Category Archives: Finance

October 29, 2021 · 23:38

The blank stage

There is a stage, it remains blank. It is not a real stage, it is a stage in our minds. We all have one, there is no exclusion. Yet there is also a stage that we fill with assumptions, with presumptions and with unspoken accusations. We all do it, I do, and you do too. This all started during the night. I dreamt a new story, a dark one, for my doing a really dark one. It is set around the corrupt, a smitten hard burning love at first sight and the rage that follows. My mind is currently naming it ‘Wrath’, it is not merely the wrath of a person, it becomes an escalation when the people had enough, when they are pushed into a corner too hard, not unlike the main character and their response will be ‘interesting’. I need to do a little more research, but the law cases I saw in Australia seem to cover a lot, I reckon that if I look harder in the US I will have all the legal settings ready for the story (if I get around to it). I am still filling in the blanks in ‘Keno Diastima’ and I only have the smallest of basic foundations of ‘Vita Exhauriunt’. Most of ‘How to assassinate a politician’ is complete, but there I feel that more needs to be done, I need to add a cog, a need to add a few more parts. This is hardly a one hour story. But then, I never published an actual script before. Yet I reckon that ‘Wrath’ might open the doors to two of these solutions. So as I started to surf the internet to see if something could wake up my mind, I saw something else. Something I wrote about, something the media at large seems to ignore. So when we get to the story two days ago by the ICIJ ‘Pandora Papers journalists face government backlash for investigating financial secrecy’ (at https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/pandora-papers-journalists-face-government-backlash-for-investigating-financial-secrecy/) something stirred in me. It was the quote “The Pandora Papers is a global investigation led by ICIJ, published earlier this month, that included more than 600 journalists representing 150 partner media organisations from 117 countries and territories. Based on a leak of 11.9 million documents of 14 offshore services providers, the trove revealed the secret holdings of more than 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 country leaders. Ambassadors, mayors and ministers,  presidential advisers, generals and a central bank governor appear in the files”, I almost had forgotten about it. The station that this was a leak, it was not. When we see “14 offshore services providers” all whilst at least two of them have above average protection, this has not a leak. This was a hack, a hack by a government player (most likely the USA) the tax issue is setting the wrong steps, there was a delay, but that delay runs out in 8 weeks and in 6 weeks the ‘tax the rich’ BS starts all over again. In all this time the ICIJ NEVER gave anyone a top line summary. Things like nations involved, like nations with the amount of politicians involved. Not names, a mere tally. So far the ICIJ sounds as useless as the stories they give us and when it comes to stories, I am seemingly better then they could ever hope to be. 600 journalists and no one in all that time create a dashboard for the people to see the impact. We see accusations against Tony Blair, yet they also hid inside the story that he did not break any laws, so how useless is that. Apart from the screaming need to overhaul tax laws, something I have been advocating for well over a decade and the NSA hack (the most likely player) was not required. And the agreement, or better stated the quoted agreement that the ICIJ would not go after the source is even more lame. How stupid do 600 journalists need to get? In the end there is a chance that some of them will move ALL their wealth to Nassau, Dubai, or Riyadh giving the other nations ever more to worry about. There are options for Guernsey, Jersey and Monaco. The US and a few more places would lose out, Wall Street would suffer greatly (not the worst idea) and that is merely thee beginning, the EU would also suffer to a much larger degree, all because a few players would not clean their rooms when they were supposed to do that (2009-2011), it has been playing for well over a decade and as people are flim-flammed into looking at environmental issues, we see that the media still has not taken a hard look at the European Environmental Agency report that has been out now for almost a year. Why is that? Is a hard look into the mirror not sexy enough?

Now, we might all think of giving the ICIJ and their 600 journalists time, but they’ve had months, and so far the setting of a dashboard that gives us the stage of no laws broken (especially the billionaires that have pushed through legally available  means their fortune in zero tax havens) should cover well over 60% of these documents (a fictive number). The simplest setting that you all can see is the missing tally, the guardian gave us a tally of what to look through, but they had the 330 politicians, so that part could have been clearly given and a dashboard does not show criminal sides, it is merely that a tally, but I reckon that the tally shows that most of these people are in places the bulk of us do not give a hoot about, just like the billionaires. How many are people of royalty from some Arabian nation? Then we get to the remaining billionaires and we will see that they broke no laws, when you get to that point you get to the stage how useless the ICIJ was from day one and how they blow their own horn whilst these 600 people might be obsolete. I cannot guarantee that, but the assumption might not be far off. 

The blank stage is filled, and as assumption and presumption shake hands the stage goes from black and white to a malleable version of grey where we cannot see the difference between the black and the white. It was that from the very beginning, I pretty much predicted that in the first hour. 

