Category Archives: Finance

May 6, 2020 · 01:28

Nature of the beast

There was news on how Samsung failed the net mobile options, the news was given ‘Exynos 990-powered Galaxy S20+ flops hard in gaming’ what I read came from NotebookCheck, and it is important that even as I am no friend of Samsung (due to their own doing in 1985), I tend to not be a Samsung hater. Let us not forget that I love Nintendo and I personally hated the WiiU, I also accept that sometimes a failure precedes a success like the Nintendo Switch, so Samsung might optionally be down,but they are not out. In the end the article lets out that it is basically not the fault of Samsung, but the chip (and its makers) is the cause of all the viewed hardship. The Exynos 990 seems to be below par on a few fields as such depending on that chip caused the project to go pear shaped. This is the direct result of choices, sometimes they blow back on us (WiiU anyone?). Yet in the field the hidden message is often missed. As stated ‘after 10 minutes of running PUBG Mobile, the galaxy S20+ was dropping frames to 50fps (something some recent consoles could not maintain), and as low as 40fps by the 20 minute mark’ the story is nowhere near over and Samsung has time to get up to speed in more than one way.

The writer goes on stating how it is that a $200 solution called Redmi Note 8 Pro did so much better. It is interesting that merely one example was matched. Still it is a mark on the status list of Samsung for now, yet a firm that is in the top 5 of most registered patents in the last years does not have merely one push towards the top and even as (for now) the S20+ is not likely to be a pushing power to the top, Samsng has had its share of true innovative successes and as such it will bounce back, it has done that a few times, and I have no doubt it will do so again.

They are not alone, even as Apple has no recorded future failure yet, it seems that not unlike the time of the PowerMac, they face a new chiprace. The news is that Intel just cannot get their response rate right and as we see that, Apple is considering a new path, one that is RISC or ARM, if it is the RISC, we see a return to happy times (ME: happy happy joy joy), yet that is because I am not a chip man and I know little of the ARM, I merely remember the good times of the RISC (I still have my RISC G5), that systems outdid anything available in those days and made no noise. Still that is not enough for you to rely on. In my mind I see another field starting up, all the APP developers relying on little INTEL options to get whatever they made go faster will have to rethink their options, there will be a weeding in the ranks of APP developers soon enough at that point, not to mention the people making PC games and including Apple as an option, it sets the optional parameters that the design for Apple needs to be truly for Apple. These two matters are a larger stage, last year the Irish Times reported on the collaboration between the two in regards to the iTunes movies, but I wonder if it stops there, Samsung has a much stronger infrastructure, Apple has a few unique designs and a following of millions, I wonder if there is not a larger space for more between the two, they must realise that the changed setting of Covid requires a different stage of thinking for the near future, their approach to almost unaffordable phones is nice, but millions of people are getting laid off, people who used to buy their products and that is off the table for the next two years, if not even longer. 

The changes that we are seeing will demand the largest players to find symphony and chorus between them instead of relying on the powerful solo acts that no one can afford. As such we will see a few more surprises in 2020 and 2021. Some might think that the markets will settle again, but they all forgot that to appease Wall Street too many companies were on a 90% stage with no reserves, now it shows as the bankruptcy numbers are going through the roof, even smaller players like Virgin are running for their life laying off thousands of people, without reserves there is no continuance for any of them, they ignored the common setting for keeping reserves and a 2 month shutdown was enough to make most of them buckle and it will get worse, the EU (those pulling the strings) have achieved in delaying Basel III for another year due to Covid implications. The FSB stated in one of their reports “Funding markets have been under strain amid extreme demand for cash and near-cash assets” it is a stage that is escalating, mainly because of a lack of reserves and it hits back at Samsung as well. This one failure is optionally no biggie, but when you consider that the next two years will be washed from larger revenue and profit in a stage where the time was not great to get a failure to deal with is not great, it is all about the reserves and to appease the markets too many players left ‘margin’ on the side for good reporting, it stands to reason that bad news will rule the news on several fields and it seems that Samsung will join that group that ends up having not great news, and optionally they have marginally good news that will get a downward revision up to 60-120 days later, can’t have the current quarter down, can we?

We can look and see how separate events do not add up and that would be fair, there is however a much larger field in sight and in that field the S20+ failure comes at a bad time, yet they are not alone Apple is in a similar place and forgoing individuality for 2-3 years and set combined products might be the good path for those two players. Samsung could revert to another path but overall they are not in charge, their shareholders are and they fear recession like the black plague. This is merely because 2-3 years could result in a stage of no reserves with a much stronger push towards a 3-5 year stage of no consumers and the shareholders fear that much more than anything. 

Is it not interesting how shareholders make a large company much easier to anticipate?

I have no doubt that Samsung will survive this era, just like it did in 1985, so far history has proven me right again and again, yet the entire Corona escalation is new to too many players and to me too, as such there is a lot we cannot see in a stage of feigned ‘non-panic’, even as these people have no idea just how bad things can get, and they need their shareholders to have faith, as such there remains an unknown. 

Time and profit are the ruling elements of the beast that devours, for the most it devours profit, yet what will it resort to when there is no profit?

 

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April 23, 2020 · 23:35

Name of the game

We all played monopoly, we all played a number of board games where we were taught that there is a balance, a level of fairness about. The game Hotel lets us build a hotel, get a permit, get clearances and as the players get to our hotel, it will cost them, there is a similarity to monopoly, but Hotel plays a lot faster. We all agree that there should be balance in all this. Now let’s take you back 15 years ago, suddenly we are forced to pay an additional fee to be allowed on an airplane. The issue was that fuel had suddenly doubled in price. Fuel is the strongest and clearest view towards greed and exploitation. Forced in cars we are pushed towards spending more and more on fuel. The entire virus situation has changed the position of the seesaw, now there is another matter and the traders who have filled their pockets for decades are now in another stage. So when we are told “US Senator Ted Cruz told the Saudis to ‘turn the tankers the hell around’ on wednesday” we get the first indication on the support that politicians give the oil barons in the US. And as we are told “traders have scrambled to get out of the contract to avoid taking delivery of barrels because of a lack of storage”, it is another example of short sighted spreadsheet thinking, oris it? I will accept that the entire Coronavirus situation is totally unforseen, yet in all this, the speculators and traders are seemingly getting support on both sides of the seesaw,and that is not right. It is as I personally see it, just another version of ‘too big too fail’, and the approach that banks used before, now also applies to traders. They might make a statement on ‘stopping Saudi Shipments’, yet the opposite also remains true, if the Saudi government decides to deliver merely 80%-90% of the normal shipments for the next two years, the impact will be disastrous, fuel prices will go beyond insane and the US government only has its own shortsighted thinking to thank in that case. So as Ted Cruz ‘hides’ behind “this is SEVEN TIMES the typical monthly flow”, I merely ponder the question, what did the original contracts say? We heard last year that the Saudi’s were ‘told’ to increase production. Perhaps the Saudi government, or an official at Aramco might be kind enough to put those contracts on the internet for all of us to observe. Is it not interesting that oil ha to be ordered?  So where is that purchase order? I reckon that Aramco could optionally store some of that oil in Rotterdam, the petrochemical plants there have lots of storage (I do not know how filled they are), the Americans would have to pay as they refused the ordered delivery, so the ships would have to go via an American harbour towards Rotterdam with alternative routes to Hamburg, in the end these places would end up with free oil, America has to pay for its contracted purchase of oil. 

