That Other Exodus

History is full of stories of people leaving their homelands for a mix of reasons, ranging from climate and economy to political persecution. There's nothing new in this, so we shouldn't be surprised to learn that this is still going on.

People migrate from poor countries to rich countries in order to better their economic situation, people migrate from cold countries to warmer countries to better their quality of life, and people migrate from oppressive countries to freer countries to gain more control over their private affairs.

With people migrating for these different reasons, it's not surprising that we find people moving in both directions between countries. I moved from Norway to Portugal in order to better my quality of life and get better control over my finances. My wife's nephew moved from Portugal to Denmark in order to get better paid work. I was driven by climate and politics. My wife's nephew was driven by economy.

This explains why people come and go. Last time I checked, some 15 years ago, Norway had a net immigration of 40,000 people per year. This was divided into 70,000 moving to Norway, and 30,000 leaving the country.

These are big numbers for a country of five million people. If they have persisted over the years, we're now talking about a net immigration of 600,000 people, with 1,050,000 people entering the country and 450,000 people leaving.

Many of these people are the same. Some live in Norway for a few years before moving on, so things are not quite as extreme as it may look. But it's fair to say that a large percentage of the five million people now living in Norway are not ethnic Norwegians.

None of this has gotten much attention until recently, when there's been a surge in the number of very wealthy people leaving Norway. Rich Norwegians are moving to Switzerland. Their destination of choice is Lugano.

Lugano is a town of 150,000 people, and the number of rich Norwegians settling there is probably less than a hundred, so the town is not exactly inundated with Norwegians. However, the net wealth of these immigrants is considerable, so the price of luxury dwellings may go up somewhat. Apart from that, there won't be much change to the town in the short term.

The emigration from Norway isn't going to have much immediate impact either. The Norwegian state is rich enough to allow for this reduction to their tax base. What is lost in terms of taxation will be compensated for by other means. The sovereign wealth fund will be used to compensate for the loss of taxes.

All of this has been very predictable. Norwegians have for decades been told that Norway is the best place in the world to live. They have also been told that we don't need rich people because the state is so rich that any shortfalls in taxes will be made up for by its other incomes.

This has made people increasingly hostile towards the selfish rich people that no-one needs, and taxes have been increased on them with the excuse that they don't really deserve to be rich. The logic is that Norway is so wonderful that no-one will leave, and taxes on the rich can therefore be put very high without consequence.

But this isn't how things have been going. Decades of emigration have had its toll. Norway is no longer the best place to live. It's been dropping in its ranking. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the UN measure is based on some rather spurious factors. There are much nicer places to live than in Norway, and Lugano is an example of this.

What is lost in Norway is not merely a tax base. Industry and investments are lost too. Those leaving Norway will start looking for opportunity in their new country, and what is invested there isn't invested in Norway.

This doesn't happen immediately. It takes time to properly integrate into a new place. It may take a generation. But wealthy Norwegians in Switzerland will become a noticeable influence in the future, and Norway will be correspondingly poorer for it.

This mechanism isn't only happening in Norway. We see this all over the place. A lot of attention is given to the migration patterns of poor people coming up from mismanaged countries in the south, while little attention is given to the migration patterns of the rich.

This is because the number of poor people moving is so much greater than the number of rich people moving. But if we look at people in terms of resources, we'd see that a few rich people moving is as important as a large number of poor people moving, and the effect is often opposite. Many poor people end up being a drain on the societies they move to, while rich people tend to invest in the communities they move into.

People are moving internally in Europe. The same is happening in the US. There are also large influxes of poor people moving into both the US and Europe from the south.

The end result will be a concentration of different cultures into different places. The rich and the powerful will drift towards places like Lugano. The poor will drift towards places like Oslo.

This will in turn force places like Oslo to become increasingly parasitic on its remaining tax base as well as more aggressively parasitic to all places under its domain. With Oslo being the capital city of Norway, we'll see Oslo go the same way as Lisbon went a few hundred years ago. The nation as a whole will suffer from the parasitic tendencies of its capital city.

Lugano

By SamuelFerrara - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

From Micro-Compost to Worm Compost

It's now more than two years since I first started experimenting with micro-composts, and the results have been remarkable. Our balcony has changed from a sterile display of plants to something much more alive. All sorts of insects, spiders and worms have emerged, and the plants have benefitted greatly.

However, micro-composts are not ideal. The end product is rarely sufficiently composted to be used directly, and I have therefore resorted to a system of post-composting in order to finalize the process. The semi-composted refuse from the micro-composts is put into a large bin with soil containing earth worms.

These worms came about as a result of the micro-compost experiment. I didn't buy them, or import them. They appeared out of nowhere, and they are now an important part of the composting process.

This means that I'm having up and running worm composters on our balcony as things are right now, and I've decided to experiment more in that direction. I'm going to abandon the micro-compost system, and instead have one big bin. This bin will have a thick layer of earth, rich in earth worms. Holes for kitchen refuse can then be dug into this. When a hole is filled up, soil can be spread on top to cover it.