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October 28, 2021 · 19:15

Baffled

I have that at times, don’t you? We see something, we see a statement and we go towards the ‘Are you for real?’ queue. This happened to me this morning. It was an article about the ‘Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ I had seen a few pass by on earlier occasions and for the most I do not care. There is nothing novel and news about someone blowing its own trumpet trying to be as important as they could never be, to be as innovative as they dream they are and as clever as they could hope to be. Even Google takes a gander as she is now seen as a ‘American former businesswoman’, former being the operative word. We see some papers throw ‘How Elizabeth Holmes lured rich VIPs like Rupert Murdoch to back Theranos’ at us, with the optional “to avoid the potential pressure from larger investment firms to go public, according to an investor at the DeVos family office who kicked in $US100 million for the blood-testing startup”, and there we have the first part, even if it is hidden between the lines. It is ‘to avoid the potential pressure’, and no one here beckons the thought that some (especially investment firms) going with ‘to avoid the gaze of scrutiny’. Then there is ‘Elizabeth Holmes trial hit by new concern: losing too many jurors’ for whatever reasons (one involving Sudoku), and I see no real interest, but in the first setting with what the BBC gives us now, I see a much larger flaw, a flaw of stupidity. You see the article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59071205) gives us that one part, that one statement ‘Are you for real?’ It was not the headline ‘DeVos family ‘misled’ before investing $100m’, it was the quote “Lance Wade, suggested the DeVos family had not done proper due diligence, to which Ms Peterson replied: “We didn’t think we needed it.”” In this my personal view of Lisa Peterson, a representative of the DeVos family’s investment office, states that it was not needed? How blazingly stupid is this investment office? More important when we consider that Betsy Devos, a Republican, served as education secretary under Donald Trump. We need to wonder if the defendant shouldn’t be let off in line of the old expression of ‘A fool and his/her money are soon parted’. It is one of the reason that only three players are allowed onto my 5G IP, but to be honest, it was done for very different reasons, the idea that an investment firm is too stupid to be allowed anywhere near my IP is a novel idea and I have to admit that I never considered that. The idea that $100,000,000 does not require due diligence with the optional “We didn’t think we needed it” is the wet dream of any organised crime endeavour. So what on earth is the case here? In the setting of Elisabeth Holmes, if she gets nicked for her actions, fine! And in this case, if she is seen as a person who was delusional yet not guilty would be just as as fine as the first option. To be honest, I have no issues with people being delusional, at times we all are. Yet the idea that she might walk because the prosecution side didn’t think it was essential to have due diligence on investing $100,000,000 makes me giggle and if she is released because of that so much the better. To be honest, this is seemingly turning into a new version of war of the Roses, a stage of dumb and dumber part 3. Devos versus Holmes and the one more stupid gets the other one off the hook, a novel setting indeed.

Even as we all recognise that Fraud is a serious crime and a more serious accusation. I now wonder on the diligence that Wade Miquelon, the former chief financial officer of pharmacy chain Walgreens did. This is not an accusation, it is a question. I do not have access to an active case and I do not have insight into what happened before, hence I ask. There is now also the question on ‘Former Safeway boss Steve Burd said his company spent 100 hours doing due diligence on Theranos’ I am not doubting Steve Burd, I wonder how complete the cover-up was to get this man on board. And the less said about Sunil Dhawan the better, from what I gather, he seems to be the putz, an optional shield for Elisabeth Holmes to hide behind, one that didn’t pan out as far as I can see. 

And as I started today, I saw a side of a fraud case that had me baffled, for most of us (ever republicans) this is a case that is loaded with entertainment and that distinction would make me want to put down my game of Sudoku, it honestly would. 

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October 25, 2021 · 22:20

Inventing the economy

Yes, this sounds bigger than it is (and it is). This is the economy for an RPG. A few places had idea’s, one was particularly helpful. Yet in the stage of the game I designed here, I decided to take a different route. You can barter all you want, yet in the end it is the economy around you that needs to flourish as well. If you do not take that route, you get either a ghost town, or a passively silent one, one that can only move when you are there. It is that approach that is reluctant to me. You cannot create your story, become your story on a blank page where everything is depending on you. That has been the case sine before I was born (in the age of Black and White TV’s). 

So as I was mulling over what I personally believe to be a shortcoming on the Elder Scrolls. I turned in another direction and saw the glitch in Fable 2, but the stage was good, so I decided to take a larger gander and set up my own premise. On September 25th I wrote ‘Recap to the intro’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/) which gives the list of most articles linked to this game.  I will now add:

Behold the economy
(OK, that was way too ego driven) yet the stage remains true, you cannot live or play in a vacuum, so as I wrote ‘An almost ordinary generation quest’, I set out the stage of stamping out the economy, there needed to be a stage where you can grow and optionally through you the town could grow. In t6his we need to take notice that a city takes decades to grow (if not centuries), so the town can only grow to some degree. If we consider the baker, the butcher, the fisherman, the blacksmith, the bookshop, the tailor, the potter and the leather shop we see that these people have average skills (2 or 3 out of 5), we need to see how to grow the town. In one stage I talked about the potter part, it will be a growth stage, so to grow the economy, when you gain skills (in your travels) on any of this, when you return home you can teach the shops the skills you learned, it gives you some income, but the larger stage becomes that a town gets X amount of people travelling through it. More important, when a shop becomes more important, more people will come, so there is a benefit to teaching them, because what they sell, benefits you too. And more importantly, when these shops grow into 4 star places, I needed to add a risk as well. You see, some people are depending on ‘non change’ I insist on change, so there is a small percentage of a chance that when the get to that level there is a small chance that they will pack up and leave for ‘the big city’, in addition to it that risk increases by a factor when they become 5 star places. It creates momentum and it creates a larger stage of movement and turmoil. You or your kids can teach the shop again, or they can move themselves. 

A stage of fluidity that we haven’t seen before in RPG gaming, and I wonder why not. I can not be the first one to come up with this, could I? A stage of increased growth and economic values will also hit the city, when the city grows, the shops have less reason to move (they are revenue driven too). It sets a new stage, instead of having 15 axes, 23 swords, 7 mauls and 2 halberts, we get a stage where we can sell that as scrap to the blacksmith who will create new ingots and create new weapons. That only works when he becomes 4 star or more location. The herbalist has a need for resources, you bring he has no need to move, or to seek out danger. And in this all shops are almost the same, there are shops that will not need ‘feeding’, but their skills too are related to the ranking they have and as you teach them, their value increases and the village grows another step. 