And I get it, no one saw the Corona issue explode the way it did, but that is the nature of the game, win big, lose big, but too many people won’t allow for the lose big and to some degree there are situations that can be adjusted for, but the need for 2 million barrels of oil per day, now in a nation where there is a lockdown, and not just in the US, all over the world, things will have to give in, yet what the media reports a whole range of wrong actions are being taken. So as we see in the Guardian ‘Trump considers block on crude oil imports to prop up US markets’, so that might be the short term, but consider that the Middle East decides due to these actions to limit export to the US to 80% of nominal, or what was initially agreed on. On one side, the Middle East takes a hit, on the other side if that limit applies, by the end of the year, heating and car fuel will go through the roof, how will that come across? And when it comes to ‘exploitation’, consider FXCM.com “Discover Potential opportunities and Trade your Opinion 24/5. Fast Execution and low Spreads. Trade Oil, Forex, indices and more” yes these traders had all kinds of options, but now, they need to get out, they do not want to pay the ferryman. I accept that, because the entire Corona issue could not be predicted, not to this degree, but how often do we get to hear, ‘there is one winner and one loser’ and this time around Wall Street (to name but a financial dimension), gets an invoice it never saw coming. Not just Wall Street, the financial districts on a global scale are getting a pummeling it has never had before. Is it just? That is a moot question, it is not about justice, there is no just, this is about the contract of oil delivery, they have pushed in the past again and again and the short story is, where are the contracts that the US has with Saudi Arabia? Last year they wanted it cheap, they wanted more and they demanded it their way. Now they have to pay.

Justice is not part of the deal, it never is when Wall Street potentates are involved. So why is it important? The issue is not merely the oil, there are all kinds of long term impacts on goods and manufactured items that will impact our lives, yet the oil traders demand their full margin of profit, even if nature banks against them.

As I see it, and under the present situations (as far as the information is known to me) the entire response from Ted Cruz was stupid, plain and simple. He turned to emotion whilst this was about a contract, is there a contract, is it valid? None of the media reports on this. The fact that a boat representing $50 million in goods leaves a port implies that this a contract or a purchase is attached to it, if not, Ted Cruz still does not have a leg to stand on, because he never made mention of that, politicians hiding behind emotions and outbursts tend to have lost the higher ground and it shows here.

And the media is (as I personally see it) in on it, none of them are asking about the contracts, no one is looking at the oil contracts whether Saudi Arabia is having an alleged hostile act, and in this, the turnabout is harsh, when Saudi Arabia limits delivery for years, the US will have a massive industrial problem. Is that not an interesting view? In the entire oil contracts, I saw nothing on the BBC, the Guardian, and a few other papers too, there is no show of the contracts and perhaps you remember that no one ships $50 million in goods unless there is a contract or a purchase order. It is not about the dumping, it is about the paperwork around it and no one is asking.As I was watching an interview with Ted Cruz, I see that he is in a bad place, his state (Texas) is the oil producing heart of America, they do not like the situation and I agree that he must do what is best for his constituents, yet in all this someone signed a contract with Saudi Arabia (a fair assumption) and no one is asking for that document, not even the media, is that not surreal?

If we are going to hide behind emotion with the hope that the invoice flys by, we ned to realise that this will hit on the flip side, and the consequence of 80% delivery after Corona is equally dangerous, but if this is a game, you should accept a lack of foresight attached to this, in business there are purchase orders and sales contracts, Especially in oil where prices can go through the roof, in this case the oil traders will take a hit unlike they have ever had, it comes with those 7 figure bonuses.

At some point regression to the middle also indicates that profit falls can fall to zero. Those not seeing that were standing on a bear trap hoping no bear would come by as they were unable to move and optionally unable to flee the environment.

 

 

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April 23, 2020 · 01:31

Opposing the light

There are several things happening in this world, yes there is a Coronavirus happening and last monday I lost a friend to that. I had not seen him for months and he had his own life (a good life mind you), he was a friend, a friend I could not see too often for all kinds of reasons (not all mine). Such is life and we need to realise that at times, we reach a point where all that changes overnight. 4,950 died in Australia, one of them was my friend, in a population of 25 million, it is a mere 1% of 1% that I am personally connected to. I should have bought a lottery ticket last week with these numbers!

The BBC gave me an interesting update as numbers go. A lot of it was not interesting, it was a been there done that. The entire situation takes a turn when we are given the realisation that France included the deaths at  care homes, England does not, as such the numbers we are introduced to are flawed and incomplete. In all this we have a group of EU nations who decide on what is reported and what is not. Apparently a corona death in a care home is not a corona death at all, how is that for today’s tuna bake?

Yet the realisation that his is happening, how about Germany and France? France had 158,000 and 20,796 non living whilst Germany had 149 thousand and only 5,117 deceased, as I state in previous blogs, the numbers just do not add up, and it gets to be worse when we compare the deceased in France and Germany 20,786 versus 5,117. That is not merely care deaths, that (in my personal opinion) constitute another factor, the difference is too big. If this is not the case, if this is truly about reporting, then we see that the case for ending theEU has been made, after all this time, billions squandered, there is no correct protocol for reporting? And the entire pandemic, or uniqueness does not count. The numbers are squandered all over the place and the people are kept in the dark, in all this the EU has become somewhat of a joke. 

And when it comes to ‘rescue packages’ the sun really lashes out. Now, I get it, there is a good case to push for some relief and I would not disagree, yet there is a strong sense that this is just a jacked up dal that was denied when there was no coronavirus. As such we see Austria, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are opposing any deal for the mere reason that they are held liable for repaying the debts of the irresponsible politicians in the south and that case had been made a few times over. A stronger case for ending the EU is right there.

As long as nations are not held responsible for their acts, their ability to push their gravy train on the other members has now reached the size where several nations are strongly pushed towards ending the EU and there is the larger problem for the EU, they should have stepped in when Greece went over the side and they did not, they let it fester for over a decade and now we see that the pull to remove the EU is now a much clearer path, the UK got out in time, but only just. Due to the Coronavirus we now see a possible escalation that would give a much stronger rise to Frexit and Nexit due to the political strife they face. To be honest, I never saw Nexit happen as Geert Wilders (a Dutch politician) fell short by a larger amount, yet that time is gone and renewed options are in play. Is their path the best for them? I actually do not know, I feel that it was the best course for the UK, but that does not mean it was the best for all. I think the Netherlands has strong enough ties to survive that move, France as well, yet in that light Italy and Spain face much larger hurdles. Even as the French economy is in the drain, they do have options, Spain and Italy much less so.

Will it happen? I do not know, but the Corona setting is allowing for a much larger setting of anger in the populations then we ever thought possible, as such the stage changes by a lot. The entire lockdown will only fester it worse, that is how I see it. Even as Geert Wilders sees the Corona escalations to push Nexit, his strength is waning and he cannot bring it about, yet in all this the EU and their approach to their gravy trains are another matter, millions of Europeans have had enough as inequality is rising, Spain and Italy will set another stage, one that the EU cannot face, and whilst the EU will not show responsibility and forces politicians to be accountable, the entire matter merely escalates. A lot of Europeans no longer see the EU as the light and some are actually opposing that light. The Corona mess in Europe is bringing a festering wound to the open limelight that was previously only slowly festering before. In all this the EU breakup was always going to happen, the Coronavirus is merely escalating matters. 

Can it be worse? Yes! Will it be worse? That depends on the EU and its greedy politicians, even as we saw the media report on all these people their is still the flaming income and gravy train matter that is out in the open and the people who are scraping by are getting more and more angry, now that we see that even a simple cadaver tally cannot be relied on, the dam is breaching and that festering issue is merely blanketed and optionally misrepresented by the connected stakeholders. 

People are opposing what was once seen as a solving light, it took a mere case of the flu to bring it to the surface.

