Category Archives: Finance

October 1, 2021 · 19:59

The idea as it came voiced

I was browsing some real estate magazine and I saw the image. A home theatre for the not so poor. A place where a family can watch a Blu-ray or 4K, stream Netflix or play a game.

The image shows a nice place, a place most would want, and it is made to size, it all makes sense, but then I wondered, what if the family changes? One person loses a partner, the empty chair next to theirs, reminding them every time that their life turned to goo. Or the reverse, they can finally share something, but they end up with one lap dancing the other, or behind one another. Yes the solution is so simple. I cannot tell whether this was done here, but I saw a few solutions where it was not done. It is simple, like the image below.

Consider LEGO, consider the setting of LEGO, a room where we have chairs and support, the support that can be altered to some degree allowing for a change in furniture whilst keeping it a home theatre. It is such a simple elegant solution, yet it is ignored by more than a few, all whilst anyone who ever played with a LEGO set could have come up with the idea, however as far as I can see this, less then a few is taking a long hard look at what ingenuity LEGO could bring their ideas, so could another invention Meccano, invented in 1898 by Frank Hornby from Liverpool (that city where the Beatles are from). It is part of a larger truth I believe in, only limitations tends to push the larger form of creativity. It has been a truth in engineering, IT and design and it is an almost absolute given that will never change. It is when a limitation hits us, we look for workarounds. When SPSS could not give us an age pyramid, I designed a syntax that did just that, it was always there, in the High-Low chart and I published it in 1993 (or 1994). Limitations are there to test us, make us creative and we are not seeing enough creativity. The LEGO idea is merely one side but when you take a larger look at the solutions LEGO, Meccano, Wilesco Steak kits, and Wise Elk toys, all toys that fuel the ideas that kids have, all fuelling the foundations that they have as adults. A foundational step we overlooked for way too long. We all relied on IT greats to give us the foundations, but they are the foundations that THEY want us to take. Microsoft might have its azure, but when we see hack after hack, all because people overlooked security and if it is not there, it will be the Amazon Web services, the Google cloud, IBM cloud, Oracle cloud and so on. So what happens when they all overlook similar stations? It is not an accusation, but it is a larger stage. The assumption that they are all flawless is delusional to the umpteenth degree. 

We might not see the larger stage, we might not see the larger goals, but to give a person a LEGO set for IT is not the worst idea. To seek in limitation is what awakes up the mind and as you can see several players preceded us. 

There is a larger stage and it is not on any of those players, but it is on us, if we rely on the people telling us where to look, we end up looking in the wrong direction. We end up not looking where we desperately needed to see in the first place. To be honest, I am not giving you advice where to look, it all merely started with an interior decorator, reminding me of others that took a limited view on the needs of a customer, so when you get the option of invoice A at 100%, or invoice B at 115%, yet invoice B give you options and invoice A does not, is invoice A really 15% cheaper or will it end up being 30% more expensive down the track? 

I will let you mull this over, and consider where you limited your options at the advice of others. 

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September 30, 2021 · 17:23

When it was about safety

That is the stage I was woken up to, a stage that is no longer about ‘safety’ but about convenience. And people will pass corpses just to give marketing a chance to set the phrase “This will be a lot more convenient to you” and it is a dangerous step. In one direction the news is good news. It shows that not only was I on the money when I wrote ‘As banks cut corners’ on September 7th, a mere three weeks later we see ‘Researchers find Apple Pay, Visa contactless hack’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58719891). Here we are given “researchers were able to make a Visa payment of £1,000 without unlocking the phone or authorising the payment”, a setting that evolved for people to bloody lazy to unlock their phones. Lets be clear this is a setting regarding commuters to make quick contactless payments without unlocking their phone. That gate is coming up and you know this 30 seconds in advance and unlocking the phone takes mere seconds. So when we get in opposition “Visa’s view was that this type of attack was “impractical”” did anyone tell VISA that they are marketing themselves as a bunch of tossers? There is nothing impractical about £1,000, 20 hits a day and the young entrepreneurs are sitting on a healthy income and it will take time to solve it after which someone else can make a new hack.

And Apple is not free of blame either. The response “This is a concern with a Visa system but Visa does not believe this kind of fraud is likely to take place in the real world given the multiple layers of security in place”” gives criminals the stage where they can get away with it for some time. So how long until low income people can get a transit ghost? And all this is happening because there was no proper testing. Yet, it is an outlier and it was unlikely that people were seeking in this direction, but that will soon change. All because people were not willing to go through the inconvenience of unlocking their phone. So how long until this stage evolves beyond the Metro? Your first cup of coffee, your quick lunch, your cinema line, and that list goes on, all because of convenience we now see a stage where Apple and VISA are optionally catering to crime and organised crime (if they have a Filofax it is very organised crime). 

A stage that is out in the open and we see deflection from VISA and to a smaller extent from Apple too. In this it is Dr Andreea Radu, of the University of Birmingham who seems to be the voice of reason with ““It has some technical complexity – but I feel the rewards from doing the attack are quite high”, she said, adding that if unaddressed “in a few years these might be become a real issue””, in addition we see that Samsung Pay and MasterCard cannot be exploited like that. So there is a stage where this goes (as the academics say) tits up. Concert tickets, beverages in any trade show all places where it is about small transactions and as they are all about the convenience of the people the criminals get to have a laughing feast, a feast with all the trimmings because the banks, in this case Financial Institutions cut another corner, optionally straight into your bank balance. 

Enjoy your contactless payments today.

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September 28, 2021 · 19:12

Sphere or Cube?

In continuation of yesterday, we have today. This is a direct consequence of time. Yet, that is not how some spin it and it is about spinning. In this we introduce Australia’s own spin master ACCC. They decided to inform us via the Guardian with ‘Google’s dominance of Australia’s online advertising needs to be reined in, says ACCC’, I personally wonder who they are speaking off (plenty of volunteers) but the article struck a chord, especially after what we saw today. I am not stating that limits should be drawn, I am not stating that the article is completely wrong. Yet the stage as it is painted does not add up, especially as some of the stakeholders are now in a stage where they painted themselves into corners. There is no real timeline here, because the article is actually quite good, but I am better (and a lot older). So let’s take you through the threads unravelling them one by one. Let’s be clear, there is no real lying here by the article writer. Yet when you see the unravelled strings, you might wonder how they got to this article. Time is the first element. The article is spun like it was a continuation of events, but it is not and more importantly the weavers seem driven to keep larger players Microsoft, Amazon and IBM out of the limelight. In light of this lets take a look at the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/28/accc-calls-for-new-powers-to-rein-in-googles-dominance-of-australian-online-ads) and look at that first thread. 

