Xerxes

At least, it will no longer be illegal to say war … though you would still be arrested I reckon. unrelated just saw this. There are a lot of coverage about Russia running out of tanks etc. Our NATO inventories are 1/3 empty since the war started.

CNN reporting what it looks like a formal declaration of war by Kremlin (against Ukraine) on May Day is coming. ————- unrelated, here is an interesting anecdote for those interested. While most folks are aware of Dec 7 pearl harbour attack, and the subsequent declaration of war by FDR, that declaration of war was against Japan ONLY and not the Axis powers. FDR was itching to fight the Nazi, but still couldn’t do it yet. Hitler however got sooo excited by the Japanese attack that he gave a hand to FDR by declaring war against the U.S. in Reichstag on Dec 11. And that is how the formal war started between the Reich and the US: by an overexcited Hitler, who wanted to egg the Japanese to enter the war against the Soviet Union. however, Japan never entered the war against the Soviet Union, until the latter did weeks before the atomic destruction of Hiroshima by invading Manchuria. Most folks looking back have a hard time understanding the nuances. But formal declaration matter. It was very difficult at the time for FDR to commit to Europe after the Japanese “sneak” attack. And had Hitler been less excited a different outcome would have came even with the Americans eventually entering the war on the side of allies.

it is a very grey zone between offense and defense. A lot of countries conduct proxy military operations/wars outside their border so that they do not have to do in their own borders. I can think of Iran, Isreal, UAE, U.S., Russia etc. of doing that for years and decades. The problem is most normal folk live in illusionary world, where they think, it is OK for one side to do it but it is not ok for the other side to do it. I would add that while people complain about war profiteering, I for one believe we need a strong military industrial complex. Not to the point of shaping international politics to capture market share and profit, but just to have that industral base. (think Japan), It can go nuclear if it is choose to.

"War is a racket" book was actually on my to read list since 2010. Sadly, I have not read it yet. War Is A Racket: Original Edition : Butler, Smedley D: Books - Amazon

I own RTX, and hope to continue to own for many decades. But it was always based on it being system-agonostic supplier of picks and shovels in aerospace & buildings (prior to Otis and Carrier spin-off). Defense portion is just icing on the cake. Not comlexity in my opinion. It was just interesting to note, how fast NATO inventories are being drawn down.

that is where crypto comes in ... lol

indeed, but the "missile" part really came in after 2020 (with Raytheon corp purchase). I thought that was an eye opener statement from Q1 call. "Greg Hayes -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yes. Let me start with that. As far as looking at the sales forecast for RMD, that does actually not contemplate any upside that we see from replenishment of stocks. And again, we're working through all that, trying to understand the timing. Clearly, we won't see any of that benefit this year. But as we think about the next couple of years, as we see the budgets continue to increase and we see the replenishment orders come in, we would expect we will see a benefit to the RMD top line, which will take that number up somewhat. Again, we're not quite ready to give you a new number, but I would just tell you, it's going to be higher than what we've got there. As far as the Stingers, we should keep in mind, we have -- we are currently producing Stingers for an international customer, but we have a very limited stock of material for Stinger production. We've been working with the DoD for the last couple of weeks. We're actively trying to resource some of the material. But unfortunately, DoD hasn't bought a Stinger in about 18 years. And some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile, of the seeker head. That's going to take us a little bit of time. So again, we'll ramp up production, what we can this year, but I would expect, again, this is going to be a '23, '24 where we actually see orders come in for the larger replenishments, both on Stinger as well as on Javelin, which has also been very successful in theater." "

Knowing what we know about the giant Activision position, it is worth re-watching that segment of the Charlie Rose interview, when he asks Buffett about his two BIG invstments (Oxy and Activision), of course not realizing that there was actually a big position in activision which was not disclosed yet. Buffett had a split-second pause before he responded and went on and on about the media mis-reporting.

Obi-Wan : I felt a great disturbance in the Force, with FFH falling 7%, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

I started watching the new Matrix. I don’t understand anything. That said the scenes where they are having espressos and lattes are cool.

