“Western nations yesterday pledged $500m (£263m) in aid to the Palestinians as the UN humanitarian chief warned an economic crisis meant the Gaza strip was a “ticking time bomb”.
A total of $114m will be spent on humanitarian aid. The remaining money will be used to meet a shortfall in UN emergency funding and to cover the reconstruction of infrastructure.”
In-Cog-Nito
Death to the Hitlerites
In keeping with our tradition of celebrating the death of terrorist scum, some good news from Russia: Shamil Basayev, mastermind of the Beslan school massacre and Nord-Ost theater takeover, is no more.
Possible video.
Google News compilation.
Die terrorist scum.
Middle East Economic Boom
Here’s a very good Opinion Journal oped piece on the Mid East economic boom thanks to the high price of oil.
The recent performance of Arab stock markets makes the Nasdaq of the late 1990s look like a slouch. Since January 2002, the Egyptian, Dubai and Saudi stock markets are up respectively by over 1,100%, 630% and 600%. Only four years ago, gulf companies were priced at around twice book value. Today they trade on an average of 44 times historic earnings and at over eight times book value. gulf banks are valued at over nine times book value, according to Credit Suisse.
Here’s a website with pictures of Dubai. Very impressive.
Photos from Visit Dubai at www.dubai-city.de
Henry Blodget is Back
Henry Blodget is back, and he has a pretty good blog. Blodget was the CIBC/Merrill Lynch analyst who put the $400 price target on Amazon (AMZN) back during the .com boom. Turns out he’s a pretty good writer. He makes a good bear case for Google (GOOG):
Google’s major weakness is that it is almost entirely dependent on one, high-margin revenue stream. The company has dozens of cool products, but with the exception of AdWords, none of them generate meaningful revenue. From an intermediate-term financial perspective, therefore, they are irrelevant.
Blodget was considered the top analyst for the Internet sector back in his day. Like him or hate him, his writing is worth checking out if for no other reason than to get a different view.
Disclosure: I’m holding GOOG put options, which means I think GOOG’s stock price will decline. Do NOT construe any of the above as investment advice.