The first thread is “Google’s takeover of ad companies, including DoubleClick and Admob, as well video platform YouTube, have helped to further solidify its position, the ACCC said” the fact that these companies became part of Google is not in question, the statement “takeover of ad companies” however is. You see, YouTube was bought in 2006. In 2005 it was launched as a “an American online video sharing and social media platform owned by Google”, the players here namely Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim became multimillionaires overnight. After a golden idea a year later was tossed for a little over $1,500,000,000. In this we get from Steve Chen himself “he was inspired by how the search giant monetised without hurting their users. “It translated over to Youtube as well. There are people that create content, view content and pay for content,” he said.” Take here that the operative part was “without hurting their users” and it is important. Look at personal video’s, look at reviews of hardware (Hero 10, PS5) review of books, games and music, even video’s of songs. It all benefits the people, all the people. It was created in 2005 and sold in 2006. It was not until 2008 when they gained 480p videos, AFTER Google acquired it. Thanks to GoPro and DJI we now see 4K movies of cities. In all this time there was no mention of advertisement, the corporate world was not ready and not prepared for YouTube. 

Double Click was pure advertisement, and even as it was founded in a basement (behind the washing machine) by Kevin O’Connor and Dwight Merriman. It offered technology products and services for a mere handful of advertisers that included Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L’Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa Inc., Nike, Inc., and Carlsberg Group, and this is important! So why is this important? You see DoubleClick was acquired by an equity firm named Hellman & Friedman. Basically a greed driven Wall Street player who saw that this would be worth something over time. And the two clients that DoubleClick had (Microsoft and Apple) never saw the potential, even as they were trying to break through in all the markets that Google had created, we see things like MSN Search, aQuantive and adCenter (renamed to Bing Ads) as well as Search Alliance (renamed to Yahoo! Bing Network). Microsoft used a 20 year old tactic, why create when you can acquire. Google acquired too but evolved the segments into behemoth, all whilst there is every chance that the Bing Network would be unable to properly identify the word ‘Behemoth’. A stage we do not see in the Guardian article because it raises too many questions. The one given part here is that only Google knew what it was doing, the rest merely tried to invoke invoices on the corporate world, Google tried to cater to the greatest denominator here, they tried to adhere to the needs of the seeker, the searcher, and as Steve Chen states “without hurting their users”, a stage that was a winning mixture and we do not see that in the ACCC spin, do we?

Then we get thread two “Rod Sims told Guardian Australia a key issue facing news sites and other users of ad tech is they did not know how much revenue ad tech providers like Google were making from each advertisement served up to readers”, in this I find ‘a key issue facing news sites’ as well as ‘they did not know how much revenue ad tech providers like Google were making from each advertisement’. It’s almost like hearing a toddler ask “these juggling tits, do they always provide milk?” In all this does it matter how much the advertiser makes? How often was this asked of Yellow pages or the advertisement moguls in New York? And it is important, because this hits Microsoft as well (Bing Ads, or Microsoft Advertising) Google was upfront in this, they even made it public in their documentation. “No matter how much you bid, you are only charged $0.01 more than the previous winner”, so if we see the bids $12, $9, $2.36, and $0.99 number three pays $1.00, number two pays $1.01 and number one pays $1.02, not $12. A setting NO advertisement company EVER offered, it was all about how much they could rake in and in their defence a system like this was not possible before the digital age. More important, the digital innovators (Google) took that step from day one (well, almost day one). A customer facing setting that prolongs the visibility of marketing departments because they can advertise more and longer, a stage they never faced before, yet the Guardian never touches on that, do they? It was all about the threat that the friends of the ACCC see, not what we actually experience. Oh, and when it comes to advertisement. Why is there no mention of Facebook, or Amazon for that matter? 

The article gives us that there needs to be a border and there should be limits, but is that up to the ACCC? 

So when we see “if you want to block certain companies advertising on your website, it’s very hard to do that through Google” there is a choice, do not advertise on your website, or get your own channel, and, oh…. Here is a thing, Google states “To give you editorial control over the ads that may appear on your site, AdSense offers several options for reviewing and blocking ads. There are various reasons why you might not want certain ads to show on your site. You may have content or business reasons, or philosophical issues. Maybe you have a vegan food blog and you don’t want to show an ad for a steakhouse”, as I personally see it Sims engaged in some forms of non truths (aka lies). And that is the beginning of a much larger station. The ACCC is the BS caterer of their friends and the Guardian did exactly what it was told to do, not inform us but to perpetrate issues that are not really there. And the entire article gives no mention of AdSense at all, why is that? It might not fit the needs of the ACCC, does it?

Consider what you are offered and vet the information, it is important that you do, you are given a pile of goods that are glued together, a setting of 10.000 cubes, glued together so that we see a sphere, but is it a sphere? I will let you decide.

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September 24, 2021 · 20:28

A short sighted wire

I was taken by surprise today, the BBC gave me ‘EU rules to force USB-C chargers for all phones’, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58665809) gives us “Manufacturers will be forced to create a universal charging solution for phones and small electronic devices, under a new rule proposed by the European Commission (EC)” which is stupid on several levels. It remains a surprise on how we see the computation of IQ of a population being  AVERAGE(group), whilst the IQ of a collection of politicians seems to adhere to LOWEST(group). Now let’s be clear. I would love to see a stage where power supplies all adhere to the same settings, but the USB-C charger of my MacBook will not charge my Chromebook, my USB-Micro charger of my android phone actually does charge other devices and a generic charger will not work on my android phone, as such the entire setting of all using the same cable is a laughable stage. More important, generic power boards with USB points will not charge everything either (it would not charge my Chromebook), so where set the standard? Set the standard at what each battery has to accept? 

So when we see “EU politicians have been campaigning for a common standard for over a decade, with the Commission’s research estimating that disposed of and unused charging cables generate more than 11,000 tonnes of waste per year.” So how about a mobile phone that lasts well over 5 years? I reckon that this element will save a lot more waste space required. But under what conditions? So how about all chargers for anything battery operated like a wireless WiFi, photo camera’s, film camera’s, webcams, speakers (like Bose and JBL), bluetooth devices. The list goes on, they ALL have to adjust? How stupid is that train of thought? When any asian market decides to take a turn to the right, when they find a new innovative way, where will the EU be left? A setting that can be hammered straight out of gateway, set to ‘unused charging cables’, all whilst the charging cble is the one part that often needs replacing long before the charger is too broken to be used. And these charge cables are also used for consoles, printers, scanners and other devices. So who was the local yahoo that set for “All smartphones sold in the EU must have USB-C chargers”? Someone with a friend at Apple, or perhaps someone who hates non USB-C systems? Perhaps some yahoo who forgot his Android cable that still uses USB micro?

