Morning coffee with Hosni

This morning I had a cup of coffee in Dubai with Hosni Mubarak. I thought he still was in Sharm el-Sheik, but he had in fact made it to safety the UAE and that's were we finally get together and chatted for a while.
Go11: How does it feel now that all the pressure is over?
Hosni: Much better, we'll be able to relax, plus the weather is a bit nicer than what we had earlier in Cairo.
Go11: So, what are your plans, as you're now free to do as you please?
Hosni: You're really not paying close attention my friend; I always did what I wanted. Now, it's going to be much harder; we'll need to pay for our own food, our flat, our helicopter and plane rides; I may have to taken hang-gliding  - chuckling... It sure will be vastly different...
Go11: Are they things you'll miss in Dubai?
Hosni: Sure, and they're too many to mention; all the stuff that we didn't have time to grab at the presidential palace; my iPod with all the Frank Sinatra tunes on it, the presidential limo, the household help, our Austrian chef and a wonderful collection of Bordeaux wines!
Go11: What are you planning to do now as you're beginning a brand new phase in your life?
Hosni: I intend to hit the lecture-circuit and have already lined up speaking engagements not just all around the Persian Golf, but also in Libya, Morocco, Iran and France - yeah, Sarkozy wants to stay in power and would like to avoid some of the blunders I've made!
Go11: That sounds like a lot of work; what will you do for fun?

Hosni: When I'm done with the French president, I plan to stay two more weeks in Courchevel and learn how to snowboard. I had originally planned to do it in St. Moritz, but those paranoid Swiss regulators froze our bank accounts; they'll lose a good customer!

Which religion has the best God?

James White, one of my Facebook active friends, launched an interesting conversation yesterday by asking: “In your opinion, which religion has the best God?” In a knee-jerk reaction, I misread the topic and responded, thinking “which [God] has the best religion,” and then formulating a would-be humorous answer that I posted on line. I have since re-read the question and today, I will attempt to address it more thoughtfully. First of all, the question itself creates a premise that different religions call for different Gods. That's alright with me, Allah is different than the Christian God, and is probably different than Yahweh, Zeus or Ahura Mazda (Zoroastrianism.) This is an important point that must be established before we go any further; we're quite fortunate to having a whole bunch of Gods and Goddesses available to us for spiritual needs.

Without getting into the minute details today, I would like to offer a simple overview. First, I think the Gods of the Talmud and Islam are not fun guys at all. They are old, stubborn, vengeful and violent. Satan, the God of satanism is not better either, plus he is extremely negative, so that puts him off my top list. Then there's the modern Christian God, that is a team deal between the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit (some sort of Intellectual Property Attorney) that is obviously breaking ranks with monotheism and creating more confusion than what's needed.

Even though they add a woman (Mary) to the top team, the Catholic Gods become more confusing, plus they condone guilt and pedophilia, which disqualify them by my book. We have the Mormon God and its plethora of prophets (including Jesus, who's been demoted) but that's not cost effective (10% of one's gross income.) Beside compassion, I don't think Buddha offers much since I don't believe in re-incarnation, for the simple reason that I can't remember what I was doing before I was born.

That brings me next to Hinduism which offer a bunch of colorful Gods that I find likeable but don't understand, and since we are now into polytheism, I'd say that my favorite are the thirty-three Greek gods and their Roman counterparts. First they are very diverse, they're specialized and they are acting as human with special powers which makes them very accessible to me, but unfortunately, just like the mini-cassette, they're no longer available. As in the song “American Pie”, they probably caught the “last train for the Coast...”

My definition of a “perfect storm”

I'm not talking about the situation that describes an event in which a rare combination of circumstances will drastically tip the natural order over, nor do I want to allude to the book and the movie covering the phenomenon and that is the source of the expression. What I want to talk about is what happened this past Monday, late afternoon, when the skies suddenly became dark and snow began to fall like it would never stop. It kept on storming into the evening and the following morning, we woke up to a picture-perfect weather and to over 10 inches of fluffy new snow.

