Tag Archives: Goldman Sachs

April 20, 2025 · 23:27

Rollback

That is the word of the day, I have always had that word in my vocabulary. The setting that any solution o programmed in Clipper had the setting for a rollback. This is how I grew up (growing up in the Clipper age was a little weird). You see, I had two settings. The first was the data didn’t change and as I was a ‘little’ verbose with my data creation there was the option of registering a data version, so that was the setting. We needed a rollback in several situations and that is where the setting ends. You see, today I got to see a few news lines.

First there was Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-jet-returns-us-china-victim-trumps-tariff-war-2025-04-20/) giving us ‘Boeing jet returns to US from China, a victim of Trump’s tariff war’, now that is a scrumptious hotdog to say the least. At almost $100 million, according to one source, that is a delicious snack to say the least and as we are told. China send it back. The tariff could cripple Xiamen Airlines as the tariff is 125%, and even as Reuters give us that the plane is a mere $55 million, we can say that the price difference is a little too much to be acceptable, the larger setting is that several players are trying to dam in the losses that are projected to become American losses.

Most of us will have seen the trade agreements that China made with Mexico, so there is that. Then there is the setting we see at where Business Insider gives us the setting that ‘Some Canadian Stores Are Labeling US Imports With a T for ‘Tariffs’’ (business insider put it behind a paywall, so that’s all you get. And only three days ago I saw the headline ‘China’s Strategic Pivot from US to Canadian Oil Imports’ (at https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/chinas-pivot-canadian-oil-imports-2025/) I cannot vouch for this source, yet in that setting we are given “Data reveals Chinese refiners have slashed US crude purchases by approximately 90% between 2023 and 2025, redirecting roughly 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) toward alternative suppliers, with Canada capturing a substantial portion of this market share.” So the first step to a change has been given and I foresaw these changes even as I never knew about the oil. So as I see it, these changes show billions upon billions in losses for America whilst we see damage to their export, their revenue making defense industry, their tourism and we can go on a little longer. Wouldn’t it have been great if America had a rollback setting for their elections?

So as Goldman Sachs gives us “The decline in the world’s reserve asset during an episode of elevated volatility comes as investors are increasingly focused on the US’s growing debt burden and other countries are also increasing their borrowing. “Markets are dealing with a lot of competing factors right now — fairly significant drivers where it’s hard to trade all of them at once,” says William Marshall, head of US rates strategy in Goldman Sachs Research.” Really? Only now do we see “investors are increasingly focused on the US’s growing debt burden”, that’s about 4 years too late, but whatever. I saw (and reported on this danger for a few years at least). If the EU, Japan and China dump their bonds (that will be an expensive exercise) the value of the Dollar doesn’t just drop, it ends up having getting a CCC− grade (to give a mere view on the matter). At that point the imminent suicide risk will spike all over Wall Street (a clear but reliable speculation).

I reckon that the one dropping them first gets the best value for it, but after that it will be a quick fall to the luxury value of zero. But it is not just America, the bonds of the EU and Japan will face a similar risk, America is merely the highest as someone thought it was a great idea to introduce the tariff game to their economy. Global News told their Canadians ‘Avoid U.S. travel if possible, Canadian academics are being urged’ with others following in similar settings. The Detroit News gives us ‘Avoid U.S. or take burner phones, Canada executives tell staff’ and there are more sources that give us that, with the added “Arrivals of noncitizens to the United States by plane declined by nearly 900,000 people, almost 10%, in March from a year earlier, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Administration. Travelers are reacting to President Donald Trump’s trade war and to stories of harsh detentions at U.S. airports. Border figures show 4,970,360 came to the U.S. from Canada in March 2024. That number dropped to 4,105,516 travelers a year later. More visitors reportedly traveled from Canada to the U.S. in March 2022 under pandemic-related travel restrictions than they did last month.” I think that Canada is the most likely of number drops, but I reckon that it is not the only one. So as I see it, the danger is not only to Tourism, but business travel too and in that case, hotels in all the major cities in the United States will report on losses of 10% or more, so what does that mean for the value of Marriott International, who operates 9,361 hotels worldwide as of 2024. In addition there is Hilton who operates over 8,400 hotels worldwide. I have no idea how many they operate in the USA, but these are merely the two larger players, especially in the business travel setting. So how many businesses are under the hammer because of this situation? And now as Canada is growing closer to the Commonwealth and they will protect their bigger brother (Canada is 9.985 million km² and the UK a mere 243,610 km²) OK, Australia is 7.688 million km², away highly smaller brother than the United Kingdom. But that setting now gives us that these business meetings are likely to be held in the United Kingdom or Australia. Hilton and the Marriott will still get their coins, but the underlying issues will hurt America to a much larger degree. And as this escalates over the next month or so, the damage to America will increase. Additional damage as China and India rolls in as expecting ‘saviors’ to Saudi Arabia and the UAE will change global politics and global economics to a much larger degree. India will get new options to get additional Pharmaceutical products sold to Saudi Arabia and that is another slice of a billion dollars. Then we get the UK, Australia and Japan hammering on improving their slice of Optical, photo, technical, medical apparatus, as such the American slice of $1.39B will decrees a lot more. All this started with tariffs and basically this setting was staged by President Trump. I merely wonder what got into him to drive America to the edge of insanity (and bankruptcy). What a miss that politics don’t have rollbacks and I reckon that the lawmakers in America will push for a larger change of settings, because I am certain that the Republicans are desperate to see this damage undone and it is me personal believe that they will accept any other politician, even a democrat to undo the damage they are seeing right now.

A mere 21 hours ago we got (at https://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-seeks-stronger-trade-ties-with-eu-australia-to-offset-potential-us-export-losses) that Indonesia Globe gives us ‘Indonesia Seeks Stronger Trade Ties with EU, Australia to Offset Potential US Export Losses’, which is fine by me as I love the Indonesian version of Bami Goreng with Saté Ajam with peanut sauce. The best dish I ever had, even now after a decade, the scent penetrates my nose, even as I haven’t had it in over a decade. So I am looking forward to stronger ties with Indonesia and I kinda miss the spices we had in Batavia (my weird sense of humor). But the stage is drawn as more countries seek replacement for America, their tariff becomes their setting for isolation and Australia will be happy to have ties with a country that has 281.2 million potential consumers. I already gave the premise to Saudi Arabia as they have access to something Indonesia desires. As such there are more players to take over the places that America is about to lose and lose more of them. Next in line are the international students who will seek safer places to be. In this Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have good chances as they all have great places Oxford, and Cambridge might be the first you think of, but not everyone can afford these places. There is till the University College London, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Toronto, University of Manchester, University of Technology Sydney, University of Southampton. These are merely a Commonwealth grasp of those who are in the top 100 and I reckon that the losses for America start to add up now. And that was merely the Ivy League, America has more good universities and now that the international students will seek education elsewhere, the economic picture of America will deteriorate more and more.

