Farmer Diaries

Lets say that 10 years ago I wanted to fly to Chicago from Montreal -- I call my travel agent (in my case AMEX) and they would book a flight and I would be charged by AMEX.  The rate was the rate and is in Sleepless in Seatle "no one knows what the airline charges". However, for inflation purpose, the data was available to the government's statistical office.  Taking a large number of Flight Montreal to Chicago you got a price for the flight! Now move the clock to 2018, you want to buy a flight from Montreal to Chicago, you take your phone and open Expedia and take the flight that fits your requirement!  That data also goes into the government statistical office. Now comes to fun part, you've got to provide additional information; at the same time the airline charges you for extra benefits:  Want food on board, want a better seat, got luggage?  All these are now additional fees (and sometimes for a substantial amount of cash).  So a plane ticket th...

What a shock! Now I don't know the particulars of all that transpires about the case being discussed in the Canadian press, that has apparently been percolating for nearly three years now, but I got to say that when I saw that Azerbaijan was involved... let's just say that I was not entirely surprised. More than 20 years ago I was the "financing representative" of Bombardier in a team that was sent to finalize negotiations for the purchase of a number of regional aircraft.  To give the reader a sense of how these things normally work, there are about 10 Bombardier representatives (contract, maintenance, operations etc) there to finalize the purchase agreement.  Normally, this process takes 4/5 days.  We all arrived on a Sunday night and Monday morning we had our first meeting (with the draft purchase contract).  By 10:30 am the contract was signed -- for the full retail price for the aircraft! Needless to say that the contract guys were surprised (me too -- ah ...

Well Italy now has a new government -- The new prime minister Giuseppe Conte is now the leader of the Five stars and the far right League, although some of their policies seem to be from the far left.  First off, the "draft" memorandum of union agreement between 5 stars and the League had a "Kill the Euro", "Get out of EU" provision that was scrapped in the final version  (remember that for later). The final agreement between the two parties referred to target economic growth via additional state spending, to re-start eh Italian economy.  What are Italy's biggest problems:  (a) High labor costs, (b) excessive red tape, (c) banks that acknowledged nearly 14% of Non Performing Loans, and (d) a toxic, crony-driven political system.  The fault of the high total wages is due to hard unions, truly, but they are also due to Italy, like most European countries entering the Euro at too high an exchange rate (exactly the opposite of what Germany did...)...

Ok ok this happened two months ago now!  Having moved out of Canada three years ago, the decision to purchase a new phone is complicated.  First, in most places, you first buy the phone outright.  No "subsidy" of a new phone (with higher rates for telephone plans).  So you got to fork out the cash outright.  Moreover, the local price is "nose-bleed level".  As an example an iPhone X that retails for US$ 999 sells for MXN 26,000 -- that's US$ 300 more (or 30%) than what you would pay at a US Apple store.  So there's incentive to do things differently...at these prices and margins First off, I asked my tech-savvy younger friends what I should buy:  Needless to say that none use the iPhone, I've seen the Android universe -- cannot say that I am impressed!  They are like Windows computer, needlessly complicated. Some of the stuff no longer matters -- I just don't have my music library on my phone.  I use Spotify...less spac...

Ok, so Facebook saw a massive plunge in users and value following the data scandal:  Want to bet! As of this morning, Facebook stock stood at 185/per share -- its all-time peak is 195 (and in fact, it must have been an intraday thing because I cannot find it in Google Finance.  The highest price there is 190 per share.  So, let's revise this, Facebook is off exactly 5% off its all-time high, but really only 2.7% off its all-time high. Now the market has spoken, and Facebook is chastised... As for users, well that's even worse -- Facebook usage is up 13% on last year (as of the end of April 2018). So there you go, Mark Zuckerberg, you should feel really really chastised!  The market and the people have spoken your business model is broken... Not even a little bit, but reading the press on Facebook over the past few weeks/months you would think that the company is reeling from the financial and social impact of the data breach.