And so we create a new stage, not merely collecting weapons and armour, but a stage where the shops grow what they have and to that respect also the scrap they receive from NPC’s and the new goods that come with that.

I feel happy, I created the foundation of an entire economy in a game, there are a few unmentioned parts and there are a few parts not here, but I am still mulling them over. In the meantime, anyone who wants to create an Amazon Luna and Sony Playstation exclusive RPG, feel free to use these ideas (free of charge) and let’s give Bethesda a run for their money, whilst pissing off Microsoft at the same time (slugging two for the price of one tends to be more satisfactory).  

Have a great day

P.S. WordPress still haven’t fixed colouring, their CEO might be colourblind

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October 20, 2021 · 21:51

The abacus paradox

The stage of what might never be is out there. There is a larger stage of what is about to happen and what might never happen. And I for one have no idea where to stand. You see, it is about what we read and what we do not know, or do we? To get there I need to do an old setting, a simple calculation, like you had in primary school (year 1) the stage is 34-15. Now you do it like there is no tomorrow, but then it was different. In that setting we had four minus five is not possible, so we borrow 10 then it becomes fourteen minus five making nine. Three minus one is two, that minus one is one, one and nine make nineteen, that is how we learned the simplest calculation (in 1969). It is not the math, it is the setting of borrowing one from the left making fourteen instead of four minus five. It is the borrowing part. You see, a setting hit me when I was confronted with ‘Micron to build $7 bln plant in Japan to expand DRAM production – report’ (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/micron-build-7-bln-plant-japans-hiroshima-report-2021-10-20/). In the article we see “U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc (MU.O) will build a new factory at its Japanese production site in Hiroshima at a cost of 800 billion yen ($7.0 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Wednesday.” Under most situations I merely shrug my shoulders. What do I care? Yet when my mind saw this, it raced back to several of these announcements. I believe it was 2018, it could have been 2017. Yet the stage then was that the resources needed for DRAM were limited. A finite equation on resources and the pressure was on. I personally believe that shortage was never dealt with, so it is nice to see a plant being built ‘too address shortage of DRAM’, but if there is still a shortage for manufacturing the problem merely shifts, it does not go away. TechRadar gave us in April “the company wants to optimise the use of its limited supply of silicon”, as one source gives us in May “Demand is much higher for all types of silicone products than one year ago. Demand started to increase in 4Q 2020 as global economies opened. Even when parts of the world were hit with second and third waves of Covid, economies did not shut down as they did in 1Q and 2Q 2020. As of today, demand is the same or slightly higher than prior to the pandemic”, this is not enough. You see it is one of the most common elements in the world, so we should not run out, but the mining and acquiring of it comes with health risks and there lies the rub. Forbes also gives us “China has called chip independence a top national priority in its latest five-year plan, while U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to build a secure American supply chain by reviving domestic manufacturing. Even the European Union is mulling measures to make its own chips. But success is anything but assured.” There we also see more. The article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-chip-production-why-hard-to-make-semiconductors/) gives us a lot to think about and if it isn’t the $7,000,000,000 they expect to spend, it is nothing against getting the right people, as such it could be seen as a severn billion dollar long-shot. Yet the stage of getting the Silica Dioxide has not been reached yet. The article also shows us “Building an entry-level factory that produces 50,000 wafers per month costs about $15 billion. Most of this is spent on specialised equipment—a market that exceeded $60 billion in sales for the first time in 2020.” So exactly how does one save on a plant that is already 8 billion short in month one? The numbers make no sense. Now, it is perfectly possible that they are two different plants, but the stage of 7 billion is weird all whilst several plants are being build and there is still a need for Silica Dioxide for the wafers. 

Now, I could be very wrong here, and that might be the case, but consider that 2020 gave us ‘TSMC to build advanced chip plant in southern Taiwan’ (May 2021), ‘Bosch opens Dresden chip plant as Europe aims for independence from Asia’ (Jun 2021), and let that not misdirect you, there are hundreds of plants, a massive amount of them in China, the stage becomes not merely who creates the chip, but who will have the plant to mine and create the required Silica Dioxide. It could be another stage for Saudi Arabia as sand is something they have in abundance, but to get one into the other takes time and takes the right secure machines as well as a few other skills. When this implodes (a not unlikely setting) the one who HAS the Silica Dioxide has an advantage. China claimed to be independent at present, most others cannot make that claim. China produces 64% of all silicon on the planet and the US pissed them off. Almost 10% is in Russia that leaves a lot less for the rest of the planet, so when I see the stage of two plants being build, I merely wonder where they get their source materials. The US at present creates less than 5% of all Silicon and the UK even less (number unknown to me). So when we see the larger stage and we look for Mineral Commodity Summaries we might learn that there are a few more kinks in those cables. Yes, I am willing to accept that they MIGHT solve those. Yet when was the last time you made a long-shot using billions on the word ‘MIGHT’? 

In all this I might be the one wrong here, but when you see three of these plants being made within a year and you realise the cost involved and there is a stage where the required resources for manufacturing are in many places, yet the bulk is in two places that certain politicians cannot reach. How does that investment sound to you?

I wouldn’t bet my stove on that risk, let alone a house (or apartment) but they are willing to bet the bank, I wonder what optional short term benefits they get before these tactical deciders seemingly run off with a large bonus to a beach far, far away. 