When we see the elements of that article, the numbers do not add up. Even Apple, the people who embraced USB-C give us: “Apple has warned such a move would harm innovation”. So when we see “In 2009, there were more than 30 different chargers, whereas now most models stick to three – the USB-C, Lightning and USB micro-B” we see a level of raw BS. You see my Apple USB-C charger will not charge my USB-C Chromebook, a simple test overseen in 10 second. Then there is “the Commission’s research estimating that disposed of and unused charging cables generate more than 11,000 tonnes of waste per year” I know that this is equally a setting of utter nonsense, because there is no division between unused and broken cables and they cannot, it is mere estimation work. The reason I know this is because I have three chargers that are still in my desk for backup. In case one of the other ones break, the cables are equally important. When at work I keep one cable there in case I forget to charge the night before. All reasons to have more than one cable. I have two additional cables for other reasons and some over time broke. All settings that are an issue, so when we are given that the cables changes are required for 

smartphones
tablets
cameras
headphones
portable speakers
handheld video game consoles

All whilst the console controllers are not part of that equation. This is an attack on the Asian market, it has nothing to do with landfill. That is how I personally see it and that is why I consider that compared to these politicians Homer Simpson is pretty much the Einstein of them all. Oh and then there is the stage that at times the same port is used in multiple ways, so what about portable speakers that cannot be connected to a laptop because the laptop does not have a USB-C port. Issue upon issue all whilst a group of people are now setting a technology limit? So consider one part not seen there (no blame to BBC) “The USB-C connector was developed by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the group of companies that has developed, certified, and shepherded the USB standard over the years”, so a filtering to less then 1200 companies? How is that not segregation and discrimination? And when we take that list of 1100-1200 companies, how is that drill down per nation? And when we take a close look at waste per nation we see “European plastics production almost reached 58 million tonnes” and we see an article on 11,000 tonnes? This adds up to 1% of 1% of an actual problem, I think the people in the EU needs to sack without any pay the people from that European Commission. To underline that part, consider that my Wifi Router and my Mobile phone use the same USB-Micro charger and when it is not charging it is disconnected, all whilst the Chromebook and the MacBook both need DIFFERENT USB-C charger, as such the line “encouraging consumers to re-use existing chargers when buying a new device” becomes equally debatable. 

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September 23, 2021 · 19:00

Wake up or slumber more?

Yes, we all have that at times, the smallest doubt we give ourselves “Shall I slumber just a few minutes more?” We are allowed it, we were so clever, we set the alarm clock to 30 minutes early and we ignore the first alarm because we had 30 minutes left. At times that is the best sleep time of the night, to know there is 30 minutes left. And I feel the same way, yet I feel that this is the time to realise that the alarm went off a week earlier and we kept on slumbering a little more and a little more and now we are out of time. We are awoken by two articles, not related yet linked. The first is the Guardian who gives us ‘anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid) we are told that Phil Valentine was anti-vaccine, he even plagiarised the song Taxman and made it his own. We are also introduced to Marc Bernier, Dick Farrel and Jimmy DeYoung. Yet, we need not worry, they are all dead now, they all died of covid and the millions of ‘fans’ they had, a lot of them will be dead soon too. That is the natural selection we are part of. And it is then that the claim “Media watchdogs suggest that some basic level of responsibility to the public should be required to keep a broadcast license” seems to seep in, but it is already too late. Even as some of the exploiters are realising that things are going overboard, they forgot the basic rules of the game, to gain riches you need a population and that population is now becoming redundant. Local radio hosts ignored by the big players, but the people are local people, they are the foundation that the US stands on and it goes way beyond USA, believe it. The stakeholders are the first and the direct franchisers of levels of exploitation and they are now seeing the impact I warned for for well over a decade. You can live on the premise of fooling people, but the strongest reality has now and always been “You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” and that is now pushing towards a reality the exploiters never realised. They realise it first because they need a population and it is dying, with 697,000 dead in the US and an expected 100% rise between now and February 2022 the numbers will take a massive offset. 

So how did I get there?
There are three elements driving it. The first is the Delta variant, the second is the anti-vaccine movements and lets be frank ‘stupid’ people driving anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiments and the third one was given to us by Jenet Yellen giving us a mere two days ago that the US is in danger of defaulting on the US loans in October, the first time in history, all whilst investments in retirement funds are stopping. The three together giving us the waves that follow, waves in hospitals losing funds, funds in resources slowing down, so as hospitals are filling up and in June AP News gave us ‘Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated’, so as the hospitals are full, the unvaccinated die and more will die soon enough. The unvaccinated take up 98.9% of ALL the COVID cases, the vaccinated a mere 1.1%, the difference is that staggering and as the people are embracing stupid anti-vaccine hosts, they follow those people to their grave, quite literally and there is an upside, it will end unemployment in the USA, it will lower unemployment in the UK, Europe and Australia. 

So whilst people are ‘listening’ to some media watchdog, I need to warn you that they have been sitting on their hands for way too long. I alerted the people to hold media accountable in 2011, that was 10 years ago. 

So how is this connected to the second story?
The BBC is the one giving us ‘Covid vaccine stockpiles: Are 241m doses at risk of going to waste?’, so if we consider “The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million”, we can consider that they did nothing wrong, we can consider all kinds of things, and considering is perfectly fine. Yet there is a larger stage where they did nothing wrong and there is the rub, over a year, less than 10% was donated and the media let it slide, until people start realising that the media adheres to share holders, stakeholders, and advertisers. So who stopped it, or perhaps better stated, who silenced it to a mere whisper? 

And no one is looking into these stakeholders. So whilst we look at crowd after crowd we see more and more, but the three stages, the ‘normal’ people, the anti-vaxxers and the people in panic is now a larger unstable mix. The normalised people are a massive minority and the other two shouting are ahead of all, yet they are now dying and as anti-vaccine versus panic people are in a mix, we see that they all become panic people and they seek a solution but the hospitals are full. The nursing staff (doctors too) are tired and sick of them all so all these panic people have no one to turn to, merely their own undoing and that is the good news. 

Why is it good news?
In the first governments will have to act, so whilst the UK is dealing with Insulate Britain activists we see the tart of a new age, an age of draconian laws, a stage that follows when resources are dwindling down, and these two nations are not alone. France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia they all have to take larger steps in changing direction and this is the stage most of us did to ourselves and the media was kind enough to help, all whilst their stakeholders are running for the hills with a bag full of money. They are now trying to find a place where they can be relatively safe, that is, until the limelight hits them and their actions.

And it is escalating, as some are all about hating the rich and taxing the rich they still fail to see the larger problem. Governments are to blame, they REFUSED to properly adjust tax laws and that has been the case for well over 2 decades. Did you think it was different? Amazon was given the headlines “Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020, despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss”. Amazon is not breaking the laws, black letter law states what they are allowed to do and they did so, they never broke the law, governments let them off the hook again and again for over 2 decades and it is happening globally. As such the phrase “Kill the rich” should to be “Kill the exploiters” and that list is a hell of a lot longer than you think. The stakeholders have now become afraid that in the 11th hour their gig is up and they are hoping to score one more time before the gig is up forever.