Wouldn’t it have been great to have some kind of political rollback in place?
Have a great day and consider where you need to set your focus to next.

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Tagged as America, Australia, Batavia, Cambridge, Canada, China, Clipper, Commonwealth, economy, Eu, European Union, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs Research, Indonesia, Jakarta, Jakarta Globe, Japan, Mexico, Oxford, politics, President Trump, reuters, tariffs, The Detroit News, Trump, United Kingdom, University College London, University of Manchester, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, University of Southampton, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of Toronto, UNSW, UTS, William Marshall, Xiamen Airlines

April 1, 2025 · 01:46

Accused, Bluff, Carney

It is a regular A,B,C. And at first I let it slide but then I got a response from the most ignorant stupid Canadian on the planet, I kid you not. As such I had to pick this up.

Mark Carney (formerly known as Markie Mark of the British Bank) is now at present the PM of Canada and there is an election coming up. So now we get the accusation (as far as I can see) from the National Post. A magazine who is on the side off whomever opposes Mark Carney (conservatively minded), and will you believe it, they are pushing for plagiarism, weirdly enough, the article is well written making the setting a larger problem and all the other sources basically repeat what the National Post gave its readers.

Two stood out
First there is the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/politics/mark-carney-canada-prime-minister-plagiarism-oxford-b2723812.html) here we also see ‘Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused of plagiarism in his Oxford thesis’, now the issues I had was that the accusation came right when there is an election, the larger setting is that this happened 30 years ago and it was at Oxford and academics take plagiarism as the big booboo. As such there is a larger look at Plagiarism (I remember my days in Uni and there is a frightening fear for that word).

The independent gives us “The accusations were reportedly made by three academics chosen to assess the liberal leader’s 1995 theses for his doctorate by the conservative newspaper the National Post.” More important we were given ““As an academic of nearly 40 years, I see no evidence of plagiarism in the thesis you cited, nor any unusual academic practices,” she emphasized.” This is given to us by Margaret Meyer, an American economist and an economics fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford University. In addition she gives us “Mark’s thesis was evaluated and approved by a faculty committee that saw his work for what it is: an impressive and thoroughly researched analysis that set him apart from his peers” added to that we get “A spokesperson for the Liberal campaign, Isabella Orozco-Madison, called the allegations an “irresponsible mischaracterization” of Carney’s work.” So far, so good. I believe that a thesis would not be unattended for 30 years, not from a place like Oxford. You see, Oxford is surrounded by close to a thousand reporters in any given day, and they have Cambridge looking over their shoulders, just like Oxford is watching Cambridge like a hawk. As I see it, there are issues to some degree and as such we get to the second piece. It comes from

Where we are given “In my January 2024 blog post, “Plagiarism Witch Hunts Cause Harm,” about the case of former Harvard University President, Dr. Claudine Gay, I pointed out that we appear to be in an era where plagiarism is increasingly weaponized against public figures. Following the resignation of Dr. Gay amid plagiarism allegations, we have seen a troubling pattern of using academic integrity as a political weapon rather than an educational concern.” And this is followed by “There is no singular or universally accepted definition of plagiarism. Oxford University defines it as “presenting work or ideas from another source as your own.” However, interpretations of definitions, as well as the definitions themselves can vary from one university to the next, as I have pointed out elsewhere. In Carney’s case, his doctoral supervisor defended his work, stating she saw “no evidence of plagiarism in the thesis,” whereas academics consulted by the National Post disagreed. One professor, Dr. Geoffrey Sigalet, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO) stated that the unattributed quotes are “what we call plagiarism.” According to the National Post article, Dr. Sigalet is a member of the UBCO’s institutional president’s advisory committee on student discipline, “which handles cases of plagiarism for the university”. This disagreement underscores the subjectivity in evaluating academic integrity.” With the added question that gives weight to a few issues I have being “Upon reading the National Post article, one question that I had was: was Mr. Carney informed of the allegations before they were investigated?” My issues was that the media could be in hotter waters than they think. As I see it they propagated this setting by basically whaling whatever the National Post handed down to their audience. The added setting given to us is the one why I basically rejected the article, especially as Markie Mark is an Oxford graduate, on a personal note it isn’t the University of Technology Sydney, but they are a larger lead in university educations. And as such when we are given “Investigating work completed nearly 30 years ago raises questions about motives and impact. As I have pointed out previously when I commented on the Dr. Claudine Gay case, “a retroactive investigation into a person’s academic work while they were a student is often an exercise in discrediting someone in their current professional role.”” I basically rejected the stance as I presumed the clarity of the “using academic integrity as a political weapon”, yet I personally would want to call it “abusing academic integrity and misaligning it as a political weapon” A setting that one raised probably in favor of their Conservative Leader (I believe that in Canada it currently is Pierre Polivicious) and that setting we get to the last part given to us by Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, a Professor and Research Chair in the Werklund School of Education. She gives us the cherrie of the pie. It is given through “So, Did Mark Carney Plagiarize or Not? The answer is, I don’t know. When I conduct an analysis of text for possible plagiarism, it is a meticulously in-depth and detailed process. I start with the allegedly plagiarized text and I go through it line-by-line comparing it to the original sources from which text has been allegedly lifted without attribution. That can show whether or not there is a potential ‘text match’. There are examples of possible text matches in the National Post article, but they are selective. I cannot make a call on whether or not there was plagiarism based on excerpts. I would want to see the full texts (original and allegedly plagiarized), not bits and pieces.

If we can identify a possible text match, then we need to look for additional evidence. Was this sloppy scholarship or poor academic literacy? For example, were the original sources perhaps listed in the bibliography, but the direct quotations were not attributed in the main body of the text? In the context of the entire thesis, would it appear as though the student was deliberately trying to deceive their supervisor or academic advisory committee. (Intent to deceive is difficult, if not impossible to prove in many cases.)” This is the cherrie as it allows to ask the media to ask these questions, especially the media that merely copied what the National Post gave us. And these publications gave us lacking settings in addition. Who talked to the supervisor of Mark Carney? Who took the questions to Nuffield College, Oxford? Seems like two essential sources for these articles. I see several sources lacking.

As such I have said my piece and I do not believe that there is a case for plagiarism against Mark Carney. Not because I got the paper (I basically lack economic knowledge), but for the simple setting that a place like Oxford will slap down any student who pushes Plagiarism, intentional or not. Such plagiarism cases hurt Oxford as much as the student. Then there is the timeline. Do you think that the Bank Of England takes on a student who attempts plagiarism? The timeline includes Goldman Sachs (that place is loaded with economy guys) and his work would have been scrutinized by dozens of people and 30 year later, just at the upcoming election someone makes a breakthrough? It smells like yesterdays diapers as Baby Herman told Roger Rabbit.

Have a great day and enjoy the smell of coffee today.