P.S. WordPress is still not fixing the colour issue.

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October 19, 2021 · 21:58

Searching for a reason

We all do that at times, we all search for a reason. Whether it is for a solution, to blame or to incite. These are the most likely reasons, but they are not the only ones. The thought came to mind when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58961836) gave me ‘Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ‘may have lied to Congress’’ a stage where ‘may’ is operative. So there is not even any level of assurance that he ‘had most likely’ lied, that on the premise it was highly likely that he was not truthful, or any other stage of ‘creating doubt towards sincerity’. We are also given the claims that “Amazon copied products and rigged its search results in India to boost sales of its own brands”, as well as “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question” and in finality we get “they were considering referring the firm “for criminal investigation””, so in the third, what ‘criminal investigation’? For allegedly rigging results in India? For inaccurate media articles? It is an open field and in all this, we need to consider that US congress is merely trying to get fines from rich companies any way they can get, it is what incompetent people tend to do, play the blame game. 

Yet to understand it we need to take a look at the Reuters article (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging) where we get ‘Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show’. Here we are given “The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns” this is indeed a solid accusation. In addition we get “It is difficult to develop this expertise across products and hence, to ensure that we are able to fully match quality with our reference product, we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product”, it is quite the accusation, yet this happened in 2016. So in the first, why is this not in Indian courts? In the second, why do we see a bland US Congress setting when it is not an activity on American soil? It was Amazon.in, it was in India and referred to Indian products. In addition we get the small part at the very end of “In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” I see it as two parts, in 2019 there is a stage of “Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” which would support the stage of wrongful action mentioned earlier, and in 2020 we get “prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business”, as such a stage optionally exists that a flaw was found and dealt with. Optionally there remains a stage that in 2016 “Amazon employees working on the company’s own products, known as private brands or private labels, planned to partner with the manufacturers of the products targeted for copying”, so a stage remains that Indian employees became creative to create their own private fortune in debatable ways, a stage that was close over time and there Reuters has a larger issue. The documents, what EXACTLY do they prove? I am not against Reuters here, they have proven themselves a few times over, so I am asking exactly what internal documents were in play? If they were emails and there the language and the path is also important. Reuters might be on the money, but they start with “A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods” and there we see the assumption it is linking ‘internal Amazon documents’ towards ‘the e-commerce giant’, yet these employees, how high up the ladder were they, were they all Indian? In that case can a quality case based on quantifiable data be made against the e-commerce giant, or is this the event involving a few rotten apples (sorry, rotten pieces of fruit). So when we see the questions that rise from the Reuters article, the US Congress made leaps without investigating the evidence before referring it for Criminal investigation. You see, there needs to be a viable case before referring it, so there needs to be decent questionable evidence and so far, no one has seen it and I reckon it might not be there in the way the BBC article gives us the goods. I think there is a lot more and in all this, when we see “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question”, we could have seen evidence and more importantly the media can show the evidence that it was wrongful data handed to them, but we do not see that either (at present), the media is very protective of one another at the alleged expense of anyone else. 

Can Amazon have done something wrong? Yes, absolutely, the firm is too big, things fall through the cracks. Yet the chance of Jeff with the Telly Savalas hairdo Bezos, or Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel to openly lie to Judiciary Committee is too ludicrous to consider. That is the stage and when I see “We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record… as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate,” I feel that this is an attempt to get another fine out of Amazon. Yes, I agree that the letter is merely good form, but I reckon that the players would have done a decent level of homework before that letter went out, and with another shutdown 9 weeks away, America needs all the cash they can lay their fingers on, I am merely wondering if their path is all on the up and up. But that is merely me, questioning whatever I see. I merely wonder if anyone else noticed the questions that the article brings up, it might be my not so trusting nature.

If Amazon did something wrong, OK. It happens and a fine will be the result, but this happened in India, so why is there no reference to a request from India, a request from Indian vendors and a more thorough investigation into the evidence. All that seems to be missing, weird, is it not?

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October 17, 2021 · 20:19

It was the smell of coffee

We all have this and we all try to ignores it when it is not Sunday. Yet that was for me the setting this morning. I was going through the Guardian with the smell of coffee in my nose. Still half asleep I noticed the words ‘shun workers’ and I saw the picture of a lovely young lady (Genevieve LeJeune) and my mind went ‘whats this about?’ And I started to read the article. As such the title became ‘Sex discrimination: why banks shun workers in adult entertainment’, I saw the word ‘sex; and I am a simple guy, so I was very much in the ‘lets read this’ mood. So the article gives us that the HSBC bank was part of “I didn’t think for one minute they would have an issue with what the business was about. And why would they be concerned, as long as I’m cashflow positive and I do all the right things, and it’s completely legal?” It was basically as was stated “She said she told the bank that she ran a community for the “B” in LGBTQ+ and was not chased for any further information”, by her own account a community with 16000 members. They were suddenly cut off and we get “She has spent more than four years battling HSBC for access to more than £20,000 trapped in those accounts” with in the finale “only regained control of the cash this spring after complaining to the Financial Ombudsman Service”. There are two parts that catch me in the article. The first was the setting given “she ran a community for the “B” in LGBTQ+”, and the subsequent part of the article that paints them all as “sex workers”. One is not the other and even as we accept that Bi curious women might see of there is a penny, it is not a given, it requires evidence and that is even a larger problem because are stated they are not breaking the law. So let’s take a look at the other side. 

In 2018 we get ‘HSBC ‘divests’ from Israeli arms company Elbit Systems’, HSBC only acted when pro-Palestinian voices became too loud and personally I do not think they had to give in. 

