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Syria's Assad discusses peace talks, Tartus port with Russians
BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met senior officials from his strongest ally Russia in Damascus on Friday and Saturday to discuss upcoming peace talks, renting out Tartus port and trade between the two countries, state media in Syria reported.
Russia has helped Assad’s forces to take back most of the country but the eight-year-long war continues. Swathes of the northeast and northwest are out of his control, while sanctions and a fuel shortage are constricting the economy.
Moscow has pushed for a political process involving talks on a new constitution and elections as a way to end the conflict, but Assad has played down the possibility that the Turkey-backed opposition or foreign countries might participate.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said late on Friday that Assad had met Moscow’s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin and several Russian Defence Ministry officials.
However, while it said they had discussed the formation of a constitutional committee, which Syria’s opposition last year agreed to join under U.N. auspices after a Russian-hosted peace conference, Syrian state media did not mention it.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said meetings had focused on the next round of talks in Kazakhstan involving Syria, its allies Russia and Iran, and the rebels’ backer Turkey.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria’s war and about half the pre-conflict population of 22 million has been displaced.
Russia launched a military intervention to support Assad in 2015, turning the tide of the fighting in his favor.
On Saturday, SANA said Assad had met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov to discuss trade and economic cooperation, “particularly in the fields of energy, industry and increasing trade”.
CONTRACT “WITHIN A WEEK”
TASS news agency cited Borisov as saying that a contract on renting Tartus port by Russia was expected to be signed soon.
In 2017, the Russian parliament ratified a deal with Damascus to cement Russia’s foothold in the country and pave the way for establishing a permanent military presence at naval and air bases in Syria.
It was also agreed that Russia would expand and modernize the port’s supply of facilities for its fleet.
Borisov said Russia now hoped to sign the deal to rent the port within a week, according to TASS.
“We have advanced quite substantially on this issue and hope that the contract will be signed within a week and the port Tartus will be transferred for the Russian business usage,” he was quoted as saying. The Tartus naval facility is Russia’s only naval foothold in the Mediterranean.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-russia/syrias-assad-discusses-peace-talks-tartus-port-with-russians-idUSKCN1RW07P?il=0
Delusional "Asset" Buyer's=What were they Thinking?
Learning From Other People’s Mistakes is Cheaper
One benefit of hindsight is that it imparts a cheap superiority over the past blunders of others. We certainly make more mistakes than we’d care to admit. Why not look down our nose and acquire some lessons learned from the mistakes of others?
A simple record of the collective delusions from the past can be quickly garnered from a price chart over time. Market peaks appear so obvious, after the fact. Perhaps with a little examination we can prevent some of our hard earned capital from being returned to dust.
Take bitcoin, for instance. What were those morons thinking who bought bitcoin at over $17,000 in late-2017? Why couldn’t they tell that a severe price collapse was imminent? Now, over 16 months later, their bitcoins are about $5,230 – or roughly 69 percent less than what they paid for them.
What’s more, if bitcoin doesn’t hit $1 million by the end of 2020, John McAfee – the cybersecurity guy – will have to eat his most private part on national television. Apparently, McAfee consulted his proprietary pricing model before making this outrageous claim. Maybe he should have back tested it a bit more before going public with his findings.
A few years ago in some or other jungle: John McAfee, tech entrepreneur and crypto maverick (here reportedly seen on the lam from authorities in Belize). Should he still be in possession of his private parts by 2021, you will know that you should have bought Bitcoin. [PT]
Still, we won’t count McAfee out just yet. He has 20 months left before his trade expires; anything can happen between now and then. And while it’s unlikely that bitcoin will hit $1 million anytime soon, with a little luck, bitcoin buyers from late-2017 will break even much sooner than the new era dot com believers of the new millennium did.
Down Beyond Measure
The savvy fellows who bought the Nasdaq in early-2000 at over 5,000 were in full agreement over one very seemingly obvious point. They all knew they were getting rich. But that was before the Nasdaq crashed over 75 percent and crushed their new era delusions into millions of tiny pieces. Yet things could have been much worse…
Sometime around early-2015 the Nasdaq eclipsed its early-2000 high, and it hasn’t looked back. After traversing a Grand Canyon sized bear market, the Nasdaq is about 60 percent higher than at the peak of the early-2000 dot com bubble. In fact, just this week the Nasdaq spiked back up above 8,000.
Wouldn’t it be nice if markets were always this forgiving?
Certainly, the erstwhile investors who bought the Nikkei in October 1989 at over 38,000 would like a do-over. They’re still down about 40 percent – nearly 30 years later. Factor in the opportunity cost of what these Nikkei investors missed out on over this time, and they’re down beyond measure.
Indeed, the significant wealth building years of several generations of Japanese investors have been lost. They’ll never get their investment potential or time back. There are some mistakes that there are no recovering
See this:
The Bank of Japan Is Now A Top-10 Shareholder In 50% Of All Japanese Companies
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-17/bank-japan-now-top-10-shareholder-50-all-japanese-companies
What Were They Thinking?
cap 2 the old crypto currency
Yet the real “my name is mud” award goes to the enlightened speculators who bought tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic in January 1637. At the time, a single tulip was trading for the price of an entire estate. One month later, the price of a tulip had collapsed to the price of a common onion.
By our rough calculation, tulip bulbs have remained at par with common onions for the past 382 years. It’s likely they’ll remain there for all eternity. But for a brief moment, roughly November 1636 to February 1637, people lost their minds in unison.
80 years before the South Seas Bubble, the Dutch tried their hand at a once-in-a-lifetime financial mania. They actually traded futures contracts on tulip bulbs over the counter. This bubble never came back and never will – a century after it had ended, tulip bulb prices were still down more than 99% from the peak.
What can possibly go wrong when stocks are at a higher valuation than at the 1929 peak?
Clearly, U.S. stock markets have been rigged by the Federal Reserve. But the popular delusion of many of today’s stock buyers is that risk has been eliminated, and that the Fed can propel stocks higher forever. Thus you should buy stocks, and buy even more stocks… so you don’t miss out.
Cap 3 against cap 2
No doubt, future generations will smirk at our imbecility, and rhetorically ask: What were they thinking?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-20/what-were-they-thinking
yes the old "let's find an alternative site" slide.
apparently BV disagree's with you