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Tagged as Bank of England, Canada, Claudine Gay, Geoffrey Sigalet, Goldman Sachs, Isabella Orozco-Madison, Margaret Meyer, Mark Carney, National Post, Nuffield College, Oxford, plagiarism, Sarah Elaine Eaton

December 5, 2024 · 17:07

The price of debt.

That is what I am looking at, the price of debt. You see, they are all hailing that the US economy is strong. One voice (Goldman Sachs), the one that lost it all in 2007 told the world that America would be strong at 2.5% (somewhere I read it). To all it sounds nice and I like nice, but I also query a system that is to my (non-economic view) is rigged. As we see images all over the place on how good things are supposed to be, consider:

We see the setting as tax collected. For 2023 is was “The US government collected nearly $4.7 trillion in gross taxes during the 2023 fiscal year, which is a 15.5% decrease from 2022. The IRS collected taxes from a variety of sources”, now for some it is a little more then milk money. And that sounds nice, but the other side has “As of October 2024, the United States government’s monthly interest rate on its debt is 3.3%. The average interest rate for 2024 is 3.32%, and the total debt is $35.46 trillion.” Consider the simple setting of 3.32% of $35.46 trillion. This gives us $1,170,180,000,000 dollar annually. Which would be ‘liveable’ were it not for the simple fact that this is ONLY interest. The debt remains. And now we have a problem. You see the interest is is a simple 24.89% of the entire taxable revenue and it was 15.5% less from 2022. Do you now see the problem? 25% of all taxable revenue goes to the banks that carry the debt. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in FY 2022. This means that they spend over 30% to much, more than they had and if there was no debt we could argue, but at this setting we are faced with the simple fact that $6.75 trillion was spent over an available amount of $3.5 trillion, which is getting worse and worse. As such we could surmise that the debt will increase with a little over 3 trillion over spending over last year alone. As I see it America is done for. And the setting worsens with the optional crushing of Google in 2025 (by breaking up that firm) which give Huawei their first global win. Then the defence industry is losing more and more revenue to China and this sets a larger premise. In that setting we see on one hand “The A&D industry generated $425 billion in economic value, representing 1.6 percent of the 2023 nominal GDP in the U.S.”, yet in this we already seeing revenue shifting to China in this year alone and more revenue goes to Europe. For Saudi Arabia alone this sets the bar at “In 2024, the Saudi Arabian defense budget is worth $71.7 billion and will grow at a CAGR of more than 8% during 2025-2029.” Yet other sources give us that “Saudi Arabia estimates military spending will be 15 percent lower than budgeted this year” as such we could surmise that this implies that Saudi Arabia by itself would spend $10 billion less. Not a biggie you say, but the other side is that China now has a little over 10% on that slice of delicious gunpowder baked pie. Making the loss for America more. As such we see an annual loss of $16 billion in one year alone from one customer. As such, what would be the books on India, Japan, Taiwan, Pakistan and Indonesia? If we see these picture, we see a dangerous escalation towards some fictive nil revenue for America. Fictive because that will never happen, but as the largest players seek economic stability they will spend less and take other jobs ‘in-house’ as the expression goes and America has been too reluctant to appease to that state of mind. And now China will step in to offer just that. As I see it, the question on the dollar setting was wrong. We are given “As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD” against the tariffs threat by president elect Trump. The actual question would become “How long could the US Dollar keep standing?” You see, as the debt becomes a millstone around the neck of the US administration, we need to consider that some nations will seek shelter from the fallout that this setting. In 2017, on March 17th I wrote ‘The finality of French freedom’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/03/17/the-finality-of-french-freedom/), I set the comparison of the Euro like a barge kept in balance by 4 strong economies. UK, France, Germany and a combined economic anchor. The UK was lost and there was a setting when the French anchor would be lost too. The Euro could not survive a setting with two anchors. A simple equation. Now with the Dollar under attack the Euro could face near certain scuttling. As such the Dollar has an influence there. China seemingly doesn’t care, but the other players who make up a combined anchor might switch sides when they merely look at their own currency. And the debt? They will not care. And as such the dollar faces a lot more than the bully tactics of choice. They will need to up the game by a lot, because when one goes, so will the other and that puts the livelihood and liveability of 784 million people at the markers. 100,000 of them will do fine, but that represents a simple 0.01275348% of people who are likely to make it (outside of the EU and USA), so when were that good statistics?

The price of debt was always there, but the media has been eager and willing to hide those facts through BS and spin and soon when the people catch on (the other 99.987% of people), the live of playing the media courtesan will be one of the most dangerous of them all. People remember. And it was a simple equation for the media. “You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time but you can never fool all of the people all of the time” A simple setting I knew to be true as early as the early 80’s. So how long did they have at most? Some are already falling in the bad light and when the people realise that they weren’t eating potatoes, but turnips. They will become massively enraged.

A simple setting I have known to become reality at some point. So when are we given the goods? When the interest of the debt of America is shown as a setting against the budget and at this time it is around 25%, Americans need to realise that budgets need to diminish by at least 30%, so at what point do the people realise that the simplicity of the matter is that their money is about to be gone?

Have a lovely day.

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Tagged as America, Budgets, China, debt, economics, economy, Eu, Euro, Finance, France, Germany, Goldman Sachs, google, Huawei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Media, Pakistan, politics, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, taxation, UK, USA

October 24, 2023 · 01:23

Digital coins anywhere?

Two articles came to my attention, all about the same subject. The first one was from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67161638) where we see ‘Top crypto firms named in $1bn fraud lawsuit’ this article includes the two favourite in the Facebook (or META) realm. They are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. There we see the accusations by New York attorney Letitia James who gives us “Gemini, a crypto exchange, had lied to customers about the risks of an investment account it offered, which paid high interest rates on crypto.” To be honest, I have yet to see any honest presentation of digital currency, but that is another discussion and we aren’t having that one today. It was the partial setting “Genesis, a crypto lender, and its parent company Digital Currency Group were also involved in the programme. It was halted last November, cutting off customer access to funds. That came shortly after the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now fighting fraud charges of his own. Genesis, which had loaned heavily to his companies, filed for bankruptcy a few months later.” You see, the term ‘heavily loaned’ is loaded. How much EXACTLY was loaned to Bankman-Fired? It is the stage of “In the lawsuit, prosecutors said Gemini was aware that Genesis had shaky financials from the start of the programme.” It implies that there was some under the table dealings between Genesis and Gemini. It doesn’t say so outright, but that is what I am picking up on this. So when we get to “Prosecutors said Genesis and DCG tried to hide the situation with financial manoeuvring and false reports, including to Gemini, while claiming publicly that its balance sheet was strong” we see a second cog in action. It is seen with “false reports, including to Gemini” if true enough it could allow Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss play the victim card. We get more emotion as w usually see in these kind of cases, but the chocolaty centre is there. It is when you consider the second article from Financial News London, who (at https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/goldman-sachs-crypto-firm-bitgo-dubai-hiring-expansion-20231023) gives us ‘Goldman Sachs-backed crypto firm BitGo eyes Dubai expansion’. They aren’t related, but when you consider the amount of issues that digital currency has, the stage changes. I reckon that neither Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss or Sam Bankman-Fried would accept extradition to the UAE if they get to be investigated for fraud or something as trivial as misplacing a few billion? So when we get to “The crypto firm, which is headquartered in the US, has applied for a Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority licence to operate in the Middle East’s key financial hub.” I tend to worry. You see, the moment things go pear shaped and they will, there will suddenly be a lot of tug and pull issues with getting extraditions being completed. These people (the three mentioned) will cry foul, will cry victim and they would not want to face Emirati courts. But that setting will come to full fruition when Goldman Sachs will have to face the music, so when we see “We do have some hiring to do in Dubai as well” I merely wonder if people like Mike Belshe have any clue what they are in for. When you see the FTX setting, the crazy setting that now involves Genesis and Gemini the entire setting is a disaster waiting to happen and no matter how many media will play orchestra for alleged criminals, there will be a larger play in motion and as such when the United Arab Emirates will demand the extradition of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, how many will have left the firm hours before that request hits the tables of the Department of Justice in America (or London for that matter)?