Now, this is what I call a “perfect storm,” when the precipitation arrives after a full workday for some, or a fun-filled vacation afternoon, when the heavy snowfall doesn't impede traffic too much or create unnecessary stress on skiers and other mountain folks that have to work their way around it. That's right: Regular night snowstorm followed by blue-bird skies and super light powder in the morning; that's the only circumstance in my book that deserves to be called a perfect storm, and we have many of those in Deer Valley: A timely, convenient and generous precipitation that supplies days of fun for mountain lovers!

Egypt: Bring in the tourists!

With tourism counting for about $12 to 15 billion in revenue and employing about 12% of the country's work force, tour operators and their clients weight really heavily on the economy of Egypt and might, if they were to present a united front, heavily influence the outcome of the current stalemate between the demonstrators and president Mubarak. It would seem to me that visitors to the land of the Pharaohs are generally well educated and less likely to give a blank check to old-fashion tyranny.

This means that if all of them (tour operators, groups and individual travelers) could find a common voice, they might bring their influence to bear and tip the entire conflict in favor of openness and democratic rule. It's clear that if Mr. Mubarak is tempted to follow the course followed by the Chinese in Tienanmen, he would do irreparable damage to his country. If that were the case, tourists would have a moral obligation to voting with their feet, especially if other world governments were to turn a blind eye to repression, whether it'd be under the form of a forceful response by the army on the ground or through a military Coup. Sure, I don't have a ready-to-use recipe on how to mobilize that vital part of Egypt's economy and leverage it in favor of its people, but the idea has huge potential...

More on growth...

Yesterday, one of my loyal reader and friend (William Bocq) voiced his disagreement with my daily blog. One of my avatars responded to him briefly but quite ineffectively. Today, I'll attempt to straighten things out. What my blog was about wasn't so much about the laws of economics (even though I foolishly mentioned capitalism,) but was more about the fallacy of never-ending growth and universal enrichment which has been one of the pillar of the capitalist doctrine.

During Adam Smith's life, the world population was estimated to be at 800,000 people, so overpopulation was a non-issue. While it's agreed that population grow may slow down, no one knows for sure, as the UN estimates for the 22nd century fall inside a bracket comprised between 5 and 14 billion.

I also agree that the law of supply and demand would quickly force some drastic adjustment on the way humans have to deal with dire situations, but my point was to state that, in an overcrowded world, it might be time to switch “currency” and let go of the sacrosanct “growth standard” for something that is more sustainable in the foreseeable future.

That magic stuff called growth...

John Mauldin writes a weekly newsletter that I read regularly. He believes in traditional (read “frozen”) capitalism. He recently wrote: “We’re optimists by nature. The natural order of the world is growth. Trees tend to grow, and economies do, too. “ What he failed to mention is that “natural growth” is followed by maturation and death, but let me try to explain the way I see that traditional view of growth.

Basically, growth is based on population explosion or on a fast-growing segment of the planetary population that can consume. Up to this new millennium, there were about one-quarter of the world population that was producing “stuff” for the rest to consume. Today, it's about half the world that is producing. So while our producing tool has been booming, the client base is shrinking in percentage. This means that even with an exponential population growth that will soon reach the 10 billion mark, we will not only cause irreparable damage to the planet, but we'll still run out of people to sell “stuff” to.

The quantitative growth model that has begun by fueling the industrial revolution, is not only dangerous and threatening us like a house of card, but it's well passed its prime. It's now time for us to find a qualitative growth model that should allow humanity to keep making a living without having to bloat and kill the planet.

The truth comes from children mouth

Yesterday, we were fortunate to watch Finn our soon-to-be three year grandson while his parents came to ski in Park City. An insatiable explorer, our little guy sees everything and nothing escapes his peering glance. He knows our home inside-out and was commenting on his portrait that is framed high, up inside the kitchen, proudly saying “that's me!” Then a few minute later, his attention turned to an older, sepia photograph that also adorns a living room wall and declared “...and that's grandpa!”

In truth, the man on the photo isn't quite me; I had discussed that picture in a late December blog and it depicts a rugged-looking fellow that wears a beret as I sometime do, and shares some facial features with me, but is definitely 15 to 20 years older than I am. However, since that character is someone everyone appears to like, I wouldn't argue with my grandson identification; I'll even use it as my Facebook profile picture...