 

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April 20, 2020 · 00:30

When walls close in

I had an interesting day, my mind designed another game, I dreamt of a new movie and I considered what comes next in the entire Covid mess. I will say upfront that it is all speculation, the issues skating close to the truth usually are. It all started with the news. The BBC gives us ‘Trump: A safe gradual and phased opening’, which might be nice and OK, yet the people who actually know about sickness and disease think it is a bad idea. With 2,347,887 sick and 161,138 dead people some will get to say ‘I see dead people’, and they might be telling the truth. I will not waste your time to consider the 739K sick people in the US and the connected 39K dead people, the math there does not hold up completely because of the timeline and the speed at which it pushes through due to large cities like New York. And what do hundreds of Americans do, people without any level of medical education mind you? They protest against the Covid rules, they are the source of propagating the disease and that is good. You see Wall Street and its vassals need to learn the one lesson they forgot about, if you bank on a consumer based wealth cuve, you need actual consumers and the US lost over 39K consumers. Their debts cannot be collected and the curve changes. Even as some Texans push to reopen to open their business, we will see that the rents are due but a lot of customers will stay away. Open business without mindful consumers spending money. Yes it is the time for Amazon to really reel in the cash, but in the end, the shops still lose. And remember resident Trump making some waves in proclaiming against all evidence that the mortality rate of Covid would be no more than 1.8%? It is over 5% in the US at present. No one seems to be asking the right questions. The economic model must be adhered to and the EU is starting to realise that it is a mere tool in the needs of the US, AUS has not figured that out yet, but they will, or perhaps AUS will become the 53rd state of the US. All speculative options at present,something that will be merketter as the A state of the US.

In my view there is a lot of overreaction regarding the flu, yet I am willing to accept that it is done to lower the curve and to keep casualties down, OK, I get it. I might not like it, but I get it and that feeling remains absent for a lot in the US.

Andin all this as we see the reactions to investigations on the World Health Organisation, I am content to write those names down, the pretentious Marise Payne who is all about bi-partisanship. The interesting thing is that this all happened right after the accusations by President D. Trump, yet not unlike the Huawei situation no evidence of any kind was ever produced, and again the A state of the US is following. It is one of those times when ‘bipartisan’ seems to meen, ‘a tool for the US’. 

Why am I here?

You see a flu this amazing where mortality rate is in the sewers and all over the place, jumping from 2% to 10% whilst there are over 100K patients in that country is not natural. There can always be some fluctuation, but if you merely look at Germany and France, where the amount of dead people are apart by almost 500%, there is a larger issue, that issue is that there is more to the disease and nations are in denial of that part, yet blaming China makes it all OK, or so they think.

Let’s make sure that I am not stating that they are innocent, I am stating that so far we see no evidence of any kind and the open hostilities of the US towards China are not set in any light in the media. That too is a piece of evidence that needs to be illuminated.

The stage where Marise Payne is stating that the WHO should not run the investigation and that she is stating that China should allow for transparency whilst she herself is in a doubtful stage is unmentioned. I agree that the coronavirus needs to be investigated, yet it needs to be done by the right people, the fact that she wants to invalidate the WHO from the get go is weird to say the least. In all this the first station of the flu is healthcare and they have been underfunded for over a decade, the health of consumers was overplayed and the effects underestimated. This is visible in AUS, the UK, many nations in the EU and the US. I know too little of Japan to add them to the list. 

THese consumers are adamant and directly involved, because without them the Wall Street formula fails and someone is finally realising it. Forbes stated on April 13th (a Monday) ‘Wall street Wobbles as investors ignore the science of Covid-19’ and there we see “its transmissibility and mortality rate are known to health officials. All of this information has been communicated publicly” yet there are clear open souces out there as well as the numbers in Germany,Spain, Italy and China that makes for a shoddy case in both matters and the people are just ignoring it. The article shows a few other parts and also the fact that when it comes to Wall Street, it is erratic, especially when the numbers go down and that is what will happen, as the US surpasses a mortality numbers of 50K, we will see panic by investors, especially as the disease does not differentiate between the rich and the poor, the worker and the abuser, a flu that merely kills. And when they realise that the death rate in the US is five times that of Germany, we will see initial inklings that there is a larger play and it is not seen in the death numbers, it will be seen in the stage where economies cannot get started because it requires consumers and they are dead. Yet the total deaths is lower than those in Syria and Yemen, so why bother now?

Because now they are consumers that these companies vie for and they no longer answer their phones, and for the most the health officials are ignored to avoid the danger that the message is too negative. As we see in the UK that the NHS people are wearing aprons instead of gowns. As they are on life support, we see a much larger danger. A nation where health care falls away, it took 114K patients and 15K deaths to pull that off, so when will Americans realise that their numbers are a lot worse and their levels of inequality. The Guardian gave us ‘Profit over people, cost over care: America’s broken healthcare’, and no one in the US is actively investigating that part? Australia is almost in a similar place. 

It is not the beginning or the middle, this is the beginning of the beginning and things will get worse. I wonder how many people realise that, even as we see all kinds of numbers, when we do get sick and healthcare falls away, the world has a problem and the US will be one of the first ones to learn what happens when the Wall Street formula cannot be matched. For them profit is everything, lives are not.

So whilst you are in lockdown, consider the fact that when the walls fall in, it is not a case of the walls falling in, but you have been placed in a coffin and you are a number on the covid stats, no matter where you live. And optionally, you will be one of the forgotten, especially as the BBC and others are stating that these numbers are so much higher than expected. In the UK has 2,000 home care locations with the Coronavirus, yet ABC claims that their numbers are not to be found, so how high is the problem and what else is unknown at present. So whilst we are not in possession of the numbers, some are still willing to blame China, all whilst for too long too many places left the border open until specifics were known, that failing in foresight is also unmentioned in many places, I wonder what that investigation will bring to the table of Marie Payne, if she looks at it at all.

 

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April 19, 2020 · 00:39

Sources of negativity

We are all binomial in origin, we like yes/no, we dislike yes/no, we hate yes/no and we love yes/no, yet most of us hide this in long winded excuses of reasoning, we all do that (including me). I partially hate Microsoft for what they did, for how they destroyed something that was pretty fabulous, I am upset with Ubisoft or how they squandered excellent IP and hid into the woodworks and made a quick buck, destroying the IP they created in the meantime. And as such as I was looking online for a few more tidbits as we approach the demise of Xbox, I came across a few items that puzzled me. 

I love Bethesda, I do not love all their products, which is fine. I am no lover of Rage, but others are, and that is fine. On the other hand I love Fallout, but was never a fan of Fallout 76 and that is fine too. I prefer my games not online and single player. Still, I accept that this is a pathBethesda went on, we all have growing curves and there is a collection of people (a large one) who do like Fallout 76. Perhaps the evolution of Fallout 76 will turn into Fallout 176, Fallout 276 and whatever comes and I will like it at some point, but the barricade that is out there is not one that Bethesda created. In another story we see the interaction, ‘Call of Duty: Warzone console players are turning off crossplay to escape PC cheaters’ it is merely one reason why I hate online play, I do not really hate it because I loved online Mass Effect 3, I was addicted to it, but the world has enough cheaters, when I game I want to get away from that and play on a level playing field, as such I focus on single player only, and in that my taste goes wide. 

As time went by I must have invested tens of thousands of dollars in console gaming, I agree when people say that it is wasted money, but that was my choice, I had a good job, my last ‘true’ vacation was in 1998, so when I get home I need escapism and puzzles, or challenges all at the same time and the consoles provide. It got me to the first issue on consoles, the pricing YouTubes are a little redundant and obsolete when you realise the origin.

When I look back, I started with the VIC-20, then the CBM64 ($1349) with disk drive. Overtime I evolved my systems. CBM Amiga ($700), Atari ST ($700) and there was the PC to use (I’ll get to that soon). As a gamer and reviewer I had made some waves, as such the Sega Dreamcast was free (christmas present from Sega), the Sony Playstation (I forgot what I paid for it, but it was less than the N4) The Nintendo 64 ($699) and after that I pushed towards the Sony PSX-II ($899). It was followed by the Nintendo Gamecube, a machine I loved. After that there was a small lull, I got the Xbox at the end of its lifetime for free with my mobile and it brought a few highpoints. We are now getting close to the time where everything changed. I was happy with my Xbox, the controller was a little bulky, but I have large hands, so it was a blessing in disguise. I played several of the games and Time Splitters 3 was an awesome trip, so good that I got it completed to 98% in hard mode. Then Microsoft upped the game, the Xbox360 came and I truly loved it, it was close to perfect in many ways, the 20GB drive was a little small, but you could upgrade it to a 120GB and within a year I did. Gaming life was close to perfect. I mentioned Time Splitters and it matters, there was the clear claim of backward compatibility and I fell for it, yet soon thereafter I learned the hard way that it was not and I never got Time Splitters 3 to 100%, the first annoyance was created. In all honesty, it is close to one defect in its life cycle. I too received the red rings of death and Microsoft replaced it, as such I was 3 weeks without my 360, but that was not an issue, the replacement was faster, the resolution was clearly better and gaming was at an all time high. Microsoft was a clear player in all this. The next step was the PSX3, Sony had always been great but I was not drawn to the third version, I was actually still enjoying the PSX2 (as well as the GameCube). So it was a nice relief when I bought a new TV and the PSX3 was part of this as a bonus, to be honest, I was not drawn to the PSX3, I did love the games I played on it, but overall, until Metal Gear Solid IV, games of the patriot arrived, I was not madly gaming it. As such, when it did the shift was starting to happen. 

