The rain came down hard just after midnight and I like rain, it fills up the space and it makes a better background noise than TV.
The Caribbean islands are perfect for this – you get the rain in the night and beautiful sunshine in the morning. Like the rain washes away the sins. An interesting thing – there are no animal sights in the South, in Canada I will see the deer and hear the coyotes, see the squirrels too, which are black in Ontario. I will take Muskoka over Barbados every day of the year, you know. Outside the coronavirus panic continues. My sons just flew in from Toronto and the plane was almost empty. Felt like taking a private jet, they said. More controversial are claims that political structures become top-heavy after long periods of success, and these bloated, brittle hierarchies lose the flexibility and boldness needed to deal with novel challenges hitting at the same time.Their response to the crisis is pathetic. This applies directly to China, which is experiencing not just a public health crisis (Covid-19 pandemic) but a host of overlapping crises triggered by the epidemic. As for the export economy: Chinese companies were already relocating abroad as a result of the trade war with the US, to Mexico for example, where the labor cost is just as low and that country is within the NAFTA zone. This will only accelerate going forward. One thing is clear for me – this is the end of China as a global manufacturing hub, there is no going back. The important question is what comes next over there – the ruling party needs to keep people employed otherwise they will be on the streets soon. China doesn't have the domestic market to absorb the factories output. A lot of people will learn the lesson that the domestic demand is the key, not the export economy. Problem is that we’re dominated by the political left, that is incapable of acting in the crisis. Someone needs to put the foot down and stop the nonsense. The left refuses to accept that every value system produces a hierarchy and if you dispense with the hierarchy, you dispense with the value system. It’s a Marxist thinking that we can somehow not shake off and it is now coming to hunt us. We’re looking at major confusion and swings that will get the best of most people. It’s coming.
0 Comments
I went to cut my hair the other day, and I know the guy who owns the place for years now. He was one of the first to read my book and he liked it.
He said “I almost read the whole thing.” Good enough. “You know where the coronavirus comes from?” he asked. “If you said Wuhan I walk out.” “From a brewery in Mexico, along with the lyme disease.” Got to love the Italians, they never give up to be cheerful no matter how bad it gets. Now Milan is the European center of the virus, likely because of the fashion shows and the many Chinese visitors shopping. Not their fault, except how the virus got out of a lab in China, it didn’t appear out of thin air in the world. Nobody is investigating it. The media said that 41 people died in Italy last day alone from this. That’s tragic. For the rest of us, we’re about to find out what we’ve wrought with the wonders of globalism. Is there anything you can think of over at the Wall Mart or the Walgreens that isn’t made in China? The message is getting out — though not from US authorities yet — that everybody may soon be spending a lot of time home alone. Switzerland banned events with more than 1,000 people (why that number, exactly is not clear), Japan has canceled school for the time being — duration unknown for now. The auto show in Geneva in cancelled. Of all the many-networked systems the world depends on, banking and finance are the most fragile, the most susceptible to danger of disorder. And, of course, that is exactly what we’re seeing in the stock markets – they’re diving hard. Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMIs) are a tally of how executives see their own company – whether business activity at their company rose or fell, whether they added or shed staff, etc. A value above 50 means expansion; a value below 50 means contraction. And in China, both, the PMI for the non-manufacturing sector and the PMI for the manufacturing sector, released on March 1, have collapsed to unfathomable lows (from 54.1 in January to below 30 now). After that time, the government site with this info became not accessible (error # 502, whatever that means). ANZ banking group estimated, based on migration data of workers returning to the city from their villages, that about 50% of the workers had returned to their jobs as of this weekend, but that China’s economy was operating at only 20% capacity, hampered by issues ranging from lacking parts to other workers not having returned to work. Despite repeated pleads from health officials not to buy face masks, which will not work, people can’t stop snatching up masks and respirators. Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades, and now is the time to act on those plans, as a WHO official in Geneva was lecturing the other day. Let’s see how efficient are the governments that cost us a fortune in taxes. Efficient in protecting their own people, that is. For all of you stacking up on food for the coming apocalypse, just remember – rice comes from China and pasta from Italy. Let’s start with this:
“Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of means and taste. Been around for a long time, pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.” That’s the Rolling Stones, their best song ever, my opinion, and he is talking about Lucifer, God’s fallen angel who they never mention in any sermon in the church. He was an angel, right? Just with a different view. “Stole many a man's soul to waste.” Mick Jagger says in the song. Better words have never been spoken. And wait, I will get to the rose soon. In the world, the diversity idea is a misleading name, and a misguided concept because men are more interested in things, and women are more interested in people. We can’t be measured the same, try to make the best use of diversity, not introduce competition. Engineers are interested in things and not surprisingly most of them are men. If you have a desire to become a nurse you are interested in people, and most of nurses are women. With the new concept you’re moving men and women against each other, not moving the world forward at all. It’s been a couple of years now since anything I said mattered, but if you’re creative you know that the rose smells slowly and it’s addictive. I spoke to an old priest a while back in the Sanctuaire Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec. Read the name again now. He said I am an aggressive man, and I asked him, “in all the years people came to you, confession or just talk, what did you learn from them? “ He said – “the dream, the vision, the desire. It never stops.” You never stop having a dream. I have two sons, aged 17 and 25. The 17-year-old thinks I am an idiot, the 25-year old knows I am an idiot. But I have my moments and this is when I teach them about live, the real one, like how things really happen. And about what’s really important in what you do. Funny thing is, they both turned up good in part because I was sharing my thinking with them since they were little. Driving them to school and talking over dinners. And they actually thanked me for my lectures, both of them. The other day I was sitting in a restaurant with a lady I know for a while since I followed her though three countries and two continents over the years. That’s a lot of commitment and the connection is real like IBM. We were sitting in a coffee in Nyon, a city just east of Geneva. I said “I am loosing interest with what’s happening in the world, I feel like I’ve seen it all.” She put down her white cappuccino cup with a red Rougemont sign on the side of it. Didn’t touch the croissant. “Do you care?” She asked. “I don’t.” “I actually hopped you don’t, just make every day of your life stand for something.” I’ve missed things, I compete with missed opportunities and I don’t have much time.
Ten, fifteen years maybe but I will accomplish what I want, you can bet your last dollar on me. Problem is, we’re loosing the battle against the stupid. How do we fix that? Well, the first step is to bring back the word “stupid”. Totally incorrect statement these fragile days, but that strong word was invented for a reason. Apple operating platform is that, stupid, electric cars are too, space programs, traffic cameras, #metoo movement. Do you want to know what isn’t? When I sit on a patio by the lake on a sunny day sipping coffee and I left my iPhone at home and I talk to someone and what she says impresses me. Back to the stupid thing, and let me tell you this – when president Obama won the elections, the Republicans accepted it in the “yeah, fine” fashion. You just take it right? The people have spoken. When Trump won there was a fury from the left (and still is) not accepting any of it. Three years in and the political left cannot settle! What does democracy mean anymore? Just look at the Brexit mess, people voted, right, that doesn’t count for nothing? And Trump will win the second turn and it will get even uglier, I am convinced we haven’t seen nothing yet. Democracy is dead, a scary thought. We’re not progressing as societies, we’re moving backwards. In every sense of the word, the rules that made the western civilization great are out the window. There are Polish people returning from living in Sweden for years because they can’t stand the mess that country has become. Police in the city of Malmö appealed to citizens for help to contain violence. You know you’re in trouble if the police are asking for help. Some people say stuff that goes against the common regression and they don’t get much