And when you consider that the US and the UAE do not have a formal written extradition treaty, we see why people want to skate on that ice rink, but until America can actually successfully prosecute these people I wonder if it is a good idea to allow this evolution to begin with. I don’t think that anyone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is willing to hand over real created revenue to American cowboys in the setting of billion dollar frauds. There is a fool born every minute and the UAE people don’t strike me as fools. Personally I would never allow this to happen, or at least not until we see proper prosecution and a real extradition treaty in place, but that is just me and as always, I could be wrong.

Enjoy Monday.

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Tagged as America, BBC, Facebook, Financial News London, FTX, Goldman Sachs, Letitia James, Meta, Mike Belshe, New York, Sam Bankman-Fried, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, UAE, United Arab Emirates, USA, Winklevoss

August 19, 2023 · 23:50

It started with television

To get the entire mess I will start with a television episode.

The line was “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment behind your nightmare scenario” it was linking a conversation between President Bartlett and Dr. Takahashi. The episode was ‘A good Day’ season 6 episode 17. Yes, this part is fiction and some of the mentioned elements were too, but not all and that is the striking part. This episode aired in March 2005. You think that would be the end of it, but you would be wrong. Lets take a look at reality.

The Financial Times gave us ‘Saudi Arabia cuts holdings of US Treasuries to 6-year low’ on august 17th (at https://www.ft.com/content/2925952d-1e20-4748-8fa4-05b3605fc46a). There we are given “Saudi Arabia sold down its holdings of US Treasuries in June to the lowest in more than six years, as the kingdom directs more funds to foreign equity and domestic investments. The kingdom held $108.1bn of Treasury securities in June, down $3.2bn from May and below the $119.7bn it held at the end of last year, according to data from the US Treasury department.” This is merely part one, the second part is seen with ‘China likely to cut more US debt holdings’ (at https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202308/16/WS64dce79ba31035260b81c880.html) this is not the end, this is merely the beginning of what was described in the West Wing as the nightmare scenario. You would think that the EU and Japan would come to the aid of the US, but you would be wrong. Mario Draghi overspend trillions in the past and now the EU credit card is stretched to the max. Japan had in March 2023, a Japanese public debt is estimated to be approximately 9.2 trillion US Dollars, or 263% of GDP. Japan has no place to go and that is the beginning of systems collapsing. The US is in its endgame towards becoming an economic third world nation.

Yet there is more tom come. We also get (at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/death-entire-financial-monetary-social-180841464.html) ‘‘It’s The Death Of The Entire Financial, Monetary And Social System’: This Market Expert Warns The U.S. Dollar Is Quickly Losing Its Reserve Status.’ I do not know Jing Pan and I do not know whether she is correct, but she gives us one part that struck a nerve. She gives us “In March, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank grabbed major headlines. After the bank sold its Treasury bond portfolio, it incurred a substantial loss, causing depositors to question its liquidity and leading to a bank run. Amid this market upheaval, Silvergate Bank, First Republic Bank and Signature Bank failed as well. “This banking crisis is not over,” she said. “Maybe they’ve been able to paper over it, and so everybody is calm, and you have consumer confidence going up and all of this other kind of garbage. But it’s built on a house of lies.”” It struck a nerve because I got there through different means. You see when the SVB issues was playing out, we suddenly get a news article with Janet Yellen who is keeping tabs on the situation. Janet Yellen, United States Secretary of the Treasury. Not some governor from California, not someone from the banking industry. No, it was El Jefe from the treasury herself. It was overkill. I had issues and I wrote about them earlier (not sure when). I wondered why the SVB was in that setting and why Yellen personally took notice. I wondered who was holding the US bonds. Because banks had some of the bonds, but no one had a list of how much and no one had a clue (or remained silent) on how much the SVB was holding.

As such I had an issue, things weren’t adding up. And now the two largest finders of the planet are shedding the US debt. As I see it the US has painted themselves in a corner and things will go ugly soon enough.

This is where the next article comes in. The article (at https://tickernews.co/u-s-credit-card-debt-levels-just-surpassed-1-trillion/), which is not the only source gives us ‘U.S. credit card debt levels just surpassed $1-trillion’, as such 300 million people have a collective debt of over on thousand billion. This amounts to the degree that every American has a debt well over $3,000. So how will this unfold when the dollar drops? Now, I am generalising but the larger stage is now set. Bonds are going nowhere and in 2022 long-dated U.S. notes lost 39.2% in value. So how safe are those bonds now? We know about the inflation and that it is rising, but CNN reports that ‘US banks sitting on unrealised losses of $620 billion’. This came to us in March, as such the SVB issues are rising, are they not? So where are those bonds? Who is reaping the losses on that one and the nightmare scenario that a television series gave to us in 2005 is about to become a very real issue in 2023 and 2024.

We might have thought 20 years ago that bonds were the safest place to be, but only 20 years later and this is no longer a reality and moreover the allies of the USA are shedding them, or cashing in to reduce the damage from them. This leaves America in a very vulnerable position. As I personally see it, they painted themselves in a corner and the windows on the two adjacent walls are soon out of reach to anyone in that corner. To add to this, the paint is red and massively toxic (as I see it), so no release unless someone can find a little over 20 trillion to help the US, the usual suspects are out of cash and I reckon Russia will not offer help either. Consumers have a total accumulated debt that surpasses a trillion and the bad news keeps on stacking up. All because politicians were playing the ‘screw it’ card. Now that the ledgers are up for grabs the US is sitting in the worst spot it has been in in well over a century and corporate and business America is looking for any way out of the US at present.