And in this COVID is ending their song sooner than they had hoped. Yet it is a dangerous stage. We see that typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Yet in this list we see no facilitators or lobbyists, these exploitive players aren’t on any list, they are couriers from corporations, yet never in service of them, they are only in service of themselves and now when we consider the Economist on July 17th (at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/17/the-republican-anti-vax-delusion) we see “Populist conservatives are to blame”, yet is it that simple? Populistic people are easier to control as they need a place to voice ‘issues’, yet stakeholders see that these are groups of people easier to exploit too and there is the problem, so whilst we see the ‘Trump’ example which could be true, there are more players in that stage and those players all hate the limelight, as the populists love the limelight, they get it all and as such the stakeholder now seen as a lobbyist fades into the shadows. A game played for a long time and now that the fallout of their actions are backfiring their need to vanish becomes increasingly important. And when you think that this is out of thin air? Consider that the United Nations reported this in 2013, which was based on Constantinides et al, 2007. There is now a stage where stakeholders saw a portal to use media to set a much larger stage to fulfil corporate needs. It is given as “The rise of social networks has changed both the way we communicate and the way we consume information. Even within the relatively recent internet era, a major evolution has occurred: In the initial phase known as Web 1.0, users by-and-large consumed online information passively. Now, in the age of social media and Web 2.0, the internet is increasingly used for participation, interaction, conversation and community building”, a stage we have been seeing for over a decade. A stage driven by populists to become internet influencers and the stage of “community building” will be transformed into “sheep herding of the easily adapted” that is the stage we now face, and if you think that they can be changed, you would be wrong because it is already too late, the people saw the Yellen message, they see the overfull hospitals and the anti-Vaccine group is not becoming a panic group and those people listen to no one and it will be fuelled by ‘241m doses at risk of going to waste’ soon enough and the stage does not end there. So when the US (and other places) run out of vaccines the panic driven people will escalate and with statistics that 98.9% of all deaths are unvaccinated ones the state of panic is close to complete and in winter when isolation adds to the issues panic will reign on a global scale. So when you are in bed slumbering to get to the office and you consider taking a sickie, also consider that this is the one sickie you should not have taken. The safe zone is miles behind you and there is no hospital left in front of you and that merely fuels the panic. So when we take notice of “Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages” consider that this is not an American or a Florida issue, it has become a global issue. London gave us all (earlier this year) “London hospitals would be short of nearly 2,000 acute and intensive beds” and when we realise that millions more will die and that this issue has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic numbers and estimates, consider that it will get worse, a lot worse. The last one is my speculation but the numbers are fuelling my point of view. So will you take a longer slumber? It is your choice, and if you are dedicated anti-vaccine person, the queue of Hades awaits. Feel free to oppose that view, it is your right, yet India a mere hour ago reported ‘India reports 26,964 new Covid cases’, which might be true, but the other numbers cannot be true, there is too much of a sliding scale in play. So how fast will the US emulate India? I honestly cannot tell, but the numbers show a grim reality and in the end the games that some people played will burn the soil in front of them, that is the realisation that history gave us. So do you really want to slumber a bit longer?

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September 23, 2021 · 18:51

The house advantage

It was early in the morning when ABC alerted me to news, this is not new. It happens all the time. And as I was glancing over the text, one little bit took my attention. It was ‘The West is playing the wrong game’ and it alerted me to reread a little more closely this time. As such, the article called ‘Despite what Joe Biden says, we’re not approaching a Cold War’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-22/joe-biden-cold-war-language-china-authoritarian-super-power/100482238). There we see a lot, several arts were known to me, but a few ones, like “the Rand Corporation think tank pointed out in a study in 2018, there is nothing straightforward about China’s role in the world. China’s engagement with the global order, it says, is a “complex and contradictory work in progress”” was not entirely new, but it was also a little unexpected. Apart from the fact that the paper is well over two years old (making us all wonder what the fuck Donald Trump was doing), the other side is less shown. If we accept “complex and contradictory work” I have to ask what on earth was driving the US and the UK to drive billions in revenue straight out of their coffers and in the hands of China? The initial steps between China and Saudi Arabia are now in an escalated stage of acceptance, implying that China is set to add $6BN-$24BN in revenue to its coffers whilst the US, UK and EU will lose it. So why be that stupid? 

So to emphasise, we see “the rules of Wei-Qi point out, it is about “breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”. This concept is known as shi — creating a strategic advantage”, we see but we miss the line. It is simple, UK, US, AUS and China will play a game of monopoly and during the preparation the players are all told: “They need to bring their own dice, two dice are needed, so that they can throw 12”. The three players bring their two six sided dice, whilst China brings. 

China gained a black letter advantage of 100%, and this is the game, this is actually happening now, although it is not a game of monopoly. So as we take notice of “the Rand corporation study argued, it should look to “hedge” China’s power. The goal, it said, “should be to shape the context so that it is resistant to Chinese coercion and aggression”.” And it is here that the Rand corporation misses the goal, because they looked at enemies foreign, and forgot to weigh the actions towards the corporate enemies that were domestic. The Huawei bashers that engaged politicians without producing any valid evidence, the corporate short cutters like SolarWinds and several others and the digital organised criminals that found a scapegoat wherever they could and they all shaped the game into something they could use, yet the essential need what it needed to do was missed by well over a mile. And it is one of the final parts “it also requires preserving US power and strengthening alliances as a counterweight to Chinese influence. It requires more than just military might or more powerful submarines”, in this the Rand organisation is absolutely correct, but the game is already shaped in way the wrong ways and that will hit them in several ways. One of these ways is seen in “strengthening alliances”, but how is the question. That answer is not easily given as corporations and media rely on stakeholders and they answer to no one, more often the goals of these stakeholders who cater to corporations is almost totally opposite of what governments need to happen and that is also shaping the game in other ways. 

And in this we see the two elements that are at the very end. The first is “this is not the Cold War 2.0”, the second one is “Xi may prove to be destructive, and confrontation may be unavoidable. That’s not yet the game he’s playing”. You see, as I personally see it, this is Cold War 3.1b, corporations are an active player in hedging their needs and the needs of their board rooms, which comes with the notion that Xi might be destructive, mainly because Chinese firms are under attack, under direct governmental attack, because the corporations demanded it from THEIR politicians. And in all this no one adhered to any rules of evidence. There was no evidence and these board members were too busy to test the stamina of body parts when constantly exposed to the satisfying need of models and cheerleaders. So whilst they were adhering to personal tests, China took the time to develop 5G to a degree that outclassed them in a few ways and now corporations need all kinds of adjustments to keep revenue, even though they took the blue pill and Viagraded themselves out of the game. 

The house advantage works, but it also changes the game and I personally believe that the Rand corporation forgot about that element, especially when that element has grown way out or proportions.

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September 22, 2021 · 15:30

Wake up or slumber more?

