "the others than them". The short version is white low-income low education low IQ.  The others in the GOP are the grifters.  It takes a while to figure it out, but the grifters of 2016 and 2020 have largely been exposed.  Those of 2024 will be exposed in a few years. The grifters are like the family I mentioned a few blogs ago; they have devices as a method to skim money from the McNamara morons by energizing the outrage machine.  That one couple I mentioned has new methods of extracting millions monthly from MAGA ...

Yesterday, Boeing finally bowed to the inevitable and announced that the two astronauts stuck on the ISS would be coming down in a SpaceX, module in early 2025.   The Boeing space project has faced many problems in developing a new launch vehicle.   However, the issue at the company is far wider than just the space element of the company, its commercial aircraft business is suffering at the hands of the Europeans and now the Chinese, with the B737 knock-off. The demise of Boeing has been long anticipated, an aerospace company run for short-term profits was always bound to be a problem.  As Elon Musk famously said, an engineering company run by accountants will eventually fail. What emerged about  Boeing's capsule is far more worrying than was first reported.  there are three massive problems (1) About half the trustees are inoperable, (2) the vessel has run out of Helium, as it has leaked out, (3) wires have been found to be defective and traces of fir...

Barak Obama's hand gesture about Trump's crowd size obsession was not the first jab at laughing at the ex-President but it was a gesture that EVERY boy or girl on the planet recognized.   Obama was making fun of Trump, and that night the Democrats fully deployed their secret weapon, don't argue with Trump don't call him a fascist, make fun of him, and his size obsession, for it takes the air out of the room.  Even Fox News had to cover that one, and although they hate the Democrats with a passion, it's still amusing to see "the orange one" lose his shit! Trump has made it clear that he hopes/plans for mass insurrection if he loses the election.   He and JD Vance's new talking point is that the hundreds of polls being conducted are fake, and that "real Americans" support the GOP and Trump.  His rally on September 5th is entirely driven by that narrative, and the Democrat's best weapon is to make fun of Donald Trump to show him as a Buffon,...

 So last night we had dinner in London with two friends and their friends, it was a posh restaurant in the West End.   The couple were ardent Brexiters, not our cup of tea, but they were there.   The wife, Brenda, was complaining about the paperwork they needed to fill out now to stay in France, where they had bought a house nearly 20 years ago.    They were idiots because they could have obtained 20-year resident permit, before Brexit. but they did nothing now they are limited to stays of less than 180 days during any 365 days period.   They were pissed because France was treating them like foreigners. I really did not like them and I had an almost visceral dislike for Brenda who I thought was a very unpleasant and angry person.  So I asked her if she had voted for Brexit, and she proudly said that she had, and would do it all over again, so I simply said, so what are you complaining about, you wanted to be out, you are out, consider yo...

 The most amazing difference between the Democrats and the Republican conventions was the nature of the message, the Republicans talked about fear and the end of the world as they know it, while the Democrats talked about hope and growth.   The amazing thing of course is that it's not the Democrats that have changed it's the Republicans, their outrage machine has taken over the entire party, and it has taken over because it achieved the primary goal which is to raise money.   This week, it came out that the Trump family were paid nearly $28 million for services to the Republican party.   Two things to consider, the cost of fundraising for the GOP is extremely high, nearly 50% of the money raised is used to pay consultants.  In reality, this is a money grab by conservative operatives who see a golden opportunity to make money.   One of the reasons that the FEC only shows the GOP raising a quarter of what the Democrats raise is because so ...

 Vagary of the stock market never ceases to amuse me! It is easy to be consumed by the minutia of the stock market, in my opinion, a grave error.   First problem as an investor you have little understanding of the magic sauce that makes your investment companies a success.   Even the analysts will admit that they can understand a trend but not the decision process that makes a company successful. As I mentioned before the bulk of our "savings" are invested in productive assets, of course, we have used our stock holdings as security and borrowed against our liquid savings, but we both consider our "wealth creation" to come from the direct investments we have made. My day job was never to analyze the success of a particular stock, rather asset allocation was my thing, a more macro view of the world.   I was reminded of this by my "new" asset manager.   My previous broker retired, we both started at the same time in the same firm and he, like me...