When you see that image and you add the failures of Microsoft a different image comes to mind and it is not a pretty one. So why Microsoft? Because it is part of the Dow Jones Index. It might only be for 4.9% but when that goes south the DJI will see a much larger problem. You see it is not merely Microsoft, it becomes an issue for Goldman Sachs as well and when the dollar collapses. What do you think that places like UnitedHealth Group, Johnson & Johnson, VISA, American Express and Walmart will be left with? When over 150 million will have no money left the consumers pushing the aforementioned companies up will also fade pushing rates and results down. All things that could have been seen will over 2-3 years ago. And there is no blaming the Russian-Ukrainian war, this would have happened no matter what. Optionally it happened sooner, but not much sooner.

Even if ‘A good day’ was the start, the settings have been in place for years. I believe the media merely looked the other way, because the other view was sexy and optionally offered more digital dollars, another funny money business.

So am I wrong?
That is the question. I could be and relating articles like I am is to some degree folly, but it was all I had at the time. And if there is an economic person (I am not one) giving us a clear answer why I am wrong, I would accept that, but there are too many issues in the field and there are too many issues out in the open. I wonder if anyone could counter them all. But I will keep my eyes open to see if someone goes that way.

Anyway, have a great day and I am about to start the final day of the weekend.

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July 3, 2022 · 21:51

Appeal to the lazy

There was a man who suddenly reached out. Making claim that he was wealthy and important, which was the first red flag. You see important people assume that others know that they are important. The only thing I had to do to get $10 million was to admit that my IP wasn’t real. Well there are two problems, one is that people offering me $10M usually do not have two coins to rub together, the second part is that I am not some grifter. I worked hard to get the IP I have (if brainpower represents hard work), the second part is that if I would be willing to send over the IP, he would sign an NDA and give me free of charge a value estimate. So how stupid does that dodo think I am? This is why I set the IP to encryption and place it on 4Chan, in the first I can prove that I uploaded them and if it gets to October 1st, well over a dozen people will see the puzzle and if they solve it, the IP is theirs. If I can’t cash in, I will make it public domain and let the fates show who is worthy. And with close to a million people a day posting, my posts (which I put there with a Japanese profile) will welcome the stuff of legends. The 5G, the setting of consoles and several other IP are there and protected. It is like trying to find a needle in a mountain of needles and as the encryption is one that requires a human touch, I doubt any AI (or claimed AI) can find it. The first step in avoiding a trap is to know what the trap looks like and no AI faced this before, so whomever tries to dissect EVERY picture will face a task with billions of images and that is if you do not stumble upon some Russian encrypted images first. It will be fun watching the witch hunt from a distance, way distant as my systems have never been on or will go on 4Chan, to avoid some trail.

What is interesting is the approach they made, like it was their bread and water, like it is all they live for. I actually do not know anyone (at last not alive) who makes their cash swindling. They are usually caught early in whatever scam they perform. So it might be a new player, or someone only pretending to be a grifter, there is option three that this person is really good, but the talk I had did not reveal a person overburdened by intelligence. And going by the setting that I put a niche market valued at $1B-$5B online for the quick Public Domain players, his setting is even weirder. He was apparently not aware of what I had done. This basically means that this man had not done his homework. And speaking of homework, I saw some news that involved Saudi Arabia. In one place we see ‘Mizkif cancels Saudi Arabian sponsorship deal after Twitch conversation with Hasan’ and it is here “Fans were quick to criticise Mizkif for initially agreeing to the sponsorship.

Going live on Twitch mere minutes after the information leaked, Mizkif claimed he knew nothing about any country’s controversies.” Now I have no issue with anyone cancelling getting paid, but consider “Hasan filled Mizkif in on Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Yemen Civil War, along with its various domestic conflicts.” The few facts:

Iran is actively involved.
Houthis have stopped UN support to people.
Houthi’s use children in their war.

And in finality, Saudi Arabia only got involved when their help was called for by a legitimate elected government. Are there errors that involve Saudi Arabia? Most likely this is a war, errors will be made on both sides, Yet the western media have trivialised Houthi drone attacks on Civilian targets in Saudi Arabia. They trivialised the actions by both Houthi and Iranian players on Yemen and on Saudi Arabia. I wonder if this Hasan told Mizkif all that. I would accept a sponsorship and create these news-cycles on YouTube, but I reckon that Google and the media would make sure that almost no one ever saw them. The game is rigged and it implies that some players have a bigger goal in mind and it is not the Yemeni people. After 8 years not that many Yemeni people remain. And the article ended with ““I’m not doing it, I didn’t know the realities of what it was,” Mizkif proclaimed.” Another player not doing his homework. And that I all I have on this situation. Mizkif made a choice and changed his mind. Fine! Whether I agree does not matter, it was his choice to make. An other person, named Asmongold from that environment gave us “After learning more about the Saudi Arabia Fortnite sponsorship that fellow OTK founder Mizkif accepted but later backed out of, Twitch streamer Asmongold says he would take the deal regardless of the controversy—as long as he didn’t have to travel.” You see, Mizkif loses out now and Asmongold optionally steps in. I do not believe that this has anything to do with ethics, or standards. If that was true, several banks would lose billions in revenue, Wall Street would have to bar Goldman Sachs and a few other players. Yet that does not happen, does it? So why do we attack Saudi Arabia at every turn? Because they are an Islamic nation? Islamic nations represent well over 25% of the planets population, in addition christian nations have committed genocide 15 times over, how many cases of genocide can you show for islamic nations? Not that many I guess. Yet in the meantime I will continue creating more IP. I will show show this man who called himself Arthur that being a grifter is the loneliest and least rewarding stage of life. And whilst we wonder what one does with the other, consider that the media seemingly decides who is worthy, a choice that you were denied, as such my 4Chan solution is just fine. They can only stare in the distance when it slips by and that is more rewarding than the fake $10M offered. Remember a promise and an empty sack is worth the empty sack. A crude but decently wise stage we should consider.

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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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October 30, 2019 · 12:03

And the news is where?

