Cases continue to fall in Victoria, we’re at 2830 active cases compared with 4012 last week. Lots of people are still in hospital still – 472.
Even NSW is going lower 181 active cases compared with 231 last week.
Victorians are NOT happy with Chairman Dan, particularly that guy, he’s about to go postal! …So we were sent this by relatives in France, because they are shocked coming from a country that values Liberté, égalité, fraternité. They wanted to know if it was all true or not.
I went and did a quick google fact check. Yup police seem to smash car windows. Police seem to be using drones, however not sure if it’s COVID related. Don’t know about separating kids from parents.
A Frenchman who lives in Chile told us that they need to ask the police for permission to leave their home. And can only go out twice a week. So it doesn’t seem too bad in Melbourne (unless your income has been affected)
To be clear, no one is asking for anarchy (as per below)
The world is at 6,863,762 active cases, with 847,397 deceased. In Belgium, at the supermarket you can use push your trolley into a special machine to disinfect it.
There’s going to be a need for transparency for any potential vaccine for people to trust it. Did you know that during phase 1 and 2 of the Oxford vaccine and Moderna’s vaccine, people experienced mild to moderate reactions? Fever, chills, headaches, muscle aches are all possible in higher percentages that I expected.
**cough** self indulgent link **cough** How to start a new job during a pandemic. It’s not like I have time to go looking for this stuff, it just randomly comes up in my news feeds.
This may be taking it a bit far…
Ahem, it’s a golf course, people!
The following has nothing to do with anything, it just kinda goes with that tape deck picture from last week. Anyone remember these days?!?
Markets and Economics.
Interesting conversation about portfolio construction with a macro investing point of view from Diego Parrilla, portfolio manager and author of “The Anti-Bubbles” and “The Energy World,”. I haven’t read his books before (not on my to read list)
If you’re interested in an alternative view to the property market than what mainstream media peddle, I find Harry Dent interesting. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s nice to have that alternate view. Also if you like spreadsheets, the Financial Stress spreadsheet is interesting. It’s in preparation for the results data that he’s going to talk about on Tuesday, to understand where the property market is going.
The Senate committee in regards to bail-in have released a report to say the law doesn’t need clarifying, there’s nothing to see here. All that was requested in the amendment bill was the wording “Any other instruments” to change to “Any other instrument (not including a deposit account)”. However APRA and the government doesn’t want this clarified. Now you thinking anything up to $250k is guaranteed by the government should a bank fail right? That’s correct however if a bank is struggling and hasn’t failed yet, APRA can direct the bank to take your money and convert it to shares in the bank, so the bank has never failed, and the treasury doesn’t need to activate the $250k guarantee. Also interesting was the singporean diplomat talking about the western view of China being evil is wrong.
The reason the economy is suffering is because we let the health guy essentially run the economy. Might as well give my dentist a go next. Chairman Dan wanted to extend the state of emergency for 12 months which requires a bill be passed in parliament. However the cross benchers want to establish a parliamentary oversight committee to scrutinise the government’s response. The government didn’t like that condition, and so it’s been agreed for a 6 month once off extension. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We shouldn’t be trying to go back to how it used to be before COVID, we should be laying the foundations to a better future.
The IMF tried to explain inflation, and they were trolled with buy bitcoin
Let’s cover some Q&A on some bitcoin basics
Without going too deep and too technical, I’m going to make an attempt to answer thing in layman’s term.
Where can I acquire it?
There’s a few exchanges in Australia, however the two major ones are
BTC Markets – headquartered here in Melbourne
Independent Reserve – headquartered in Sydney.
Think of a crypto exchange like a broker account for stocks. Exchange is not the only way to acquire.
How do I store it?
DO NOT leave money or coins on an exchange. It is more secure if you withdraw it to a wallet that you own and control. You know that you control a wallet if you have to write down 12- 24 random words. For a large amount, you need a hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger, which seem to be quite newbie friendly. For small amounts, then a wallet software on your phone is probably ok (Green Address seems recommended, however I haven’t looked into). In either case, MAKE SURE YOU WRITE DOWN THE 12 – 24 word seed, and keep in a safe and secure location. That list of words is how you recover your wallet, there is no support that you can call if you screw up.
What can you currently do with it?
-In Aus, you can pay bills.
-Escape a country that is in financial repression.
-Mostly people have been thinking about it as a store of wealth. As an insurance policy to protect against the world falling apart. Against old people screwing up the financial system. Against the value of your local currency losing value and also against inflation. When I say it that way it starts sounding like how Germany was before Hitler came to power as detailed in the book “When money dies”.
How much should I own?
The amount that you are willing to lose if it goes to zero. Or you lose access because you forget your password and seed. You do not need to buy 1 bitcoin, you can buy $10 dollars worth.
Explain to me simply how does it work?
This is a simple explanation that uses analogy to support it, but the details go a lot deeper.
Imagine if everyone on this email list opens up an Excel spreadsheet.
You’ve been told that you need to keep track of EVERY transaction that happens between everyone. Everyone has a set of rules to follow such as:
-You can’t spend what you don’t own
-You need to prove that you control that money by producing a signature that everyone verifies.