Before that time the Xbox360 had 70% of my time, the GameCube 20% and 10% was for the PSX3. MGSIV was the first game to attack that pattern. Sony would give us more games on that system that impacted the consoles.As Sony got more adapt in exclusive games, the PSX3 would consume time: God of War 3, Infamous(1 and 2), Ratchet and Clank, Beyond two Souls, Gran Turismo and the end there was the Last of Us, Sony was reacquiring the timeline. Even as I had Oblivion and Mass Effect 3 on my Xbox, the timeline had shifted to 40% X360, 40% PSX3 and 20% Gamecube. Sony was back through great games, just like it did before and Xbox was not to blame. In all this I did not mention PC Gaming and that was on purpose, from 1989 onwards my PC was for gaming and I had more often than not the best of the best. A soundblaster card? I had it and when the first games came needing the better processor I had that system. Unreal Tournament, Black an White, System Shock(1 and 2), Wing Commander (1,2,3), Red Alert, Populous, Ultima, the list goes on, it was when Thief came that I ‘woke up’, I had a really good Diamond card yet Thief forced me to upgrade to the Diamond Viper 2 (no regrets) and the realisation set in (around 2003). Gaming is about the graphics card, sound, storage and the processor and at that point a graphics card was $600, the soundcard $500, and storage came as is. As such a console was a lot cheaper and my need for gaming was fulfilled. Only two years later a high end graphics card was $999 and as such console gaming was becoming increasingly cheap.

This all matters, when we are confronted with the pricing of the Xbox One X and the PS5, we forget that what came before was a lot more expensie and offers less, it was also the time that we started to realise that we need increasingly more space, the Xbox360 and the PSX3 already taught us that, as such the faults in the Xbox were more than merely stupid. Sony solved it by letting people selecting a larger drive and replacing the old drive, Microsoft had not caught on and would not catch on for the entire life cycle of the Xbox One, it is only now that they are seeing the light and their other flaws (always online) are showing that they are no longer to be the trustworthy system and trust is everything here. 

So when I see this tyrade of options and systems and whether I (and many other gamers) are willing to pay only $500 or are willing to pay $550, I wonder if these people realise that they are continuing a consumer base that goes into pillions and they have spent a massive amount of money. Microsoft is also making the mistake to hunt towards the most powerful systems whilst good games is where it is at, so where are the great games?  This is where Ubisoft comes into the mix, exclusive or not they went from great game maker to mediocre game maker and you merely have to look at the exclusive sony titles to realise that. Whilst the creation of titles gave them 90+% games, we now see that 80%+ is the best they can muster and for the most pushed deadlines and marketing promises that cannot be kept are the cause. The lack of proper testing is another matter where they failed and it impacts the choices of consoles we have, because whether we want to accept it or now, Ubisoft is a big deal in console gaming and as they fail, the exclusives are where it is at and there Sony wins, it is a landslide win. To get the greatest games we need Microsoft and Ubisoft to get back to the top or we need someone to replace them, it is that simple.

Players like Bethesda, Capcom and others help, yet the more the merrier (in the high end gaming cycle) and we are all starved for good games and the consoles are a driving force.

Let’s hope that this gaming force is driven to the max at the highest peaks for years to come by as many players as possible, for in that setting the gamer truly wins, no matter who tops the bill.

 

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April 13, 2020 · 02:02

Shaping visions

I have been considering and reconsidering the events that unfold and the view I have on them. It is a first need, the ability to monitor the self in us. Without it a lot of claimed speculations revert to mere ranting. If we cannot set the critical eye on ourselves, the ability to disseminate data, to extrapolate optional wisdom from events goes wrong in all the places, as such I feel it was important to reconsider what I am, and where my mind is.

When we see ourselves as a greater part of us, we see and we speculate on the visionary that we could be, but that does not happen without the critical eye that we cast towards  ourselves. 

Visionary

The visionary has these elements in play, even as that person is contemplating idea after idea,there is an invisible machine that is directing focus towards goal again and again until the job is done. One of the most famous of these visionaries were Bill Gates and SteveJobs (last century) and they were followed by the Google Smurfs (Papa Smurf and Clever Smurf), there were more visionaries, in several fields but not in fields I work in, so it is hard to recognise these people, you might know of 1-2 visionaries in your own field, the real visionaries and those who market what they come up with as visionaries are not the same.

No matter how clever these visionaries are, they need dedication and focus. 

Dedication

Dedication is the hardest and easiest of the two elements. Dedication tends to be fueled by passion and interest, nearly everyone has it and they all have their own interests, this is the easiest way to fuel dedication, look at anyone that was passionate about an interest that they have (not talking about the horizontal lambada), take sports, hobbies, gaming, or photography, whichever your interest has, that interest is mastered much faster than anything else. Not merely through reading or learning, but beyond that you start to grasp a much larger part of it and we have seen this in the last few weeks as people paused from the run of life to the contemplation of actuality. It is the part I was confronted with 3 days ago when my mind designed a new TV series, only to end up with a larger part towards my novel, there was no interest to do that, but that is what happened. 

Focus

Focus is only one part, it is the most pronounced part but there it is. Focus is sometimes replaced by enthusiasm, yet without discipline whatever effort you make goes back to zero, into the void of largely wasted time. Most people (myself included) rely on logic, yet it relies on us to remain rational, we need to toss emotion over the railing, because if we do not do that, we are royally screwed and that is the hidden trap. Dedication fuels emotion towards the goal, and when we rely on logic, emotion is a hindrance, not a subjective supporter,if we accept that too late, there is already a larger damage in play and we ignore that damage until it is too late.

In the coming year because of what we faced, the visionaries will decide on what happens next, they will be heralded, especially in corporations that have been marketing iteration as innovation Microsoft anyone?) yet the visionaries will bring true innovation, innovation that gives these people a much larger hold on what happens next. 

As the world is looking towards solutions, the loud screaming marketed voices of corporations are trying to be the one everyone trusts. Yet that would be wrong, in this instance we need another Steve Jobs, he had an interesting role, he was not merely the innovator, he was able to recognise innovation when it was in his neighbourhood, an element that many ignore in him. Yet having a person like that is not enough, there will be a much larger need to silence the false claims, they all want a slice of the pie, yet the deciders are seemingly unable to recognise true innovation,at least that is how I see this happen. 

If we are to evade the dark hole that we are currently digging for ourselves, we need real innovators, we need a real path towards creating a new economie, not pouring money into the hole in the short sighted way that Mario Draghi did twice, we need to focus on actual innovation and as I see it, the funds are drying up faster and faster. It is in that part that there will be new players in town, the silly people on Wall Street made a guarantee for that. And there is also the larger problem, they have a huge grasp of politicians all over the world (who will actively deny it), and there the problem becomes visible, the people who were in charge want to be in charge again and with their needs and the friends they have to feed, anyone else loses out. 