I had trouble finding it on YouTube in the morning. I think it was meant to be a exclusive on CNBC.com. Not even on the CNBC feed of YouTube. for those looking for a replay, they did say it would be included in the CNBC Buffett archive. I don’t think there is a firewall there.

Buffett was hilarious today. Good laughs. Funny, how he described how Oxy and Alleghany came about. Investment by coincidences and chance. So his mental bandwidth and attention is really the deciding factor between cash pile going down or not.

The noises around Moldova I think are just Moscow way to distract some Ukrainian resources away from Donbas. If Russian army’ battalion tactical groups were healthy, they would want as much Ukrainian forces in its jaws as it closes. I guess that is not the case with the Russian BTGs being mauled, depleted and re-grouped. Unrelated, May Day would be interesting.

Gregmal’ best friend has spoken

Historically in Canada it has been real estate, Big Banks and the oil & gas sector. that incremental dollar saved need to be soaked up somewhere.

“first tweet” NFT reaching its 52-week low. Who is holding the bag ? A Persian. Damn ! https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61102759

I have been watching MoonKnight (and all Marvel shows). But specifically MoonKnight is not doing it for me. Downhill after the first two episodes. HBO: ”We own this City” brought to you by the producers of the Wire. And also in Baltimore and with a lot of actors from the Wire. With quality dope coming out of the HBO pipeline no wonder Netflix is losing subs. episode 1 available

I am talking about the second gulf war. Not the first. Iraq was the aggressor in the first. Not the second. I am talking about a U.S. military based in an Indian Ocean (actually British) not the almighty Israel. ISIS came after the post-2006 insurgency totally irrelevant to 2003 at the time (it was more like a post-script to that sorry idiotic adventure) and definitely irrelevant to the first 1991 gulf war, which you took us. bottom line: we as human beings will rally behind whatever cause we want to support and built narrative around it, ignore whatever we want to ignore and call it fair.

I have three tranches on my house. tranches 1 and 2 were locked in at about 1.7% for 5 year in the depth of the Covid. Late 2020 and early 2021. tranche 3 was coming due in a few months. I got nailed with the fix rates, as oil prices spiked in March. Finally opted to lock in only for 2 years for 3.1% up from 2.68% which was at its end. the 5 year fixed was too crazy for my taste

a dash of optimism on a Monday morning

It was a “oh shit, are we seriously doing this” moment. Putin is corrupt but in Russia only him (and his close buddies) are allowed corruption. They spend tens of billions on their armed forces and intelligence for the past 10 years. That only means that there is an entire class of corrupt imperial mandarins and eunuchs taking a cut until there was nothing left for the actual modernization, betting that it will be status-quo between West and Putin.

Lavrov interview with the Indian channel. This is for an Indian audience consumption (not western). Shoring up support of a wavering partner.

Totally agreed fair is fair. Ukraine (at this point) it should feel comfortable to test the water, and do what it can against Russia. That said, would we make the same comment if Iraq were to attack Diego Garcia using ballistic missile (if the range was there) in 2003-04 as retaliation or would we say : “well that is NOT the same thing, how dare a third rate country assault a first rate country. They should just stand still while we destroy them. It is for their own good. The faster we destroy them, and de-bathify them, the better it is for Iraq”

It is hard to see a giant unraveling in a glacial pace, even when you squint real hard. I am with the view is that all these hard measures have more to do with Xi’ elevation for a third 5-year term as party boss. And that 2023 will be different. Westerners get obsessed with Xi extending his presidential term (few years ago) that is mostly titular, being the party boss counts. George soros the contrarian even went as far as saying the 2022 election might not results in Xi’ favour. unrelated, here is article. Not sure it appears 90 degree to the right

Brauchitsch was fired and Hitler did assume personal command of the army, but he was not a theatre commander. His role was akin to General Marshall (chief of staff of U.S. army). Wehrmacht had no theatre commander on the eastern front controlling the army groups, before or after von Brauchitsch firing. It was all ran from the Wolf’ Lair in East Prussia with Hitler and his Yes-Men (Keitel and Jodl). Unlike the First World War, where Hindenburg, Lunderndorff and Hoffman held away over the eastern front for a period, while Falkenhayn had the western front.