UK

Thank you. So, if I understand correctly, at upper bands, it would be something like about 6 per cent from CAP for FFH (and 1 per cent to BRK).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/hurricane-ian-threatens-to-overshadow-andrew-s-devastation?srnd=premium-europe Would FFH felt substantial impact if such predictions come true?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-berkshire-hathaway-could-be-among-top-payers-of-new-minimum-tax-11664098382 The UNC analysis comes with caveats. Lacking confidential tax returns that would allow precise calculations, the authors used publicly available financial data. Companies might change behavior to minimize taxes. A one-year snapshot includes unusual situations that cause companies to pay the minimum tax once, generating tax credits that can be used in future years. Under the new law, companies averaging more than $1 billion in publicly reported annual profits calculate their taxes twice: once under the regular system with a 21% rate and again with a 15% rate and different rules for deductions and credits. They pay whichever is higher. The new system, known as the book minimum tax, starts with income reported on the financial statement, not traditional taxable income. Differences between the two—the treatment of stock-based compensation, for example—could drive a company into paying the new tax. According to the UNC estimates, Berkshire Hathaway would have paid the most in 2021, at $8.3 billion—or about a quarter of the estimated total—followed by Amazon at $2.8 billion and Ford Motor Co. at $1.9 billion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-warns-russia-of-catastrophic-consequences-of-using-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine-11664116188 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapon-us-response/661315/

In the oher news: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/22/turkey-cuts-interest-rates-again-as-country-struggles-under-inflation.html Erdogan, meanwhile, remains optimistic, predicting that inflation will fall by year-end. “Inflation is not an insurmountable economic threat. I am an economist,” the president said during an interview Tuesday. Erdogan is not an economist by training.

And TSLA still >CAP 800 B!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-market-still-isnt-priced-for-a-proper-recession-11663857523 i have no idea, but just for fun, speaking about this whole FCF vs rate question, I think in the 1H and until yesterday most of the stock market drop was driven by rate vs fcf and valuation rerating of more expensive/growth companies, together with long bonds. No idea if and when, but If market starts to price some hard landing, earnings drop and some second order effects (just look at GBP), lower inflation, and then deflation:), then value/high FCF/short duration/leveraged things could lead decline? either way very exiting times possibly is coming again:) UK

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-23/ackman-touts-immigration-over-rate-hikes-in-inflation-fight Fortunatelly for US it is fixable thing? https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-14/niall-ferguson-demographics-are-a-us-headache-but-nightmare-for-china?leadSource=uverify wall

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-20/biden-s-vow-to-defend-taiwan-makes-us-policy-shift-explicit

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-16/germany-s-rosneft-seizure-kicks-off-test-of-oil-infrastructure

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-13/china-s-lead-on-evs-has-been-a-long-time-coming

i imagine job will be done by this or similar agency: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-12/china-said-to-expand-anti-monopoly-bureau-as-crackdown-widens https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/exclusive-china-readies-plan-to-elevate-status-of-antitrust-unit--sources-2642157 Learning from the best: "Beijing has looked to European antitrust authorities as a model as it seeks to upgrade its antitrust capabilities, one of the people said. In August, SAMR's antitrust office said on its website that it had invited experts from the EU and United States to hold online courses for Chinese "antitrust talents". "Compared to other major anti-monopoly enforcement authorities in the world, the authorities in China currently have fewer staff, which needs to be changed in the future," Wu Zhenguo, head of SAMR's anti-monopoly bureau, told industrial online journal The Antitrust Source in a July interview" However: "The State Administration for Market Regulation will boost staffing at its anti-monopoly bureau, which will be split into three separate divisions focusing on antitrust investigations, market competition and mergers oversight, according to people with knowledge of the matter, asking not to be identified as the information hasn’t been made public. It’s planning to increase the number of antitrust officials from over 40 currently to 100, before reaching 150 within five years, two of the people said. " Seems like really small number, FTC gave like 1000+ people, but perhaps it is not comparable/different.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/algorithms-vs-regulators-battle-royale-kicks-off-in-china-11634125270 China is taking a first step toward regulating algorithms. How that experiment goes could help Western regulators understand what to embrace—and what to avoid—as they ponder tougher controls on Western social-media giants too. China launched a sweeping three-year plan last month to regulate the use of algorithms, setting itself up as a potential trailblazer as governments around the world step up regulation of Big Tech. According to draft rules released in August, companies can’t use algorithms which lead to addiction or excessive spending. Users should also have the right to opt out. The broad-based regulations, if implemented strictly, could fundamentally shake up the business models of many successful internet companies. For example ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has succeeded largely by recommending catchy content with the help of its powerful algorithm. To be sure, some aspects of China’s proposals are clearly targeted at maintaining government control. Guidelines from the internet watchdog say algorithms should uphold core socialist values and promote positive energy. Democratic societies are unlikely to accept such strictures, and even more benign rules would likely face court challenges. But watching how China’s moves work out—and how large any collateral economic damage ultimately is—could still prove useful to other countries which also are grappling with the enormous societal impact of internet companies. The European Union proposed a bill in April to regulate artificial intelligence systems in some so-called high-risk uses like critical infrastructure, college admissions and loan applications. In the U.S., Congress recently conducted a hearing on Facebook after The Wall Street Journal’s investigations into the social-media giant. The biggest problem for regulating algorithms is how opaque they are. That is becoming a bigger issue as more decisions are made by machines which learn through crunching a vast amount of data. It isn’t easy, sometimes even for the creators of algorithms, to pinpoint the exact reason why an artificial intelligence makes a particular decision. Biases embedded in the training data could unknowingly seep into the decision-making process. And algorithms can also narrowly focus on some objectives, like amplifying viral content, without considering other impacts. Moreover, they are also continually updating, which makes regulation even harder.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-13/turkey-s-erdogan-meets-central-bank-governor-after-lira-rout "Erdogan has described himself as an “enemy” of interest rates, and espouses an unconventional theory that lowering interest rates will lead to lower inflation. The inflation rate was 19.6% in September, when Kavcioglu lowered the benchmark interest rate by 100 basis points to 18%."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4302938/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubo_and_the_Two_Strings "Kubo premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival and was released by Focus Features in the United States on August 19 to critical acclaim, but was considered a box office failure, grossing $77 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million." After watching cannot believe it was considered a failure:)