. Oh and Elbit Systems is an electronics company (mostly drones), the ICIJ reported only last year ‘HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering fine’, so a laundering company makes waves over skirts? How is that for irony? So when we are given (at https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/) “HSBC was profiting from an international criminal scheme even while on probation for having served murderous drug cartels and other criminals. HSBC had admitted to U.S. prosecutors in 2012 that it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least $881 million controlled by the notorious Sinaloa cartel and other Mexican drug gangs”, we see a setting where Bi-curious women have less rights than drug gangs in the eyes of the bank? I reckon that the drug gangs didn’t have to go to the Ombudsman (why is that?)

And only last July the Guardian reported (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/28/hsbc-faces-questions-over-disclosure-of-alleged-money-laundering-to-monitors) ‘HSBC faces questions over disclosure of alleged money laundering to monitors’ with the byline “Bank was under supervision by US Department of Justice-appointed team because of previous violations”. I think we need to do something else. Something I have never ever done on this site before. I am calling ALL readers to see if they or their friends use the HSBC as a bank, and ask them all to switch banks, to whatever bank they prefer. It is time to give HSBC an education on hypocrisy. I have no connections to that bank, and I hope the large numbers of readers (especially in the UK) will move to another bank. 

I feel this is the only path open to us. Now if you feel that curious women are to be discriminated against, I leave it up to you, but a bank with these standards acting against people who broke no law whilst they are on the US laundering top 10 with ties to drug gangs should not be allowed to function, should they?

P.S. WordPress still has not fixed colour issue

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October 15, 2021 · 01:49

The rule of guns

This is not new, this is not even novel. It is the continuation of something that has been going on for decades, I saw it with my own eyes in 1982, others saw it too. Some objected, others did not. And when Beirut had its fireworks party on August 5th 2020, so many voices were eager to give rise to a setting that could never be, and all rejoiced when the media forwarded those messages. They must have thought it was in the bag. But I knew a think or two and I gave the readers ‘Boom goes the dynamite’ that very same day (about 6 hours later, might have been 12). And I gave the readers “It is speculation, but consider the blast, according to some the blast was noticed well over 100Km away. I do have a point of reference, the Fireworks blast in the Netherlands (Enschede) had a similar effect, but nowhere near the size, the video’s I saw told a different story, one car on the highway with a distance of around 2000 meters away got its windows blown out and the rear view mirrors got blown off the car, and that is one of a few video’s that show me that this was no ordinary blast”, so there was a lager stage and the people who were behind it went under the rocks like cockroaches. I calculated that it took a massive amount of 40’ containers and the cargo, 125 40’ containers worth cannot go up like the way it did, not in one go. And I rote more than one article about that. So when we now see in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/14/gunfire-beirut-protest-judge-leading-port-blast-inquiry), the setting of ‘Five dead as shooting breaks out at Beirut protests over port blast inquiry’, we now see “demanding end to judge’s investigation of huge blast last year”, all whilst we see Hezbollah types being brave behind their balaclava’s. So whilst we get the terrorist spokespeople Nabih Berri and Hassan Nasrallah make noise, we see the attacks on judge Tarek Bitar continue. I see no surprises, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. And when we see “However, demands that all aspects of the explosion be investigated seem almost impossible to deliver, with ministers summoned for investigation refusing to turn up”, something that I saw and I feel certain plenty of others saw that too, we wonder when Hezbollah will be held to account. So whilst these political chihuahua’s refuse to appear we see the stage changing, a stage where a lot of people are demanding that ALL HELP towards Lebanon will stop until someone correctly muzzles Hezbollah. And I see a reason to divert those aid funds to Israel (if needed). A larger stage erupts as the smaller (2020/8/5) subsides. This is not about local rights, this is about Hezbollah is showing itself as the bully it always was, it was that in 1982, it still is that now. In this I am not making judgement on judge Tarek Bitar, I know too little about him, but the stage that Hezbollah wants it stopped and they are happy to show themselves (often with balaclava’s) exercise that right wielding an RPG-7, or other hardware of the ‘firearms’ variety shows them to be the aggressor, to be the bad apples and now as the energy crises is pushing into winter, the stage of anger changes even more. Now there is a larger explosion and it could go on into its neighbouring places and one of them is Israel the other one is Syria and neither accepts the Hezbollah approach. I nice stage to set and the people of Lebanon do not get a choice in the matter, they let things slide with Hezbollah for too long and this will implode in all kinds of wrong settings. Even now we see all minds of media including Iran in this mess. I cannot follow that as I remain a follower of evidence, but it does make sense. And even in light of the humanitarian side of ‘Hezbollah-run oil shipments from Iran’, enough players were willing to let that slide, but it would not take long until Hezbollah thought it was in control (because to some degree they are) and now the world has had enough, some will stop funds, more will stop goods and Hezbollah will learn what war against hungry and cold fellow citizens look like, they will not give Hezbollah any consideration in all this and neither should we. There comes a time when enough is enough and too many have hit that point now, so as Hezbollah and Amar will seek ‘compensation’ (optionally for their lost explosives), the larger station is no what they want, it is what they were part of and that is what fears them. The Times of Israel gives us “Local commentators said Washington, worried about chaos in Lebanon amid raging, multiple crises, may have decided to look the other way”, but that is not the real deal. The slightly more real deal is “humanitarian assistance in Lebanon to more than $372 million in Fiscal Year 2021” and it has become time to stop that. Let the cancer die, let those people die. This in not inhumane, it is an essential part of stopping terrorism by Hezbollah. If there are no people to care, there are no recruits, there is no Hezbollah and the times and the economic pressure are growing in this direction. It would have been less of an issue if someone muzzled them, but no one did so we have a new stage to look forward to. In the first the UN trying to smooth things over, the other all the heart bleeding people who ache for the people of Lebanon, yet none of them are willing to hold Hezbollah to account, why is that?