Wake up or slumber moreYes, we all have that at times, the smallest doubt we give ourselves “Shall I slumber just a few minutes more?” We are allowed it, we were so clever, we set the alarm clock to 30 minutes early and we ignore the first alarm because we had 30 minutes left. At times that is the best sleep time of the night, to know there is 30 minutes left. And I feel the same way, yet I feel that this is the time to realise that the alarm went off a week earlier and we kept on slumbering a little more and a little more and now we are out of time. We are awoken by two articles, not related yet linked. The first is the Guardian who gives us ‘anti-vax radio shows reach millions in US while stars die of Covid’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid) we are told that Phil Valentine was anti-vaccine, he even plagiarised the song Taxman and made it his own. We are also introduced to Marc Bernier, Dick Farrel and Jimmy DeYoung. Yet, we need not worry, they are all dead now, they all died of covid and the millions of ‘fans’ they had, a lot of them will be dead soon too. That is the natural selection we are part of. And it is then that the claim “Media watchdogs suggest that some basic level of responsibility to the public should be required to keep a broadcast license” seems to seep in, but it is already too late. Even as some of the exploiters are realising that things are going overboard, they forgot the basic rules of the game, to gain riches you need a population and that population is now becoming redundant. Local radio hosts ignored by the big players, but the people are local people, they are the foundation that the US stands on and it goes way beyond USA, believe it. The stakeholders are the first and the direct franchisers of levels of exploitation and they are now seeing the impact I warned for for well over a decade. You can live on the premise of fooling people, but the strongest reality has now and always been “You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” and that is now pushing towards a reality the exploiters never realised. They realise it first because they need a population and it is dying, with 697,000 dead in the US and an expected 100% rise between now and February 2022 the numbers will take a massive offset. 

So how did I get there?
There are three elements driving it. The first is the Delta variant, the second is the anti-vaccine movements and lets be frank ‘stupid’ people driving anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown sentiments and the third one was given to us by Jenet Yellen giving us a mere two days ago that the US is in danger of defaulting on the US loans in October, the first time in history, all whilst investments in retirement funds are stopping. The three together giving us the waves that follow, waves in hospitals losing funds, funds in resources slowing down, so as hospitals are filling up and in June AP News gave us ‘Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated’, so as the hospitals are full, the unvaccinated die and more will die soon enough. The unvaccinated take up 98.9% of ALL the COVID cases, the vaccinated a mere 1.1%, the difference is that staggering and as the people are embracing stupid anti-vaccine hosts, they follow those people to their grave, quite literally and there is an upside, it will end unemployment in the USA, it will lower unemployment in the UK, Europe and Australia. 

So whilst people are ‘listening’ to some media watchdog, I need to warn you that they have been sitting on their hands for way too long. I alerted the people to hold media accountable in 2011, that was 10 years ago. 

So how is this connected to the second story?
The BBC is the one giving us ‘Covid vaccine stockpiles: Are 241m doses at risk of going to waste?’, so if we consider “The UK promised 100m of that pledge, so far it has donated just under nine million”, we can consider that they did nothing wrong, we can consider all kinds of things, and considering is perfectly fine. Yet there is a larger stage where they did nothing wrong and there is the rub, over a year, less than 10% was donated and the media let it slide, until people start realising that the media adheres to share holders, stakeholders, and advertisers. So who stopped it, or perhaps better stated, who silenced it to a mere whisper? 

And no one is looking into these stakeholders. So whilst we look at crowd after crowd we see more and more, but the three stages, the ‘normal’ people, the anti-vaxxers and the people in panic is now a larger unstable mix. The normalised people are a massive minority and the other two shouting are ahead of all, yet they are now dying and as anti-vaccine versus panic people are in a mix, we see that they all become panic people and they seek a solution but the hospitals are full. The nursing staff (doctors too) are tired and sick of them all so all these panic people have no one to turn to, merely their own undoing and that is the good news. 

Why is it good news?
In the first governments will have to act, so whilst the UK is dealing with Insulate Britain activists we see the tart of a new age, an age of draconian laws, a stage that follows when resources are dwindling down, and these two nations are not alone. France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia they all have to take larger steps in changing direction and this is the stage most of us did to ourselves and the media was kind enough to help, all whilst their stakeholders are running for the hills with a bag full of money. They are now trying to find a place where they can be relatively safe, that is, until the limelight hits them and their actions.

And it is escalating, as some are all about hating the rich and taxing the rich they still fail to see the larger problem. Governments are to blame, they REFUSED to properly adjust tax laws and that has been the case for well over 2 decades. Did you think it was different? Amazon was given the headlines “Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020, despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss”. Amazon is not breaking the laws, black letter law states what they are allowed to do and they did so, they never broke the law, governments let them off the hook again and again for over 2 decades and it is happening globally. As such the phrase “Kill the rich” should to be “Kill the exploiters” and that list is a hell of a lot longer than you think. The stakeholders have now become afraid that in the 11th hour their gig is up and they are hoping to score one more time before the gig is up forever.

And in this COVID is ending their song sooner than they had hoped. Yet it is a dangerous stage. We see that typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Yet in this list we see no facilitators or lobbyists, these exploitive players aren’t on any list, they are couriers from corporations, yet never in service of them, they are only in service of themselves and now when we consider the Economist on July 17th (at https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/17/the-republican-anti-vax-delusion) we see “Populist conservatives are to blame”, yet is it that simple? Populistic people are easier to control as they need a place to voice ‘issues’, yet stakeholders see that these are groups of people easier to exploit too and there is the problem, so whilst we see the ‘Trump’ example which could be true, there are more players in that stage and those players all hate the limelight, as the populists love the limelight, they get it all and as such the stakeholder now seen as a lobbyist fades into the shadows. A game played for a long time and now that the fallout of their actions are backfiring their need to vanish becomes increasingly important. And when you think that this is out of thin air? Consider that the United Nations reported this in 2013, which was based on Constantinides et al, 2007. There is now a stage where stakeholders saw a portal to use media to set a much larger stage to fulfil corporate needs. It is given as “The rise of social networks has changed both the way we communicate and the way we consume information. Even within the relatively recent internet era, a major evolution has occurred: In the initial phase known as Web 1.0, users by-and-large consumed online information passively. Now, in the age of social media and Web 2.0, the internet is increasingly used for participation, interaction, conversation and community building”, a stage we have been seeing for over a decade. A stage driven by populists to become internet influencers and the stage of “community building” will be transformed into “sheep herding of the easily adapted” that is the stage we now face, and if you think that they can be changed, you would be wrong because it is already too late, the people saw the Yellen message, they see the overfull hospitals and the anti-Vaccine group is not becoming a panic group and those people listen to no one and it will be fuelled by ‘241m doses at risk of going to waste’ soon enough and the stage does not end there. So when the US (and other places) run out of vaccines the panic driven people will escalate and with statistics that 98.9% of all deaths are unvaccinated ones the state of panic is close to complete and in winter when isolation adds to the issues panic will reign on a global scale. So when you are in bed slumbering to get to the office and you consider taking a sickie, also consider that this is the one sickie you should not have taken. The safe zone is miles behind you and there is no hospital left in front of you and that merely fuels the panic. So when we take notice of “Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages” consider that this is not an American or a Florida issue, it has become a global issue. London gave us all (earlier this year) “London hospitals would be short of nearly 2,000 acute and intensive beds” and when we realise that millions more will die and that this issue has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic numbers and estimates, consider that it will get worse, a lot worse. The last one is my speculation but the numbers are fuelling my point of view. So will you take a longer slumber? It is your choice, and if you are dedicated anti-vaccine person, the queue of Hades awaits. Feel free to oppose that view, it is your right, yet India a mere hour ago reported ‘India reports 26,964 new Covid cases’, which might be true, but the other numbers cannot be true, there is too much of a sliding scale in play. So how fast will the US emulate India? I honestly cannot tell, but the numbers show a grim reality and in the end the games that some people played will burn the soil in front of them, that is the realisation that history gave us. So do you really want to slumber a bit longer?

