Spekulatius

So you really believe Obama funded Iran’s nuclear program? Trump cancelled the deal in place because he doesn’t like deals unless they are his own. While not perfect,. Iran went rogue on nuclear and the few data we have would suggest that even after the latest test strike, they still have an active nuclear program right now. or why would they do this: https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2025-06-25/irans-nuclear-facilities-status-updates

It is definitely possible. See Venezuela’s under Chavez. 50 year of economic progress went down the drain.

I think this is a correct take. The US has already largely ceased helping Ukraine this year, except intelligence. Europe does not have this intelligence capability but they will need to create it themselves, because the assumption that it is available to them via NATO coalition is probably not correct any more. This adds to the underlying current that the NATO really isn’t functional any more. This could not be clearer than that since Trump proposes to negotiate between NATO and Russia even though USA technically leads NATO. This tells you more than anything that Trump has checked out of the NATO (as if this wasn’t clear enough already).

The change will be that we are looking at multipolar world where a couple of Neo imperialist power will fight for control and broadening their spheres. Russia is by far the weakest of those imperialist powers.

High 5’s for Google everywhere means it’s likely time to take some profits. I still think the risk to Google main search business are there and this gets since it has the dominant market position, the outcome of any change in business is a net negative. Now they can be retro new revenue sources but Search is such a beast that if Google’s market share drops, it’s for going to hit the bottom line.

Vlad Vexler analysis of the peace plan is pretty good, imo. https://substack.com/home/post/p-179635594 There are many paradox in this. USA lead NATO but also mediates. As he said, this is written as if USA were not in the NATO at all. The typical MAGA thing about investing in Ukraine and USA lead this effort (doesn’t invest itself) but gets 50% of the profit. No security whatsoever…

This is available in YouTube for those that prefer visuals and it’s a great interview. Highly recommend to watch.

Damodaran actually was not bearish at all until very recently. He makes some good points in this podcast.

We will see. The aid from the US this year has already pretty much stopped but it is true that the intelligence sharing provided by the USA is hard to replace. So, I don’t know the answer but I do know that giving something to Putin nothing in return isn’t going to stop the war. Trump is not equipped to deal with Putin and I think neither do the Europeans. So I think the war will go on with Ukraine mostly supported by Europeans and Russia grinding along. One commentator said that Russias advance in terms of territory is less than the speed of a snail actually.

Ok, since I actually live in Charlotte now - it’s true they got some folks with criminal records but most people were just illegal ( undocumented) here. My wife actually worked at a hospital where the ICE paraded with their black SUV’s and patrolled the hospital foyer. Not sure what this was about but they carried a in a poor sob who got a seizure when the ICE caught him in for treatment. They posted 3 (!) Guys with para military dress up in front of his room to make sure the 60 ‘s year old guy with obvious medical issues didn’t go on a rampage. So yes, they did get some but man does this look like performance art.

Emigration is not a zero sum game. for example how many homes are build by emigrants / emigrant labor versus how much do they occupy. I think they build a lot of more they occupy. I am not against uncontrolled emigration either , but the USA has been build on emigration during the hole existence. It’s has become a problem because there is no political will to create a sensible framework. Also, to ask a personal question - you or your parents emigrated here from Russia. If current MAGA politics were in place back then, you or your parents emigrated would rot in Russia and you may be drafted to a frontline in Luhansk and get killed by a Ukrainian drone. Why do you pull up a ladder after you made it to safety? What is the moral framework here?

CNSWF/ CSU, BOL, PINS, EXO (adds) and a starter in ABNB.

Everthing that is called “uninvestible” deserves a hard look. Fish where the fish are, not where the others fisherman are.

The peace plan looks worthless to me. No details on guarantees, Ukraine gives something with nothing in return but a promise from Putin which is worthless. Putin has no intend to make peace as long as he thinks he is winning. The problem that Trump has with negotiating with Putin is that he has: 1) no real stake in the outcome 2) no patience Putin has both - a stake in the outcome and a lot of patience.