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-06/fantasia-opens-a-nasty-new-chapter-in-the-china-evergrande-saga Btw, nice name for a developer:)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/06/is-the-chinese-stock-market-a-smarter-buy-than-dow-sp-right-now.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/walk-in-cryptocurrency-exchanges-emerge-amid-bitcoin-boom-11633107697 Cryptocurrency storefront operators say in-person advice and a physical presence instill trust among those unlikely to invest online “We allow individuals from all walks of life to be able to participate in this digital asset ecosystem, without the hurdles of attempting to onboard with self-service online exchanges, not to mention the technological barriers that people of a certain age might perceive,” said Adam Hack, the chief executive and founder of Coin Nerds. The exchanges charge fees ranging from 0.99% to 5% for each transaction, slightly more than those charged by large online exchanges. “We’re not going to have a digital revolution, for lack of a better term, without everybody participating in the ecosystem,” he said. “A lot of people are still grasping the concept and they still want to learn how to use it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-27/danish-artist-takes-museum-s-money-and-runs-calls-it-artwork

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-undo-rail-success-amtrak-canadian-pacific-deregulation-competition-11632511941 "One thing remains unchanged: Railroads and their biggest customers (such as coal shippers, agriculture processors and chemical plants) are condemned to live in angry tension because neither can exist without the other. Their ancient fights were recently reprised at length in the Washington Monthly by think tanker Phillip Longman, who portrays today’s freight railroads as abusive monopolists. These companies, he says, are operated by modern-day “robber barons” who perversely want to shrink the industry “to the point of non-viability” for “short-term economic gain” (this will be news to one of those robber barons, Warren Buffett, who praises his Burlington Northern Santa Fe as a source of long-term profits). When this argument doesn’t get him far, Mr. Longman rolls out an alternate clincher: climate change. Because railroads use less fuel per ton-mile than trucks, railroads should be forced to change their practices and pricing to subsidize more freight to switch from trucks to rail. The blessed result will be a “cooler planet” via “huge reductions in carbon emissions.” Echoing this argument has been Mr. Biden’s newly installed head of the Surface Transportation Board, Martin Oberman. In a speech he claimed that “123 million tons of global warming CO2 has been pumped into our atmosphere just because the railroads chose not to maintain their market share as compared to trucks (emphasis added).” The wording is slippery. Railroads and their customers both choose to maximize their efficiency and profitability. Messrs. Oberman and Longman also fail to mention that any emissions reductions would be infinitesimal in relation to the atmosphere."