The bin I'm using is large enough for at least 20 days of use before I have to dig into a place I've dug a hole before. This is not long enough to complete the compost, but it's long enough to have the refuse greatly reduced in size. This means that I can heap the 20 day old refuse on top of the previous hole I dug, and then add some soil on top to cover. That previous hole will then have fresh refuse at the bottom, 20 days old refuse on the top and a thin layer of earth to cover. A new hole is thus created for fresh refuse. When it is full, the process repeats.

This means that the next time I complete a circle, I'll encounter the three layers of refuse and soil again, only 20 days older. The top refuse will have had 40 days total to compost, which should be enough for it to be used. The 20 day old refuse can then be tossed upon the previous hole, and the process repeats. From that time on, I will constantly encounter three layers of refuse where the top layer is old enough to be used as compost for my plants.

This may sound elaborate and rigid, but it is in fact both straight forward and flexible. When there's a lot of refuse, I can toss some or all of it directly onto the worm composter. Large leaves and such can in this way be used as a natural cover while simultaneously saving me some effort. The top cover can be either soil or leaves. As long as it covers the refuse, it serves its purpose.

My guess is that this new system will be more efficient than the system of micro-composts that I started out with. It will also be more convenient; so much so that it will beat any alternative, including the usual way of tossing kitchen refuse into the garbage. This is because a trip out on the balcony is quicker and easier than to fill a garbage bin with refuse and then take it out to the trash container outside.

If I'm right in this, I will not only have a free supply of fresh earth for my plants, but I will also have a quick and convenient way to get rid of kitchen refuse. If so, I will have rediscovered a convenience that has been lost in our mistaken belief that throwing refuse into the garbage is the quickest and easiest way to deal with this type of waste.

Balcony with flowers

Taking the Third Booster

A year ago, people lined up to get their boosters for Christmas. We were still talking about a new normal, and a system of green passes was still under way. But it was nevertheless easy to predict that the project was going to fail. My estimate was that less than 40% of the population would be fully boosted by now.

As it turns out, less than 4% of the US population is currently fully boosted, and the number is probably not much higher in Europe or anywhere else in the world. That means that we've seen a total collapse of the vaccine narrative. The unvaccinated is not merely in a majority. We represent more than 95% of the population, and it's now the ones taking the boosters that are the odd ones out.

The ones still encouraging people to booster up are out of tune with the zeitgeist, which has made a complete reversal over the past 12 months. They are not only making a fool of themselves. They are setting themselves up for all sorts of trouble.

We are continuing to see excess deaths, and it seems to be the fully boosted that are most at risk. However, no-one seems interested in finding out why this situation persists. The team of scientists that delivered us vaccines at warp speed are unwilling to perform a simple correlation study to see if the vaccine may be causing trouble. Others are similarly reluctant to say anything.

With all of this relatively easy to predict from the start, we have further proof that most people are terrible at risk/reward analysis. Knowing that the vaccine carried risk, and was something that couldn't be un-taken, the prudent thing to do would be to watch and see, and then take the evidence for or against it seriously. Yet, very few did this. Many took the vaccine despite clear evidence of risk being higher than any potential reward.

An important lesson to draw from this is that most people are gamblers with little sense of risk/reward or timing. There's little wisdom to be found among most people, and we are best served making our own decisions and ignore the chatter of the so called experts.

Mask of the beast

Borrowers in Trouble

My son had a few friends over at our place to celebrate his 11th birthday the other day. The father of one of these kids stopped by, and we had a talk that turned out to be a little more frank than I had expected.

It turns out that the recent increase in interest rates has hit him and his family hard, and I got the impression that he's looking to sell his house, even if he didn't say so directly to us. The bills are just too much of a drain on their economy, and they have to cut down on something.

This fits well with other news. House prices in the US are going down. The same is happening in Norway, and I guess this is also going to happen in Portugal, if it isn't already happening. The driving mechanism behind this is the rise in interest rates.

Meanwhile, the price of gold is holding up well despite the increase in interest rates. This is because most people who own gold don't have much debt. They aren't pressured to sell. Gold is also a good alternative to other assets when times are tough and bankruptcies become widespread. It's a safe haven both in times of inflation and times of deflation.

This means that the price of real-estate is likely to go down relative to gold over the next twelve months or so. The price of a comfortable but somewhat old three bedroom apartment in Porto, which hit  2.2 kg of gold back in 2014, and is currently at 4.4 kg is likely to go back down. It may even be on its way to desperation and despair, which would be somewhere in the one kilogram region.

From earlier analysis I got the following numbers for our apartment:

• 2005 - 12.7 kg
• 2014 - 2.2 kg
• 2017 - 3.3 kg
• 2022 - 4.4 kg

My guess is that we'll be back below 2.5 kg by 2025; maybe earlier if the market crashes.

The same analysis has the following numbers for comparable real-estate in Norway:

• 2004 - 14 kg
• 2017 - 16 kg
• 2022 - 14 kg

This too may be on its way down below 2.5 kg. That would be an insane drop from current levels. But such a drop happened back in 1986, and may well happen again.