Now we get to the real problem, what is it you want, a solution or a delay? Only true visionaries will aid us, and the entire Corona issue pushed the problem forward for too much, we might want to listen to the people proclaiming that it will be fine, that it will resolve itself, yet wonder how much issues we see with only 110,000 deaths. What will happen when we lose a lot more? We can argue on the numbers, yet consider the issues in France and Germany, almost the same amount of patients, yet one country lost 14,000 people the other one 3,000, yet the media is not asking the questions that need asking and no one is wondering why? We might get angry again and again why Donald Duck (I meant President Trump) is talking about a ‘Chinese Virus’, all whilst it is a case of the flu, and there is no evidence of any kind that it was created by the Chinese, but that is how things go in America, ask Huawei if you doubt it.

As I see it, we need visionaries to get is past these difficult times and into a new economy. I believe that this is the struggle we see during this year and the next. For the rest of the world it becomes an interesting time, the more stupid actions the US governments starts, the less of an option they have to stay ahead of several games. Even as we see fragmentation on 5G because of the Huawei actions that the US starts, we see that Europe is less and less inclined to follow the US example, as such China now has a real chance of becoming the dominant trade partner in the Middle East, not the US. Soon we will see that the US slips into third position there and from there the sliding lag only increases for the US. 

No matter how that plays out, at this time it is almost the only step they have left, they placed the real innovators out of bounds and even as Google is trying to stay ahead in that game, there is every indication that they might consider moving their patent floor at some point, to gain the benefits they have now, the US might soon lose its appeal for that. I have no idea where they would go, but I see that there is an overwhelming need for my IP to move towards China, not because I like it, but because it is safer for me. When we get to that point, it does not matter whether you are an innovator or an iterator, you need to be where your value is and there is a larger initiative playing. 

The annual IP report that congress got in February 2019 was indicative in this, I will let you decide on this yourself (it is the Feb 2019 report and I will add it as soon as WordPress fixes their system. No matter how we slice it, the direct future requires innovators and a lot of them running wherever they are valued. I can only speculate on how it pays out and I wonder who else sees it that way. It might just be me and it might be illusional or delusional, but I wonder how you see it when you take a step back from all the media articles and take a rational view of what we are given and why we are given it in this way, it will be a first step in recognising what actually needs to be done.

 

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March 23, 2020 · 15:25

Being smart is a crime in America

This all started with the BBC, I saw an option to slap Americans around and I decided to take a look. We can at times argue when a thing is no longer fun, but an act of civic duty and with ‘Coronavirus: US Senators face calls to resign over ‘insider trading’‘ i thought I had a nice opportunity. Yet the more I looked, the more the sensation came over me that Republicans Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffle were merely being smart and did nothing illegal, in addition James Inhofe, and Dianne Feinstein might be on that very same page.

So what happened?

They are accused of insider knowledge in trading and it all refers to the Coronavirus, basically they got out in time. It all refers to “It is illegal for Congress members to trade based on non-public information gathered during their official duties“, the fact that this information was globally available is (as I personally see it) not considered, in addition it all happened last month, all whilst the Coronavirus impact was not overly visible (and openly denied) by president Trump a week later, so what gives?

“Mrs Loeffler, of Georgia, is reported to have sold holdings worth up to $3m in a series of transactions beginning the same day as a Senate briefing on the virus“, yet when we check the news from those days we see in February “U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R–AR) added fuel to controversial assertions on Fox News earlier this month when he noted that the lab was “a few miles away” from a seafood market that had a large cluster of some of the first cases detected. “We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says“, as well as CNN who gave us on February 28 “The latest numbers: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 2,800 people worldwide, the vast majority in mainland China. There have been more than 83,000 global cases, with infections in every continent except Antarctica” at this particular stage there were 64 cases involving Americans. If there was insider trading then it is that the US has been keeping vital information from its citizens and that (as we see the tidal wave of media articles) does not seem to be the case, as such the BBC is repeating and forwarding a envy situation (as I personally see it). In support, the first one (James Inhofe) gives the situation “Inhofe’s account manager sold stocks valued at $150,000-$350,000 on Jan. 13 and another $170,000 – $400,000 worth on Jan. 27. The stock markets were near record highs at the time.” we see the news giving us that the entire matter did not come to blows until February 25th (13 days after the first drop by the senator) and the second drop was a day later, after the media slams us with “Dow closes down 1,000 points as coronavirus fears slam Wall Street” which was TWO DAYS BEFORE the second sell off, as such I wonder what wrong James Inhofe did exactly, I am not seeing it and the public information out there shows that he was two days late with the second sell off to reel it in (as the fisher would say).

Personally I will contemplate that all this is a play by Senator Chuck Schumer on getting into the limelight by making non related issues around his ‘no’ statements around the McConnell GOP bill. There is nothing like a political foul to make the person crying to get some extra limelight.

In the case of Dianne Feinstein we also get “During my Senate career I’ve held all assets in a blind trust of which I have no control. Reports that I sold any assets are incorrect, as are reports that I was at a January 24 briefing on coronavirus, which I was unable to attend,” she tweeted” (source: FoxNews), now I will be honest, I did not check that last bit, yet if that part is true, some interesting questions should be asked of the BBC and in particular Whoever was the editor that decided to blatantly repeat news that should be scrutinised to a much larger degree. It took me initially 15 minutes to find out the goods (I merely decided to be lazy this weekend, as any person is allowed to do), over those three days there has been no insight from the BBC who seemingly dumped emotional driven news, perhaps BBC News is now under the control of Paul Dacre? #JustAsking

This is not the case of that news just hitting us. The setting that Dianne Feinstein can claim the status of ‘Blind Trust‘ is a larger part, this should have been clearly known in the Senate, as such we should push for a much larger penalty towards Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (for intentionally misinforming us) if he was not intentional then the ‘silly’ gauge is too high to allow him to be a senator, but that is merely my take on the matter. I personally believe that as a Democrat he should know better, but apparently he is from New York, so anything is possible in that case.

I believe that the BBC made a mistake on the 20th of March 2020, I let you decide, most news (and facts) are out there.

 

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March 20, 2020 · 15:02

Insensitive Me

Yes, at times I tend to be truly absent of empathy, especially when I see small items like ‘as companies struggle with debt‘, so as I am given ‘Experts warn companies that have gorged on cheap money for the past decade face going out of business‘, some of them relied on the famous sales quote ‘Fake it till you make it’, and now we see the ‘warning’ sign “A worldwide credit crunch triggered by the coronavirus will set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis look like “child’s play”, investors have warned.” In this my sober response would be ‘And? Why (the eff) would I care?‘, these people relied on the debt, money they never had to get beyond the point of faking it till they made it and one small flu event is now driving them out of business. So as the world is throwing trillions against it all, I wonder just how short sighted they are. The EU spent 3 trillion on an economy to start it and it never did. As such there will be a much larger toll to everyone involved. There is no upside in “The sudden loss of revenue faced by airlines, tourism-related businesses and carmakers make them extremely vulnerable” OK, we get it, it is not their fault, but we have seen an economy giving out ebts, loans and cheap travels all over the world. Now that there will be an actual cost, there is always an impact we did not see coming. And as we are treated to: “many companies will struggle to refinance debt due to a repeat of the sudden change in credit conditions that sparked the 2007 credit crunch, banking collapses and then the GFC. The prospect of no revenue for months meant creditworthiness had plummeted in exposed sectors and cut off access to funding” we see the shortsigted issues that not having reserves bring. There is now a larger cost to rolling over debts and the stage that zero revenue brings will kill off the smaller players, those players thinking that they were in the same league of the big boys and the big boys are indeed wondering if they survive this age, as such the small fishes have almost no chance. 

As such as we consider the impact of “$2 trillion worth of corporate debt is due to be rolled over this year” all whilst we see no validation of debt rolling over, and the absence of paid off debts, we see a much larger field and everyone is in a stage ‘but why me?‘, as I personally see it, it will affect everyone who did not take the option to reduce their debts. I get it, some will be in a shabby situation and none of this is on them, but to give a rise to 5 out of 500 is a little shallow, is it not? It is the station that we see with “Lindsay David, of independent consultancy LF Economics, said the coronavirus shutdown had exposed longstanding imbalances in the financial system that had been disguised by more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and trillions of dollars from quantitative easing schemes in the major economies“, we see the stupidity of ‘longstanding imbalances in the financial system‘ and the question attached to that ‘Why was it unattended for so long?‘ is a station that no one wants to be at, no one wants to answer that part of the equation. 