To keep instability around? It is too late for that, Wall Street solved that problem for you all. 

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October 14, 2021 · 06:07

Is wealth $$$?

An article threw me yesterday. It was given by the Dutch News agency NOS, it was not merely the title, it was the entire setting that threw me. So as we are considering the translated title ‘Dutch in 4th place richest citizens worldwide’ (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2401433-nederlanders-wereldwijd-op-4de-plek-rijkste-burgers) we should consider the list that Allianz seemingly gives the viewers. In that list we see: 

  1. USA (218.000 euro) 
  2. Switzerland (212.000 euro)
  3. Denmark (149.000 euro)
  4. Netherlands (129.000 euro)

Now, that would be fine were it not that there is a place in Europe called Monaco where the average wealth is 1,824,177 Euros, it might be all those billionaires and multi millionaires in that place. Then there is Luxembourg with the average 663,661 euro’s and that took seconds to check, so what does Allianz think it is doing? They give us “The report ranks the assets and debts of nearly 60 countries” I see this as a report that heralds filtered information bringing. Some call it lying but I think they are bonkers. It seems that news, the media, and politicians are all about filtering the information. It reminds me of someone. Ah yes, was that not a premise in George Orwells 1984 as well? 

And when we reconsider “nearly 60 countries” what are the chances that none of the zero tax nations are part of that? And when we consider “Switzerland ranks well on the list because the country attracts a lot of wealthy people, due to its low taxes.” Might this all be a ruse? I have no idea where they are going with all that, but they have a plan. A place like Allianz has the German grundlichkeit, so something is up. Now if that report had a separate section for Zero tax nations I might have had some peace with it. Yet when we search further we see “According to BMO, the average Canadian household now has more than $1 million in total assets, even after accounting for debt”, we got that last July, as such is seems that the average Canadian is twice as wealthy as an American, so what is Allianz doing this and more important, what the fuck is the Dutch NOS doing publishing an article without proper vetting? 

And that leaves us to think, is wealth really about ‘$$$’, ‘£££’, or ‘€€€’? Me and many others (especially as we do not have it) believe it to be so, but I will accept that money gives less complications and as such we would be happier. And there we have the rub, do we really have less complications as we are being lied to? 

In this is filtering the information we get a new form of lying? That took me back to 1984 (not the year). I remember when I read it and a few parts never made sense. One of those were “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”, I had an issue because if we (me claiming to be me) are of pure thought (not some paedophilic clergy edition) how can we be corrupted? I learned that over the years. I was lied to from basic school onwards. The christian invasion in the middle east was not to protect any land, not even a fictive holy one, so as we go on we were lied to more and more and it was not a point of view, the Crusades gave us that part. It would be a few more years as I got a hold of one sided information and later on filtered information the circle was nearly complete and now we see a larger stage, the last bastions of actual news reporting are now falling. The pointing powers behind the screens are now afraid of everything that comes and they will force new slogans like ‘tax the rich’ onto the people setting us up for some small version of civic war, but they will call it something else. Some form of social war. 

Yet there is more, The Global Wealth Report 2021 (at https://www.eulerhermes.com/content/dam/onemarketing/ehndbx/eulerhermes_com/en_gl/erd/publications/pdf/2021_10_07_Global-Wealth-Report.pdf) gives us more. Allianz gave that report to the world and even as the NOS bongs it, it does not mean that I need to do the same, does it? And on page 38 I see the first part, the part that shows grundlichkeit. There we see “Debt in the US represents 81.5% of output, while in Canada household liabilities are 114.7% of GDP. The ratio increased substantially from 2019 (US: 76.6%; CAN: 105.3%), not so much because of the increase in liabilities, which was also at highs not seen since 2007 (EUR522bn), but rather because of the sharp economic contraction of 2020”, as well as “There are still 2mn borrowers in debt forbearance who are vulnerable to financial distress once the forbearance programs come to an end. As of today, debt delinquency is not a problem. But going forward, when the pandemic protections expire, the historical debt burden in the US, not just among households, but also related to the government, might become a risk factor in the road to recovery.” OK, so that sounds better, well not that much better but at least there is a large solid pedestal it is all build on. On page 19 we see some graphs that explain the list (even as Switzerland was number one) and the other charts show that there is a larger story and we also see that none of the Zero Tax places are included. 

So as a non-economist I do grasp decent parts of the report, but what boggles the mind is how the NOS set the stage to what it published. Especially when we consider page 38 giving us “the historical debt burden in the US, not just among households, but also related to the government, might become a risk factor in the road to recovery.” When we read this with a debt of $28,000,000,000,000 How are they the richest player? When that debt goes south, they will be worse off than Mexico ever was (my speculated view). And when we see the list on page 52, we see where the NOS got its list, yet when we consider ‘by net financial assets per capita’ or to the right of that where the Swiss are number one and USA is number two giving us ‘by gross financial assets per capita’, I feel there is a lot missing (mainly that I am not seeing it all), but the report does show a whole range of issues. It also gave me the surprising view that Germany is way behind nations like Belgium, New Zealand, Italy, France and Israel. A stage I never expected, but that happens when you have a partial view, I personally believe that this is report is a partial view but that is not a bad thing. It is not some filtered view, it is a partial view of the elements that set the assets and equities (a stage that I feel happy I never understood). And that is not on Allianz, but the flaky article that the NOS is giving its Dutch citizens is on the NOS. For the life of me I have no idea where they expected to go, a 55 page report created by a dozen economists reduced to a 5 bullet-point article by someone who could never have been an economist. That’s today’s media for you. 