It isn't inconceivable that comparable real-estate everywhere is going to go down below 2.5 kg, because the increase in interest rates currently taking place are global in nature. When the FED increases their base rate, all other central banks have to do the same in order to support their local currencies. The alternative would be currency collapse with associated hyperinflation.

We can even argue that a drop below 2.5 kg is more likely than not, because the only way to avoid it would be for the FED to find some sweet-spot for their interest rate that tempers price inflation while still encouraging borrowing, and that sweet-spot is extremely hard to find, if it even exists.

The more likely outcomes of FED policy is either deflationary collapse or hyperinflationary collapse. Either way, gold goes up against everything, including real-estate.

Reflection in a soap bubble

By Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

A World Lacking in Empathy

Empathy is the ability to see things from the perspective of others. It's a rare ability relative to sympathy or antipathy which are merely reflections of sentiments, because most people feel more than they think.

This is regrettable, because a lack of empathy is at the root of much confusion. For instance, most people sympathise with the poor, and want the government to help these by giving them subsidies. Then, the same people get all confused when they see the poor spend their money on tattoos, bling and booze.

There's also much antipathy against the rich and well to do. Many want the government to force them to pay extra taxes so that the government can hand more money out to the poor and other people who they feel are more deserving. Then they get all confused and angry when the rich take actions to avoid the higher taxes.

The fact that so many people get confused, saddened and angry when they see how things play out in reality is proof that empathy is in short supply, because even a small bit of empathy would make clear the inevitable result of redistribution politics.

Windfall money is always treated with less respect than money earned through labour or long term investing. The threat of confiscation is always met with counter measures. There's nothing strange or unexpected about the way people act when faced with government actions of this kind.

The popularity of the idea that we can overcome the adverse effects of redistribution policies by improvements in education is further proof that there's a lack of empathy among people, because the impulse to spend what's received without effort and to protect that which has been earned the hard way is not due to a lack of education. A windfall is always celebrated with at least some excess, and a threat is always reacted to with at least some effort. Indoctrination can only temper these impulses, but it cannot remove them.

This is easy to understand for anyone with empathy because we react more or less the same way to windfalls and threats ourselves. We don't have to imagine ourselves poor or rich. All we have to imagine is that the windfall or threat comes to us one day.

But the people lacking in empathy have a tendency to imagine the poor and the rich as somehow different from themselves. The poor are imagined pure and good, and the rich are imagined mean and greedy. They then go on to explain all actions based on these clichés, with much confusion as a result.

Us against them

By Pedro Ribeiro Simões - Flickr: "Geração à Rasca" Demonstration, CC BY 2.0, Link

Morality and Religion

Some people claim that they don't need religion in order to be moral beings, and they would be right in saying so if religion was confined to institutional religion, focusing on rituals and a belief in the hereafter. However, religion is more than buildings and men dressing up in fancy costumes. Religion is the belief that there is something beyond the purely physical.

I've argued that the existence of our free will implies that there's something beyond physics. There's a will in the universe, and we're born with this built into us so that we can make decisions that change the outcome of events; not due to physics, but due to our will.

This will that we're all equipped with is something we see everywhere around us, even in the tiniest of insects, and according to Schopenhauer, to some extent in plants and minerals as well. This will is beyond physics, and hence something supernatural, yet known to all of us. It's everywhere, and of vital important when it comes to our efforts to live good lives in the company of others.

This is where morality meets religion, because morality has to take into account the will of the universe, and this will is a supernatural entity. Those who see themselves as atheist must also account for this will, so they do in fact acknowledge the supernatural, even if they don't realize it themselves.

Schopenhauer was clear on his views on the will, yet claimed to be an atheist. The Tao is supposedly a type of atheist religion, yet it's all about the will of the universe, and how to live with it. Similarly, we have Christianity and other theist religions where the will of the universe is represented as god and deities.

All of these differences in opinion are in the end academic. What's important is the fact that they all acknowledge the fact that we need to understand the will of the universe in order to live moral lives that lead to desired outcomes for ourselves and others.

Religious texts can in this way aid us in making good decisions, provided we're resorting to texts that have a proven track record. Religious texts that have shown themselves ineffective in promoting prosperity for its followers are suspect, and should be avoided. This is why I'd advice people to follow Christian doctrine and to stay away from Islam.

The purpose of religion is to promote morals that yield desirable results for everyone, and a quick look at the world around us tells us that Christian doctrine has been supremely successful in this respect. But religion is in the end a personal matter. There's no need to pick any one religion, and our relationship to our own will is private. No-one knows precisely how things hang together.

Life is an experiment, as Emerson pointed out. We have no choice but to try our luck in the world. But it's folly to ignore advice from our forefathers just because we have to make our own decisions. We don't have to re-discover everything for ourselves.