As such, the quote “We know everyone is overleveraged, full-bore, full-risk,” he said. “All we were waiting for was a trigger and unfortunately that has come in the form of a health crisis.” As such it is not the fault of the Coronavirus, any trigger would have sufficed, as such being the one adhering to some Wall Street need, is set to zero and the house will take it all, it is in that light that some see players like Virgin Australia who needs to roll over $5 billion whilst it is in a stage where it cannot bring more than $500 million to the table, a mere 10%, even in the better stage where it would have been double that, rolling over is a doubtful stage for a few lenders, yet this health trigger is not the one anyone hoped or even wished for, it is a stage that was well over 10 years in the making and greed driven people filled their pockets and walked away with a multi million bonus, enough to live in luxury for the next 10 years. After which the market will resettle and their stage of profit comes again, that is what we have catered to.

So as we are introduced to “A full repeat of the post-Lehman Brothers crisis was on the cards, he said, as banks scrambled to hold on to liquidity” a lot of people have not considered the stage we see where the panic driven people first bought out all the pasta they could and after that take out their ATM and saving balance before the bank runs out, at that stage the initial point leading to the worst of the worst will be a much larger stage for everyone.

And the larger issue is seen at the end of the article with: “Let’s say you are a pension fund in Canada and six years ago you gave a bank $1bn. Every year you roll over that bond and the deal remains in place. But now you’re saying, ‘you know what, can I have that money back now?’. So the problem for the company is, where will I find $1bn? Not from its deposits or its liquidity because it’s now got more money going out than coming in.” and that is not where it ends, in October 2019 we saw “regulators should be ensuring the strength of the financial sector to withstand future risks, not weaken it, but that is not what is happening in the U.S.  Recent moves to ease regulations suggest financial stability risks are at an inflection point. Incentives to leverage will continue to rise as interest rates remain low amid a global search for yield.  Vulnerabilities that have been “moderate” could escalate quickly to “elevated”, as they did in the lead up to the 2007 – 2008 crisis“, as such some tried to ‘ease’ the Basel 3 regulations as fast as their greedy needs required, as such, we see “Phase-in arrangements for the leverage ratio were announced in the 26 July 2010 press release of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision. That is, the supervisory monitoring period will commence 1 January 2011; the parallel run period will commence 1 January 2013 and run until 1 January 2017; and disclosure of the leverage ratio and its components will start 1 January 2015. Based on the results of the parallel run period, any final adjustments will be carried out in the first half of 2017 with a view to migrating to a Pillar 1 treatment on 1 January 2018 based on appropriate review and calibration” (at https://www.bis.org/press/p100912.pdf), now that was then and it got a little more time “The leverage ratio1 and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), which took effect in January 2018, and the supervisory framework for measuring and controlling large exposures, which took effect in January 2019, have yet to be adopted by all jurisdictions (Graph 1). The leverage ratio is now in force in 16 jurisdictions (one more since 2018), while 11 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the NSFR (unchanged since 2018). Only 10 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the large exposures framework.” (at https://www.fsb.org/work-of-the-fsb/implementation-monitoring/monitoring-of-priority-areas/basel-iii/) as such it is not required until 1 January 2022 (as some stated), and now that it is too late, we will get the larger impact. So how happy are you with those people making 6 figure numbers and delaying it all again and again? You will feel that part soon enough when internal systems start to buckle. We might think that President Trump $1 trillion dollar bailout is a good thing, but when that money dries up (and it will dry up a lot faster than you think) he will a scared little mouse, as he will see firsthand what 300 million angry Americans look like and corporations will see the impact of their delay and rollover tactics. Even now as we are told ‘Trump administration is asking states to hold off on releasing unemployment figures as economy plummets‘, we might start to see a much larger failing. We are in a stage where we set ourselves up for a much larger stage, one that outstages the great depression of the 30’s, it merely took a case of the flu to get us there.

Should you think I am exaggerating, consider the Bloomberg headline (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/goldman-sees-deepest-australian-downturn-since-great-depression) a mere 2 hours ago. It might have the sobering ‘Goldman Sees Deepest Australian Downturn Since Great Depression‘ headline, but in part the overp[aid delaying factors are to some degree cause of it all and they are hiding behind “Most of the contraction is expected to be driven by a collapse in ‘social’ consumption“, the essential part of ‘the stage of reserves is not what it needed to be‘ is not mentioned anywhere, you have to distill that from other parts and read through the emptiness of what they claim, they might claim facts, yet they do not give any part of the whole story and it will hit the US, Australia, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and to some degree even Germany. That is what we have to look forward to, at least as the Covid panic continues. It seems to me that the makers of pasta and pantry items are in a much better position. Until a month ago, the idea that San Remo ends up being one of the richest companies in Australia would have been laughed at, when you look at the empty shelves almost everywhere last week, that stage is a lot less laughable at present, I wonder in all this whether the new economic superpower will include San Remo and/or Barilla, as there is a chance that the seat of Virgin Australia on that board will be up for grabs soon enough.

 

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March 16, 2020 · 15:12

Just Saying “Haachoo”

We all get it, there is an overreaction at present, the overreaction (for the most) is people buying too much of whatever they do not need. So Saturday I saw a person getting back to the supermarket who wanted to return some of the toilet paper he had bought, I wonder if second hand toilet paper sells. He didn’t go to see if he can offload some of the toilet paper to his neighbours and break even that way. I did because 36 rolls is all they sold and 12 should keep me in shitty paper for at least a month, keeping more than that is a little excessive. My neighbours did not mind, they both paid their $5 and as such I broke a little better then even, I made $1 and created two happy neighbours. In my  case, 36 rolls was the only option. Yet as we see the supermarkets, we see empty shelves of toilet paper, tissues, pasta and a few more items. It is panic buying in a Coronaviral atmosphere, even as Coronabeer is not sold beyond the normal amounts it does.

Why is it overreaching?

I get it, we want assurances, yet consider the numbers. Around 170,000 people got it at present. Until last week, 93% of ALL cases were in China, Italy, Iran and South Korea. As such over 3 billion people got overly angst in regards to an optional infecting 1,000 people, that was then. Now we see that Spain (7,845), Germany (5,813) and racing to the top 6 positions France with 5,423 cases. We get it, it is the flu and this one is growing fast, but in the end, France is looking at a 2.3% mortality rate, which is still better than the 3.6% that is the global number. Italy with a whopping 24,747 cases see a rising 7.3% death rate. 

Now, I get it, it is scary, yet here in Australia, the mortality rate is set to 1.67%, a lot lover and now we see the stage where fear is more likely than not killing us before the flu will.

Yet the numbers show something else too, the numbers do not add up in all this. How did that one person in Suriname get infected? The one in Mauritania, Mongolia, or Gabon? There was one case in Gibraltar, but that person is now cured. We are all pointing at China, but the setting does not add up. There is even a case on St. Barths. How is this flu spreading, because all the information does not add up. It did for a while and now we see a pandemic and it is growing and growing in numbers on a stage that is not properly identified, as such the pandemic will only get worse.

For me I see one flaw, in all this there is no mention of Yemen, or Syria. I agree with anyone who states that they have enough problems, but this flu is larger than we think and these people need a lot, they do not need the Coronavirus to help a hand in killing them, yet that is also the larger issue. Two nations where the immune system is close to destroyed to bad water, no food and other means, the flu has a free reign in those places and even as the Middle East Eye gives us ‘Syria insists it is coronavirus-free‘, I believe that this is not the case and through there (and Yemen) it will spread further still. Beyond that, as we look at the numbers, the spread of the disease is largely uncontained as there are too many unknowns and as such when there is no containment, others will get infected, how? We cannot be certain.

It becomes a lot less certain when we consider the quote “Pakistani health officials said on Tuesday that at least five of their country’s cases originated from patients travelling to Pakistan from Syria via Qatar” as such, what else is being spread? And to what extent is Pakistan involved in the Syrian escalation? Because the last time I checked, refugees cannot afford a trip via Qatar, making Qatar also a larger target in other ways.