recognition. I am one of them, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I hope that there will be more of us. One thing to understand is this - it's dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong. Even worse, when majority of the people are wrong. In closing, I maybe temperamental but I also push the envelope. I say things that are original and this has to count for something. And to be clear, I don’t like doing any of this, it feels like paddling up the creek. My favorite quote comes from Charles Dicken’s novel “A Tell of Two Cities.” Here it is: “these are the best of times, and these are the worst of times.” And they are. For all your sinners out there, see you in hell, first lap dance is on me. Listen, I am from the past and I am here in the present thinking about the future. Some people say “the future is now,” but it’s not - this is now. Future is then, and when we get to “then” that will be the future. It may be disappointing or not, it is up to our children and how we bring them up. And they have great energy and attitude towards life that impresses me constantly. I was just thinking about it still lying in bed. Let me explain my mornings to you. I wake up and look at the tremendous cedar out there; it’s straight outside my bedroom window. It is quite possibly the main feat of nature that keeps me in Switzerland for so long, with all due respect to this great country. With age I learned to appreciate the details of life, except this one is anything but a detail. I don’t eat until the afternoon and I spend my days writing my new book, the Villa Rose. Yes, the famous one on Lake Lucerne and the story is about Marc Rich, the (in)famous financier. Rich was born to a Jewish family in Antwerp, Belgium, and moved to America as a kid. He is mostly known as the founder of the commodities company Glencore, but there was way more to him than that.
He was also an art collector and lived surrounded by Renoirs, Monets and Picassos, a dimension which I admire in a person. At some point, before he died, he wanted to sell the villa for 100M – it is really that spectacular. His daughters accepted less after he was gone. In 1983 Rich was indicted on 65 criminal counts, the biggest tax evasion case in US history. He fled to Switzerland and never returned, even to visit his dying daughter in California and that was tough on him. Later, president Clinton granted him a presidential pardon on his last day in the office. It was controversial, but then the Clintons were always open for business. Rich was married for 30 years to Denise Eisenberg, a songwriter from New England. I guess she was really something, keeping him on an even keel with all the shady businesses he was involved in over the years. Funny thing is, marriage is a learning experience for men, for women is more of a teaching experience. The difference exists because women know what they want to do in life. They typically get married, have kids and bring them up, go to work if they feel like having a career. Or not if they don’t. It’s a pre-defined path. Men don’t have any of this – we need to figure life out. So, the book is coming along, writing it feels to me like a therapy in a way. The night comes quickly and I like working during the night, except that I don’t see the big tree. At night I get the feeling of time shattered in gray dust and sometimes someone in the building plays violin. Blue Café is a place where the one who knows meets the one that does not care.
The irony is that it could very well be the same person. I’ve been there, to the Café. Now, sitting in the lounge at the airport watching flights to China being cancelled makes me think that this is a panic situation and life never goes well if you allow yourself to get into that mode. Still, the tomato soup here at the Étude is excellent, the wine is not bad and I am not flying East. Enjoying life Chopin style. The number of those affected in China’s population of 1.36 billion is miniscule, and the virus has a mortality rate of about than 2%. It is sad for those sick, but one has a bigger chance to be hit by a bus than die from this new virus. Still, the activities of the “operation maximum redundancy” continue – on January 31st the American government issued a travel advisory, a class 4 emergency, which urges all U.S. citizens in China to leave, putting China into the same basket as North Korea and Iran. Just get real folks, will ya? The coronavirus is neither as deadly nor as communicable as the SARS virus from 15 years ago. It probably won't kill nearly as many people as a normal flu season, so the public in most of the world should ignore the fear mongers. The Chinese ruling party has made huge effort demonstrating its earnestness in the crisis, performing great feats like the construction of a one-thousand-bed hospital in ten days, shutting down the lunar new year festivities (it’s like cancelling