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September 20, 2021 · 17:00

Just like the moon

We all wonder at times, we all look and see the same image. Yet like the moon we only see one side, the dark side of the moon is always turned away from us. As is the back of a stamp, as is the other side of any coin. In some cases we think it does not matter, just like the stamp, we see the side that matters. And when we have that approach start ignoring the dark side of the moon.

This is merely the setting of one part of the stage, perhaps it is the colour of the canvas, perhaps the colours of the ropes of a boxing ring. It is regarded as trivial by our brains, we told the brain to ignore and for us it makes sense. So let’s add a new flour of dimension, a very different one.

“Yes, you corrupt piece of shit, you never learn. Not until I kill your children in front of you, at that point you like all corrupt people start considering the price of corruption. You criminals and tools are all alike. You are either too stupid to care, or even worse, you are a mere tool to a person no one cares about and this will get you and your family killed, the simplest of all solutions and you ignored it.” 

This is not a known part, I put this together from a few pieces that originate in works from John Le Carre (the real master of spy stories). You see, when we see the news of all these AI stories we tend to psh it all over the same side the brain does with all the other works. Yet AI does not exist. Apart from the powerful quantum computers you require, the adaption of Shallow circuits that (as far as I know) only IBM has and their version is still developing. There is another side. An actual AI had elements like Language understanding and Language generation, but those elements only work when there is a decent level of Relationship learning and knowledge refinement. Some of the ‘claimed’ AI systems have Text extraction, but without the earlier mentioned elements the text I ‘created’ will not come to pass, because there is no AI and what some call AI is pushed through deeper machine learning and that element is clever, it really is.

Yet without Language understanding the system is not getting anywhere. It is a thought I was contemplating as I was looking at the elements of Idle Law Tycoon yesterday. You see we all see a watch and we know how it works, yet the engineering side in me want to see the watch and see the cogs move and slowly rotate as I am trying to make sense of the machine I am watching, Just like I watched Idle Law Tycoon yesterday. I saw the glitches, the small issues and they dod not bother me, I merely looked at how the makers looked at it and how clever they were, small glitches be damned, the game was not inhibited by it. It is the difference between out of hand deletion and deletion after contemplation. It is the contemplation part that matters. It is the contemplation part that showed that there was more to Litecoin, there was more to French Submarines getting cancelled and the media has been all over the field to ignore elements but as I personally see it they did not contemplate, the shallowly overlooked what they ignored and that is seen in the Iran v Saudi Arabia setting, the Houthi ignored acts, the stage the Financial Times is only now exploring. Something I mentioned here weeks ago. We now see ‘More of China, less of America’: how the superpower fight is squeezing the Gulf’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/4f82b560-4744-4c53-bf4b-7a37d3afeb13) only 2 hours ago, whilst I showed that danger in a story on February 5th 2021 in ‘Am I the hypocrite?’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/05/am-i-the-hypocrite/), I even added the danger, all whilst I showed that initial danger two years earlier in ‘The seventh guest’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/06/21/the-seventh-guest/). Yes I was that quick and that is not on the Financial times. I was extrapolating intelligence and setting an optional timeline without the actual timeline being there. The Financial Times reports on events and of course for me the bad news is that I will loose out on 3.75% (poor poor me) of a really nice 10 figure number, but then so will the UK and the US. I looked at all the sides, even the dark side of the moon. So when the Financial Times gives us ““There’s a trust deficit with America, which is growing by the day,” says Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati professor of politics. “The trend is more of China, less of America on all fronts, not just economically, but politically, militarily and strategically in the years to come. There’s nothing America can do about it.”” And that is the truth, the US (UK too) are losing billions in revenue (just like France) and this time around it will go straight to China, they set themselves up for a large failure and it is starting to show. So whilst we see claims after claims, China moves forward and when the Huawei implementations in Saudi Arabia are starting to come through their failure will be complete. It will be the stage where we are all so engrossed in high morals whilst 10% of the population is starving. But there is good news too, as the anti-vaxxers are getting themselves and family members killed we can offset the 10% hungering with 17% dead people, so overall we win a bit. 

But is it winning? As stakeholders are telling us where not to look, who are we giving business away too? When I can predict that much of a change to military hardware, even as I have a mere partial comprehension here. What more are we losing out of?

We call real news fake news because we can at times no longer tell the difference and whilst that happens marketeers and stakeholders are trying to set the stage. Yet the marketeers are trying to create hypes on things that aren’t there. Stakeholders are trying to stop other players to get revenue that they want and in all this a third player can stand on the seesaw and with the smallest acts get the goods sent their way. The latest is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is bashing Israel and their arms package to be banned, I see a setting where Raytheon Australia could fill that bill and Australia better wake the fuck up. Even as Boeing will lose some revenue, for Australia it might end up being good news and their economy could use some good news. The alternative is that either China gets a lot more business or that Russia gets a larger stake in the Middle East. I have nothing against stupid people becoming elected, although it might be nice if it comes with a muzzle. 

Do you think that is out of bounds?
A group of 5 people are directly involved in pushing up to $17,000,000,000 in revenue towards China and it gets to be worse. So with the US, US and a few others losing THAT much revenue, what austerity measures will be required to counter that? With the UK and US having large deficits in oxygen and other healthcare parts as well as Jenet Yellen giving us in the New York Times a week ago ‘a possible October default on U.S. debt, swollen by the pandemic’, when you relise this was handing over that much money to China through shortsightedness, fake high morals and blatant stupidity a good idea? The article (at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/business/economy/united-states-debt-default.html) gives us “Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history,” and that is not even the worst, it is “To delay a default, Treasury has in the last month suspended investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund and the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan” in an ageing population the people who need it the most will be left with nothing. All settings that I saw (to some extent) happen over two years ago. So how do you feel about those stakeholders now? Ready to seek and expose them? Go look in your local media stage, there will be several in pretty much any nation.

