Farmer Diaries

Ok first some hard news about Trump's social media company, called Truth Social and trading under DJT: Two large firms of auditors resigned from the company before its "listing" One small IPO mill auditor provided the necessary paperwork so that the company could be acquired, yet indicated that the company had issues as a going concern.  Since then the auditors have been shut down by the SEC for being an IPO mill where more than 500 companies were affected, and more than 1,500 SEC filings were issued (fraud in terms of audit standards).  Truth Social has hired Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP, a small Phoenix-based auditor (may 6) (there is a real shortage of auditors anyway) Truth Social has seen its stock price rise to above $50 per share giving the company a market capitalization of nearly $7 billion.   Trump received another 36 million shares increasing his ownership of the company and diluting outside investors (Trump is now 65% owner of Truth Social) Truth Social an

The temptation has always been to believe that trend persists forever.   This is simply not the case.   Baby boomers have experienced two trends over their lifetimes, declining interest rates since the early 1990s (when they began saving) and ever-rising real estate prices (more or less the same timeframe).    This 30-trend has become a mantra for the investment class.  However, as the world is now discovering interest rates can rise and have risen, and house prices can fall, and have fallen.   The drop in the US has been small, with two hiccups, 2008 and the subprime crisis a decade and a half earlier.  The limits of housing as an investment can be seen in several European countries and in Asia.   In Spain, Portugal and Italy, houses can be bought for virtually nothing.   The trend so far in these countries has been limited to the countryside, but in Japan, it is now in Tokyo too house prices have declined dramatically in the city.   We are talking about buying a house in Tokyo's

 It is very well known that the head of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is a rabid evangelical Christian, he makes Mike Pence the ex-vice president look like a sinner.   To watch Mike Johnson repudiate all his beliefs by supporting Donald Trump, a three-times married cheater, is amazing.  I can only imagine the mental gymnastic and the absolute horror of Johnson having to support such a man.   Moreover, to do so, when the evidence if plain for all to see, that Trump has broken important laws, after all if Congress thinks these laws are unimportant they can always change them.... This case has been delayed repeatedly since 2018 by Donald and his friends.   This week it all comes to ahead, the prosecution called its last witness, and the defence is calling no one (especially not Donald "I will stand before the jury" Trump).   The case was expected to take four weeks because Trump's team decided to deny everything (the prosecutor even had to call on Harper Collins

 For some strange reason when Donald Trump began selling a bible a few months ago now for the small price of $69 dollars each plus shipping, he had included the US Constitution, and the bill of rights.   my first thought was that Trump would not be stupid enough to change parts of the bible or the US Constitution, it would be too easy for his opponents. Guess what he did just that.   Absent are amendments 11 to 27.   Why he included the first 10 is beyond me, still it would have been better, because missing is the womens' suffrage and the anti-slavery components.   The stupidity, You could not make this up!

 The wife is camping in London as our second grandchild is expected any day now.   Needless to say that like his father did all these years ago, my eldest son if freaking out right now.   First, there is the prospect of being entirely responsible for a new life, second is the pain he is causing to his wife.   Thank god we are having a cool spring, it would be much worse otherwise. Watching Adam brings back memories, of just before he was born.   Great memories, I remember after the first month, saying to my wife, "The little guy is a lot of work, how can people have more than one!"  For those keeping track, we had three more, as I've said to Adam.  Enjoy the ride, it's the best thing that will happen in your life! I, on the other hand, am at the farm taking care of business.   

Harry was notable for two specific things;  He served in the regular army and even did two stints in Afghanistan,  and created the Invictus Games -- helping hurt soldiers. He celebrated 10th anniversary of the Invictus games, now I get that none of the Royal showed up, and I am relatively certain that the King didn't organize a 5,000-people garden party to inconvenience his second son, but to announce on the same day that his older brother would become head of his old regiment is just mean.    As I have said many times, Harry made his bed and seems to enjoy it a lot more than his previous life.   Nothing is ever perfect, but he and his wife seem to have a good life, the family back channel probably functions but away from the press.    What was truly amazing was Harry and Megan's African Adventure.  Once again Harry demonstrated an amazing ability to relate with people.   This is the second time that Harry outshines the Royal family in an ex-colony.    Again, this was probably

