1-12, 2014

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)

Evil companions bring more hurt than profit.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Silence is the virtue of fools.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
  
The greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
Gandhi

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

Children have a natural antipathy to books--handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Einstein’s  last interview

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.  
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930 

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, and the third is useless.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) 

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot (1819-1880)

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)

Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Distrust interested advice.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Wit has always an answer ready.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)

The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf—it's almost a law.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Abstain and enjoy.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

What is most truly valuable is often underrated.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

You see, but you do not observe.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Only cowards insult dying majesty.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
Gilbert Chesterton (1874-1936)

Everyone is more or less master of his own fate.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Insanity: repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.
Einstein

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world--and never will.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)

Fine feathers don't make fine birds.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)

Self-help is the best help.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Better no rule than cruel rule.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Si vis pacem, para bellum. (хочешь мира — готовься к войне)

Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Sentence first, verdict afterwards.

Lewis Carroll(1832-1898)

Brain, n.: An apparatus with which we think we think.

Ambrose Bierce(1842-1914)

I fear the day that technology will surpass our human intereaction The world will have a generation of idiots.
A. Einstein

FIVB World Grand Champions Cup Media Guide 2013
The solstice isn't for more than a week, but the earliest sunset of the year is already upon us. How's that possible? 
An obscure mathematical principle called Zipf's law has predicted the size of mega-cities all over the world
Newly analysed Nasa satellite data from east Antarctica shows Earth has set a new record for coldest temperature ever recorded: -94.7C  

In the midst of five months of darkness this coming winter, the Norwegian town of Rjukan will have one bright spot: a town square illuminated by sunlight bounced off giant mirrors placed atop the town's neighboring mountains.

Read more: Giant Mirrors to Light Up One Dark Norwegian Town - Popular Mechanics

Economic modelling shows that the methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars -- the size of the world economy in 2012.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-12/7-more-years-low-rates-and-then-war

50 most influential Jews in the world:

1-10 in-depth list
1. Yair Lapid
2. Jack Lew
3. Binyamin Netanyahu
4. Shimon Peres
5. Anat Hoffman
6. Sergey Brin
7. Jon Stewart
8. Sheryl Sandberg
9. Moshe Ya’alon
10. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
11-20 in-depth list
11. Eric Cantor
12. Elena Kagan
13. Steven Spielberg
14. Jill Abramson
15. Naftali Bennett
16. Mark Zuckerberg
17. Michael Bloomberg
18. Lena Dunham
19. Moshe Kantor
20. Ed Miliband
21-30 in-depth list
21. Sumner Redstone
22. Scooter Braun 
23. Elie Wiesel
24. Howard Kohr
25. Natan Sharansky
26. David Saperstein
27. Aharon Lichtenstein
28. Ben Smith
29. Michael Chabon
30. Sara Netanyahu
31-40 in-depth list
31. Diane von Fürstenberg
32. Matthew Bronfman
33. Ester Levanon
34. Shari Arison
35. Rakefet Russak-Aminoach
36. David Grossman
37. Ronald S. Lauder
38. Bar Refaeli
39. Yityish Aynaw
40. Dror Moreh
41-50 in-depth list
41. Ruth Westheimer
42. Michael D. Siegal
43. Nir Barkat
44. Yosef Abramowitz
45. Yotam Ottolenghi
46. Eve Ensler
47. Idan Raichel
48. Ephrat Levy-Lahad
49. Efi Stenzler
50. The commissioners of the NHL, NBA and MLB

There are no Bernanke,  Soros, Rothshild, Bloomberg, ... sense.

top 50 American Jews
the same rubbish.

I guess that 1st prize in architecture boldness goes to China. The building that will house the new Beijing offices of the People's Daily, the official paper of the China Communist Party.

Russia’s nouveau riche's keep riches from putin

link

The only reason Cypriot bank haave stayed close for this long is to count the amount of account holders that are eligible to vote and how many under 100k and over 100k there are. In a country with 800k population this is not difficult to do. Accounts of less than 100k outnumber those with greater than 100k by almost 10 to 1 and 91% of those 100k are russian. It looks like the russskis will take a big haircut as the EU and Germans were never going to stump up the money to guarantee laundered russian money.

THE devastated family of a nine-year-old boy who hanged himself say he took his life after racist taunts by Asian bullies.
Aaron Dugmore — thought to be one of Britain’s youngest suicides after bullying — was found in his bedroom after months of jibes at school, they claim.
His family say that Aaron was threatened with a plastic KNIFE by one Asian pupil — who warned him: “Next time it will be a real one.”

xagaud -3.64 xagjpy -3.46 xagusd -3.41

xagnzd -6.10 xag$ -5.10 xag€  -5.08

€gbp -2.66 xau € 2.13 €jpy -2,09%

chfjpy 4.33 xagjpy 4.31 eurjpy 3.65%

Back in July 2008, just before all hell broke loose and the S&P was trading in the upper 1,200s, everyone's favorite permabull, JPM strategist Tom Lee famously reiterated his S&P 500 price target for the end of 2008: 1450. 
 Two months later Lehman filed for bankruptcy, and 4 months later the S&P closed 2008 some 40% lower than said price target. Another two months later and anyone who had listened to Tom Lee lost 50% of their investment. Today, as the Fed's balance sheet crosses $3 trillion, and the global central banks have pumped a total of some $15 trillion into the markets, Tom Lee ws back on CNBC with what is his most permabullish prediction ever: he now expects the S&P to generate some 150 in earnings to which he applies a 17x multiple. His conclusion "If you put a 17 multiple on $150, the S&P really sort of peaks around 2,400 or 2,500." In Dow terms, this means a Dow Jones Industrial Average of, drumroll, 20000. He does, caveat it, however: "that's obviously 4 years away." 
And if Tom Lee was off by 40% in 4 months, we can't help but wonder what the hit rate on his 4 year prediction will be, and if, by using the same ruler extrapolation mechanism he applies to corporate earnings nand multiples one extrapolates the Fed's balance sheet at some $7 trillion in 4 years, what a loaf of bread will cost just as the DJIA crosses 20,000.

xageur -3.02 xagchf -2.78 eurcad 2.55%

xagchf: 6.97 xaggbp: 6.29 xagjpy: 5.62%

Long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved. Specifically, it is about to be partially moved out of the New York Fed, where the majority, or 45% of it is currently stored, as well as the entirety of the 11% of German gold held with the Banque de France, and repatriated back home to Buba in Frankfurt, where just 31% of it is held as of this moment. And while it is one thing for a  Hugo Chavez to pull his gold out of the Bank of England, it is something different, and far less dismissible, when the bank with the second most official gold reserves in the world proceeds to formally pull some of its gold from the bank with the most.

eurjpy 3.28 chfjpy 2.44 xagjpy 2.10%

NZDJPY 4.16 AUDJPY 3.75 CADJPY 3.65%

1-12 2013

Quotation, n.: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
The real source of inner strength and self-confidence is warm-heartedness.
Dalai Lama
If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.
Homer (900 BC-800 BC)
 Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Congratulation, n.: The civility of envy.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
 Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the others willing to let them.
Poet Robert Frost
I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin  

It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

 "There's an old saying: If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. But given today's out-of-control change "inflation,' if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get less than you have now."
Winning in the Game of Life. Tom Gegax
 Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"—which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket!"
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble ... Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
There are not more than five cardinal tastes (sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared ... You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues—faith and hope.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.
Gilbert Chesterton (1874-1936)
Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers ... marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)