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What’s the future for this war? And what should our investment strategy be?

From the pinnacle of great economic and employment news for the U.S. to the despair of the Russian atrocities in Ukraine and the idiocy of Germany’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. “We can’t wean ourselves or we will destroy the German economy.”

From the market up hugely yesterday to down hugely today.

There of famine through Africa, including Egypt and Afghanistan, because of the stopping of Russian and Ukrainian grain and fertilizer.

It’s been a roller coaster of emotions that I didn’t need (or want) for my happy old age.

My main concern is nuclear. Will Ukraine, with the aid of American and English lethal weaponry, push Putin into a corner where he drops a nuke and puts us into World War III.

I know two things: Our western world won’t let Ukraine fall. Second, the Russian generals have rebuffed attempts by American generals to talk to them about the extreme dangers our world faces. No Zoom calls between us and them. They’re afraid of Putin and their families. His boys listen in everything. No one is trusted.

Russia loves strong men who seek territory to expand the Russian Empire. It’s been that way for a hundreds of years. When did you buy something made in Russia? What a miserable place.

The prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine is worried, too. It has just published the seminal piece on nukes — the April 1956 article by Henry Kissinger called “Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age.” Click here.

Kissinger was not sanguine about the Russians.

Three things stand out about Putin:

+ He once said “The breakup of the Soviet Union (in the late 1990s)  was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

+ In his mind, Ukraine doesn’t exist. It’s part of Russia and needs to be brought back into the fold — no matter the cost.

+ He is as close to pure evil as it comes. His evil is evident is the utter destruction he wrought on Aleppo , Syria and Grozny, Chechnya. Here’s Grozny after Putin was finished with it.

You and I wonder what benefits such utter destruction brings. But if your aim is territory and subjugation, destruction will do it.

The hardest thing for a normal person is to recognize pure evil. Now he holds us to ransom with his threats of nuclear annihilation.

What you and I can do:

First, contact your congressperson or senator and reinforce the importance of speeding up the flow of lethal weaponry to Ukraine. If Russia swallows Ukraine, the implications for the rest of Europe are too horrifying to imagine.

Second, send money to my favorite charity, the World Central Kitchen. Soon there’ll be five million Ukrainian refugees who need to be fed. These guys do the best job of feeding refugees. Click here.

This war is likely to continue well into the summer. That’s a long time for more atrocity photos and more stock market volatility.

Here’s an interesting take on “What’s the likeliest outcome of the Ukraine-Russia crisis?” Click here.

Meantime, we need to pursue some sort of personal life strategy that will bring all of us a modicum of emotional stability. To wit:

+ Stick with the stocks we have (I’ve updated the list on the web site). Tech is still growth. And I now have some energy — the most successful of which is ENB. For God’s sakes, don’t play short-term trends — like crypto, casino, cruise lines airlines or defense. Or, worse, Chinese stocks. These areas get buzz on places like CNBC. But …. BubbleVision is either filling airtime or promoting people to manage your hard-won money. They’re all overpriced.

+ Look at real estate. Nothing is “cheap.” But the nice thing about real estate is that you can snag bargains before your neighbor can, because the price is not broadcast on a national exchange, flashed up each second on everyone’s screen —  in New York or Podunk. Speak to your local bank manager. I bet she has a couple of properties she’s be happy to offload to a nice local fellow like you. Remember the one rule in real estate: The price you pay largely determines your profitability.

+ Four million Americans have quit their jobs. Many have started wonderful new businesses digitizing existing businesses (like what the Kourts software did for our tennis club) or simply installing hot new networks in local businesses.  If there are opportunities galore in our little community in Columbia County, New York, there are opportunities elsewhere.

+ Get healthy. All of us could lose a few pounds. Go for a bicycle ride, play a sound of golf, take up tennis, plant some vegetables in the family garden. Get a second covid booster. My friend got one at CVS. Took him 60 seconds. Clearly an exaggeration. He was pleased with the service. Above all, don’t let your Covid guard done. As many as 30% of covid sufferers end up with Long Covid, which you don’t want, may last for years and has no clear solution.

+ Buy yourself a nice cardigan. I’m amazed at the variety of great cheap clothing Amazon is peddling. I’m so impressed I’ve recently bought a couple of gorgeous cardigans, a pair of ski pants and a ski parka. None of my stuff was over $70. It’s amazing.

Above all, don’t get depressed.