Well there was the news this morning ‘World leaders return to ‘Davos in desert’ a year after Khashoggi boycott‘, but I dealt with that 4 days ago during ‘When we say ‘Ney’ to an event‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/10/24/when-we-say-ney-to-an-event/), complete with the summit time frame, seems like such an interesting delay. Perhaps the entire Nikkei setting is rather more interesting than that. Nikkei review giving us “Mizuho and SMBC among 15 names planned for historic listing“, whilst also giving us “The roster of underwriters could change depending on where Saudi Aramco goes public“, that part will get more visibility in the stage where ‘Aramco proposes two-stage IPO, shunning London and Hong Kong‘, that partially made sense, especially as HSBC took a flounder in the last year, by itself it is not a explanation, yet the events that overlap Jamal Khashoggi and certain times events in that light have not been considered ‘fair play’ by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in that light the events shunning London would make sense. And this is the direct consequence of certain tasks made by certain elements who thought that jerking off the market because the going was good some kind of thing. Well, yes, that is exactly how I would phrase it, especially over the year when we saw Saudi Arabia being hunted and nagged in three different ways; I think it is fair to call it that. I see no reason to call it any other way. Now that the initial plans for a petrochemical location in China is ready to be mapped out at $10 billion, China will have new options whilst Saudi Arabia is opening a new vat of tactics, the US is now up in arms to sooth their longtime partner and they better pucker up. The US made sure that the Khashoggi matter got light and then the lost track of their novelty, they were not prepared for the windfall others made of it and now we are given: “The crown prince denies involvement, but told US TV last month that he took “full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia”” an issue that was out in the media, but did you not consider the cost involved? Did you think that this comes for free? Even as we were given “it triggered Saudi Arabia’s biggest diplomatic crisis since the 9/11 attacks as world leaders and business executives sought to distance themselves from Riyadh“, it does come at a cost and Aramco is the first to exact the cost of doing business, it is the first of several steps, the deals with India and China are too soon, too visible and it shows a Kingdom who was sick and tired of two faced options in oil, now that we see that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has options, now that the west is about to learn that you cannot play certain games, now they will all be about the ‘miscommunication’, they will be all about the freedom of the press even as we see that the freedom of the press is some convoluted story, some story that we tended to warn scholars about, like we see in Umberto Eco, the name of the Rose (post-glad infringed upon for this event) ““Until then I had thought each preacher spoke of the events, human or economical, that lie outside books not told of. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of white papers: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the gathering seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, annual murmuring upon an imperceptible dialogue between one vision debated on and another ones paper, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by any human mind, but the cistern of wealth merely a treasure of ill spoken events emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.””

I recently had to revisit an abbey in northern Italy so it made sense as well and the years are actually in several ways applicable. The Divine Comedy (Dante Aliegieri) finishes at this stage, the era was founded by double entry bookkeeping, the Italian bankers who designed it had no idea what impact it would have on accountancy or that the practice would survive until today. Yet, Umberto Eco placed his novella in an interesting time, Yet that time 680 years later we see that the question of wealth is very much at the heart of the matter, yet not in hands of the Christian church, it is there that we see the actions of certain members of coinage to be handled from. Feel free to disagree with me, but when you place the events as they were played over the last year and who exactly started these accusations, with the preemptive part of evidence that cannot have any further meaning, including the UN Essay by A. Callamard, can we answer in any other way that something is apparently wrong?

We merely need to look at the impeachment of a Trump card, a mere clown in the entire financial orchestra, when we see the steps allocated by intelligence and civic groups, whilst a Crown Prince was indited on paper with no resulting evidence, do you really think that it is merely a farce? Now that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has met with two events, it is stronger than ever to settle Aramco, to settle oil disputes and America might not care, but now that their own surpluses and their own economic value is now under attack, its 21 trillion dollar noose will become more than just the chain around a junkyard dog seeking a larger yard to bark in. And now it is only just that I include the bank that was around in the beginning of Umberto Eco’s tale, in 1327, from brothers financing governments the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) would grow and from its acquisitions in 2008, the hidden losses and the bailout in 2013 it never stopped being the BMPS, J.P. Morgan, Mediobanca, Banco Santander, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs had signed a pre-underwriting agreement with BMPS in July, with all kinds of assurances, several of them all now shunned in the Aramco deal.

There is part of it that I cannot prove, I am not stating that I found certain links that are personally as shallow as it gets, yet certain people made transfers to other avenues, and in those positions they would if that deal went through made huge waves, if nothing happened, then they would be in an interesting place, so we cannot go on anything that flimsy (I don’t work for the UN after all), but the time line is weirdly skewed in certain visibility graphs, one would consider that certain acts would have been ‘concidental’ top a fault if it would have happened and it would have been the savior of what would be the “the industrial plan of the bank was approved, which the bank would be re-capitalized for €8.1 billion, but only €3.9 billion would be underwritten by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (excluding additional shares that would be buyback from retail bondholders by the government), with the rest were the “bail-in” of bondholders, mandatorily converted the bond of the bank to shares” Some would ask questions on the grounds of Margrethe Vestager, yet they would be wrong, I believe that certain matters had been in the frying pan a lot longer than that. And the entire Saudi Arabia matter does not stop there, where it stops is up in the air, because both Wall Street and a wealth banker that is above all this would prefer it this way, so when some are stumping their chest giving you the goods on some deal, just be thankful that it is not your coinage that is depending on this deal.

That is the underlying sound of more than just an Aramco deal, it is all over the place and even if my view is not to be seen as the correct one, consider what evidence you are going from, I never told you the little evidence that I have based this on, for the mere reason that two or three memos could be seen as mere typo’s, but how could my story exist?

Consider that I gave visibility to certain parts weeks ago, and that I was ahead of the curve for some time, after which my interest merely grew in other directions, I had finished the puzzle, I had no real reason to watch it unfold until completion, it was merely an exercise at that moment and like all other people, I hate exercises.

Yet I left two parts out, it is not important, but it gives a larger play towards the entirety, consider Davos in the Desert 2015, who was there and who absconded, consider that this was BEFORE Khashoggi and who came out of the woodwork? That is one part; I let you figure out the second hint. Now consider what options the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has left when the table is spread the way it is, I wonder if you can see the irrefutable acts of discrimination.

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October 24, 2019 · 11:04

When we say ‘Ney’ to an event

We have all kinds of events going on, some we attend, some we show interest in, some are nice to be at. We have all kinds of events that require our attention. For example if there are 7 events to watch and you can only attend 4, how will you go about it? I for one distinguish it into a whole range of requirements, the first being ‘Have to attend‘, that is number one and in that cadaster 2 of the 7 will be found, then we get the ‘Nice to be at‘ and ‘Show interests in‘, they are of equal footing (in my case), now we have three more and we can settle our differences in to any of the three, it is more of a jumble, for those two out of three we get to watch the travel arrangements, the visitor spectacle and there we are off to the races.