A proper understanding of the will of the universe reveals to us that it's something we can't go against or ignore. There's Karma in the world. There's also the need to be meek; to bend with the current when it storms around us, but to stand our ground and not give into risk taking that is likely to come back to us when the current resumes its normal flow. This is all explained in the Bible and the Tao.

Most importantly, we must never let others dictate moral decisions on our behalf. That would serve us no purpose. To yield control of our will is the greatest moral danger, and can very well kill us, because there's no lack of people willing to sacrifice others to the benefit of themselves.

Creation of Adam

By Michelangelo - See below., Public Domain, Link

Death by Moral Failing

In any discussion related to morality and moral codes, we need to first define what morality and moral codes are. For this purpose, I have the following short definition: Morality relates to actions that enhance our own and everybody else's chance of living a good and prosperous life, and a moral code is a set of actions believed to promote this desired end-result.

Keeping things abstract for now, we can go on to list actions with potential consequences as follows:

1. Acts with the potential to hurt ourselves and others
2. Acts with the potential to benefit ourselves and others
3. Acts with the potential to benefit ourselves but hurt others
4. Acts with the potential to hurt ourselves but benefit others

The word 'potential' represents a scale that goes from near certainty to very unlikely, and our ability to determine the likely outcome of an action is obviously of great importance in this.

Real life is rarely a clear cut choice between absolutes, yet some actions will be avoided or engaged in regardless of the certainty of outcome. Point 1 will for instance only be acted upon in situations of desperation where the aim is to hurt other, no matter the cost to ourselves. Conversely, point 2 will almost always be acted upon; the only exception being deep hatred for the others.

Point 3 is also rarely acted upon. We know that this kind of selfish behaviour has a way of coming back to us, so we don't engage in them. The long term price of a short term gain is simply too much to pay. Knowing that we'll cause harm is also a big factor, and often the most important at that.

It's only when we get to point 4 that various moral nuances become apparent. Certainty of outcome becomes important. The way we value ourselves and others become important too. Most people will probably jump into a stream of water to save a puppy from drowning, provided that the stream is shallow and slow moving. But we won't do the same if the stream is replaced by a roaring current.

What makes point 4 all the more interesting is that the opposite of action is inaction, which means that those who refuse to act are merely sitting put. They aren't acting in an opposite manner. We aren't actively drowning the puppy for refusing to rescue it. We might be reprimanded for not picking the puppy out of a slow moving stream, but no-one can seriously blame us for refusing to jump into a roaring current to do the same.

In fact, jumping into a roaring current to save a puppy would reflect a failure to judge risk correctly, and a moral failure to value our own life correctly. Yet, many would see this kind of excessive risk taking as somehow noble and just.

This is why so many young men decided to enlist for the army at the start of World War 1. They judged the risk relatively low to themselves, and they valued themselves low relative to those they hoped to help by putting their lives at risk.

As it turned out, many of those who volunteered for World War 1 didn't survive the experience. The risk turned out to be much greater than they anticipated, and the value set on their lives by the ones they hoped to help was appallingly low.

If they hoped to benefit themselves and their community by enlisting, they failed. From a moral standpoint, the war was a failure in all respects. No-one benefited, and millions died. Yet, throughout the war, and for many years after, the morally failed were celebrated, and the ones with the common sense and moral backbone to resist conscription were demonized.

This pattern has now repeated with three years of vaccine propaganda. The vaccinated are heroes, despite the persistently high rates of excess deaths we're currently registering. Being reckless and stupid is seen as noble, while being principled and full of foresight is seen as evil.

Notable deaths according to Wikipedia

The vaccinated are presented as heroes precisely because they failed, it seems. They failed to judge the risks correctly relative to rewards, and they failed to value themselves correctly relative to the people they hoped to save. Some young people were willing to risk years of their lives in order to give a terminally ill patient a few more weeks of life. That's neither moral nor courageous. On the contrary, it's morally and logically wrong.

Making this all the worse is the fact that many of these failed moral beings engaged in pressure campaigns to coerce and deceive their moral superiors. They applauded the development of vaccine passports, the segregation of society into the vaccinated and unvaccinated, the construction of internment camps for the unvaccinated, and the denial of entry into sports and business without valid proof of vaccination.

All of these evils were promoted by those who failed to see the dangers before them. Yet, they are the heroes, and they will probably remain heroes in the eyes of the majority, just like the crippled veterans of World War 1 were hailed as heroes until the very last of them was finally dead and buried.

But none of this matters in the end. I have no need of approval by strangers who made bad choices for themselves. I didn't take any medicines in the misguided hope that it would benefit others. I'm not the one wondering if I may wake up dead tomorrow morning due to the medicine I took. That's all for the heroes to endure, and I'm happy that I'm not one of them. I'm also happy that I never pressured anyone but my wife into inaction when the heroes were out calling for sacrifices.

It was never my job to pressure anyone into anything, but I couldn't very well sit passively by and stupidly watch my wife act against her own best interest, so I put some pressure into it. I also tried to talk my children in Norway out of taking the vaccine, but they all took at least one shot. The social pressure to act like a hero was so intense that they ignored my warnings. Facts and logic simply don't matter in the eyes of the morally righteous, and a lot of people caved under pressure, including my three children in Norway.

