Italy's horse of a different color

  DISTANT GLOW AND SMOKE M y take on “Why #European countries are going for Coal over #Nuclear? “ DISCLAIMER: I am not an engineer, nuclear or otherwise, I shun titles of any sort if I possibly can, but my job in finance involves analysing and assessing the economic prospect of.. things. I have been doing that for a living for over 30 years and I am still here. Countries and areas of the world at the tip of the spear of the “Green” movement, Germany being the most shining example, have been frantically turning to COAL instead of Nuclear in their plan for their future electricity provision. My lack of surprise at that has been duly noted, coupled with some of my most outrageous interjections. But first, my usual “materials and methods” preamble: I do not claim to be right. I simply look at alternative explanations of the reality I live in, provided that nothing material disproves them, and order them in order of descending likelihood according to my taste, until and u...

Defense of the speculators This article was originally posted on "Intelligence Quarterly", my son's now closed financial information site.   “ But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell.” (“The Lord of the Rings”, J.R.R Tolkien) Given the sad state of the Economy in Europe, especially Energy, the Italian media and the election campaign is rife with calls by politicians and punters to “punish speculators”, and our government went as far as to impose an extraordinary tax on “extraordinary profits” of energy companies, on top of Premier Draghi proposal to the EU to agree to a price cap on gas bought from abroad. Yet, lest some quick witted person undertakes to try, “Speculation” is not a sure thing, and unless some background is provided to the obvious framing going on, the term is much maligne...