Thursday, March 7, 2013

Today's diary - Day 2

Who knows, maybe this becomes a new habit of mine. I recently saw a BBC documentary from some time ago about Leo Tolstoy and was intrigued about how people 150 years ago kept daily diaries, even by both spouses in a household, that is. They also shared those between them as a token of devotion and eternal 'love'. I'm sharing mine with the world, regardless there will only be a handful who'd really bother reading them. No worries. Couldn't care less. Just expressing opinions...

Chavez cont'd. I saw a series of photographs by Reuters yesterday of Venezuelans mourning his death and taking it to the streets. Heartbreaking shots of unseen public hysteria. I made a selection of few among those pictures and sent them to my 'jokes' list of recipients. This is a list of folks worldwide, friends, relatives and close acquaintances that send me and receive from me all sorts of Internet wisdoms and jokes (some spicy, among other... don't we all do this?). Anyways, I got a reaction from Katmandu (yes, Nepal, no shit) and one from Athens, Greece, saying that we, in the West, actually know far too little about him (other than his populist bullying of the leaders of the West), and that he did a lot for his people. That's why they mourn him. Some of it must be true I gather. Good for him. May he rest in peace. That's what many Italians also say about Sylvio as well. Among ourselves boys and gals, I like Sylvio. His political opponents, traditional Italian parties, having failed miserably in the past on domestic issues (it's not only the Greeks holding that trophy, mind you), not being able to deal with him on the acute social and economic, let alone political issues that hold Italy awake these days, have turned over to a war of Tabloids instead. I have known of him as the President of Fininvest in the 80ies, when his company was a consulting customer of ours. Yep, Fininvest was one of our most important customer references. We did quite some work on ITC strategy for them, in times most other companies couldn't even spell the word properly. And Sylvio was on top of things, I remember. I was actually told that by one of our senior consultants who happened to have met Berlusconi in project meetings (that's good ol' Graham Price, an ex-Xerox Corp executive, RIP, passed in 1999). Yep, I was one of the 'lucky' ones to have heard about the Maestro before the rest of the world crowds came to hear and hate him. It was the time of the capitalist rebels in Italy, the likes of Berlusconi and Carlo de Benedetti. Against the traditional 'aristocracy' of the Agnelli's and others like them. Viva Sylvio? Why not?

AAPL: Motley Fool reports an Apple downgrade by Barenberg Bank, moving its target from 800 bucks to 360! Reminds me of those clowns who put the same AAPL target at 1111 bucks half a year ago! The BB analyst also moved them from Buy to Sell! Can you imagine this? This alone tells you the whole story about this idiot. A 'sell' recommendation is something you never see mentioned about blue chips, unless they are headed to disaster and everybody knows that from the actual facts, that is their financial reports. How can you recommend selling a stock of a company who still turns around margins of 40%, grows at the speed of light and dominates the world in everything surrounding our electronic being? Not to forget the mountain of cash they are sitting on, estimated at the best part of 150 billion US, as we speak. So, my recommendation is this. Stay away from Barenberg Bank. If that's the sort of analysts they employ, they are actually acting along the top clowns and comedians of the world, going after simple sensation alone; they'd be the last place on earth I'd trust any of my hard earned dough to. To talk about another bank, UBS of all people, published far more reasonable reports recently urging investor patience, by looking at the real facts. Well, that's what makes the difference between the Swiss and Americans. The Swiss love facts and solid foundations, whereas Americans are swearing by 'hot air rhetorics', TV preachers and sensation gurus! Pity that they still control most of the world's wealth in their hands. Not for long, I hope. Here cometh People's Republic of China!

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