It's regrettable that I wasn't able to prevent my children from taking the vaccine. But there was nothing more I could have done. Hopefully, they're not so stupid that they keep taking the shots, and I remain hopeful that nature will clean out the poison and restore everybody's health once people quit taking the boosters.

Wax plant

Céline Gounder's Dilemma

Céline Gounder is a vaccine expert much in the same way that Emily Oster is an expert on the subject. Their claim to fame is based on their willingness to promote a drug that they know next to nothing about. They sold their soul to the devil, as it were. They saw in the pandemic an opportunity, and they grabbed it with both hands.

However, this type of opportunism usually comes with a cost. Emily Oster recently joined the great vaccine pivot. She's suddenly promoting herself as a vaccine sceptic. In doing this, she let her readers know that she knew next to nothing about viruses and was basically just parroting the official narrative. The reactions to her change of heart were not as positive as Ms Oster may have hoped for.

Emily Oster has presumably stopped taking her boosters. But those who still haven't joined the pivot are still taking them. Assuming that she followed her own advice, Almyra Oveta Fuller took all her boosters, and she's now dead. The same can be said about Grant Wahl, a sports reporter who died in Qatar while covering the world cup in football.

What's interesting here is that all of the above mentioned people were part of a relatively small elite of influence peddlers. They all knew each others. Céline Gounder is Mr Wahl's widow, and she has almost certainly been in contact with both Ms Oster and Ms Fuller.

This means that Ms Gounder knows what shame and controversy comes with a sudden change of heart after having pushed vaccines and lockdowns for two years straight. She also knows two people now dead after taking all the boosters.

Ms Gounder is a hard-line vaccine pushers who promotes the idea of getting boosted every five months. She's no Emily Oster who could at least point to a few fragments of scepticism. If Ms Gounder changes her opinion now that her husband is dead, it will result in very little sympathy, and she will also loose her position as influence peddler, hobnobbing with the elite.

Will Ms Gounder continue taking her medicines, or will she have a change of heart? If she does change her mind; will she tell us?

The social contract

Conspiracy Theories Surrounding Grant Wahl's Death

I would never have heard about Grant Wahl if it wasn't for the fact that he died suddenly and unexpectedly during the Netherlands against Argentina match that he was reporting on from Qatar.

It's not normal for a healthy 48 year old man to suddenly keel over and die, but that's what Mr Wahl did, and a conspiracy theory has quickly been concocted to explain what happened. The story currently doing the rounds in the mainstream media is that someone decided to kill Mr Wahl due to his support of the LGBTQ+ community.

But Mr Wahl was also an outspoken supporter of the vaccine effort. He was married to no lesser person than Dr. Céline Gounder who served on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. We also know from Mr Wahl's Twitter posts that he was fully vaccinated. He was also most likely fully boosted.

It should also be noted that Mr Wahl experienced chest pains during the days preceding his death, something that's commonly associated with Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.

Some people have concluded from this that Mr Wahl's death has more to do with the vaccine than Qatari's dislike of the rainbow flag. The official conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that Qatari hate the LGBTQ+ community so much that they will kill people who openly support this movement. The unofficial conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that vaccines are causing excess deaths.

We will probably never know the truth. But it's interesting to note that conspiracy theories exist both in the mainstream and in fringe communities. When unexpected things happen, people leap to conclusions, and being mainstream doesn't significantly moderate this urge.

Pride flag

By Gilbert Baker (Vector graphics by Fibonacci) - SVG based on this image, Public Domain, Link

Price of PSI20 in Grams of Gold

Here's a chart of the price of the PSI20 index measured in grams of gold. My available data goes back only to 1999, and we are therefore getting a single leg of a mega-cycle. We registered a top in 2000, when the PSI20 hit 1200 grams of gold, and we're currently scarping a bottom at around 100 grams of gold for the PSI20.

PSI20/Gold ratio

Note that the graph is logarithmic, and it's spanning two decades. Anyone who chose to sell their gold in 2000 to buy shares in the PSI20 have lost more than 90% on their invested gold. On the other hand, anyone who sold the PSI20 in 2000 to buy gold can go back in and get about 12 times more shares than they sold in 2000.

This illustrates the power of long term investing. We can also deduce from this that we must be near a bottom. It's not inconceivable that we have some more to go on the down-leg, but a long term investor may do well in starting to roll gold into the PSI20 at this point. However, I'll wait a little longer because the PSI20/gold ratio is unlikely to move up in an environment where other indexes move down, and the Dow/gold ratio is still in bubble territory. My signal for rolling into the PSI20 will come when the Dow/gold ratio goes below 4.

Notable Deaths in November

With November behind us, we now have another month of notable deaths to analyse.

Almyra Oveta Fuller, a prominent virologist who played an important role in the vaccine rollout of 2021 is for some reason not included in this list, so we know that Wikipedia's data is less than perfect. However, our analysis of their data may nevertheless shed light on the general health of the global population.