Sorry folks, with The Donald in the White House its hard to get very excited about anything political -- I mean the crap he pulls on a daily basis would have normally made the front page of all newspaper for weeks, but because he's so crazy, ignorant and supported by the GOPs own crazies there really is not much to say. Europe, well Europe is doing OK, at least on the surface.  The Italians finally got a government -- which includes 5 stars -- which is as anti-European as can be, and drafted exit words from Europe and the Euro (plus canceling all Euro-denominated debt..) but thankfully these ideas were not in the final governing agreement (but how far are they below the surface).  France and Germany are trying to get along, with some success, but on one side you've got Germany and on the other, you've got everyone else.  How long till German gets fed-up of paying for everyone (actually that's easy -- as soon as Europe stops buying goods and services in Germany)....

In light of the Evangelical "unfailing" support for Trump despite his multiple marriages and (it would seem) too numerous to count affairs you start to wonder about what religion in America is about. As a Canadian, the way Americans talk about their religion (and boy oh boy do they talk about their religion) is somewhat unsettling.  Granted that Canadians have a very "private & personal" view of their religion (at least on the east coast.  It is not spoken about, God is not thanked every two minutes and generally, religion (or the lack thereof) is a very private affaire. Years ago, a friend invited me to join his family to a vacation home on the coast of main for the July long weekend.  First, we were surprised that such an amazing house would even be available at that time of the year, what my friend told me was that the owners were Jewish and because the "enclave" was Presbyterian no children would play with theirs!  All of us, it was a ver...

Not really important that Trump lied to Trudeau, in fact, world leaders do it all the time.  Although this may be a first that a politician lied to another one and then went to his supporter, in front of cameras, and bragged that he lied, that he had no idea as to the state of the Canada/USA trade balance, and in the end didn't really give a sh$t! That's new!  I would guess that any world leader now will wonder what's the point of having a head-to-head with Trump.  He's likely to lie about everything and it has no impact on policy. It's not so much that Trump should "go home" rather he should "stay home" because it is evident now that what comes out of his "pie hole" is inconsequential for other nations...not only does he make stuff up, he doesn't care what it means -- why then engage the man!

Living away from Canada you encounter different health care systems; in Canada that provides virtually all its health care on a no-fee basis -- the user pay nothing; the system of allocation of the services is scarcity.  Long wait in the emergency room, for noncritical care, but when it comes to critical care, Canada is second to none with outcome.  Moreover, Canadians don't fear that their family will go broke caring for them. Currently, I am in Mexico, and a friend recently took a bad fall -- nothing life-threatening, but still.  this all happened Sunday evening (imagine the wait at Montreal's emergency room), we arrived at the local hospital (there was a bad cut on a leg) and my friend was immediately rolled into a treatment room -- she didn't wait 5 minutes (in fact she was already in the treatment room when I came back from parking the car. Within 90 minutes she departed the hospital with 8 suture on her leg, and orthopedist had examined her o...

Last night was a disaster for the GOP, taking Pennsylvania's 18th district that was for the past 20 years a solid Republican stronghold (+20) became democratic.  Yes, the margin was razor thin, but the point is that the GOP, even with Trumps' poor rating should have won this seat.  This is a seat where the GOP usually wins with a 20% margin.  There are more than 100 seats in Congress that are more at risk than PA-18. However, it is still hard to draw conclusions; the fact is that Lamb (the Democrat) won by less than 1% -- however, PA-18 is a largely electronic ballot district, so recount is out of the question, except for absentee and military ballots, and these account for less than the difference between the two candidates (a few hundred). What is interesting here is that Lamb got 80% of the number of votes than his "no chance" predecessor, what is key is that his opponent Rick Saccone got only 53% of the number of votes that his predecessor got (who ...

I've got 10 posts in process, but not enough time/interest to get them finished.  To my readers: Sorry

At an Energy conference in Mexico City last week every Mexican political party agreed that there was no turning back from the energy reform that was proposed by the current president and was enacted by the current Congress via a change to Mexico's constitution. The fear had always been, that AMLO (Lopez-Obrador) as he had somewhat expressed in several of his Youtube presentations that he wanted to turn the clock back on energy reform.  Last week, his energy spokesman indicated that AMLO's position has been miss-understood and that he saw the current energy reform as a way forward for the country -- which face regional energy shortages. Although the presidential elections will cause massive administrative dislocation (the first three layers of all department are political appointees) the reality is that much can proceed despite this certain slow down in the policy side of the equation. However, for asset builders, this has often ended up killing new energy proje...