There are several issues wrong with Europe, but first and foremost is that the two countries at the centre entered into the agreement for very different reasons.  the Germans saw it as a way to re-establish the German empire, don't laugh but the reality is that the German way has become the only way in Europe.  Secondly, Germany does not have a democratic tradition, it simply doesn't grant the UK is not much better, but institutions here matter, in Europe, they matter too, but it is the will of the bureaucrats that run the show, and that is true for the French too.    The one good aspect of Brexit is that the UK's democratic traditions were re-established.  For most Britons, this doesn't matter and they are right in the short term, but in the long run, they do matter. The second issue is that the entire European experiment was financed by the Germans.  what happens when they run out of money?  Sure it sounds ridiculous but Germany's aging problem is now worse than I

I've known him my entire life, we first went to school together, we were at University together, and we both worked in the City.   Friday night we had dinner and I suspect that after that meal we will never speak again.   My friend is Jewish and has been a "supporter" of Israel his entire life.   I was in London, and we were having drinks (yeah I get the irony -- having a beer in a gastropub on a Shabbat...I get the joke), and we were having a chat about nothing when for some reason the conversation shifted to Israel, for the life of me I have no idea how it started, anyway at one point I said, it is ironic that a country and a nation that still threads on its Nazi persecution tragedy uses more than similar tactics, actually uses the same language.    He immediately looked cross, and I doubled down giving him clear and evident parallel specifically the recent words at a press conference by the minister of defence -- what he said was not open to interpretation, sure he'

 Consider that until about two years ago, about a quarter of China's GDP was related to the construction industry.   In the past two years, dozens of construction companies have gone into bankruptcy.   The big names are known the world over, Country Garden and Evergrand, they were/are massive companies with hundreds of billions in debt and tens of thousands of unfinished projects (I am not making this up).   The Chinese government "decided" that others than the construction industry would now benefit from the largest increase in capital (aka lots of cheap/free debt), and so manufacturing production rose.    It is important to understand that the goal in China is not the end result but the process.   It is not the millions of empty, useless apartments that have been built (the Chinese government recognized formally a year ago that there are more than 500 million empty apartments in China) it is the purchase and building of things and the jobs and GDP statistics it provides

 I mentioned before that our daughter and future son-in-law (also our beautiful and brilliant granddaughter) are leaving London and have acquired a medical practice nearby.   Since the apartment was completed ahead of schedule (about three months) they too have accelerated their departure from London.  Our daughter followed her brilliant father (the tech guru aka Nerd Dad) and is deploying technology in their new surgery. The first thing they did, when they signed the purchase contract was to begin digitizing all the patient files, which was overdue, but small UK practices had been given longer timeframes mainly because of both availability and the cost of digitizing.  However, for our daughter and (future) husband, it was something they needed from day one (also part of the law on patient medical files).    In short, when they take over the medical practice the entire medical filing system will be removed,  the paper files will be kept for a year and then destroyed as per the law (als

Donald Trump's electoral strategy is similar to his legal strategy, don't follow the process, abuse the process and fix the problem behind the scenes.  That is why he was so successful, surrounded by grifters who were betting the house, and the consequences of their actions are all part of the same show.  The disbarred lawyers "know" that when Trump is President they will get the big payoffs, although most of them who were semi-competent made sure to get paid upfront.   Only the idiots, such as Guliani gave advice on credit...that only gets you so far. Politics is about money, it is also about money in the UK (don't let Labour make you think otherwise) and politics shares a lot of similarities with sausage making, "how can something so good have so many disgusting ingredients..." Trump last week took it to a new level, he asked US oil executives for $1 billion in election money with a guarantee that he would reverse all of Biden's green energy laws. 