November 2022 saw 694 deaths, which is less than 2020 and 2021 with 805 and 708 deaths respectively. However, the number is well above 2019 and 2018 with 606 and 540 deaths. Once again, we're seeing numbers in line with the pandemic rather than the years that preceded it:

When we look at absolute numbers for November, we get the following:

• 540 in November 2018
• 606 in November 2019
• 805 in November 2020
• 708 in November 2021
• 694 in November 2022

Deaths among those younger than 70 years of age compares to previous years as follows:

• 21.48% in November 2018
• 22.28% in November 2019
• 23.73% in November 2020
• 22.87% in November 2021
• 23.78% in November 2022

November 2022 is comparable to 2021 and 2020. This too is in line with numbers from the pandemic.

Using a severity formula that divides deaths among those older than 69 by 10 and multiplies deaths younger than 70 by 4 we get the following:

• 506 in November 2018
• 587 in November 2019
• 825 in November 2020
• 702 in November 2021
• 713 in November 2022

November 2020 and 2022 are the worst, with 2021 a close third. These numbers too are well above 2018 and 2019.

Notable deaths according to Wikipedia

Here are the numbers:

---

November 2022:

• 20s = 8 = 1.15%
• 30s = 11 = 1.59%
• 40s = 18 = 2.59%
• 50s = 43 = 6.20%
• 60s = 85 = 12.25%
• 70s = 161 = 20.20%
• 80s = 208 = 29.97%
• 90s = 149 = 21.47%
• 100+ = 11 = 1.59%

Total = 694; Younger than 70 = 23.78%

November 2021:

• 20s = 11 = 1.55%
• 30s = 9 = 1.27%
• 40s = 18 = 2.54%
• 50s = 43 = 6.07%
• 60s = 81 = 11.44%
• 70s = 140 = 19.77%
• 80s = 236 = 33.33%
• 90s = 156 = 22.03%
• 100+ = 14 = 1.98%

Total = 708; Younger than 70 = 22.87%

November 2020:

• 20s = 5 = 0.62%
• 30s = 8 = 0.99%
• 40s = 25 = 3.11%
• 50s = 59 = 7.33%
• 60s = 94 = 11.68%
• 70s = 160 = 19.88%
• 80s = 277 = 34.41%
• 90s = 161 = 20.00%
• 100+ = 16 = 1.99%

Total = 805; Younger than 70 = 23.73%

November 2019:

• 20s = 6 = 0.99%
• 30s = 11 = 1.82%
• 40s = 18 = 2.97%
• 50s = 31 = 5.12%
• 60s = 69 = 11.39%
• 70s = 126 = 20.79%
• 80s = 200 = 33.00%
• 90s = 129 = 21.29%
• 100+ = 16 = 2.64%

Total = 606; Younger than 70 = 22.28%

November 2018:

• 20s = 3 = 0.56%
• 30s = 11 = 2.04%
• 40s = 14 = 2.59%
• 50s = 24 = 4.44%
• 60s = 64 = 11.85%
• 70s = 129 = 23.89%
• 80s = 161 = 29.81%
• 90s = 117 = 21.67%
• 100+ = 17 = 3.15%

Total = 540; Younger than 70 = 21.48%

Wikipedia

CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Forecasting a Cold Winter

I'm not a great believer in long term weather forecasting, so I'm a little sceptical to this article forecasting a colder than usual winter. However, the case laid out in the article makes sense, and is interesting in light of the current obsession with our climate.

Contrary to what was forecasted by climate experts, such as Al Gore, back in the 1990s, and Greta Thunberg in the 2010s, the world isn't seeing any less snow during winters than we used to see, and this winter is already on track to break all records.

This might sound dramatic, but the records only date back 56 years when satellite observations of the climate first started. We are at the moment seeing snow cover a little in excess of the record held during these 56 years. It's not exactly proof of anything. However, it doesn't bode well for those who've been hoping for a mild winter, because early snow extent is a good indicator of how cold a winter is likely to be.

This is based on simple physics, and has been verified by experience, so the odds of us getting a mild winter are slim.

The primary reason for the correlation between early snow extent and cold weather is the albedo effect that comes with snow. Sunlight is reflected by snow and prevents air close to the ground from heating up.

The other effect is due to the energy required to perform phase transitions. Melting snow and ice prevents air close to the ground from heating up due to the energy required to transform frozen water into liquid water.

With all of Russia and Canada already covered with snow, cold air will be allowed to build up in these areas and produce arctic blasts that send temperatures lower.

However, all of this affects only the low-level air close to the ground. It ignores temperature variations in oceans and higher altitude air-masses. To read a lot into this would be like taking air temperature measurements only at ground level and deduce that the climate must be changing due to changes measured only about 1.5 metres above ground.

Greta Thunberg

Eco-anxiety - By Anders Hellberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

An Index-like Portfolio

The Portuguese stock market, as measured by the PSI20 index has been a disappointing adventure for investors. Apart from the odd up-turn now and again, it's been underperforming just about any other investment. However, this is no reason to presume that the tide will never turn. The 30-yearlong underperformance may well turn into decades of outperformance once the current mega-cycle comes to an end.