 Our youngest daughter has been spending the summer with us.   Our eldest daughter is now fully moved into her quarters.    Everyone is in the main house right now, because my eldest daughter is on her honeymoon, and our granddaughter's father is away (he is not a bad guy just busy), so the house is full, my son and daughter-in-law are also up for the summer (son not so much, but our daughter in law has been here for two months with the baby).   We are loving it!    The best summer ever, and finally, the weather is cooperating.   the lower level of activity on the farm (on our part) means that I have a lot more time for my granddaughter and grandson (although he is only a few months old).    The best of all worlds...have a great summer!

 Once again the ranking for top universities came out last week.   Once again, the Ivy League schools dominate with Cambridge and Oxford in #4 and #6 place.    I know nothing about Harvard, or care for that matter, I attended King's and that was my choice, my wife attended Clare College.   Out of our four children, only our youngest chose Cambridge, she is about to finish at Christs, and follow her sister to medical school in London.    The thing is to call Harvard or Yale the best misses the point.   Schools are not interchangeable at all.  They each have their own high and low points, and it is important to understand that University College London may be better, or as in the case of our second son, a military school may be more to their liking.    The idea that Harvard is best is irritating, also it only includes English-speaking schools...As they say, there are some rather good universities on the European contine...

 Donald Trump has been facing a difficult month, since Joe Biden decided not to run for a second term.  A month ago, Donald was cruising towards an "easy" victory against a man that no one seemed to like.   Joe Biden was smart enough to realize that his odds of winning were too low and quit the race.    Kamila Harris was immediately anointed the chosen one and has proven to be excellent on the setup, far better than anyone had the right to anticipate.  She lucked out with her running mate and has shown America that a dynamic leader was nothing to behold. Donald Trump has tried all his tricks and they have uniformly failed.   He tried to portray her as a false black woman (she attended Howard University in Washington -- a predominantly black college) tried to portray her as soft on crime, not at all the reputation she had as the District attorney for California.  He tried to belittle her, nicknames but all of it has failed, even his proxi...

 The five day old incursion by the Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region, have shown the limits of Russian power, and also the flexibility of the Ukrainian arm Forces. According to Russian sources, the Ukrainians have gone more than 40 Kilometres inside Russian territory. This morning the Ukrainians announced that they did not intend to keep the territory. what the offensive of the past few days have shown is that Ukraine has decided to take its own initiative outside of what the OECD would prefer. It is evident that the Russians were taking their queue from European government that the Ukrainians would not invade Russian territory, the reason therefore why it was so poorly defended, this creates a huge headache for putting since he will be facing an obligation to Reinforce his territory in case Ukrainians pull the same stunt again. according to news media, the Ukrainians have sufficient forces that they can rotate troops in and out of theater. The implication, therefore is that t...

The images were horrifying there is no other way of saying it.   The drop from 17,000 to ground level in less than a minute must have been the most harrowing thing possible.   There are two culprits, (a) flying outside the flight envelope and (b) icing.    Which is the same thing, complete loss of lift.    From the stories, the aircraft was in a decent mode at 17,000 at 205 kn, when it suddenly dropped like a stone.   Flying outside the flight envelope usually occurs at altitude, and not on landing.  Few people are aware of this but at 40,000 feet the air speed difference between a high-speed and a low-speed stall is surprisingly small.    The reason icing is the likely culprit is that the ATR-500 has a long history of "medium icing performance", but also that pilots in the area were warned of icing conditions, as a pilot reduces speed, less hot air is bled in the wing leading edge, so it is more than possible that this wa...

 The current inflation push began with a pandemic when western Society had to adjust its production rate and consumption systems to take consideration the economic shutdown that occurred. What that means is that when people stop going to the office or going to the restaurant or going out they change your consumption patternsin the same way as demand for high dropped the demand for two by fours for constructions explodes because people have nothing better to do.  in the same way as demand for high dropped the demand for two by fours for constructions explodes because people have nothing better to do. That was the first wave The second wave was when the world returned to normal, and this process is near completion now too as demand for vehicle increases as return to the office has occurred then consumption pattern return to their old standards. These two changes. These two variances have led to inflation pressures because there are natural shortages that occur in these quick cha...