Christmas here), and locking down a hundred million citizens in quarantine. Pretty impressive, but with the absolute power of president Xi comes absolute responsibility. As any leader worth his salt understands – everything that goes wrong is your fault. Impressive with the new hospital, and it takes fresh thinking to accomplish something like this. As they say - everyone understands that something cannot be done until someone new comes along who doesn’t know it yet, and he makes it happen. Speaking about impressive - Greta Thunberg has been nominated to the Nobel Piece Prize. Not sure how world piece and climate change intervene, but I am no longer European and will let it go. Don’t forget, as per Greenpeace gloom and doom we are all supposed to be dead by now or drowning because of rising sea levels. Apparently former President Obama did not believe his own warnings of climate change since he just bought a mansion on the beach (Martha’s Vineyard, no less, and he spent good money on it). So what is Greta preaching? Not how we could better interact with our environment, just a head on attack on our way of life with nothing different to offer. You can do better than that young lady. Where are your parents in this nonsense? There is something I know for sure - facts can be misleading, but rumors are very revealing because they show how the world really is. They tell me to stay away from the nonsense and my definition of it may surprise you. So, I hide behind my writings. My psychiatrist at the hospital looks at me waiting until I say something, and I try. We sit opposite each other in the cold office with the view of the lake; she dresses the same every time to keep me calm maybe, but I still just hide behind my words. They hide my true shape like Dorian Gray. The problem with having an opinion is that some people love you, others don’t.
Call yourself strong-minded or just admit that you consent with what’s right at the time only with some mental effort. With age I realized that I have less opinions, but I feel stronger about them. Example is - do I care about the climate change? I don’t - because only the sun energy rules it and I have no influence over the sun. I do care about messing up this beautiful planet with garbage, that I do. There is no doubt that the migrations throughout history were driven by natural climate change. It is the reason why the Northern tribes descended on Rome and it ultimately fell. It was a disaster – the population of this city went down from about a million to 15 thousand. It took hundreds of years for Renaissance to come and get Europe going again. Climate change has always caused massive migrations North to South. Along with a boom in agricultural products, that is coming to the neighborhood near you, by the way. It used to be that one could cross the Baltic Sea from Poland to Sweden on a slide with horses. There were places to get warm food on the way on ice, change the horses too. Need a ferry now, an all night trip. Climate change is nothing new on this planet; temperatures went up and down throughout the history of humankind. Now, how about fast-forward to today? Today is the day that Britain is leaving the European Union, and there will be more countries following, first those that don’t share the Euro currency. The departure of Britain will leave a major hole in the budget of the EU at the time they want to fund their own army. It’s over 10% of income they’re about to lose at the end of 2020 (Britain has been 3rd largest contributor to the EU budget). How do people take it? The stock market is flying and commercial property prices in London are up 5% in January alone. The financial heart of Europe is in London. Where could it move? To Frankfurt where Deutsche Bank stock is in single digits? The Brits are doing what’s right, getting their country back. It seems like the rest of Europe is in the holding pattern for now. To borrow from The Matrix, not many are willing to take the “red pill” to see the reality behind the controlled explanation. The business in Europe will pick up again – just give people the room to move and be creative. Or rather they will take it themselves. For now, entrepreneur is French for unemployed, by the way. Problem is, the lawyers in charge of the EU don’t understand how people think. They’ve brought money rates to zero, but the thing to understand is that the level of interest on loans doesn’t matter for business at all. If the money cost me 10% but I can make 20%, I jump on it in a heartbeat. But if the interest is at zero and with all the taxes and regulation there is a slim chance to make a profit, I’ll pass. One always needs to stay ahead, no? Just ask yourself this question: What do I know that’s original? As I was growing up I learned that the only unforgivable sin in life is to be boring - a notion that collides somewhat with the current education system.
