Xerxes

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.

I think this might be the first time I see FFH share price and book value shown in the same currency (USD). annual reports shows them in CAD and USD, respectively, for some weird reason that I cannot fathom

i saw the three hours movie in 3 sittings. I can only tolerate an hour on tv. The moment I saw that re-imagined Times Square in the opening scene, I knew we were in for a treat. yeah definitely film noire. And very well done. I hate reboots, but this one I ll take.

Guys I am NOT talking about massing armies. Or doing war maneuvers. all of which they have done on and off as early as April 2021. the average joe sitting in Moscow coffee having that latte didn’t see it coming. (An actual all out invasion). Even the spy chief on public TV was off the rail when talking with Putin and that was not staged.

Everything is relative. If there was 10,000 trolls in 2014 and 50 trolls in 2022, it doesn’t make my argument wrong. Now I was neither paying attention to the trolls then and now. But I have seen the comparison argument in the western media a lot (The Economist even had an essay on it calling the contrast with 2014 odd), which made the whole thing confusing to decipher leading up to the war. Anyways. Point taken you saw some trolls. Agree to disagree.

I am telling you guys the whole thing was made up in Putin’ brain on the go. Even internally at the highest level they were probably shocked. If soldiers were not ready, don’t think their people were ready in contrast to the 2014 annexation. it was an internal shock and awe as well as an external one.

Hahaha “The guy (Ackman) who bought it when it dropped by 20% sold it yesterday” I ll give Prem credit for saying we don’t have the skillset to see if Amazon other bets would have paid off or not. Thats fair.

Netflix down %30, just in time for Prem to make a comment about it at tomorrow’s AGM

The new Batman looks really good. I like the style. Highly recommend "Tokyo Vice" on HBO (Canadian Crave). About an American journalist working stories on the Yakuza in the Tokyo underworld in the 90s. Really well made.

Fairfax = Fair and Friendly.

Viking you probably know better than me, but I ll say it anyways. You better off staying with what you know (FFH) and riding it out … than diversifying into its lesser branches (Recipe, Resolute etc). There is no need to make a move and “locking in” gains. Only to go down the quality ladder.

Russian state prepared their people in 2014 for what was coming. In 2022, complete opposite. No preparation. Despite the obvious signs of an army massing near the border and even going to Belarusia. I believe (with no evidence) that even foreign minister Lavrov didn’t know what was in Putin mind only weeks away from the invasion. I believe what Russian state says and what Putin decides to do are two different things. And things happen the way they did, because he chose to make it a fait accompli no time for internal dissent. On nukes, Russian state is doing is job in signalling what they have told to signal, that is there is no escalation to that. But If it does happen i don’t expect it to be signalled in advance. it is already a long war and the day is still long. We are at year 8 and counting.

The Dutch auction and periodic won’t close the discount. That is not the intent. What will compress the discount is the airport going back to its full pre-pandemic capacity and showing in the numbers. The buybacks is just to get ready for that inflection point. After all the discount is based on book value, which itself is based on a calculated intrinsic value. The real economic picture for the airport need to “kick in” …

there was this podcast on it as well. https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus/2021-05-12-wildcard-is-nelnet-a-hidden-gem

Understood. Cheers. I would just mention that the wrinkle would be that Russia has veto power in the UN Security Council. We can argue the flaws of the system, but for now it is what it is. UN was pretty much ignored by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld as they prepared to march the legions to Gaul for glory in 2003. So not only Moscow & Beijing can veto everything they can also ignore it as a dead body (Ala John Bolton) A UN move would be symbolic, but agree that if works would be a clever way to go around the NATO dilemma.

Who is saying it doesn’t ? The escalation ladder is what we are talking about. What response they expect vs what is given. Given all mishaps we saw in the past 8 weeks, I would say it is more likely than not that there is a huge mismatch on the escalation ladder and threshold. Moscow has a clear threshold and we don’t what that is. That said your point & Spek point differ that he is talking about direct conventional limited response within Ukraine by NATO. You are taking about U.S. increasing its supply of weaponry to UN. This is not going to be Gulf War & Kuwait 2.0. Pipeline carrying Russian gas does not need to be blown off, to add more damages to the Ukrainian infrastructure, the end customer can just stop receiving it and default on its contractual obligations (and deal with its consequences). Why blow off pipeline. (Other than have more business for Brookfield Infrastructure at a later date) I guess we have different perspectives.

That is a great point ! But i would say that point had a shelf-life that ended by the invasion. Now, the perspectives are very different. If before we were toying with the Ukrainians, not being able to decide how much we ought to care, it is different now.

makes sense, now that you put it this way

Well said, it becomes normal to use thereafter. The Dow will drop 15% after the first use of nuke in the war, but then ends of closing the week on the positive, after the markets realize hey the world didnt end. Sad but true.