 Florida continues to impress. The reality that the new hurricane season has launched its first name and then a tropical storm that dumped more than a foot of water onto the stage, made the whole issue of insurance even more relevant since people are starting to lo your claims for losses as we speak.  The reality is that in 1992 the state of Florida with see about one $1 billion claims event every four years currently the state sees between one and three such claims piranha. The implication is that the rates need to Reflect the greater call on the insurance companies reserves. Between 1992 and 2024, almost 2 dozen Country wide in entrance companies quit the state or went into receivership. The reality of the insurance industry is that it can only survive as long as it’s reserves are there once these have been exhausted. The company has to shut its store. This happened with greater frequency over the past few years, and those companies have been replaced by local players with m...

True social media finally released its quarterly results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2024. The numbers were more or less in line with the revenues and losses of the previous quarter with total revenue of less than $1 million and total loss of about $16 million again, it only reflects the fact that revenues from advertising is dropping from the same period last year mainly because the revenues split had been modified after the IPO not, situation to make the company appear better before it is sold to investors.  this all means nothing because it’s clear that true social as a platform like Twitter is not an effective tool. The company has already indicated that they wanna move into media business and that’s why they spend an awful lot of money in the first quarter for that objective in mind, maybe they will be successful in that endeavour but right now the revenues are not there and the profits are certainly not there. The stock is doing any stock with no revenues and massi...

 well, the riots of 10 days ago have already started producing results in terms of convictions. So far 70% of those convicted for offences already have criminal records but what is truly amazing is how many have gotten relatively long prison sentences one even got a seven year prison sentence it is incredible that in this country, we have been able to bring people to justice and take them directly into jail for active committed in less than the fort whereas the Americans are still running after their six protesters four years after the events it shows the difference between the British and the American legal system .  It also indicates that the British legal system runs out much lower cost structure because what happened in the US is that law is represent all kinds of documents to slow the process down dramatic. No, is it slow down legal system but it also made it incredibly expensive. Interesting that how to countries with similar legal system can achieve very different resul...

 There is no doubt that the current push by Harris and Walz is driven entirely by the upcoming democratic convention into each time. However, it is incredible that would less than three months before the election that Trump is not campaigning at all. There has been multiple days in the past two weeks for Trump has played golf.  It’s as if Trump is not taking the campaign seriously. It could be that it has always been Trump‘s intention to try to steal the election post facto. There is no doubt that the Republicans are aiming at deeming the election as fraudulent if they don’t win.  It is well known that the GOP has hired a large number of lawyers and work tirelessly to put his people in place in each states electoral system. For Harris and walz they should therefore becomes existential. They have to show that they are winning by such wide margins that they are unstoppable. It’s hard to see how this can happen in America where the voters are so polarized, people just don’t ...

 well, it now seems that the Ukrainians have advanced into Russia proper almost 10 km. If this is true, it’s the first time since the war started or more than two years ago that Ukrainian have been attacking as opposed to defending. It is an important change in the war between the two countries.  it is hard to say how this will all end up. There’s no clear path to any form of victory because there can be no victories since the invasion of Ukraine has always been a way to something as opposed to destination for the Russians in order to secure their overall land borders.  What has been evident is that the Ukrainians have been largely stopped by the Americans from having important incursions into Russia, until very recently and so far most of these incursion have been done by Ukrainian develop weapons as opposed to F-16 for example that have been supplied by European countries. it is hard to see how Putin will pursue the war in Ukraine, So much of his modern weapon systems H...

 It’s interesting how quickly both of Central government and local government are taking action with regards to the rioters. I did not expect such quick action. It will be interesting to see how quickly this process moves through the court system. When you compare the English and the American System system you wonder what’s with the yanks. Dealing with a 2020 election fraud in Colorado, Wyoming and other states it’s now only starting now four years after the events. It is truly shocking. That justice is so slow when the events are so clearcut. anyway, this is where we stand today we seem to have a British legal system that responds to attack against the nature of who we are as people quickly. Where is the American taken ungodly time to resolve any simple issues why I don’t know, but it is the fact that the US legal system is ridiculously slow.  In his criminal cases, Donald Trump was indicted months ago, and yet the sentencing is not further a few weeks if not once.