That is how it goes into the normal realm of opportunity, so as I look at ‘Davos in the Desert‘ it would be one in the ‘Have to attend’ group. The heads of states are there, my Trademarks office could optionally score one large fish, the tranquility of having one corporate trademarks revenue is just too lard to pass up on. And that is before we consider the opportunity that trademarks in the Middle East and predominantly Saudi Arabia with companies like SAMA, SAMI, Aramco could have over a much larger setting, apart from the IP that I am holding on to. For Bloomberg this is what I call a ‘must attend’ kind of a show, so as we are given: “Axios reported earlier on Wednesday that Bloomberg reporters were scheduled to moderate nine of the panels in a draft of the program. Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman, told Axios that “Bloomberg is not sponsoring the event or participating in the program. We will be covering news from the conference, as we did last year.”” gives a stemming sound, a ‘we are there but we are not‘ kind of hustling in the woodwork. For a show like “Davos in the Desert“, seeing Bloomberg to remain absent is almost like a denial of the importance of “Davos in the Desert“. I see it in a larger frame, Bloomberg is doing the bidding of its corner office, Bloomberg called back like the little dog it is, the wonder of this chihuahua would be the Wall Street pound, they want the world to know that they are upset that Aramco went to the Japanese. A given 3.54% of every ticket sold that would be the income of most hedge funds managers who saw Aramco as a nice on the side grown food, now going towards the Nikkei, there is a larger game afoot and Bloomberg gets to be the messenger. I wonder how many US newspapers will hold some kind of a Khashoggi reverent during the October 28–31 window, I wonder how many newspapers will call upon the dead reporter, all whilst the events in Turkey will not call for any events, will they. Yes, the death of one journalist against the bombing of an entire group of people is so much more justified. Yet there is a large group of US people in attendance, we see Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner. Former Treasury undersecretary David Malpass, now the president of the World Bank, is also on the list, as is former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci. Then there are the top financiers Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup, Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse, and Noel Quinn, CEO of HSBC. Fund managers include Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, Robert Smith of Vista, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Larry Fink of BlackRock, Daniel Loeb of Third Point, and Barry Sternlicht of Starwood. Even Masayoshi Son of Softbank is there and so is Will.i.am. The British entertainer and part of the Black Eyed Peas, beyond that he is a rapper, DJ, songwriter, record producer as well as a philantropist. He gets to be there, yet Bloomberg is calling ‘no show’?

I have no goal or esparations perse, but I would go there because one customer from that isle means that I would not have to go scrapping for customers for at least 8-12 years for 50% of the time. The rewards are that impressive, also the foundation of IP laws would be sought after in such a place, and being one of less than 20 attendance given IP lawyers, it would be interesting, even if a dozen of them end up with my business card, it will gradually mean that business comes my way, now for me it is not a given but for someone like Bloomberg it very much means that the larger corporations will be setting meetings with someone like Bloomberg, but now, we see “the State Department recently booked 45 rooms at Riyadh’s Burj Rafal Hotel in support of the two “VVIP visitors” taking part in the kingdom’s third annual Future Investment Initiative, as the event is officially known“, as well as “including representatives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and BlackRock, according to a guest list” and some of these parties will get to grow to a rather large setting especially now that Bloomberg is not appearing.

And when you look at the event: PDF DavosintheDeseert2019

You’ll see that anyone with commercial aspirations would want to attend, which beckons the question why would Bloomberg not attend? More worrying is the setting of making this blaze about a week ahead of schedule. From the very beginning when H.E. Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan, Advisor to the General Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers, Governor of the Public Investment Fund, KSA opens the event, until the final event where H.E. Bassem Awadallah, CEO, Tomoh Advisory, UAE moderates the final event, namely the G20, a setting I would presume that Bloomberg has vested interest in, but they give way to absentee. 70 events over 3 days, with all kinds of interim discussion options, yet the absentee of Bloomberg make perfect sense, does it not?

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February 1, 2019 · 12:43

Updates

First of all

So whilst Microsoft is trying to rephrase their weak position through: ‘We are continuing to look at engagement as our key metric for success and are no longer reporting on total console sales‘, yes try to sell that whilst you have been all aggro on boasting boosted numbers for decades. Now that Xbox is about to become the number THREE system, they are running scared. The Nintendo Switch is now at 32 million, which surpasses the previous total number of Xbox One consoles sold, but they are currently allegedly at 41 million consoles sold, which means that there is only a 9 million gap until the most powerful console in the world degrades to the bronze position. Nintendo sold 14 million consoles in the last quarter alone, so that gives light that this is the last quarter with Xbox in the number two position, optionally the last month. Yet, I admit, my expectation of passing Microsoft by January 31^st was not met, I was wrong. Yet the total number of consoles sold in the last quarter is still an amazing feat by Nintendo and it also shows that even as I was not correct in the end, my view was a lot better than all the market analysts.

The writing is on the wall.

I personally believe that some analysts have been setting the stage for shorting the stock of Nintendo. The question becomes what the law states. You see, when we look at the definition of shorting stock, the most generic version is: “he or she borrows shares of a company from an existing owner through his brokerage, sells those borrowed shares at the current market price, and pockets the cash“, yet in this case, the premise is not entirely that clear, with ‘he or she borrows‘ we need to consider that shorting the stock was done as a service for a third party, giving rise to the sale at tremendous profits. At present I seem to be wrong, there is no evidence of a setting to allow for a short sell. Yet the predictions that were made last year were so wrong, in so many ways that the overall findings would lead me to this path (there are others too). So is it just me? I would actually agree with this, was it not for the fact that the level of wrongness regarding Nintendo was so profound.

The state last year (Oct 2018) was given with ‘Nintendo Delivers Record Quarter, But Misses Estimates‘, so the stock tumbled a little less than 2%, in all this, whilst within a year the total lifetime sales of the Microsoft Xbox One were completely by 67% at that time, in addition, the software sales were almost globally ruling software top ten lists all over the place. We can argue that the ‘missed estimates’ were so ludicrously unrealistic that the entire matter had to be looked at, now we see the last quarter alone delivered 14 million consoles, which is almost 50% of what Microsoft achieved in sales between 2012 and 2016, four years versus three months, so how were estimations missed?

The puzzlement is supported even further with: “That’s Nintendo’s most profitable Q2 in eight years and a solid increase from the $211 million it booked last year.” It is in that light that I had an issue with the predictions in the last year. From my point of view Nintendo smashed almost every record, yet the stock is not reflecting that, giving rise to a few issues, but as a non-trader and a non-economy educated person, I cannot give the weight to that thought, yet the thought remains.

And now that we are treated to: ‘Nintendo cuts Switch sales forecast despite strong holiday season‘ the matter should be set, yet I am not convinced. Even as we see 14.5 million consoles up to now the last two months are unlikely to give them the 5.5 million consoles they need, they expect to get 2.5 million consoles and that seems achievable. I am not convinced that the 5.5 million consoles cannot be met, merely because Microsoft is on the ropes and there is no marketing, no advertising to reflect that. In this aggressive expansion universe it seems odd that Nintendo is not taking up the gauntlet to that degree.

They drastically improved visibility, especially compared to the WiiU. They have the titles that have a large appeal across the board and the people who do play the Switch love the interactions. In addition the shock news of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and the fact is that it is exclusively to Nintendo Switch is not merely news, it is equally a shocker to Sony as well, as this was the kind of stuff that Sony needed to prevent from happening. The fans (including me) loved the first one on Xbox 360 and as we see the foundation of the original Gauntlet added to the DC and Marvel Universe, we get a game any comic book fan would love to play and nearly everyone that was one did and loved it. So to get this exclusively to Switch is a dealmaker as well as a record breaker. I doubt that this game will be out in time to get the next quarter sales up to the degree it needs to be upped, but it will soar sales of Nintendo yet again (optionally not in time to make the 20 million marker).