At least they have a decent sense of humor: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-23/xi-s-u-s-envoy-invokes-lincoln-in-declaring-china-a-democracy Meantime: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-19/xi-s-celebrity-crackdown-no-match-for-universal-studios-in-china "As President Xi Jinping’s government looks to tame China’s celebrities, the popularity of a new Universal Studios theme park in Beijing shows Hollywood’s enduring soft power among the nation’s 1.4 billion people. Tickets for the grand opening on Monday, priced at 638 yuan ($99), sold out within 30 minutes of going online last week -- as did rooms costing as much as 20,000 yuan at the resort’s two hotels, according to state-run media. Fliggy, an online travel site operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., last week apologized for overselling the 500 yuan Universal Express Pass that lets visitor skip lines. The park became the most-searched topic on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo on Monday morning, as hundreds of visitors queued for entrance in the rain while those inside posted videos of “Harry Potter” experiences. A grand opening ceremony was attended by top officials, including Beijing party chief Cai Qi, according to state-backed news outlet The Paper. The surging demand underscores the challenge Xi faces in dampening the appetite for celebrities among the general public, as the Communist Party looks to curtail foreign influences and promote the concept of “common prosperity.” A commentary published widely in state-run media last month warned against “fan culture” and “worshiping Western culture.” The popularity of the Universal Studios theme park shows resistance to the Communist Party’s tightening of cultural standards after decades of allowing Western influences, according to Adam Ni, co-editor of China Neican, a newsletter on Chinese public policy issues. “As powerful as the party is, it will have to contend with countless everyday decisions by the Chinese, which would together make up the moral fabric of the People’s Republic,” he said. In the lead-up to the park’s public opening, dozens of Chinese celebrities -- including “Crouching Tiger” actress Zhang Ziyi and supermodel Liu Wen -- visited attractions related to “Jurassic Park,” “Transformers” and “Harry Potter.” Photos of other guests dressed in Hogwarts cloaks, and posing with “Minions” and “Megatron” characters, became trending topics on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. “Universal Beijing Resort is popular with the Chinese because there is part of the global culture that the Chinese thirst for,” Ni added. “Beijing is trying to reinforce this dichotomy between ‘Chinese’ and ‘foreign,’ but there is still much admiration and curiosity for foreign cultures in China. So the public attitude towards Western culture is two-faced.” The project, which is expected to attract 30 million visitors a year, is a joint venture between the state-owned Beijing Shouhuan Cultural Tourism Investment Co. and Comcast NBCUniversal. It has been in the works since 2001. China’s newly appointed ambassador to the U.S. last week compared one of the attraction’s roller coasters to bumpy diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing. “After all tumbling and shakes, the roller coaster came to a soft landing in the end,” Qin Gang, who visited the park before moving to the U.S. in July, wrote on his official Twitter account, signaling a note of optimism. "

https://www.wsj.com/articles/evergrande-is-chinas-economy-in-a-nutshell-11632233862 "The long-term impact could be even more disruptive. China has tried repeatedly to rebalance its economy away from debt-driven construction toward consumption and service industries. It has had some success, but every time there is a slowdown, it returns to the tried-and-tested model of jacking up debt and investment to boost growth. This time might be different, as President Xi Jinping has secured all the levers of state power; perhaps he is ready to accept slower economic growth as the price of it being more sustainable. Capital flight is hard too, after a clampdown on routes previously used to get money out of the country, and with Covid-19 restricting travel. If China really is pushing back against unsustainable debt-driven growth, it faces a series of tricky problems as it remakes its economy. It will have to wean the population off the idea that empty apartments are a good vehicle to save money, without destroying everyone’s savings. It will have to persuade people that they should save less and spend more. It will have to reallocate vast numbers of workers and capital from real estate and the broader construction industry, which together make up about one-eighth of the economy, and together with suppliers probably account for more than a quarter of gross domestic product. And it will have to raise taxes to substitute for land sales as a source of finance. Worse, it will have to do all this while adding less debt and accepting a lower growth rate. The model needs rebalancing, because it is unsustainable. China adopted the same if-you-build-it-they-will-come mantra as Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams,” but aging demographics and slowing urbanization mean “they” no longer come in such numbers. Debt absolutely can’t keep rising at the rate of the past decade, either. China is one of only three countries to add nonfinancial debt amounting to more than 100% of GDP since 2011, according to the Bank for International Settlements (alongside Greece and Singapore, while Chinese territory Hong Kong has, too). It now has about the same level of debt-to-GDP as the U.S., despite a significantly less well developed financial system. If China succeeds, it will mean less demand for the raw materials it has been importing, more demand for consumer goods, and, probably, a better balance of trade. For the rest of the world, that means lower prices for steel, copper and the energy that was going into cement, and less need for China to recycle dollars into Treasurys and other overseas holdings. But if China succeeds it also means less cheap Chinese labor and more Chinese consumption pushing up global demand, both of which are broadly inflationary. History suggests it is exceptionally hard to navigate such shifts without mistakes, and China is so big that the shifts will need to be global, not merely domestic. It could be a bumpy few years. China’s stop-start rebalancing hasn’t made much progress in the past few years, but it seems to me that Mr. Xi is more and more serious about it, quite apart from wanting to reassert control over the private sector. As that rebalancing filters out into the rest of the world it will matter to all of us. Evergrande is a wake-up call."