-If you are fraudulent or communicate a transaction that breaks the rules everyone stops communicating with you and ignores you.
-There’s a limit of 21 million coins.
-Each coin is able to be split into 100,000,000 units called a satoshi (sats)
-Each person decides on the rules they want to follow. If your rules are incompatible with everyone else, you are basically being fraudulent and we stop communicating with you.
Example: I send Bob 10 dollars, I produce a signature, and I show it to Alice who validates it against all the rules, and then tells Carol, and then tells Ben. Each person validates everything. And eventually everyone knows about it and have it recorded on their own spreadsheet and Bob now has 10 dollars because everyone has recorded it in their own spreadsheet.
Why hasn’t it taken off yet?
Could be a couple of answers to this. It’s too technical right now and only people who understand it are in it. You are too old and it’s been a young people’s game. You do not live in a country with adverse financial conditions. It’s still early and only for the lunatic fringe, although that seems to have changed this year with the world economy in a deep freeze that the macro finance guys are starting to talk about it.
But it has no intrinsic value, it’s not backed by anything.
If it had intrinsic value like a banana where you can eat it, it wouldn’t make good money. The money in your bank account is not backed by anything, there’s no gold behind it. It’s just a number at the bank. And once you realise that money is just a story that we monkeys all tell each other and collectively believe in, it will change your life. Because once the narrative behind that story is broken, then money stops working efficiently. As has happened in Zimbabwe (hyperinflation), Venezuela (hyperinflation), India (Demonetisation), Cyprus (confiscation) , Hong Kong (tracking who was buying metro tickets to go protest), China (capital controls).
But it’s for money launderers and drug dealers
To be honest, it’s probably easier to go to some street corner in Richmond and pay AUD for your drugs. And it’s probably easier to launder money through commbank and westpac if you look at news in recent years.
Other Stuff
When iOS 14 comes out make sure you update, and make sure you block app ability to track your unique ID.
Something is wrong with the Victorian textbooks
Here’s some 70 year old women who lift weights from Castlemaine and found the benefits.
Look at the amount of time pollution from coal fired power stations is drifting over Melbourne. It’s like we are cavemen still dealing with fire and haven’t worked out how to split the atom yet.
I enjoyed this piece about the robot revolution from the national geographic.
Tour de France is on despite COVID! No autographs, no selfies. I’m watching it from france.tv (needs a VPN). Can also watch on SBS Tour Tracker, which i discovered years ago and better than on TV.
Looking at this year’s map I’ve only been to Grenoble and Millau.
We went to visit a bridge in the village of Millau called Le Viaduc de Millau (which is like saying someone came to Melbourne to visit the west gate bridge). It’s the tallest structure in France (that’s not a giant antenna). I was impressed when we drove on it during our second honeymoon. Here’s some pictures we took
It was a detour when we were driving from Provence to Ardeche. Did you know there’s 96 departments in France and additional 5 overseas. (equivalent to states in Australia). I thought I was going to be tested on it by the foreign affairs department on the last trip so I know all these patriotic facts. Also cause I struggled with a jigsaw in January. Here’s my proud achievement
If you want to see COVID patients being transported via TGV (320km/h train) across France, fast forward to 15mins. There’re 16 ambulances lined up at the train station, and it appears to be a lot of trouble to get the patients into the train, which have been converted to ease the burden on hospitals. Another interesting thing to note is that if you call the ambulance in France, don’t be surprised if the firefighter turns up. The firefighters are the first to respond to medical emergencies, they deal with injuries and illness and can transport you to the hospital. Which when you think about it kind of makes sense, since things are not on fire as often, so the firefighters could be cross trained to do other jobs. If it’s a more serious or complex case then the SAMU will come, who are usually actual doctors and nurses.
France is connected by a complex network of fast rail, it is also connected by a large network of autoroute (130km/h freeways). You will often find yourself switching autoroutes to reach a designation. Autoroutes are usually tolled. Tolled meaning you take a ticket at one end and pay via card on the other end of the gate. We drove a total of more than 5267kms over the 3 months, I did a large majority of the driving. And that’s with 2 kids, in a small Citroën C3 that needed to fit the pram, clothes, nappies, food. Other things to note is people drive in the slow lane on the freeway, and only move to the fast lane to overtake before moving immediately back to the slow lane. You may witness a strange phenomenon where you’re barreling down the autoroute at 130, and everyone up ahead has their hazard lights on, it means SLOW DOWN NOW!
Part of that was a 1100km driving trip to Stuttgart, Germany (headquarters of Mercades, Porsche, Bosch) to visit some old friends. So there I was barreling down the autobahn at 150 – 160km/h, in the night in heavy fog and I was getting over taken for going too slow… and if I drive any slower than 130km, it would be unsafe.
Here’s some pictures of the xmas market from Esslingen.
There was a medieval xmas market too, where there was a ferris wheel being turned by hand (wheel in picture below). Merry go round being turned by hand. Fire spinning shows, archery, knights and short and shield games.
Schneeballen – delicious!
Anyway enjoy your week. Here’s your quarantine song for this week.