It is just like the moon, we keep on staring at that same shiny side all whilst it is the dark side of the moon where the dangers are, because we deleted that side from our consideration. As for the Pink Floyd image, it is both a joke (a great album too) but it has a few hidden hints, and when you see that these hints are 47 years old, how asleep have we been for all this time we to begin with?

I will let you figure that out, enjoy today and consider that tomorrow will soon be coming.

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September 18, 2021 · 18:19

The thin ice

We have all been there, whether it was in early years when you were trying to cross ice that was not deemed safe, or perhaps later in life when you relied on a stage where you could not be certain, we all have been there, and so was I, not merely was, I am doing it again today.

There was no doubt that the AUKUS stage was set, it was set and prepared for, the French never had a chance and we need to realise that. We need to realise two main parts here (well actually a few more, but let’s start with two).

The first is the Guardian (not the only one) who gives us (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/17/france-recalls-ambassadors-to-us-and-australia-after-aukus-pact) ‘France recalls ambassadors to US and Australia after Aukus pact’, some newspapers, not all give us “That deal became bogged down in cost over-runs, delays and design changes”, which is fair enough. Yet the US with the Zumwalt and F-35 fiasco’s will have to button down the hatches very clearly to avoid the same disaster projects. The second one is less clear, it is about a united front towards China. I never stated that China was an innocent bystander, they were not. We might not be in a war or a seemingly hostile environment, but there is an issue and the US who has no hope to counter this alone found a way to add two horses, the UK and Australia to pull that carriage towards the China sea. France was left behind and that will have repercussions down the line, yet in all this, consider the media, who are they serving? Which stakeholder are they servicing? Consider the new Collins class submarines, in all the news (from all sides) who have been giving exposure to “That deal became bogged down in cost over-runs, delays and design changes”? That list is not that big and why is that? It was the Weekend Australian of all places that give us “According to informed sources, the costings for Core Workstate 2 submitted by Naval Group were at least 50 per cent higher than the Defence estimate of $2.5-$3bn. This total included completion of the submarine construction yard being built at Osborne North by government-owned Australian Naval Infrastructure to the functional requirements of Naval Group. Naval Group has declined to answer questions on the funding issue — or indeed on virtually anything else — but is understood to have submitted, without success, a much-reduced figure to Canberra.” They did so on the 22nd of May 2021 (at https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/funding-threat-hangs-over-future-submarine-program/news-story/827aef23757bef95adc822d7acd696ec), Australia and Submarine give us 74 million hits and we needed to get to page 16 of that search to get this information. Whilst a lot are ‘hiding’ behind “cost over-runs, delays and design changes” it was the Australian that gives us the “at least 50 per cent higher” that is not parts of a glass of wine, that is the entire barrel when you considered that the meek estimate of an annual $3bn was offered. I feel certain that political income trimming will not produce the missing one billion and short change. So what gives?

I do understand that I need to be careful, mostly because this is not my field of expertise. Most of my Submarine knowledge comes from Operation Petticoat (Cary Grant, Toni Curtis), The hunt for Red October (Sean Connery) and Silent Hunter (EA Games). They are not the same, and I do fully realise that. We could hope for the involvement of Paul McCartney and if he gets involved we can paint those 12 beasts yellow, but still, not a real solution, is it?

Oh, and for the reality of it all China has at present 74 submarines, so our chances are not great, they also allegedly have a much better fifth generation fighter (Chengdu J-20), so are we out to rumble or show our teeth? In this we are about to order a set of teeth for the price of $75,000,000,000 so we better get it right, being in a nation with 25,000,000 people, it is not an invoice we should be happy about, I get it, it might be an essential one, but that does not mean we need to be happy. 

The thin ice is a dangerous place, it is more than ice that is seemingly missing layers of stability, there is dangerous waters below and even if it is not deep, the hypothermia can be equally deadly as is the deepest ocean. This thin ice we face also hides stuff. It hides stakeholders who decide what we can hear and what we should not be allowed to hear and the media is at fault. Hiding too much for too many, the stakeholders are the media uncontrolled and unregistered set of lobbyists who shape the story we are allowed to see and if fake media wasn’t dangerous enough, filtered information bringers (like breakfast shows) add to the danger, add to keeping us uninformed. I agree with campsite leaders (Mike Burgess, Richard Moore, and William J. Burns) we do not need to know all, I have no problems with that, but they do not respond to stakeholders, the stakeholders are in it for corporate executives and boards of directors, they do not get to dictate us anything. What these people get away with is close to unacceptable and when they dictate our budgets and defence to us, I shiver and I do get worried and a little scared. And the media is helping them!

So we have a few issues, apart from the US Military construction follies, we have a new stage where we become a buffer opposing Chinese acts. I think that the utter lack of working actions by the UN against the Uygurs is part of this, the blatantly evidentially unsupported actions against a firm like Huawei is another. I see in part the accusation against Huawei and the entire NATO collection of jesters have NEVER given clear evidence on how they are a threat. You think it does not matter, but it does. A market where lazy people want to make claims so that they can get some coins whilst they slept through the motion is an invalid act and that needs to be said. It is a clear setting. Corporate executives used (as I personally see it) stupid politicians so that they could steal work orders and sales. A market that they are still likely to lose comes from sitting on your hands. This taints the China setting, and these stakeholders know this. 

If we were to investigate the US national 5G environment, we would learn that 5G at 4G LTE speed is not really 5G. Canada, South Korea and Saudi Arabia have a much better handle on that. 

So let’s make sure that OUR National defence is properly set up. Are nuclear submarines the wrong choice? I do not know, I believe that nuclear powered systems have a space and when you see what needs to be done to keep a diesel submarine fed over 3-4 years, a decent case for Nuclear submarines can be made. And let’s make sure the people understand that a nuclear submarine does not mean its weapons are nuclear. I get the distinct feeling that too many people do not realise that. A nuclear submarine means a nuclear powered submarine and we need to see the difference. If that takes away coins from Saudi Arabia, then so be it. We are not here to pay for the existence of Aramco (or Saudi Aramco as it is often referred to). 

Yet underneath it all, I recognise that I am on thin ice. I am not an expert on submarines, or an expert on far east tactics. I do however feel that we all have been watching disjointed parts of information because that is what the bosses of stakeholders seemingly want, We merely need to find out who the stakeholders are and who they report to. If you doubt me, consider the actual news sources, the actual news given and the complete news and wonder what was missing from a lot of them (not all) and also realise that a news article cannot give EVERYTHING, but some parts should not have been missed. Should you doubt that, consider a look into Litecoin and how we are now seeing more and more “the Litecoin creator also said that not much can be done by the Litecoin Foundation about bad actors spreading fake news”, as well as “According to the fake press release on Monday (September 13, 2021)”, a pump and dump action involving BILLIONS implies orchestration, so why is the FBI not all over that? Why is the news smothering events there too? This was not some prank, this got past EVERY filter and check of Canadian Global News until it was way too late. So what happens when it is not merely a multi billion hustle, but what happens when it impacts the national security of more than one nation? Consider that when you walk the thin ice too, the thin ice is dangerous because the weaknesses are below the ice and  below that is water, and often you do not know how cold or how much water there is.