There is also the stage of consideration around “It was not immediately clear whether the infections could have originated in Qatar, where cases have risen to 337” (401 as per yesterday), even if that is a larger rise in the Middle East where, as per yesterday, Saudi Arabia had 118 cases, Oman had 22 cases, and Bahrain had 214 cases, the stage is larger than we realise because in a setting of non clarity containment cannot be reached. In all this, humanitarian help in Syria and Yemen could be spreading it faster, they have a better immune system and as such until they get noticeably sick they might be spreading the disease to dozens upon dozens more. and whomever they give it to, those infected will hit the mortality rate hard, they are malnourished, have underlying health issues, they tend to be dehydrated and have no way of keeping clean. It is a much larger stage that we cannot predict and it will hit every one of us in one way or another.

In all this, the mortality rate went from 3.4%, to 3.6% (last week) and is now set to 3.8%, as what stage will governments take the lead and have actual solutions in place? The fact that containment is not reached implies that whatever solution they think of is merely a non solving patch on a hole that hides a few other holes that are not patched at all. 

Am I exaggerating? 

Consider that last week 4 nations had 93% of all the cases, that has now dwindled down to 75.1%, the numbers and nations with cases are growing and we see no actual answers and no factual solutions other than post event considerations, giving a much larger rise to hysteria. and in all this the mortality rate does not add up. Globally it might be 3.8%, yet in Sweden it is 0.28%, in the US it is 1.83% and Italy wins with 7.3%, which is a lot higher than China with 3.9%, the numbers do not add up and the media is not informing a hysteria driven population, all whilst the guardian gives us ‘UK coronavirus crisis ‘to last until spring 2021 and could see 7.9m hospitalised‘‘, in this I wonder how spring 2021 is tested? There is enough doubt on the lack of containment, as such we have much larger fish to fry than ‘A Complete List of Trump’s Attempts to Play Down Coronavirus‘ (source: NY Times).

The setting in any war and believe me, this is a war against the flu, we need to set the stage of containment, as this is not achieved we see that the flu will win in the end. Personally I am not fuzzed, I will be either dead or better employed, either way is a win for me, yet for the US government, the flu is not about the sick (at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/business/economy/coronavirus-response-wall-street.html), it is seemingly about the volatility of Wall Street. And as we are being fed “The Federal Reserve, in a drastic attempt to ensure Wall Street remained functional as volatility roiled even normally staid bond markets, said it would promptly inject as much as $1.5 trillion in loans into the banking system and broaden its purchases of Treasury securities. But neither the Fed’s actions, nor a plan by the European Central Bank to offer cheap loans to banks and step up its bond-buying campaign, were enough to assuage investors, who sent the S&P 500 down 9.5 percent“, we need to consider that there is a mechanism to keep wall street afloat, even when the sick are being denied that. The lack of containment pretty much guarantees it.

And as we are being given (in this case by the Financial Times) “Spain has followed Italy’s lead in imposing a shutdown on its entire population to fight the coronavirus, while France is closing all non-essential shops and restaurants” in this we forget about one small little event. If there is no containment, how does it help and for the matter of imposing self isolation for two weeks, will that actually solve it? Consider that the people were infecting others BEFORE the disease struck them, is the idea that they are still contagious after they feel better two weeks later that strange? Consider that on  December 4th 1872 a ship was found its crew missing, we used that event (Mary Celeste) in several weird occurances, yet the idea that a cured population becomes a Mary Celeste, is that so far fetched? In this Live Science dot com (at https://www.livescience.com/can-coronavirus-be-cured.html) gives us “Currently, however, there is no cure for this coronavirus, and treatments are based on the kind of care given for influenza (seasonal flu) and other severe respiratory illnesses, known as “supportive care,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)“, and as we accept the numbers giving us that 77,450 have recovered, can we be sure that they are not still spreading the flu? I am not telling you, I am asking, because I do not know and it seems that there are plenty of medical specialists in the dark. The quotes we can consider in the article give a larger rise to it and as such the over acting governments are merely showing that they are at best partially limiting the events of spread of the virus implying that the virus could last a lot longer.

There are too many unknowns and the fact that the numbers show that there is no actual containment, are my thoughts out of bounds? It is in that path that I see the actions of the WHO (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/european-countries-take-radical-steps-to-combat-coronavirus), slightly out of bounds. I agree with the language, but it cannot be connected to actions, actions require us to acknowledge that we know how to contain this and the numbers show a different story, containment is not reached and as far as I can tell, it was never merely a Chinese issue. It might have grown there faster and more radical, but the rest of the world got infected in other ways, and the medical world is staring in one direction all whilst they have no clue on the powers and the spreadability of the Covid-19 virus. It became a pandemic too quickly and we are now getting the smallest confirmation that the movie by Steven Soderbergh called Contagion (2011) was optimistic, it seems that we have to learn that part the hard way. In those days Manohla Gargis of the New York Times gave us :”“Contagion,” Steven Soderbergh’s smart, spooky thriller about contemporary plagues, is a paranoid freakout for the antigovernment, Tea Party age“, I merely wonder how she will react when Covid-19 comes knocking on her front door.

To support it we get Warner Brothers giving us: “the film ranked 270th in views in the company’s catalog at the end of 2019, when the existence of COVID-19 was not yet public knowledge. Now, it’s the second most-watched movie, bested only by the Harry Potter films“, it seems that the people are being made aware of what was out there and the fact that it is becoming reality will fuel more than a few wandering minds. We might all see this as providence, but it isn’t (at present), apart from the mortality rate not being on par, we have another consideration. It is the fact that there are cases in Mauritania, Mayotte, Mongolia, Suriname, Eswatini, St. Vincent Grenadines, Honduras and the Channel Islands, all with less than 5 cases, yet how did THEY get it? Containment is almost non existent and that is a larger need, when we walk the street we see 50-150 people, and there is every chance that up to 10 have Covid-19, up to ten in every street, that is the reality we face, not now, but in a weeks time? Who knows?

In a setting of non containment, the flu gets free reign, we have known that for decades, and often in the workplace.

 

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February 26, 2020 · 16:02

The defining moment

We all have seen it, we all have experienced it, yet what happens, if the definition does not align to what a government or a funded overreaching group likes? I am referring to those small grocery stores like the EU and the WHO, and should you doubt it, then consider the following part that has been published in several papers and online sources.

WHO mission director warns world is ‘simply not ready’ for pandemic, as well as ‘prepare for a potential pandemic‘. This was the news today, yet when we consider “A pandemic is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide“, I raised it in the beginning of the month (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/corona-i-never-touch-the-stuff/) with ‘Corona?  I Never touch the stuff!‘. In that piece I wrote “there are now close to two dozen nations with confirmed cases. The one from Sweden is perhaps the most illustrative one. “The patient is a woman in the Jonkoping region of southern Sweden who had visited the Wuhan area of China. She sought medical attention after arriving in Sweden on Jan. 24. “One case doesn’t mean that we have a virus outbreak in Sweden,” said the agency’s Karin Tegmark Wisell, who added that the country’s health-care is well prepared to deal with the virus.” I do not disagree with Karin Tegmark Wisell, yet she was a carrier and passing on the disease before the patient knew she was a carrier, as such she would have been in Arlanda (most likely), then a train or a car with stops and for some time she was unaware that she was sick. There is every chance that she infected 3-50 people” in the meantime the disease has now grown the amount of infected in 20 countries (Italy, Japan, Iran, USA, Bahrain, Germany, Algeria and Australia) that implies a growth of the infected on 6 continents. So when exactly will the WHO (or the EU) decide that this is a pandemic?

All whilst the media is happy to report “prepare for a potential pandemic as the outbreak spreads across Europe“, this is a much larger issue, an issue that is bigger than the media, we are being sold a bag of goods and there are players who are too scared for their value when the ‘pandemic’ becomes official and they are willing to sell the world population down the drain to protect their profits (a personal assumption).