Tenured professors at universities are unusual beasts in nature, for they have no predator. Their jobs are safe, they don’t need to publish new research unless they really want to. The result is not encouraging. How many technological breakthroughs have come from the universities? Or how many times we turned to professors to resolve an important issue? Then look at the amount of money that is needed to get education in America and in the UK as well. It’s a Ponzi scheme, which is what academia has to a great extend become. Young people are running up massive debts in a system that can’t reward them and there is a huge resentment coming in the next few years from the people who realize they’ve been had. Also, if you massively increase the number of people who think they should go to a university, you can’t keep up a system that rewards people for having gone to these universities. This creates a major imbalance in society. One can look at it from different angle. Geopolitics is a pattern of power, and one of the elements that make it happen is technology. Meaning that the rise and fall of nations is in step with the rise and fall of technology. Core technology, to be specific, which branches into many areas of life, like what made Apple and Microsoft so powerful. Now, what is the next thing that is coming? The one fact you can be certain of, is that it will be utterly unexpected, and it will be different from what came before and will drive power one step further. The battleground in geopolitics is the next technology. What comes after the decade long pause in invention? When a really smart guy or girl, who can’t get a date, is not interested in anything digital anymore and starts to think about the next thing, this is when progress will happen. If history is any guide, he will not be a graduate from a prestigious university; he’ll be working out of his parent’s garage. Switching the topic, which is what guys say before they do and women just switch on the fly, the winter is now brutal in Canada and the army was sent to dig out the Atlantic Provinces from a massive snowfall. It’s tough with the snow and the cold, long winter plus Prince Harry with Megan moving there. Thank God for Hockey Night in Canada and curling, where the most important part of the game is beer. Prime minister Trudeau already offered to pick up the royal pair’s security bill while they’re here and it will go in seven digits. Nice of him dispensing other people's money so leisurely. The weather is better in the Geneva area, where I was able to ride the motorcycle at +2C on a sunny day. I wasn’t doing a good job of it – no matter how warm I dress, the dexterity suffers and you need both feet and hands to make the Bimmer fly. I end up with saying this - the upcoming BMW 1.8 boxer is not a convincing piece of equipment, big in the news as it is. It is meant to take on Harley, but whoever signed off on the design doesn’t have a sense of harmony or a sense of beauty. They need the Italians to make it look dashing. I always thought that if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, and this was back in times when I still cared about the consequences.
And I remember were my attitude came from. I had a business lunch with an older man in Houston, Texas a long time ago. He had the Strohhut hat on and a bolo tie and he drove a Lexus. He said, “take whatever original skill you have and amplify by ten. That’s how you make it in life. Find the original you, something that only you can say and do.” I was listening. Also, I think I lived through the best 50 years of all of humanity – the progress, the growth, the access to information, the openness and inclusion of the western culture has been unprecedented. All this may be closing a little now. I was always a spiritual man, attracted to religion because of the distance it gives to current happenings in life. Walking into an old church from a busy street is like changing reality. And I always liked the Old Testament more than the New one, the Old is way deeper in my opinion, except for what St. John had to say in his gospel, easily the best part of the bible. What he said about the “word” defined humanity and it is extraordinary. It keeps people interested still, despite constant shenanigans from the Vatican, two popes on the display, arguing. The name Israel actually means “he, who wrestles with God”, and this is a sign of a life that is lived properly, because if God is the source of meaning, the place where answers can emerge – you will wrestle with it all your life it if you’re honest. Important thoughts get lost in the daily rutine and visions get blurry. Just ask yourself this question: who is now able to build Jerusalem? I admire people who don’t watch news on TV and I think I’m half way there, taking the long view from the heart of the Alps here. I consider a German - Rainer Maria Rilke, the best poet that ever lived. One Christmas some years ago I was flying home through Frankfurt and I stayed the night at the Sheraton at the airport. I picked up a book about Rilke earlier and I was fascinated by it, reading it at the bar late into the night until they kicked me out. His famous verse “and the song remains