Updates

It seems we HAD the leader of ISIS in custody, but the Bush administration let him go.  That and other revelations in this rather scary interview Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, gave Der Spiegel.  (In English.)

In case you missed it yesterday: Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change from the Science section of the New York Times . . . the last of the 12 hard questions being: “Is there any reason for hope?”  Subhead: “If you share this with 50 friends, maybe.”  So I am.  Worth a read — especially with 150 world leaders meeting on this in Paris as we speak.

GLDD:  This is my long-term holding that controls half the dredging market and should, I would have thought, gradually accrete in value like sediment in a riverbed — with an added boost from our long-delayed investment in infrastructure (maintaining our ports) and the now-completed deepening of the Panama Canal (which means loads of other ports must now be deepened to accommodate the even larger ships that will be plying the seas).  What I did not bargain for was bad management.  They seem to have made lots of dumb acquisitions and generally to have performed much less well than I expected.  But the assets are still there, and the core business is valuable, so I am hopeful the board will eventually recruit better management, and/or sell out to a larger company that sees the opportunities.  I have  no plans to sell.

BOREF:  Inch by inch.  This remains, to my mind, a terrific lottery ticket.  There is absolutely the chance nothing will ever come of it; but a potentially terrific pay-off if they can cross the finish line.  That’s what makes it a lottery ticket.  Only with money you can truly afford to lose.  But I haven’t sold a share.