Xerxes

The Economist Podcasts: Introducing The Prince on Apple Podcasts

thanks @VersaillesinNY

BAE for sure. For LMT, unrelated to Saudi Arabia, it was already known that they would have flat y o y top line through 2025. The large stock repurchase program started in Q4 last year was largely there to take advantage of that. So that once the budget is in, you get that EPS torque with a lower share count. I don’t know what is Saudi exposure to its top line but should be small, given that for the longest time buying Lockheed stock meant investing in the F-35 franchise because of its outsize role in LMT business.

This Friday is the finale of Rings of Power. What a fantastic show. But all good things must come to an end. i ll check out Pennyworth. Also watching Andor. Pretty well done. On HOD, the overall highlight has been the introduction of the High Tower as a power broker. We barely saw them in GOT.

The only comment I would have is that the OPEC cartel became OPEC+ as a defensive measure against the resurgent shale industry back few years ago (post-2014). It has nothing to do with Biden or anybody else. It was the American ingenuity in tapping its vast reserves that pushed OPEC into OPEC+.

Thanks everyone. makes sense. A cyclical drop in earning is one thing (opportunity) but a drop in AUM will be putting the whole “secular thesis” into a cyclical camp and with it the fund-raising franchise. I only own BAM and two of its subs + small position in Onex that got cut in half but is actually more of an opportunity given that the market never gave credit for its FRE anyways being so small. So one can hinge it against its NAV as oppose to a multiple on FRE.

Any thought in using iShares MSCI Qatar ETF | QAT as vehicule to capture the directional trend that the natural gas bonanza will have on the country of Qatar. It is not clear how much of the windfall would actually come into Qatar proper itself. I would think a lot of it would go to its sovereign fund outside the local economy, but some of it should flow down and be the tide that would be lifting the boats.

Does anyone has a source of consolidated letters from Mr Russo from Semper-Vic-Partners Google search on gardner russo & gardner and/or Semper-Vic-Partners yields little. There are some letters on MOI Global but no main source that i can find. Any feedback would be apperciated

Isn't that the whole point of being "inflation hawk" ... more about the take-no-prisonner optics

@RedLion @StevieV Would you agree that for the bluechip alternative story to truely roll over (beyound just the cyclical aspect of their earning/carry), we need to see their "fund-raising franchise" machine to decline. i.e. lower AUM year over year

Look like Kremlin is hiring Dr Evil as the new C-in-C overseeing the Special Operations.

To be fair, U.S. has also for decades safeguarded (alongside its self interest) the institutions of democracies that we all enjoy today which allow us to opine more or less freely.

admitingly it can go sideways and the scale of destruction would be many times that of WW2. You are not wrong ! but was that his original intent ? Or was it by virtue of being cornered. (I understand that he actually has a choice - but in reality he probably doesn’t, not everyone is Gandhi) Don’t forget that most of us in the West would gladly sponsor unleashing nuclear holocaust on an enemy city if we feel our “military’ honour” has been stained. I am referring to the survey done where a good % folks in the US would want to nuke an Iranian city of several million people, if a U.S. aircraft carrier has been sunk in the Persian Gulf. When I posted here I barely got a reaction. The only person (don’t remember who) on this board who really answered tried to make the case that nuking could be somewhat ok depending on the circumstances and rules of engagement. It was mostly silence from everybody else. I was shocked !!

Be serious Greg, This is not a republican vs Democrat debate. Getting entangled in foreign adventures has been a way of escape for both from the gridlock in their domestic arena.

You probably enjoy this discussion. There are lots on railroads.

I would not conflate what private citizens & posters here might think with what U.S. as a government might think. private citizens I imagine are more interested in triumph of good vs evil. So one needs to forgive them when they are more focused on certain events than others that does not fit that fairy tale black and white narrative. Now while the US government has no business taking the moral high ground (given its exotic history and foreign adventures), it has every bit of business in securing its geopolitical interest and its allies. One does not get to be a superpower by not securing its interest or doing a “random walk”. The danger though is that the US Government has so deeply aligned itself with the Ukrainian cause that it may be hard to do a “pivot” if it gets too far. And that is if we even know what is too far. It has been said that the US Central Bank is going to hike interest rate until something “breaks”. In the arena of geopolitics, can the U.S. Government keep pushing Ukraine until something “breaks”. With the former the Central Bank can do a u-turn and start buying bonds ala Bank of England. Can the U.S. Government perform a geopolitical u-turn. It is sad and unfair to the Ukrainian to even be talking about this. As the Ukrainian have every right to keep on fighting. But there is a bigger picture. For instance I recall in 1985-86 (whenever that was) the U.S. Government was only too happy to supply Iraq with satellite imagery of Iranian troop movements to help Saddam with his chemical attacks. I suppose enabling the use of WMD by Saddam served a greater purpose ! https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

Viking I agree with Dinar that we cannot compare Hitler with Putin. if you do so you are decreasing the damage that Hitler has done to the world at the expense of trying to score a point. they are not even in the same zip code

Agreed. I would just caution that story has not ended. However I do hope that the lesson remains the same 12 months out. happy thanksgiving

just to add t Spek’ comment In the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and U.S. involvement in Iraq —- in all three conflicts the assailants captured the country (i.e critical infrastructure) within months. In case of Afghanistan and the Soviet it was in matter of weeks IIRC. Yet in all three they lost the long game. In case of Ukraine/Russia in 2022, that first phase has not even been completed.

Don’t take a snapshot of the past and just projected forward into the future. That was the House of Saud, with a decentralized rotating power structure between brothers and ruling by consensus and careful decision making. This is now House of Salman with power being fully centralized on and around the royal line of Salman and his descendants. Autocracies prefer to work with other autocracies.

Just now … “Blast damages only bridge linking Russia and Crimea“ “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning” Sleep walking to Armageddon are we …

Neither the Iranian nor the Saudi can be trusted. If you trust them, be prepared to be disappointed. But that is the nature of things. But it is also true U.S. has been the biggest spoiler in the region and directly and indirectly causing havoc, death and destruction as it went. So therefore in turn neither Iranian and Saudi can trust Americans. It is just mutual. The only U.S. government that has done any good (IMO) in the past 40 years in the Middle East is actually (surprisingly) that of President Trump. No no no not because of pulling out of nuclear deal (which you ll see westerners opine a lot) but rather the Abraham Accord and bringing UAE and Israel and others close. It even beats Camp David in terms of achievement. That is a credible of achievement worthy of praise.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-installed-ukraine-official-pours-scorn-putins-generals-defence-minister-2022-10-06/ The defence minister should consider this, given the true state of his portfolio of responsibility. He has become Ukraine’ biggest weapon supplier !