So did Nintendo do it wrong? I am not convinced, they made huge mistakes in the WiiU era and seemingly repaired all those flaws in the Nintendo Switch stage, no matter what estimates were not met, we now see that Nintendo Switch has gotten to 45% mark of the PlayStation 4 lifetime sales in under 2 years which is quite the feat as Microsoft got nowhere near that result, ever!

In second place

This is given to us by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/31/italy-slips-into-recession-for-third-time-in-a-decade-economy) it is in the setting of the same wall with more writing. It was to be expected as Italy has a whole range of economic anchors and downfalls. Yet I had hoped that Italy would have been able to stagnate their economy; alas they do not get to be that lucky and recession is the result. The problem is that this could also adversely affect France at present. It is (according to the Business Insider) yet at present the recession there is most likely, yet not a certainty. No matter how it wields, the French President will have to make a few committing jumps on several levels and as the stage between the US and the EU is polarising France will be on the side of the French needs, which by the way is not on par with American needs, so the Europeans have that to look forward to in the next 5 weeks. It is also the Italian part where we see failings, the Guardian gives us: “The deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio, the head of the Five Star Movement, said the recession was proof that Europe’s budget rules should be relaxed to allow Italy to stimulate its economy back to growth“, which is the larger mistake. That approach did not work for the ECB and now the EU nations have a 3 trillion Euro anchor around their necks, adding debt will not have any true influence on the economy. the entire spending spree is now to be the anchor that drowns the 27 EU nations sooner rather than later and that is the overbearing part why Brexit was essential, the moment the UK is cut form that, the entire mess evolves too fast for anyone to correct for. The entire mess on four economies, where the one (UK) leaves and two (France and Italy) have merely a recession to offer, which means no options at all leaving it all to Germany who has enough for the ace of spades to be handed to them again and again. Germany avoided recession as it grew by 0.1%, which means that they only defeated the recession on the academic principle. It still means that the German economy is stagnating and that is not a good feeling when you are a German. So whilst we now see a whole parade of blaming the UK on making matters worse through a chaotic Brexit, I merely state that these idiots only have themselves to thank. If they had done something about the lack of transparency at the ECB as well as muzzle Mario Draghi from spending 3 trillion euro’s, money they never had, the situation would not be this dire (as I personally see it). The fact that the Business Insider also reported: (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/europe-economic-gdp-growth-data-heading-to-recession-2019-1) “Junk bonds went through the roof. Total issuance of junk bonds from non-financial companies (rated BBB) went parabolic, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as more highly rated bonds declined“, it is directly linked to the problem, that market went up by €100,000,000,000 in the last year alone, so this time if there is another meltdown (like 2008) and it happens, Europe will not see the fallout as it happened in Wall Street. No, this time around Europe will be the cause of it all to a much larger extent, so the impact on Europe will be beyond disastrous. Whatever quality of life there is, the Europeans can kiss it goodbye for decades. They could quite likely desire the time of harsh austerity, how is that on forecasting quality of life?

In combination

The EU is in a bad place and it has been reflecting all over the place. You see, last November we were treated to: ‘CPPIB is shorting $750 million worth of EU stock, making it one of the most active short-sellers in Europe, data show‘, more important, it gets an added “Unusual in that Canada’s biggest pension plan also tends to hold ‘rather long-term’ positions“. It seems a perfectly valid place to be in, especially when we see that so far that pattern seems valid. We see the additional “the CPPIB has nearly doubled the number of its disclosed short positions since last year, to 23 from 14. That places CPPIB 14th on the list of the most active short sellers in Europe“, as stated before, I can see the presence, and in this case I cannot explain it (merely because I am not knowledgeable enough to do so). Now, as we see the recession hitting Italy, followed by France soon enough, we might see the reflection on how the gains for the CPPIB could be one of the most profitable ones they have ever had. Even as there is still a little doubt, the firm holding ‘$356.3 billion in assets’, might soon be growing to a half a trillion wealth management colossal. With the positions becoming winners as Talend SA, Wirecard and PostNL falling like a brick in free flight, we see that the CPPIB is lunging forwards through growth (for now).

When we see the impact markets where the fun of wealth comes through the investing towards the gloom of failure, there we see profits soar, profits for those selling short that is. This is not the end or the beginning of the end. As France is setting the stage to move directly into a recession we will see more and more short selling profiteers and as France stumbles, the eyes of all will focus on Greece. Even as we are given ‘Greece moves towards ending austerity with rise in minimum wage‘, it is hard to predict the outcome. It makes perfect sense to do this and when you realise it is significantly less than half of what an Australian would get over that same period. It makes us wonder how the Greeks had been able to keep themselves alive. I personally hope that the view of Alexis Tsipras works out the way he thinks it will, the case is viable, and will it work? Only time will tell at present. Yet it is also a dangerous place. That is seen with: “A glimmer of light emerged on Monday as borrowing costs on 10-year bonds dropped to a four–month low and Tsipras announced that the government would imminently be issuing a five-year bond“, we get the logic of essentially needing to borrow, but Greece is in a much too dangerous place and those bonds could backfire in a terrible way, I believe that the bond issuing was done too early, in a time when there is still too much to lose. In that I actually hope that I am wrong, yet my track record towards predicting these events have been too often on the nose and that worries me to no end.

In this Bloomberg view supports mine (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/all-the-risks-besieging-europe-bonds-are-spilling-over-into-2019), the headline ‘All the Risks Besieging Europe Bonds Are Spilling Over Into 2019‘ gives that. Even as the view does not include Greece, the overall risk will be hitting all EU nations (as well as the UK). There are two parts to this, the first opposing me is the view “The risk of spillover from Italy is in our view overestimated,” by Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, head of fixed-income research at Danske Bank A/S. Both that as well as the positivity that he thinks that Spain brings is set on realism, the man is a professional, let’s not forget that. Yet on my side we see: “What happens in Italy is still likely to be felt in its Mediterranean peer, albeit not to the extent of the euro-area debt crisis earlier this decade” this is the Goldman view and I believe t is more accurate, more important the doubt and worrying nature of these investors will make them sketchy and shift happy on a few levels, so when Italy is hit, France will get a beating as will Greece and it will affect Spain too, depending on their economy optionally a lot less and there we get back to the academic non recession of Germany, that 0.1% in the plus, when that gets hit negatively it will escalate the Mediterranean issues by a lot more hitting Spain for certain and hitting the others harder. It is merely my view, yet I believe it to be the correct one. For how much is unknown, I have no idea and I am not willing to guess. We will see a lot more by the end of March. It is at that point where we see what the actual impact will be, at the point the people will decide to either enjoy a little sunshine or make sure that they can avoid the winter of their bank accounts, in Europe these options have become mutually exclusive, an impact that will hit tourism in Greece and Spain in more ways than one. At least the Greek prediction that their tourism will level off in 2019 is decently realistic, which opposes the view: ““2019 will be Greece’s year,” according to DER Touristik, the largest travel company in German-speaking countries” one that is wishful thinking at best.

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