Monthly Archives: March 2023

Hubris

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I keep returning to something.

In 1975, Genesis was a reasonably popular band, that had a serious crisis because its frontman and singer, Peter Gabriel, decided to quit and have a solo career, because, you know, he’s such a creative genius that they are holding him back and stuff. Losing the singer, composer and by all accounts the “main guy” had to be fatal, and the band considered calling it quits, but the drummer said something along the lines of “hell, what do we have to lose; I’ll give it a shot”. The drummer was Phil Collins:

He led the band into the next order of magnitude of success and they became one of the greatest of all time.

I keep thinking about this in the context of the “indispensable” America.

Banks circling the drain

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The banks are performing according to my expectations:

Credit Suisse wasn’t doing well before, and now it’s basically fucked:

Credit Suisse Sparks Global De-Risking After Top Investor Bails (ZeroHedge)

On Wednesday, Credit Suisse Group AG’s shares reached their lowest point ever, dropping by as much as 10%. This is the eighth consecutive session of decline, which comes in the wake of restructuring issues, delays in submitting its annual report due to ‘material weakness’ flagged by the SEC last week, and a broader industry selloff following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. In addition to these challenges, the troubled Swiss bank now faces a new problem: its top shareholder has said they will not invest any further due to the sharp decline in valuations.

“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Wednesday.

That was in response to a question about whether Credit Suisse would receive fresh injections if another liquidity crisis emerged.

Saudi National Bank, which is 37% owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, is Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder as of late 2022 after acquiring a 9.9% stake. Al Khudairy said there are no plans at the moment to take the stake over the 10% threshold because of regulatory hurdles. In the last several months, since the bank’s equity has been on a waterfall lower, the Saudis have lost more than 500 million francs on their position.

The news the Saudis are perhaps done supporting the troubled Swiss bank sent shares down as much as 25% to a new record low in Zurich.

I have nothing new to add in terms of my recommendations; basically, the banks are going down, the fiat currency system is going down, everything based on America and the Dollar is going down, what follows is extreme turbulence and insecurity, the lemmings are going down the cliff.

You know what I think is a good idea. 🙂

Timeline

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Recently, Mexico declared lithium a strategically important resource and nationalized all deposits.

Biljana’s comment at that point was “watch how America occupies Mexico now”.

Current news: America contemplates sending the military to Mexico, because the terrible “drug cartels” (probably CIA-run) kidnapped some Americans, and baby Jesus will cry if America doesn’t introduce democracy and rules-based order to the suffering people of Mexico whose leader is a dictator who is killing his own people with weapons of mass destruction and is a new Hitler.

Either Biljana is a prophet, or America became predictable as fuck; you tell me.

More 1st world problems

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Another Norfolk Southern train derails in Springfield, Ohio after toxic East Palestine spill.

A Norfolk Southern cargo train derailed in Ohio on Saturday evening, one month after the derailment of another company train carrying hazardous materials sparked concerns about the safety of those nearby.

The Saturday incident took place near the town of Springfield, Ohio, as the 212-car train traveled south, a company spokesperson said. About 20 cars from the train, which did not have passengers on board, derailed by State Route 41 near the Clark County Fairgrounds, leading officials to advise locals within 1,000 feet of the scene to shelter in place. The derailment also caused more than 1,500 residents to temporarily lose power.

This is, of course, anything but unexpected, if we remember what the train tracks look like over there, and they obviously aren’t repairing them, so if the trains somehow managed to limp along in the past, and the condition degraded further with time and use, it’s obvious that at some point derailment would become the default option.

That’s privatisation for you – it’s unprofitable for the company owning the tracks to invest in repairs, so they milk it for as long as possible, bribe the politicians to leave them alone because that’s cheaper than repairs, and then liquidate the business, split the money between the owners and have someone else deal with the unprofitable business of repairing infrastructure, someone like the state, and then bribe the politicians again to let you “privatise” the infrastructure, promising you’ll do a much better job, because businesses are so much more efficient at managing assets.

The problem is, the businesses are very efficient at milking assets for profit, but they are very inefficient when you need to make large investments in things that will provide long-term benefits to the people at very moderate returns over the decades and centuries. Businesses prefer to make lots of money fast, and in this case we can see what it looks like – neglect, corruption, harm.