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October 13, 2021 · 20:06

We are the tools

Yes, we are, you, me, we all are and the evidence is all out there. So let’s start with the global comic relieve that we call the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). We all see the headlines, global headlines and 600 secretaries (they call themselves journalists) are out there giving us what we think are the goods. To phrase an example we take a look at the Sydney Morning Herald (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-has-become-a-go-to-destination-for-dirty-money-leaks-reveal-nation-s-tax-weaknesses-20211007-p58y2i.html) it is a mere example what is going on out there. A collection of people no one head about, no one cared about. A collection of tits and dicks all striking their own ego, their own needs and the audience is gobbling it up. So when we are given phrases like “ALP senator Deborah O’Neill has launched an inquiry into Australia’s AML-CTF regime and is seeking industry feedback on the costs and benefits of broadening our laws to include accountants and lawyers to bring Australian laws into line with international standards to prevent financial crime” Yet here is the problem. It is ‘prevent financial crime’, in this that we also see from other sources “the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion has become so blurred we need to act against both” and there is the real problem, a stage I told people for well over a decade. Tax laws need overhaul on a global stage. And the setting too often is that there were no laws broken, these people might act against the spirit of the law, but they NEVER broke the law. And that is the stage, 600 typing tutors cannot give us the goods, because as I speculate, the real goods were never there. Yet someone in the ICIJ decided not to investigate the origins. Interesting not? So whilst we focus on “Avoidance meant arranging your affairs so tax wasn’t due”, whilst we consider that politicians have given the wealthy and rich a little too much leeway these politicians are now hiding under rocks and they do not want the limelight. And whilst some are considering “It isn’t illegal for the celebrity or a politician to move their money (so long as it is theirs to begin with). Assets within the trust are subject to local tax laws (sometimes zero tax) and local secrecy laws (sometimes complete secrecy)”, they will get the idea that places like Monaco, Cayman Islands and Dubai have appeal to many people with a piggy bank that holds an 8-figure number or more. So when we see all these papers give us “the documents were linked to more than 330 politicians and public officials, including 35 current and former national leaders, in more than 91 countries and territories”, as well as mentions of billionaires and no one gave us a clear top-line setting, I saw one, just one in a stage with dozens of papers and on less than 50% of the politicians involved. Yet none in the US, none in Canada, none in Australia or New Zealand, it is optionally possible, but 50% of that rundown was missing. And 600 secretaries had no time to look into it? As papers keep on handing us “a two-year effort to sift through 11.9 million confidential files leaked to it, aided in that effort by more than 600 journalists from 150 media outlets.” No one had the idea to give us a tally, a top-line? So far how many give us a list of ACTUAL criminal events? Tax Avoidance is not illegal, owning and residing in a zero tax nation is not illegal, so what is this about?

Now consider another station I made mention on. Consider the names Jacob A. Frenkel, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Guillermo Ortiz, Jean-Claude Trichet, Geoffrey Bell, Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Arminio Fraga, Kenneth Rogoff, Janet Yellen, Zhou Xiaochuan, Domingo Cavallo, Mario Draghi, Yi Gang, Carmen Reinhart, Maria Ramos, Klaas Knot, Philipp Hildebrand and Kenneth Rogoff. All part of the G30 bankers list, no mention at all? These people move trillions, there is no way that there is no mention of them in any way, but the press seemingly avoided that small part, or the source data was stricken of them, making this an exercise of some sorts and no one caught on? How come?

And this is not in you, that is on the members of the media (including those who think that they are journalists, or got the degree and faked their way through life). 

A simple setting of bankrupt nations painting the wealthy as the criminals, all whilst the politicians were a lot more to blame in all of this, 2 decades of ignored overhauls and no one catches on? 

The sanctimonious BS that the media is feeding us sickens me, it really does.

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October 11, 2021 · 19:12

Was I wrong?

That is something I have been accused of plenty of times. Mostly they were wrong (as anyone might who thinks that they are right), in this case it was my take on the debt ceiling. I wrote it in ‘Two items’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/07/two-items/). Consider the fact that the debt is at present $28 trillion and there is no real debt ceiling raising, there is merely a stand off of 10 weeks. So the people in the USA will go through this again during Christmas, and if we are picky about this. At present the interest in the debt is well over $280,000,000,000 a year, that is if anyone was stupid enough to give the USA a 1% credit arrangement, even houses get more, so at 2% it is $560 billion. Consider that and consider that this extension costs a little more than $107,500,000,000 for 10 weeks. How much tax was collected? A setting that goes nowhere EVER. As I personally see it the total annual tax receipts. One source gives us “In 2020, the total revenue of the U.S. government sum up to about 3.42 trillion U.S. dollars and consist of individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes. Individual income taxes totalled up to 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, whereas corporate income taxes totalled to 212 billion U.S. dollars.” As such we see two elements, corporate tax would not. Cover the debt, not even 50%. Yes the total tax collected covers that interest, but it will take 15% of all collected taxes to make that work, as such if we take the simple road (I need to because I have no economics degree) it amounts to 43% of the collected taxes to pay for the interest plus enough to pay the debt off in 30 years. As such a debt accumulated in 25 years will take 30 years as well as push a large part of the US nation into pure poverty. No infrastructures maintained, no education, a massive cut on defence spending (not the worst idea), yet in this logistics takes a hit, so consider standing in long lines in ANY setting that requires you to get any help at all and healthcare is damaged beyond repair. That is the station that the Americans face and as this happens, Japan goes over the edge and the EU will be in all kinds of states. You see, Russia and China do not have the engage in war, they can merely stand on the sidelines watching it all implode. This is not a new setting, this was clear in 2012/2013 as we were watching the middle east expenses explode. Politicians who were all in a stage of ‘We will overcome this’, so where are these politicians now? Sitting pretty on a large bag of money, thats where! In all this, I do not want you to take my word on this. Do the math, check the numbers and see where it is coming from. 