When I joined my ex-employer all these years ago, in 1995 or was it 1996 (there is a joke here), the world of finance was very different.   At the time, the City was well on its deregulatory wagon, the change that had occurred almost 10 years earlier and the massive inflow of capital that it created was something to behold.   I remember a friend who worked in a mutual fund shop telling me that his strategy was getting between 2 and 5 million pounds of additional capital every day.    When I joined my ex-employer, about half of our client's assets were in bonds.  Bonds have always been the sleepy bit of the financial industry, and whenever it gets exciting (aka the junk bond craze) it never ever ends well. As a strategist my conservative brain said 40 to 50% of an investor's portfolio should be in fixed-income instruments.   Guess what when the reality of working in the financial sector hit that question went out of the window.  Of course, we told our client that at least a thir

 Donald Trump's newest and read-out-loud in-court nickname is the Orange Turd.   He is now known as the Orange Turd in the press.   I kind of feel sorry for Donald Trump, in a sense it is 100% self-inflicted and today was a low point.   Stormy Daniels the porn star started her third day on the stand because Trump has decided to deny that the encounter ever occurred.  In many instances, Trump denied even knowing her.  So we have the terrible situation where the defence counsel starts reading tweets that Ms. Daniels wrote and one of the tweets was to not only qualify Donald Trump as an Orang Turd but also say that if she had written a sex scenario involving Donald Trump she would have written something much better than that (she directed more than 150 sex movies). Overall, it was another disastrous day for Donald, the orange turd Trump.   On the bright side it's almost over another two or three weeks is all that will be required.  Also, let's be clear, there is no doubt in an

The boring stuff is often the important stuff.   Three weeks ago the US Census Bureau revealed the latest data.   Under the US constitution every 10 years the entire population is counted. contrary to some voices this is not a ploy by the Democrats (not a joke this is for real among some of the crazies on the right).   The questions can be political but more often than not, the questions are written by demographers to get a real understanding of the population shift. In the last 10 years, there has been a negative shift in the US birth rate.  20 years ago, the US birthrate was about 2.2, (population replacement was 2.1).  this is not political or biased it is a simple statistical analysis.   The latest census shows that US birth rate has declined to 1.6. This has short-term and long-term demographic consequences; economic growth in the short term will be more dynamic, and fewer children means more savings which means more capital for the economy.   In the long term, and we are talking

 Because Trump is an idiot.   Everyone knows that Trump cheated on his wife (including his wife), but apparently Trump decided to deny everything.  so the Prosecutor had to prove that Trump was a sexual predator...I'm not sure how much more embarrassing it could get for Trump, but as in many things he has done, he only has himself to blame.  the whole stormy thing could have been avoided. i know what is Trump's defense strategy is to demonstrate that his lawyers are incompetent

A very good friend from my college days who majored in English paid for his London house from ghostwritting political biographies for relatively famous UK politicians.    He would often brag about these biographies because he would always insert a specific paragraph in each book, a little easter egg of his own.  He said no one ever noticed because in most cases the politician read their book quickly.  My friend would get a bunch of notes and elaborate the story for the politician.    It was a well-paid gig, a sure thing, and editors loved him because he wrote well and worked with the publisher's editors.   He told me that he would get notes on the book from the politician and that all the stories were "true", maybe slightly embellished but truthful. Now in the US South Dakota's Governor Kristi Noem is publishing her biography.   In the book, she is now famous for having shot her puppy (who may have been a 14-month-old hunting dog) and also a few old horses.    Today i

The US president sent Antony Blinken to China to try to re-normalize relations with the country.  First and foremost to stop the arrest of American citizens trying to leave the country and normalize trade between the two.   A few weeks ago China's most supportive friend in the US administration (Janet Yellen) turned into a hawk, and Blinken, considered the most serious and capable foreign envoy of the US was sent to see if a trade war could be averted. Let's not forget that the US can do rather well without Chinese imports, and every day this situation is improving.  The issue is that the Chinese market is completely closed to US imports and has been since before COVID-19.   To say that Blinken's reception was "frosty" would be a polite way of saying what actually happened, in reality the Xi Jinping wanted nothing to do with the man, he was under the impression that America needs China. American warships have been protecting the oil trade in the Middle East, and t

After my short note on the Blackpool by-elections I got one question; will the Tories survive this?   The answer is obviously unknowable, but there are certain signs, first, the Tories are still raising money, and a sizable portion of the electorate is still very happy with Brexit, they wish it was more than it is, but they generally like the outcome.     So the Tories still have cash and supporters.    There is no doubt that the Tories will spend the next few years in the wilderness, it is overdue and necessary the "old guard" needs to take a long walk down a short plank, the likes of Boris and Liz have to be expunged from the party, and rebuilt.   I strongly believe that between 2032 and 2033 the party can return to power, rebuilt and re-energized.   Eight to ten years should do the trick.   The question for the Tories: "What do we stand for"   An existential question especially if labour does the difficult thing and signs an agreement with the Americans.  It is a