My guess is that it will be the Dow that heralds the end of the current mega-cycle, with the Dow/gold ratio going down into single digits. Once we see the ratio hit 4, I'll start rolling some of my gold into shares, and my plan is to buy Portuguese shares.

This is not likely to happen very soon, but it's never too soon to lay a plan, and my plan is to buy shares in the PSI20 index. I've made a spreadsheet for myself, where the PSI20's 18 components are listed with their respective market cap.

In doing this, I discovered that there are two companies that together represent more than 50% of the index. There are also ten components that represent less than 20% of the index, and some of the components are involved in businesses I don't have much faith in. The index is neither well balanced nor universally appealing.

The solution to this problem was for me to introduce a weighting function where I add weight to businesses I like and reduce the weight of businesses I don't like. The result of this is a weighted index which I can compare to the actual index going forward.

I have not bought any shares at the moment. I'm still looking for the current mega-cycle to end. But I don't have to wait for it to end to see if my stock picking is better than the index. I'll update my spreadsheet once a year to see how my weighted index performs compared to the actual index.

There's no point in following any of this very closely, so this is not some new hobby of mine. It's merely one new tool that I can use to judge objectively how my overall strategy is working relative to alternatives.

Wall Street

By Vlad Lazarenko - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

A Closer Look at the PSI20 Index

I mentioned back in early 2019 that investing in the Portuguese stock market has not been a profitable venture for anyone who've stayed invested in it over time. Looking at the chart, it's impossible to find an entry point that would have given an investor a better return on their money than gold. The index is up 100% over its 30 years in existence, which is far less than inflation. Gold is up more than 400% in the same period.

However, this is not to say that I'll never invest in Portuguese stocks. I live in Portugal, and I like the place, both its culture and its stability. I don't see why I shouldn't invest in Portuguese stocks if I one day decide to rotate out of gold and into stocks.

Buying the PSI20 index would hold true to my philosophy of investing in local things. If I have enough faith in Portugal to make this place my home, why shouldn't I put some money into it? It may not be the best decision I could have done, but it's not going to be all bad either, provided I get my timing right. The fact that Portugal is less developed than other nations is no argument against investing here, nor is a lack of efficiency any argument against it either. Those things give room for improvements and can therefore be turned into an advantage for the investor.

A curious thing about the PSI20 is that it contains only 18 companies. This was the case back in 2019 and is still the case. However, I didn't note down which companies were in the index, so I'm not sure if the index contains the same companies now as it did back then.

Companies come and go, so an index is not unchanged over time. Owning stocks requires more attention than owning gold which we don't need to rearrange every now and again. In the case of the PSI, two companies appear to have gone away without being replaced.

If I enter the stock market, I'll do so after a big drop in its price against gold. Such an event is likely to flush out overleveraged and vulnerable companies, leaving only the strongest companies in the index. It's also likely that there will be newcomers which have somehow thrived during the downturn.

I'm therefore tempted to buy individual stocks rather than the index. That way I can build a portfolio that is more weighted against promising newcomers than old and struggling companies. The main thing about investing is after all timing. There's no point in owning an index per se. The trick is to buy, hold and sell at favourable times during a super-cycle that typically lasts about ten years.

With the Dow/gold ratio still around 20, there's a long way to go before we reach 4, when I will start rolling gold into stocks, so I'm in no rush to make any decisions. However, a list of the companies that constitute the PSI20, together with a short description of what they do may come in handy, not least because it will tell me which companies survived, and which didn't once the downturn is well under way:

• EDP Renovaveis | EDPR - Spain-based company active in the renewable energy sector.
  Market cap = €21.03B
• EDP | EDP - Portugal-based utility company.
  Market cap = €17.99B
• Jeronimo Martins | JMT - Portugal-based company engaged in the food retail sector.
  Market cap = €13.45B
• Galp | GALP - Portugal-based holding company engaged in the oil and gas industry.
  Market cap = €9.34B
• Navigator | PTI - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the paper manufacturing operations.
  Market cap = €2.76B
• BCP | BCP - Portugal-based privately owned bank.
  Market cap = €2.24B
• NOS | NOS - Portugal-based company engaged in the broadcasting and telecommunication industry.
  Market cap = €1.96B
• Sonae | SON - Portugal-based holding company primarily engaged in the retail trade of food.
  Market cap = €1.84B
• REN | RENE - Portugal-based holding company involved in the energy sector.
  Market cap = €1.7B
• Corticeira Amorim | COR - Portugal-based holding company engaged in the cork industry.
  Market cap = €1.18B
• Semapa | SEM - Portugal-based holding company engaged in three business segments: Paper and Pulp; Cement and Derivatives, and Environment.
  Market cap = €1.13B
• Altri | ALTR - Portugal-based holding company primarily involved in the production of bleached paper pulp from eucalyptus.
  Market cap = €1.11B
• CTT | CTT - Portugal-based company principally engaged in the provision of courier services.
  Market cap = €0.47B
• Mota Engil | EGL - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the construction industry.
  Market cap = €?B
• Ibersol | IBS - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the operation of restaurants.
  Market cap = €0.24B
• F Ramada Investimentos | RAM - Portugal-based holding company primarily engaged in the production and sale of steel products and storage systems.
  Market cap = €0.17B
• Novabase | NBA - Portugal-based company active in the provision of information technology (IT) solutions.
  Market cap = €0.12B
• Pharol | PHR - formerly Portugal Telecom, SGPS, S.A., is an open company.
  Market cap = €0.05B

Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

The Curious Case of Elon Musk

After much back and forth, Elon Musk ended up buying Twitter. My guess is that he didn't have much choice but to stick with the deal. It's also evident that the rich and the powerful are determined to destroy Twitter, now that it's no longer under their direct control. All of this has been fairly predictable. However, there's something distinctly odd about the whole situation.

Musk benefited greatly from the green agenda, and the corruption associated with it, so why has he decided to upset this liberal world order? What drove him to this, and why hasn't he been stopped?

The deep state doesn't normally allow people to rise to great riches without having some dirt on them that can be used to control them. But nothing shocking has been revealed about Musk, and it's almost as if Musk has manged to turn the tables. He has Pelosi invested in Tesla options, and he's now sitting with the keys to all sorts of dirt locked away in cabinets in the Twitter headquarters.

But none of this explains why Musk is doing things that upset those who used to be his greatest fans and backers. The man is not a profoundly moral person. He pushed Bitcoin and even Dogecoin onto hapless laymen. He has ruined many lives on his way to ever-greater riches, so I wouldn't attribute his change of heart to pure undiluted love for liberty and free speech.

Musk's transformation over the past two years is undeniable, but there's no single event we can point to for an explanation, so I suspect we're looking at a complex mix of factors. He's not getting any younger, and being already rich, he may be looking at ways to leave a legacy. That could be done by creating a trusted to some good cause, as is what most rich and powerful people do to create a legacy for themselves. But Musk wouldn't need to control Twitter to do this. The fact that he started to toy with the idea of buying Twitter some two years ago indicate that he has something else in mind.

My guess is that Musk is seeing an opportunity in politics a little over the horizon, and that this is what he's now aiming at. His ambition may be to one day become president of the United States. However, his ambitions may be even greater than that because Twitter has the potential to completely reshape the global political landscape, and he may be visionary enough to realize this.

The current political system of the world is centred around nation states. This system is so ubiquitous that hardly anyone can imagine an alternative world. But Musk is not an average guy. He may see the profound political potential of social platforms like Twitter, and his behaviour of late appears to confirm this.

Musk has the habit of making polls for all sorts of things. He issues a suggestion, and everyone on Twitter gets to vote on the subject. He's the king of Twitter, and he asks his clients for advice before taking decisions.

This is similar to how Irland was organized back when it was an anarchy. The Irish people were free to choose between several different kings who all operated in parallel. Each king would provide protection, insurance and legal assistance to those who paid their taxes to him. Anyone with property would thus choose a king for themselves in case of disputes and conflicts.

If Musk expands into legal services, protection and insurance, Twitter will become a parallel kingdom, competing with our current system centred around nation states. If so, people will start to ask what use they have of the nation state if all they truly need is provided by Twitter and similar platforms.

The entire world could become like Irland was before the English invaded it and turn it into a fiefdom under their control. Irland had more than ten kings, so the world could easily have thousands of kings, some operating locally, and others operating globally. Everyone would be free to choose their own preferred king based on price and services rendered. 

Is this what Musk is seeing over the horizon, or is he merely hoping to one day become president of the US? Nobody knows, but it's interesting to see how the custodians of the current world order are reacting.

Musk's vision is not in harmony with the one-world-order that is currently being pushed, and corporations like Apple have decided to act against Twitter in an attempt to curb Musk's ambitions. Apple has also come down firmly on the side of the Chinese Communist Party in its effort to squash opposition movements, so Apple and Twitter are now opposing forces in the battle of control in China.

The EU, always eager to move sovereignty away from the populace and into the hands of world leaders, is threatening to ban Twitter altogether.

Musk's reaction to Apple has been to investigate the possibility of creating a smart phone that cannot easily be used as a tool for oppressive regimes like China.

Musk's reaction to the EU has so far been to say nothing. If EU decides to act on its threat, EU is once and for all revealed to be an anti-liberty organization, and if EU doesn't act on its threat, it reveals itself as a toothless tiger. Either way, Musk wins, so my guess is that he will remain silent towards his adversaries in the EU.

The push to squash Twitter is ongoing and fierce. But Musk has so far stayed firm. Time will tell if the elite is as powerful as it is believed to be, or if we are looking at hubris before an epic fall. Either way, a lot is at stake both for Musk and his adversaries.

Elon Musk

By Duncan.Hull - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link