More travel stuff

+ United won’t let you into their clubs if you only have a first class domestic ticket. You must have a first class international ticket. You can buy a one-person, one-day pass for $59.

+ Don’t check bags. Having your bags with you gives you more flexibility to switch flights and airlines.

+ Rental cars are hard to get and expensive. Much better: use Turo, which rents privately-owned cars, vans, SUVs, etc. Click here.

Zoom meetings

It doesn’t recognize your camera.

Bingo; Uninstall your Zoom software.

Download and install the latest version from Zoom’s site.

You can easily test your camera and your audio — before your meeting. Click here.

This piece came from The Week:

One more madman to usher in apocalypse?
North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal is troubling. But so is our whole global standoff.

Every single one of us is, in a sense, insane. We face terrible threats every day, yet manage to go about our lives as if they don’t exist. We drive (38,000 deaths a year). We walk (6,700 pedestrian deaths). We just hang out on the planet, emitting (150,000 deaths from climate change).

And every day is a new chance of nuclear war. The threat ebbs and flows with the headlines and the madmen behind them.

If it’s true that peace in Ukraine is possible, the threat of nuclear war may have once again receded. Yes, kids, we can all get up from under our desks and sleep tonight in the way we have since the Cold War ended 30 years ago.

Or maybe we can’t, as the list of countries that could target New York City and Washington, D.C., with nuclear-tipped missiles may have just grown by one. North Korea is claiming a successful test of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile that would put those cities in range.

I say “claims” because there are counter-claims that what actually launched was a dolled up version of an older missile Kim Jong Un is trying to pass off as the real thing. Here’s what matters, though: This test may have failed, but the one after it, or the one after that will succeed. And for those of us living in those cities, that means we have one more madman ready to usher in the apocalypse.

Of course, there’s a broad sense in the U.S. that Washington and New York aren’t really America. I might argue otherwise, but it really doesn’t matter: Wherever you’re reading this, if they can hit my home, they can hit yours, too.

It’s all madness, and it has been since the Soviet Union developed the bomb in 1949, just a few short years after the United States killed hundreds of thousands of people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Up until that point, the U.S. alone could unleash death in a way that could still feel escalatory after a war that killed as many as 65 million people. After the USSR’s successful tests, the two sides split the world between them, then tried to keep from pushing the button as smaller fights flared.

U.S. allies, formal and just friendly, also built bombs: Britain, France, South Africa. Then, in 1964, China — a major power with its own interests and alliances of which no one could quite be sure — joined the club. China has been slow to reach the madness level of the U.S. and Russia, each with strategic nuclear weapons numbering in the thousands. But Beijing’s stockpile is in the hundreds and may soon have the chance to grow. China also has some terrific rocket technology. Hitting the East Coast of the U.S. would be a dawdle.

Shhh! Israel has the bomb, too, but pretends that all that’s going on at Dimona is some nice peaceful research, maybe a little power generation. Their regional rockets can certainly take out local enemies in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the like. Considering shifting alliances in the region and U.S. and Russian allyship scattered all over the area, an Israeli launch could easily trigger a larger exchange. And then, once again, New York, Washington, and the rest of the United States are in play.

India — not an American enemy, but not a friend, either — is a nuclear club member too, and one with the capacity to send bombs into orbit. The likeliest target of Indian nukes is Pakistan, and  Pakistan feels the same way about India. Any exchange between those two, with their complex relationships with the U.S. and Russia, could also lead somewhere nobody wants to go. Even if no other countries joined an India-Pakistan atomic war, we’d all suffer the literal fallout, including here in the States.

None of this even touches on the bombs that supposedly can’t hit New York and Washington, the “small” tactical weapons intended to blow apart armies, rather than cities, which I’ve written about before. But no one knows what the next step will be after the first tactical nuke is used. The strategy that follows that desperate act is secret.

Have I mentioned this is madness?

And what can you do about it?

Bupkis.

Carl Sagan, scientist, educator, and anti-nuclear activist said it well: “Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse.”

Seeking redemption on Broadway

This is 

These are SO wonderful and SO stupid

Writing today’s blog has been cathartic (cleansing, purifying, clearing my thoughts).

The machines have taken over today’s market and pushed it down. “Go with the flow” in programming language.

My strongest stocks today are UNH, JNJ, COST, ENB and ATEX. I hear the rest of them gurgling down some outhouse.

My backhand is improving.

See you tomorrow. — Harry Newton