 out with the old and in with the new.   Bangladesh is a country in existential crisis. The reality of living in a swamp has been problematic since the inception of the country in the early 1950s.  The resignation of the Prime Minister tells you nothing about the desperate state of that country. The new leader Nobel prize winner will face the same difficulties, and it is hard to see how he can solve these intractable problems. On one side, it is a growing population very much like in Africa, but it has none of the resources not even land. It is a tragedy in the making. Bangladesh the same problem as Egypt overpopulation insufficient land for growing food. And a world that doesn’t care. Because that is a reality of Bangladesh today, hundreds of died over riots the past few weeks and it hardly made the press until the president left the country. It would be ridiculous to think that any of this will change with the new president. In fact, there is no reason for anything to c...

It was bound to happen, there always was a strong nativist streak within British society, just looking at how the Brexit conversation was phrased... I think that giving oxygen to these people is exactly what they want,  the point is to create social tension to create fear and ideally to blame "others" for social ills.   

There are three ways to promote GDP growth: consumption-driven, investment-driven, and export-driven.   In other words, you build the stuff, you consume the stuff or you sell the stuff.   There is no other way! For over 40 years China has been an investment-driven economy.   In 1990 China had zero high-speed train network, in 2024 it had like 30,000 miles of railway.   However, the demand for the high-speed railway is finite.   The same goes for housing.  We have seen it all over Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Italy all suffer from overabundant homes so that in parts of all these countries you can buy a house for a dollar.  Even Germany has nearly 2 million vacant homes (as opposed to underutilized ones) it was in their most recent census. Since 2021 the CCP has realized that the investment route for GDP growth was no longer working.   More buildings would not solve the problem, and the second plank to raise consumption...

In 2018,  Tesla's stock price was around $22 a share.   It was the most shorted stock in NASDAQ, with 26% of the entire float (stock not owned by controlling shareholders) shorted.  Famously, Bill Gates was a massive player in the short end of the game  (FYI Gates has been a major player in the Green Revolution). Elon Musk made a deal with the Board of the Company that he would forego any compensation from the company until the end of 2022, where he would get a payment based on specific outcomes.  The board agreed but also gave him a salary of $37,000 per annum, which was the lowest salary in the company.   Elon Musk never took the money, it is still in the accounts payable.   In 2023, the total compensation amount came out to a staggering US$ 50 billion.   IN 2018 Tesla generated gross profits of $4 billion.  In 2023, Tesla generated gross profits of US$ 17.4 billion, and the share price rose from $22.00 to $248 (it has l...

 How does he do it over and over again? You may think that Tesla is total BS, but it remains that what he has done for the vehicle manufacturing process is as groundbreaking as what Herny Ford did more than 100 years ago.   The assembly of the Cybertruck the use of drive-by-wire technology, means that Musk's team have accelerated and simplified the manufacturing process.   He also recently announced that the new sub-compact electric car will redefine vehicle manufacturing.     There is a reason why Tesla earns between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars per car it manufactures, while Ford, GM and others lose money.     SpaceX is another example.  This week the company unveiled its new Raptor engine.  The third version, not only is it more powerful, it is lighter and is easier to assemble.   It is also a lot cheaper to manufacture. SpaceX sold 8 flights to the ISS to NASA for $3.1 billion.   Boeing has so far sunk n...

It may have made it to this side of the pound by now, but there's a rather explosive report in the US press that talks about the money that Egypt's CIA may have paid to Donald Trump.     Egypt is stuck in a Gordian knot, and Trump provided an escape, a way of cutting the knot.   The economic and political problems of Egypt are intractable.   A land that can possibly support 40 million inhabitants is home to more than double that number.   A ruling class separate from the people, and a US government withholding military aid. The story, if it is correct, is that the Egyptian CIA saw a solution in Donald Trump, they made a small bet of around $10 million, that Trump used to fund his campaign and when he got the job, he promised to release the billions that had been withheld by Obama. Bottom line the Egyptian CIA paid a bribe to Donald Trump and he used the money to fund his 2016 campaign.   The problem is that according to the story, W...