Yes, pulling up the latter behind you is what seems to be happening. For example @cubsfan mom came here from cuba as I understand it fleeing Castro. no dice she would be here with current emigration rules. That also means Cubsfan would be on Cuba if he were born at all. I came here with a H1B visa. No dice for me either since I don’t think the relatively small company I started to work would have spent $100k for a H1B, nor would they have been able to bribe Trump for an exception. My wife’s family came here through her Mom overstaying a tourist Visa in the early 80’s and starting to work in a Sweat shop (literally) in San Franscisco. Then she legalized through an emigration attorney, got her kids here later also legal. the same thing became harder and harder in the 90’s and would be impossible now. One reason we have so many illegals immigrants is that it became impossible to legalize for most, especially after 9/11/2001 when the phobia against foreigners and immigration really started to emerge (imo). Now you can argue what is right and wrong here and I am not a fan of uncontrolled emigration but I find it also mentally difficult to pull up a ladder behind me after I made it, but I guess others don’t have that issue.

Yea, but the USA and Allied did not best the Nazis by cozying up to them. I don’t have a strong view on MBS and the Saudis but they are not our friends. They play both sides, trade with Russia, (white wash their oil), China - whatever, any dealing with them should be transactional at best. Also, the numbers do notmake sense. the Saudis won’t invest a trillion in the USA because they simply don’t have the money. their wealth fund is only ~$950B and they run a fiscal deficit of $60B. the law of large numbers that make no sense. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/11/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-solidifies-economic-and-defense-partnership-with-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia/ Everyone (even the Swiss) figured out by now that you just need to pay a little personal tribute to get tariffs lowered from 39% to 15%: https://www.axios.com/2025/11/14/trump-swiss-gifts-gold-rolex I wonder when Putin gets the idea just to invest a billion in Trump’s bribecoin and bring some gold for Trumps library in exchange for Ukraine.

This is not free trade though. The issue here at hand is that the Dutch government allowed the. Chinese to take over a seemingly low tech but critical component of the automobile supply chain. the components are diodes and simple Ic but they are to some extent customized toward auto and cannot be replaced quickly. They cost in the order of 5-10c each, it without them production lines had to be slowed down and $50k cars can’t be build The reaction of Chinese government to wrestle control away from the controversial CEO means that his plan had their backing and what Wingtech did had their backing. So the EU has to be really careful here .

I haven’t seen much about the Nexperia saga here. Nexperia is a fairly low tech auto chips supplier located in Europe. It was taken over by Wingtech, a Chinese co, which seems to have hollowed out the business and moved the backend (testing and packaging) to China and was about to move almost the entire critical production and R &D to China later. In late September, the Dutch government took control of the business, also based on the fact that the owner Wingtech is now blacklisted by the US government. China then instituted export control which basically prevented the company to hip the complete product back to Europe causing shortages. It quite an example how China seems to conduct targeted corn too of criticism components on supply chains and then https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/business/netherlands-cedes-control-nexperia-intl

$FIG close to the $33 IPO price and I don’t see people lining to up buy the stock.

Thx. I do wonder with the above if this is really AI or just having a good digital infrastructure. Regarding China - China is not just used for clinical trials, the more important step is that Pharma licenses clinical compounds in China at favorable conditions from researchers and then pushes them through clinical trials. Apparently the leads/ compounds from there are of high quality according to Merck (from CC transcripts).

He is not totally wrong either. I don’t think releasing the Epstein files will do much than embarrassing rich and influential people but won’t lead to much prosecutions if any. So we can all enjoy how these folks embarrass themselves like Summers did. We also know that Trump is not easily embarrassed so it will be more or less a nothing burger from that perspective.

How is AI reducing clinical trial costs? On drug discovery, I think the big story for big pharmaceutical will be licensing compounds from Chinese researchers for way less than they can get similar quality leads from biotechs. China has quietly become a biotech powerhouse. Merck and Novartis are actively pursuing this path to beef up their pipelines.

It’s quite something - Summers asked Epstein about relationship advice how to handle his mistress in 2017-19, That was about 10 years after Epstein was widely known to be a sex offender. Why in the hell would a public person ask a well known sex offender for relationship advice for his mistress? It’s so dumb it almost hurts.

I posted exactly to what Bessent said “ as The migrants they brought some of their cattle with them”, so we had to close the America border. Thats exactly the BS he said word for word.

Beef prices have been going up pretty much in a straight line since 2021. Of course this was and still is blamed on Biden and what not, but it’s pretty clear that beef prices don’t care about politics and immigrants and do what they want to do.