DJT was not the first, it was one of hundreds of US listed companies that used the firm of auditors BF Borgers.  This afternoon, the firm agreed to pay $14 million in fines and to permanently suspend its operations.   The SEC determined this firm to be an IPO mill, that provided fake auditing services to small companies (3%0) that were seeking to list on the various US exchanges. Several of its partners had already been barred from working in the industry, the investigation into BF Borger goes back years, and has nothing to do with Trump Media...although Trump media is by far the largest client of Borgers. Two things, first BF Borgersprovided an limited opinion to Trump Media, that it was at risk as a "going concern"   in other words an auditor known to more than cut corners was found to be one of the worse auditing companies in the US, did not like the numbers for DJT. If I were an investor in DJT I would run for the hills, because now everything they did will have to be red

Well last night was interesting,   Last night Blackpool saw a swing away from the Tories of 27%.  That is so large as to be significant, this is not a protest vote this is the total repudiation of the Tories' mandate.   This is well beyond "writing on the Wall" it's the end of an era. The one thing for which the Tories have been blamed is Brexit, not only did they lie about the impact they totally mismanaged the exit, seemingly on purpose to make the whole thing feel even worse.   Boris the delusional and Liz the idiot did not make things any better. The real shame is that the Labour came out smelling like a rose because they were equally guilty and basically "supported" Brexit for their own reason.  However, such is political life, the body politic rightly blamed the Tories, and they deserve to be gravely punished.   I don't know if they will survive the next five or 10 years will be interesting. Part of the issue is that there are real benefits of bein

We've seen this story before.   30 years ago, laptops would be replaced every year, the capability of new machines was demonstrably better than the older ones.  Now not so much.   Give anyone a 15-year-old MacBook and this person will be hard-pressed to tell you in what year it was manufactured.   For 99% of daily applications, there is no difference between a new and an older machine. When the iPhone came out in 2008, yes it has only been 15 years, the phone was groundbreaking, and many resisted but in the end, the combination of ease of use, the App Store and the blind stupidity of Research in Motion (aka the company that invented the blackberry) made frequent upgrades for your phone a must.  Every year or so a new phone was needed. Rolling on to 2024, and most people have changed the way they use their phones, fewer calls, more text messages, mean the phone doesn't work as hard.  In addition, you have to check the BIOS to know what model you have in your hand.   You have to

 What makes Donald J Trump great? Simply, he revealed the true nature of most leading lights of the Republican party machine.   Grift is at the core of the GOP's identity.  Improbable leaders rise and fall in quick succession and every single one of them was exposed by Trump's own massive grift as grifters themselves.  Every day in court, revelations about others almost overshdows Trump's own grift. There is no conviction there is only the money at the end of the rainbow, they just need to hold their nose from the stench one more week. Of course, you realize that their entire career are built on this.   Does anyone anywhere now believe that Rudy Giuliani was ever "American's mayor", but really simply another small man who was able to seize an opportunity and ride the dragon for every single dime.  No moral just money. I would like to believe that the Tories are/were different.  However, now that my eyes and heart have wandered away from that world, I often see

 The criminal trial of Donald Trump is fascinating.   But not for the obvious reasons, what is amazing is that the Republican machine and Trump have spent the past three weeks vilifying Michael Cohen, Trump's old political fixer and now jailbird.     The shock of being faced with David Pecker instead.   It was clear that they were completely unprepared, the cross-examination demonstrated their failure to pivot because Pecker is not a liar and was very clear as to what he did for Donald Trump. More important is that it highlighted the other conspiracy which is that AMI supported a specific candidate and created fake stories about his opponents; specifically that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the murder of JFK, a complete fabrication, but it created doubt among the GOP primary voters.   Since the Trial started the GOP political machine has ground to a complete halt, In America elections are set, so November 2024 is a known quantity, while the Democrats are raising money and g