It doesn't matter

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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The root of suffering is attachment.

Buddha


I am not yet here but as I got older I came to the conclusion that most of things really don't matter.  On the political front in Europe we are electing totally incapable people to office and the world goes on, it looks like someone is in charge besides the politics. It really doesn't matter.


PS In Venezuela it mattered a lot. If you are not in a free trade region it matters a lot who you put in office.

Plant for the future

Tuesday, February 26, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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 "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant."
 Robert Louis Stevenson

Imperative to miss the pain

Monday, February 25, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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Buy & hold line 1

miss the 50 best & 50 worst months line 4

who wins? line 4

imperative miss the bullets is key

Tailand report

Monday, February 25, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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I have been to Thailand last week with Catarina. 3 days in Bangkok and 6 in the beach. here are some datapoints:

1.Emirates is an efficient airline but no more than that. Service stiff and lousy food. very good entertainment. They speak all the time and make to plane ready to land 45 min before necessary. They have an internal policy of not letting anyone sleep.

2.Bangkok is a gigantic China Shop with cheap products. they were invaded by Chinese tourists and Chinese products.

3.If a single child sometimes doesn't behave ok imagine a country (China) with only one child families. Kids are dictators parents the servants.

4.Some ultra luxury shopping centers dedicated to chinese.

5.Thais are very educated, no one horns the car or bike. people are generally at ease. really no stress. Budism works.

6.Food is great.

7. Difficult to move in Bangkok, too many rivers and water. I could not figure out the organization of the city.

9.Floating market is a scam, its made for tourists, there is no one single thai shopping there. They take you a picture like if you were at Eurodisney.

10. The beachs in the south are completely different, zero Chinese and only some Scandinavians in our lodge. water is hot. you can stay hours swimming.

11.There was no police, we rented a scooter with the take the key and go system.. There was no cash machine in the island. there was no shopping center. there was light in the bungalow.

12.The food was great from a Thai/french chef and cheap

If you want a place without resorts, without Hotels and without tour groups there are places in Thailand still.

13.Thailand is not a place to drink. Too expensive  huge taxes on alcohol (wine). Good time for a detox. reading swimming and sleeping. There was no TV of course. They had wifi in the restaurant.

15.Best in Thailand!  Foot massage.

The Future is now

Wednesday, February 06, 2019 Francisco 1 Comments

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It takes five times as many coal miners and coal power plant workers to produce a megawatt-hour of electricity as employees in the wind power sector, 50% more than gas and twice as many as solar.  Safety issues with nuclear bumps up employee numbers, with 9,000 armed guards at the nation’s 62 nuclear facilities.
Last month, Vistra Energy closed a power plant in Texas, along with a mine that supplied it with coal via a 15-mile long conveyor belt.  In total, 450 positions were eliminated.  Later this summer, Vistra plans to open one of the largest solar farms in the country in West Texas that will employ two people who might only work part-time.

Demographics and Debt

Tuesday, February 05, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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A simple remark here. Something that should be mentioned: The demography of most of southern Europe is terrifying. The fertility rate I remember being at 1.3 for more than a decade now. So you have an enormous amount of debt with a shrinking population. So it implies that if you want to service that debt with a shrinking population you will have another fall in the standard of living. There is no other possibility. And that's politically difficult to explain to the population. So the only way to get out is basically for the countries with the lousy demographics to repay their debt in a different currency, not in deutschemark but in lira.

Charles Gave

The poor man of the world

Tuesday, February 05, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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the banks today in Europe, the biggest banks in Europe, have a market cap lower than that of JP Morgan in the US. The whole banking system in Europe has a lower market cap because everyone knows that these banks are loaded with European bonds and nobody knows what they are going to be worth.

Charles Gave

i Agree

Monday, February 04, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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Globalization is largely responsible for the lack of real wage growth in the G-7 countries for more than a decade

A Gary Shilling

If someone can do your job in China by a fraction of the price it's better to close the border unless you are a plumber or hairdresser!

More fools than money?

Monday, February 04, 2019 Francisco 0 Comments

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Already, the world monetary base, which rise at a 4% annual rate in this cycle, first turned negative last June and has now declined 6.6% year over year.  Much of this is caused by the drop in the U.S. monetary base (Chart 2, page 2) caused by the reduction in the Fed’s Treasury holdings.