This article includes very interesting part on historical transport inovations: "Taxi companies using radical new technologies and promising to transform transportation have arisen before. In 1897, what became known as the Electric Vehicle Co. began operating battery-powered taxicabs in New York City. In the U.K., the London Electrical Cab Co. also began service that year. In 1899, the Compagnie Française des Voitures Électromobiles got underway in Paris. The electric taxis offered some great advantages over the horse-drawn cabs they sought to replace. They were clean and quiet and, because they were so innovative, they appealed to the wealthy and fashionable. In New York, the electric-taxi business boomed. In June 1898 alone, nearly 1,600 customers traveled a total of 4,400 miles, according to business historian and management professor David Kirsch of the University of Maryland. They paid 30 cents a mile, more than $9.75 in today’s money. (Horse-drawn cabs charged 50 cents a mile.). In 1899, the Electric Vehicle Co. had about 45 cabs in service, averaging 27 miles of trips per day, and a financing rush was on. A rival, the General Carriage Co., sought to raise $20 million in capital (about $650 million today). The New York Central railroad said it would launch a service with 100 electric taxis based at Grand Central Terminal. That year, estimates of demand for electric taxis quickly ratcheted up from 1,600 to 2,000 to 12,000. To shuttle passengers to New York’s booming Metropolitan Street Railway trolley system, which covered 232 miles in Manhattan, 1,500 battery-powered taxis would be needed. The Electric Vehicle Co.’s parent ordered as many as 850 “electromobiles” from its manufacturing affiliate in Hartford, Conn. In seven weeks that spring, the share price of the New York electric taxi company nearly tripled. Then the surge began to fade as overexpansion took its toll. Short battery life doomed the London and Paris firms in a year or two. In 1902, the General Carriage Co. collapsed after its stock shot from 87.5 cents to $20.50 and fell back again. Most of the electric-taxi services in smaller U.S. cities never got traction. Above all, Henry Ford supplanted the electric car by changing the idea of what automobiles were for. Electric taxis were the natural offshoot of the 19th-century model of transportation, exemplified by steamboats and railroads: centralized services that charged fixed prices to serve fixed routes on fixed schedules. Consumers who accepted that as the status quo would rather pay others to drive them than to drive themselves. Instead, Ford got consumers to think of transportation not as a service someone else offered but as a product they could own and operate themselves. That enabled people to go anywhere they wanted whenever they wished. Transportation no longer had to be rigid; it could offer freedom. Traveling was usually still a necessity, but it could also fulfill an aspiration. Huge improvements in the power and range of gasoline engines helped, but Ford’s biggest weapon was low price: He introduced his Model T in 1908 at $850, roughly one-third of what electric cars cost at the time. Suddenly millions of people could own a product that gave them a sense of control over time and space. Decades later, Sir Freddie Laker adopted a similar approach. Air travel had long been limited mainly to the wealthy and to business travelers when, in 1977, he launched his Skytrain, a bargain-priced, no-reservations and no-frills airline linking the U.K. to the U.S. People stood in line for hours, sometimes days, in what they called “Queue Gardens” to snag tickets at one-half to one-third of competitors’ fares. Laker’s innovation helped force governments to deregulate the airline industry, slashing airfares across the board just as the global economy was about to boom. In 1976, 137 million middle-class people world-wide had traveled by air. By 1981, that number hit 212 million; a decade later, it reached 583 million. Technologies and industries often take leaps forward when products and services can be put to surprising new uses, enabling customers to fulfill needs—or aspirations—they didn’t even know they had. Radio, developed to assist navigation, became the indispensable musical accompaniment to people’s lives. The airplane, in its early decades, was used far more for delivering mail and shipping goods than for carrying passengers. The mobile phone, originally designed for people to talk with, has become the all-in-one wristwatch, camera, stereo, movie theater, road map and encyclopedia we all carry in our pockets and purses. Endless commutes in torturous traffic jams have made travel something millions of people dread. Perhaps—if all the technology works and every bureaucracy cooperates—air taxis can someday reinvest travel with the sense of novelty and freedom it once had. Success might depend on what the technology can deliver soon. It might depend even more on whether the technology can deliver what people don’t know they will want later."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-came-before-the-9-billion-bet-on-flying-taxis-11615566244