beautiful” rings in my head every day. No matter what happens in life, don’t you just want this to be about you? Now the capital flow models are indicating that there is a high concentration of dollar hoarding in Germany as fears continue over the future of Deutsche Bank. Brussels EU leaders do nothing about it - they’re simply lawyers trying to get around the constitution, not the leaders you want. The fear of a “Deutsche Bank moment” is causing repo rates to spike because banks don’t trust each other for the fear of exposure to DB. US Federal Reserve has stepped in as intermediary – the nonsense you read in the media about them pumping trillions into the market is just that. They extended a line of credit of sorts that is repaid daily; there is no new money in the system. And they’re saving the world again, make no mistake about it. They say that history isn’t kind to men who play Gods and I don’t agree with that for a moment. Which is to say, I don’t believe in mediocrity. Make your life remarkable, be the God. Back when I was in eleventh grade, our high school owned a chalet deep in the Sudetes, which is a mountain range on the border with the Czech Republic. Take a look. To qualify for the winter skiing trip you had to make the school famous by winning medals in sport competitions. My friend and me did just that and we were tasked with going to the chalet earlier and get the place ready for the rest of the team. So, we took a couple of trains and then found a taxi in this town close to the border. Wet wind came, the snow was blowing and people were hiding in their homes. The man drove as up as far as the car could make it and then he said – “you’re on your own now boys.” We were walking uphill in waist deep snow for most of the evening. If this is not an impression of an empty planet for a 16 year old, I don’t know what is. Nevertheless, when the team came two days later we had the house warmed up and hot food on the stove. Fast-forward to today and to my take on the empty planet now. The world population growth prediction by the United Nation Population Division assumes nearly linear increase until the planet can’t sustain us anymore. The model is based on trends that may have been right in the past, but they don’t consider changes in society. In fact the world’s population is about to take a dive. The reduction in fertility in developed countries is by now an accepted fact; fertility rate of Canada today is 1.6, way below the 2.1 replacement level. The extreme case is Japan, which lost almost half a million in 2019 (out of a total population of about 125 million). Do the math when the last Japanese will walk the earth. It gets really interesting looking at India and China (40% of world’s population lives there). China has a birth rate of 1.5 and India has just been reported at 2.1, so you may wonder how we can explode if we’re hardly replacing ourselves. And keep in mind that Eastern Asian countries just don’t accept emigrants. It’s the same in Eastern Europe – a cultural issue, they would rather shrink and be united, than expand and be divided. In China’s case there is a twist to it – thanks to the disastrous “one child policy”, they now have 60 million more men than women. That’s roughly the population of France, all men no women. The major driver in population decline is urbanization – for the first time in history we now live mostly in cities (55% of humans). When you move into the city, a child stops being an asset (another pair of hands to work in the field) and starts to be a liability (another person to feed). Keeping in mind that statistical 2.1 children per family is just the replacement level, here is how we score elsewhere: European Union is at 1.6 (740 million people who’re not replacing themselves, just rapidly aging). The problem with aging population is that they just don’t buy that much. And old populations are expensive – healthcare, pensions and all the issues you have to deal with as people age. One way to deal with population decline is immigration. Canada, US and Australia are doing it right, the EU is doing it wrong. Russian demographic is just a disaster, the fertility rate collapsed with the Soviet Union. This means that if they have any military ambitions in Eastern Europe, they need to do it now. There is a twist with Russia as well – the population there is still in support of the old communist order (up to 60% by some polls). President Putin has been doing a good job of keeping the old demons at bay, but he is on his way out. If Russia slips into a more democratic system, all bets are off who raises to the surface. Back in the mountains, there was a classified military area not far from us, where they used to mine uranium in the 1950’s. One local took us to the entrance of an abandoned mine and we went in and took some blue sparkling crystals from the walls. Back in the chalet they were exploding when thrown in the fireplace. It made for a fine combo with the howling wind outside. * ”Empty Planet” is a book by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. The statistics in the text above were taken from the book. |
AuthorTom Kubiak is the author of The Traveler Archives
February 2021
Categories |