Now consider what I gave you earlier and consider that sources stated that the 2020 Budget for the US was $4.79 trillion. A budget that comes $1,370,000,000,000 short of what was available. Are you getting a clue that the 10 weeks is a laughable excuse? Yes, the republicans have a good case, but they are not innocent either in all this, both sides got you in this mess and now the Credit Card with the connected address of 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW is getting cancelled on a near global scale. We see how Wall Street is presenting itself to be happy, but it is short lived and those people are filling their pockets and they will go wherever they (and their family) can have a sweet lifestyle for 40 years. I reckon when it all implodes it will take that long to get up again and whatever gets up will not be very human, or humane any more. 

These are numbers that are out there, so do you still think I am wrong? It’s fine, you should never just agree with anyone, especially a person you do not know. You should check yourself, because when the social system in the US (and several other nations) collapse, the upside for those governments will be that suicide numbers will go through the roof. 

Why upside?
Housing prices collapse, homeless numbers go down, unemployment numbers go down. If an unemployed person commits suicide, the cost falls away, if an employed person does it a job becomes optionally available. The numbers are at this time THAT COLD. You think it makes me happen, but it does not. I admit, on the Covid side I made fun of the non-inoculated people, but a social collapse suicide wave is nothing one has ever seen before. Consider that 2018 had the highest male suicide rates since 1950 and then triple it, (an estimated number created with a wet finger). The US will be looking at 67 per 100,000. That amounts to 217,750 suicides and it will not be one year, it will be a setting of a percentage annually of the 217,750 for 3-5 years. It will surpass the 733,575 covid-19 deaths in the US. That is the setting and beware, this is speculated on my side. I cannot prove this and I have no data supporting any of this, a mere impact of expected events when a social security system collapses. It is set to about 70 million people in the US getting assistance in one form or another from the Social Security Administration (SSA), now consider it falling away completely. Rents cannot be met, hunger all over the place and no healthcare. A situation that comes from a badly managed debt by both the Democrats and the Republicans. So, feel free to ignore this, but I do hope you will check the numbers, they are all out there and they are all over the place. So when you see the impact that 70,000,000 people face, my number set to 217,750 might turn out to be extremely conservative. If it gets to be seriously higher I honestly hope I will not live to see that day, it would be depressing beyond measure and if you think that this is bad, I expect Japan to equal those numbers and optionally surpass them. They merely have a population of 126 million, a mere 38% compared to America, so when I see them surpass that number, we can see that the larger stage will be a nasty one. A stage where China and Russia can claim the lands by clearing the corpses, not one weapon used, not one bullet fired. That is the deep dark future we are all heading too. So whether I end up saying ‘я не говорю по-русски’, ‘我不懂中文’, or optionally ‘मैं हिंदी कहां से सीख सकता हूं’ We are all heading towards an abyss, one that was created by people who were smitten with ego’s stating ‘We are too big too fail’. History taught us that nothing is too big too fail. We saw the examples in Julius Caesar (44BC), Napoleon Bonaparte (1821), Adolf Hitler (1945) in this their opponents had a nice party (the one in 44BC was awesome), will I be wrong again? That is a decent setting, you see the people getting wealthy on the debt the US has wants the debt ceiling to be raised again and again. And as I personally see it, there is no real solution, there is no debt management, there is no halting overspending in too many places and as such these nations will grab whatever they can and however they can. IP values will be end up being based on on national products, and corporations will need to align with a nation. You see there is a larger danger for Big Tech and the US (EU too) doesn’t like true global companies. As such we see court play after court play, yet in the end players like Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others will optionally face a new setting a domestic office and non-domestic offices that will have to report to the domestic office. A setting that happens to some degree, but now there will be a tax focus. In this both the US and the EU have no choice, their credit cards are stretched too thin. However, I doubt that they will become sensible and plan for an end to debts, Wall Street for one will not like that and the IMF will have its own reasons to object. Debt is big business and the people you never elected in any nation are getting decently wealthy in the process. I am not talking about people like Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin or Bill Gates. I am talking about Mario Draghi and his friends, the banks who are collecting the interest. You forgot about them did you? The so called ‘secretive club of bankers’, did you think they were having a drink and talking about the good old days? Did you think that they were letting $560,000,000,000 to chance? A club with 33 member, and if they only get 10%, that implies that these 33 people are optionally at present getting $17,000,000,000 each EVERY YEAR. You still think that the debt is making your life better? 

Do not take my word on any of this, find the numbers, find the links and see what else is there, there is enough out there and as far as I can tell the larger issue was never seen in the IDIJ, or showed up in the Pandora papers, did they? Why was that? Try finding any of these 33 people in the Pandora papers, what are the chances that you will find none?

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