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September 17, 2021 · 03:36

How stupid are we?

Yes, let’s come with a question that optionally offends us all straight from the barn, because we deserve to be asked the hard questions. I have been accused of being ‘all’ pro Saudi, all ‘pro’ China and why? You see, two players (US and UK) have a product, OK the USA less so, if you ignore 900 flaws and that would be fine, but then the US gives the KSA ban after ban and for no good reason, merely a morel approach whilst the opponents of the KSA are not held to ANY standard. So, if I see an option to make 3.75% from $11,000,000,000 I will do so. Australia is not in a war with China. Now, as a commonwealth citizen I would have preferred to sell the KSA the UK solution, but here we see that the UK is as stupid as the US and they all listen to the wrong people and they are now losing out on billions, billions THEIR government coffers desperately need (the US needs them as well, but I remain a commonwealth citizen, so fuck ‘em). And China has a product and personally so does Russia, but in that equation I would prefer to ‘sell’ the Chinese solution. There are no morals, this was all about common sense (and me getting a few coins in light of an upcoming retirement event).

Now was it good, was it bad? It is neither, a buying party needs their nation safer (KSA) and the USA and UK have an issue with that, so along comes a valid alternative (China) and so I take a gander being the courier here. 

That does not mean that others are not to be held by standards and that is where we are. You see Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/15/what-could-an-evergrande-debt-default-mean-for-china-and-beyond) is giving us the stage where we see ‘What could an Evergrande debt default mean for China and beyond?’ And the stage is not a small one, the debt is now at $300,000,000,000. It is larger than the national budget for quite a few nations. I am wondering, was no one awake when we were confronted with the utter stupidity of a place called Interserve Plc? Oh, and only earlier this year we were fed ‘Interserve Construction suffers £108m loss’, and that was not even the worst. In March we get ‘Losses from Interserve’s energy-from-waste disaster top £300m’, did no one catch on and after we had the Lehman brothers, the Dutch SNS bank who relied on ‘We are too big to fail’, we now see Ever Grande and the risk of running short on $300,000,000,000 which looks like a thousand times worse than Interserve, now Tilbury Douglas and the hard times are nowhere near over. Yes, the board of directors will fill their pockets on the way out and I reckon that Hui Ka Yan and his $11,000,000,000 plus fortune will not face the danger of hunger any day soon. Now, whatever China does is up to China, yet I believe that the setting of “Evergrande currently has 1,300 real estate projects in 280 cities in China” shows that there is a larger need for governments to step in, especially when we are confronted with “the real estate developer may not be able to make the interest payments on some of its $300bn in liabilities next week and could also miss a principal payment on at least one of its loans”, I personally never believed that there is anything like ‘Too big to fail’, just offer some of these contracts and the payments to their competitors and see what happens. So even as Hui Ka Yan believed in the alternative Tom Cruise with “I feel the need, the need for greed” there is a larger station, we do know that governments tend to be a lot more stupid then people, but there are well over half a dozen examples of stupidity, did no one catch on? And here we need to take notice that people are on average as stupid as the average of the total amount of stupid people. Yet governments and companies doe not share that. They are as stupid as the sum of all the people working for them and that tends to be a lot worse. According to Deutsche Welle it is already there. With “Some 1.5 million people have put deposits on new homes that have yet to be built” (at https://www.dw.com/en/evergrande-why-the-chinese-property-giant-is-close-to-collapse/a-59175953) we see a setting where a place like San Diego, California where every person in that city loses ALL of their lifetime savings, it is that bad and we tend to wonder what will any government do, I wonder how these people will not lose everything. This is not some collection of shareholders, this is a stage where 1,500,000 people become optionally homeless overnight, it is a lot worse and it could hit the Chinese economy in a few ways and as some people sit hiding behind their dark shades, nodding and state “We feel the need, the need for greed”, all whilst the cadavers of circumstance pile up. When will governments learn that there is a need for oversight, especially when the impact is THAT big. So whilst we take notice of “Evergrande has expanded into other areas of the economy, including food, life insurance, tv/film and leisure”, can anyone explain to me why a property giant was even allowed in food and life insurance? Never mind the bollocks (aka: the 122nd largest group in the world by revenue, according to the 2021 Fortune Global 500 List), too many are heralding and applauding stupidity and greed. As such I feel perfectly fine trying to be the courier between two parties grabbing a decent coin in the process. Oh, and as the Chinese government is seeing what is rolling their way, the KSA deal might be one that diminishes the impact of Evergrande, so whilst we see three people (Biden, Johnson and Morrison) plot to become a new world power by handing nuclear submarines to Australia, all whilst we know that this is merely setting a stage to strut around like peacocks, no one is looking how much more Australian defence budgets will get with nuclear submarines in the mix, all whilst they still need to realise the impact of the F-35 folly. As such I wonder who is aware of what will be left to other people past 2035 when the defence budget will require a 45%-61% top up. I believe in defence as much as the next person, so whilst we accept “Last month the Australian government signed a $50 billion contract with the French company DCNS to build 12 new submarines”, do you think that such a contract will not come without cost? Yet here too (source: ABC News) we are told that “that program has come with delays and blowouts, and would have delivered conventional diesel-electric submarines, like the Collins Class”, so at least there is a decent reason and it makes sense, but still, there is a larger concern, not the coming of nuclear subs, but the realisation that Australia has an antiquated submarine stage and it does need to take care of 2,137,000 meters of beach front property, something needs to be done and that is good, I do not object.

Australian Navy too small

I merely wonder (at times) why it took this long in the first place. When we dig deeper we see why the US wants it because the foundation of nuclear submarines need to be build there, which makes me a bit hesitant after the failures that the F-35 (with 900 design flaws) as well as the failure that the Zumwalt class represents (at $21,000,000,000), the US wants to shout that this will be a success, but I have concerns and fortunately I do have a degree in ships engineering (which I never used). The larger stage is seen but so far governments are seemingly deaf as their irresponsible teenagers (aka politicians) are living off someone else’s credit card and there is the rub, there is the danger. They all live by the rule “We are too big to fail” and China is seemingly no different, its corporate greed is just like all the other greed driven players. So whilst a few players are trying to push the borders, we need to consider what happens when someone in that pool of overspending delusional players panics, because that will be the ball game when things escalate and explode in all our faces. 

How stupid are we to not loudly protest as corporations and governments remain absent in actions, especially when there is a $300,000,000,000 issue? Why was there no action when the danger was a mere $5,000,000,000? Even for China 300 billion is too much and when did we see a positive outcome when that much money was lost? I do not remember any positive impact. Not in 2004, not in 2007 and this time around it will be no different. Yet when the amount is that big it will impact a lot more people, all over the globe. 

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