And now (as per 16 seconds ago) the situation is “total number of cases in mainland China to 78,064, and 2,715 dead“, whilst the new deceased numbers include China (the bulk) and South Korea, Italy and Iran. So when will it become a pandemic? I believe it already is and it is not the worst pandemic to face, this part we get from a fatality surpassing 3.4%, these facts are available (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/), the fact that these numbers also appear in the Guardian (and a few other sources) validates them for me. 

Yet there is one nice epitaph to my consideration of Pandemic, it is found in Wikipedia (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic) and gives us “Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu.” Yet it gives us a much larger setting too. 

With the header ‘Economic consequences of pandemic events‘ it introduces us to “In 2016, the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future estimated that pandemic disease events would cost the global economy over $6 trillion in the 21st century – over $60 billion per year. The same report also recommended spending $4.5 billion annually on global prevention and response capabilities to reduce the threat posed by pandemic events“

That is an amount that scares Wall Street (and therefore the US administration) to a larger degree. The economic part we get from ‘The Neglected Dimension of Global Security‘, that document gives us a lot more too (added atthe end). Even as the preface introduces us (again) to “After the outbreak was recognized, the international response was slow and uncoordinated. Mechanisms for the establishment of public–private partnerships were lacking. For example, the development of lifesaving medical products was reactive, rather than proactive.” It is seemingly the smallest stab to the Ebola event in West Africa, yet the goods on page 23 gives us “National public health systems are essential components of resilient health systems and the first line of defense against the threat of pandemic disease. Robust public health capabilities and infrastructure at a national level are thus the foundation of a global health risk framework” and here is the first pebble that starts the avalanche, on a global scale the stage was to do as little as possible as there were no budgets, the US, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France have been showing larger failures for several years. Germany is not far behind, yet still in a slightly better position and the less said over failing Greek healthcare, the better (at present). 

In this environment a pandemic is a larger issue for the people in and connected to Wall Street as they need to be ahead of the curve and not trailing it. As such pushing the statement ‘We have a Pandemic’ back further is for them essential, it is at present more likely than not that the Coronaviirus will be seen as a pandemic AFTER the fact, especially after the greedy people have their profit ducks in a row.

The weird part here is that this is not a new issue, Pandemics were the focal point in writing as early as 1350 (Decamerone), films and TV took the subject as early as 1957 (7th seal) as well as several games on PC, consoles, iOS and Android. Enough people knew of the dangers that this issue brought, it even made it to the comic books, although there the setting was warped massively beyond reality as we know it (the Extinction Parade). 

In all this the references make sense, it is seen on that same page when we see “Public health objectives can only be achieved within a highly-functioning and resilient health care system with effective primary care delivery (WHO, 2008)“, a statement seen 12 years ago gives rise to the dangers that nations have brought onto themselves and those remembering that 12 year old statement are now not ready to answer the questions from voters when the ‘pandemic’ is made official, in a more healthy style we could argue that political heads will roll when that news comes out a little too soon to their needs. This is more true when one considers “both sets of capabilities and infrastructure are necessary to prepare and respond to the threat of infectious diseases. A primary health care system without the support of strong public health capabilities will lack the ability to monitor disease patterns and be unable to plan and mobilize the scale of response required to contain an outbreak. A public health system without strong primary care capabilities will lack both the “radar screen” to pick up the initial cases of an outbreak and the delivery system to execute an effective response strategy“, in all this China has shown a decent degree to deal with it, and as such we see in the Guardian ‘Expert tells nations to access the expertise of China and prepare for a potential pandemic as the outbreak spreads across Europe‘. The move makes sense, but the larger issue is not the reactive side, it is the proactive side and most of Western Europe is seemingly not ready. In all this Western Europe is the second stop as International travel is the highest there and what is in one nation could hit a dozen nations a week later, basically one infected person in an international airport could in theory be the global exporter on the spot. If Virgin calls a $130,000,000 loss and a large chunk of that is the Coronavirus, could it be possible that the $60 billion a year seen earlier might be somewhat optimistic? In that consideration look at Virgin and its size, with the fact that this one company is 0.1% of that annual number, and this is not my imagination. 

Only 4 hours ago the New York Times gives us ‘Wall Street Is (Finally) Waking Up to the Damage Coronavirus Could Do‘ (at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/upshot/coronavirus-wall-street-analysis.html), in all this, all the issues I filed over a month, with connections to reported issues 12 years ago and now we see: “there has been a strange divergence among those trying to predict what coronavirus might mean for financial markets and the world economy“, “People in the trenches of global commerce — supply chain managers, travel industry experts, employers large and small — warned of substantial disruptions to their businesses. And public health authorities feared that the disease could spread far beyond Wuhan in China” with the closing phrase of “financial markets and most economic forecasters projected the virus outbreak wouldn’t do much harm to the economy and corporate profits” where we need to notice that ‘corporate profits‘ was the centre of attention, as such we now get to live with the image “last Wednesday, the S&P is down more than 7 percent. And on Tuesday, yields on 10-year United States Treasury bonds fell to their lowest levels on record“, Wall Street is finally waking up having to reek the shit they shovel. All whilst the New York Times also gives us “if the virus becomes a global pandemic that causes meaningful pullback of commerce across major economies” it is the setting we needed to see, certain influencers do not want the claim of ‘pandemic’ to become reality, they are just not ready to see all their long plays become shorted stocks, the fallout would be massive for some players and they are not ready to adjust their economic game play. In all it seems that all over the world, medical centres are nowhere near ready and even as we admit and should realise that this can never be the case, the spreading of any pandemic is likely to hit all over the place and fighting one is not set to what we can do, but to what we can detect. It requires a larger proactive engine and as we see in the UK (NHS), as well as the US, they are lacking in proactive stages and as such, the statement of pandemic will require two elements the first is to find the real cases (any pandemic is likely to cause a panic in equal measure) and to deal with the real cases, it is there where we see that those running with a panic end up running into a disease spreading cluster (an acceptable speculated situation). 

When we see the facts and the situation where this had been going on for two months, CNN gives us ‘Trump claims coronavirus is ‘going to go away’ despite mounting concerns‘, as well as ‘Spread of coronavirus in U.S. appears inevitable, health officials warn‘ (Washington Post), as such we have a larger issue. The numbers give us that the US only had 57 cases and no additional ones since then, they only show 6 recoveries, so what happened to the 51 others? they might still be sick and more importantly there is no telling who the 57 infected, the lack of reporting there leaves a lot to be desired. That part is seen when we look at the CDC (at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html), here we see only 14 confirmed cases, now that does fit better with the 6 cured ones, yet the discrepancy of 57 and 14 is important, it also gives rise to larger clusters of people unknowingly affected. 

In all this we are still ‘heading towards’ a pandemic? I think the pandemic hit us all in the beginning of the month and too many are eager to hide (or oppose) that part and they hide themselves with numbers. In all this, we can argue left, right and centre, yet the definitions were clearly set and a paper with references to facts 12 years ago make for a larger case that politicians are too much in denial of the hardship hitting their lives, their welfare and their economy. A side that the Guardian reported on a week ago with “The coronavirus could cost the global economy more than $1tn in lost output if it turns into a pandemic“, as such, Samsung might end up seeing its stock shorted sooner rather than later, they did get help though, 1146 people with COVID-19 helped the forecasted need to short the stock, I wonder where those 57 Americans were and how Wall Street is optionally setting a different stage, one that has them seemingly unaffected by a so called optional pandemic that is set in China.

When these defining moments surpass the expectations of the people with stocks against the people with expected sick relatives, at that point will we see a first engagement of what Wall Street states versus the impact of the victims, the victims that could get not be cured in time because the proactive medical needs were numbered away by other means. Consider that against the fact that some of these white papers and warnings have been out for years, at that point reconsider the culling of funds in healthcare. There are too many related factors and they all survive as their test for ‘pandemic’ is not passed.

Neglected-Dimension-of-Global-Security

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