TGIF

It's Friday and the holiday season is coming. Next week is a shortened week and Christmas ads fill the airwaves. Hmmm ... that's a bit archaic, as now the "airwaves" aren't analog waves at all, but packets of bits and bytes. But at the fundamental level, the digital bits are still electromagnetic waves, although somehow configured be read by receivers as bits. I wonder how that's done ? Oh well ... you can tell I'm mostly a theorist when it comes to physics, etc.

Marketwise, consolidation continues. A few weeks ago I wrote that to hit my S&P target of 1200 by year end, the markets need some good news on the jobs front. That means unemployment claims dropping solidly below 500,000 per week, and the December jobs number showing a loss well under 200,000. We'll see ...

Europe is now going through the "Articles of Confederation" phase of nation-building. Eventually they'll copy the US Constitution, but it might take a generation for the need for that to be obvious to the leaders of member states. For now, Europe seems rather dominated by the big three, viz. Britain, France and Germany (listed alphabetically), but when will Italy, Poland and Spain (again listed alphabetically) start to get the respect they deserve ?

Hmmm in a year, this blogger will be semi-literate in all the major languages of the EU. I'll be able to add news from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain to my daily posts. I wonder how many bloggers world wide are able to do that ? Perhaps I'll then consider expanding operations to a real web site with more capability.

By the way, I can read enough of those languages to note that the leading newspapers in Italy and Poland did NOT have the appointment of the EU president as a top headline, while those from Britain, France and Germany did. The headline in a leading newspaper in Spain focused on the weakness of the #1 and #2 EU leaders. Interesting ...

Actions

The refrain continues ...
Je ne fais rien.
Ich machte nichts.
Nic nie robię.
Estoy haciendo nada.
Non faccio nulla.
Nihil facio.
I am doing nothing.

I wonder if I can make a poem from those lines ? Perhaps next time. I am listing to a course on "How to Read and Understand Poetry" from the Teaching Company. I might be able to combine those lines into some sort of verses with alliteration, assonance, consonance and half-rhymes and other poetic "sound effects". A good project.

Word of the Day

"Proxeny" - noun [$1000] and "Proxenus" -noun [$1000]; both from Greek
Proxeny means the office of function of a proxenus"
Proxenus means (in Greek antiquity) A resident citizen of a state appointed by another state to represent and protect its interests there. Readers of the fine book by Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks, will recognize that function was called "consul" in the free trading cities of pre-1871 Europe. Proxeny is sort of like an official agency of a governmental entity in another jurisdiction.
Sentence: The position of EU president seems a bit like a joint proxeny for all the members states of the EU on the world stage.