Xerxes

Thanks. This looks great. I reposted it on Pershing thread.

I thought this was a fantastic podcast covering the Burger King, QSR, Tim's saga with folks at 3G Capital. Worth listening to. Also posted on QSR thread.

The problem with Boeing is not its CEO ability to get technical or not. The previous Boeing CEO was technical and rose from the engineering rank and didn’t have a drop of GE blood. The issue is that Seattle and Charleston are in the aerospace design and manufacturing business whereas Calhoun’s Virginia-based “Supreme” headquarters is the “capital allocation” business.

Amazing ValueArb i am glad you are getting to where you want to be

Sir You are so close to the White Mountains. That is such a blessing.

Dan Yergin wrote this amazing book called the “The commanding heights”. it goes over each of the Asian economic power. It has been 13 years since I read it. Needs to be reread I think.

Broadly speaking I am not pushing back on any of this. you give an example of being conscripted to serve in Russia, the flip side is the person could be born as an enterprising lad in Russia and who in their 30s lived in Russia in the 1990s, or in Singapore in the 60s, Japan in the 70s. Not all sons of Russia serve. Sometimes you are born at the right time opportunities are everywhere. Whether one is there at the right time and age, is a different matter. but what West offers is a framework for a structured approach (works really well for families). For those seeking unstructured approach they better off elsewhere.

Pre-Covid I was commuting 4 hours per day. Driving to train station, then train, then metro and then bus. And doing the same in reverse in the evening. I used the time to read. But after the workday, I could not do anything else as I was too tired when I transited back home. I refused to move however until a blackswan “world event” brought work to my home. WFH during Covid and now hybrid. lots of flexibility now. Wrong lesson learned: stubbornness pays off

In the short term democracy will always have its fits and starts, but in the long run it always pay off. my brainwashed simplistic Western view

100%

name me an African country whose name starts with a “D” but it is silent when pronounced. it is also the only country in the world that simultaneously hosts a Chinese, a French, an Italian, Japanese and American military base. Which in case of Japan is its ONLY foreign military base.

For a moment I misread Thebeau as Trudeau of Canada. Don’t know who Thebeau is, but clearly that person has some issues that needs working.

Wouldn’t there be a conflict of interest between Ben’ own Marval business and FIH where he would be chair. Both outfit invest in India.

not at all. in the AGM, Prem sang his praises. I actually thought he was going to announce his retirement at the AGM

It is true that the good professor presented no hard evidence when he went on Bloomberg. It is also true that everybody else in the mainstream media also did not present any hard evidence that it was Kremlin, except for their very strong feeling. And a pre-written narrative of how it makes absolute sense that it was the Kremlin. Even my beloved The Economist, and I remember this very well, wrote “… most likely by Russia …” when it happened but since kept an “open mind” as oppose to point fingers. I for one wrote on this very board “ most likely Poles, or Americans”. I am still fairly certain that the Poles played a strong role in it. But no evidence. The reality is that whoever did it, know that it did it and whoever did not do it, knows that it didn’t do it. Whether Russia has hard evidence, it will not see the light of the day, as this falls under “proxy war” and not sovereign to sovereign, which would need a response. Same goes for the Americans, if they have hard evidence that it was Russian, this could trigger Article 5. Both sides have something to gain to keep this under the wrap.

Tucker has its own agenda. But sometimes that works to our advantage [the public]. As more information/points of view are shared.

i love Tom Keene but he blew a gasket somewhere within. I remember that interview Doesn’t mean Sachs is right about everything though.

Dear “Globalists” please do not shoot Xerxes for posting this. I have listened only to bits of it. I think I am going to put some hours to listen to the full thing. PS: I wish Tucker would improve his facial expressions during his interviews. s

Post war, I think there will be structural social divide between those who shed blood “who know better” and those that didn’t (younger people that lived in the shadow of the war). post war will continue to have the menace in the east, so those that fought “that know better” will insist to be vigilant and in control. I think all these talks about Ukraine becoming like Israel are just fantasy. Israel was in mortal danger as a nation in early decades, there was no room for internal dissent, Ukraine on the other hand may lose a limb but not be in any mortal damage. That grey zone is just enough to have that social divide pulling the country in different directions. Taiwan was a dictatorship in its early life. Maybe the Taiwan of that era is a better analogy to Ukraine.

As a side note for fellow North Americans and West Europeans, you do realize that we collectively (aside some energy price spikes) have not seen or felt the impact of Ukraine War at a personal or family level. So our collective points of view (whatever those may be) is really shaped without having paid the real cost of expanding the war.

right I think the rule of thumb is 6-8 launchers makes up a battery along with the radar system. Base on the quick search I did. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/05/17/graphics-patriot-missiles-ukraine-russia/70227493007/

do you mean “launchers” or missiles and not “batteries”. There are not many batteries in the whole world I think. Each battery can have many launchers. at most maybe a dozen battery in the whole Europe ?!

Technically speaking both sides are and will be poking holes and see what they can do. And far they can go. NATO’ member sovereignty has been breached so many times, and Russia’ national interest has been ignored so many times, that there is enough juice to drop the charade and engage in full scale war. But neither sides want that. So we go on with the charade, and dance the dance. That is very different than in the late 1930s. and I understand the attraction to keep bringing up Munich for the narrative. However back then Western leaders were just hoping that Herr Hitler would see reason. There are no such delusions today about Kremlin’ ambitions to torpedo the post-1945 world order. All it takes is a Russian victory in the war and all credibility is lost. The remedy to that however is even worse. Fund and arm Ukraine until they can eject 200,000 troops from their soil.

this I find to be a great analysis. Pure analytical work from Foreign Affairs. The guest speaker is an Iranian American. so yeah I am bias ! https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-foreign-affairs-interview/id1623855270?i=1000657277974

^^^ you might be confusing “genocide” with “war crimes” and using those interchangeably at times. You may not be committing genocide but going all-in with war crimes. The reverse is harder to do. And of course both can be happening at the same time and also neither can be happening. The “what if US” scenarios are just time-tested rabbit hole that people use to back their argument. The twitter machine is full of “what ifs”. But they can cut both ways. Of course folks using the “what if” use only the edge that doesn’t cut their argument. ————-general comment———- I personally barely follow social media and read any non-sense from either side, except actual news that makes it to mainstream. I like to be brainwashed by mainstream media. Last bit of new being the ICC ruling. Overall I find these type of discussions are utterly pointless and extremely unhealthy. And also this is not a game of football, that you need to rally to one banner and declare yourself to be a “fan”. And that there is only one “right”. Here several things can be truth at the same time. You are all investors. Surely you must know that. But hey if you cannot help it please use Twitter/X for your daily emotional outbursts that needs outing. It is a digital town-square after all. At least you get hundreds of retweets. Now can we talk about the Kurds, Yzidies, Armenians, Rohingyas. And other helpless fu&ks that don’t even have the luxury of having a thread in an investment forum let alone having a country (for the middle two).