I am in favor of EU receiving war refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. These people are victims of horrible wars and war crimes, some partly perpetrated by EU and USA. But with a small caveat.  What I do want is that these refugees realize what religious extremism in the form of Islamic State and the Taliban and others has done to their native countries and embrace the secular culture of Europe. A Europe in which religion is a choice of some, separate from education, where atheists/agnostics make the majority of the population, where freedom of expression and gender equality are the norm and where sexual orientation is free for everyone to express. We can’t have refugees in Europe who are in favor of denying education to girls or would want to kill homosexuals, or want to kill a woman because she had sex before getting married, or because she had sex with another woman, or a man with a man, or kill somebody because she/he joked about religion, nor any type of honor killing, nor any type of domestic violence, we have to make a clear explanation of our values and laws, anyone who lives in Europe should be explained what is and is not legal over here.  Moreover I hope that those who are antisemitic, leave their anti semitic views behind. I speak from experience, I was in Syria in 2004 and was detained on suspicion of being Jewish and had to lie my way out of detention denying I was Jewish something I was very ashamed to do, but had no choice. I think we could make refugees understand this in writing what Europe stands for.  We should have them sign a commitment to the democratic values of Europe as part of their acceptance procedure. Europe is freedom, if you love freedom, you are welcome!

Science is used in high schools around the world to rank students. This is especially true in Europe and Asia.  But most students score poorly in math, physics, chemistry, biology and as a result see their career choices erode.  In my view, science should be taught pass or fail with many quizzes along the way to see if students learned, but not to define future paths. I believe if science was taught this way,  if science was not used to curve students, many more people, as adults would like science.  Scientists are surprised at how many adults believe in unproven theories such as previous lives, homeopathy, ghosts, vaccines causing autism, mobile phones causing cancer, genetically modified food killing us. For politicians funding science is less and less popular. Government funding for theoretical physics for example, is at an all time low.  But if you think about it the general public mistrust of science makes sense. Why would people believe in science if science treated them like idiots. If science was used to block their opportunities. If science didn’t believe in them.

How can Germans be so generous vis a vis taking refugees in Europe? Germany will probably take around a million refugees, especially Syrians. Syrians, people who mostly speak no German, and whose culture is so different. People who have never lived in a democracy and who are absolutely destitute and desperate. Taking one million refugees is like taking one million unemployed people who are not educated in your country and whose skills most likely do not match those of your labor market. So what could make Germans want to take these refugees? Because from what I have seen it is not that anyone is putting tremendous pressure on them to take them. It is actually a popular measure in Germany to accept Syrian refugees. This while British and others are chasing them away and other than the Swedes, nobody else wants them. So here’s my theory.

Spain’s economy goes from existential threat to existential threat. It all started in the 90s with the country betting its future on the construction sector and then running out of credit by 2008. This crisis left Spain with a quarter of its population trained to do something for which there was no more demand. The crisis was aggravated by the socialist party being in denial which led to runaway deficits of over 10% of GDP. This accelerated indebtedness was combined with poor quality bank balance sheets, the result of holding so many devalued real estate assets. Fortunately Spain avoided bankruptcy and default thanks to the EU bailout and the economy started to recover. But the economic disaster, the great Spanish recession, the 50% youth unemployment opened the door to two populist movements. One is Podemos, the Syriza style Spanish fantasy that says that we can spend much more, renegotiate our debt, and somehow get away with default. This movement was extremely successful and recently won the cities of Madrid and Barcelona. And  together with this populism another flavor of blame others for your shortcoming movement emerged in force in Catalonia, the independence movement rose blaming all the economic ills of the region on Spain. This is absurd because Catalonia has been managed for generations by politicians who are as corrupt and as incompetent as the rest of Spain, went bankrupt borrowing more than any other region, and was actually saved by Spain. So when cornered, the Catalan leadership played the independence card, always a powerful way to draw attention away from you.

Spain first almost defaulted because of runaway deficits, then flirted again with financial disaster electing pro default Podemos, and now the newly gained still fragile stability is threatened by pro independence candidates in Catalonia. These leaders age that they will use the threat of not paying the 20% of debt corresponding to Catalonia as a means to gain independence.

What is the solution? A well designed independence referendum that clearly explains the consequences of independence and allows Catalans to decide on their future. The results would likely be the same as in the UK but if they aren’t nothing much will happen to Spain if Catalans become independent with their own regional debt plus their share of the national debt. But Rajoy’s hard line and the Catalans blame it all on Spain strategies are made for each other, and may result in chaos and indeed another possible near default.

Greeks voted to default.

Both alternatives were bad but staying was the better choice. Greece reminds me of my native Argentina.

Greeks vote for easy political solutions of poor economic outcome.  Both Argentina and Chile had over borrowed in 2000, Argentina chose to default. Chile did not. 15 years later we can see that Chile did much better. Argentines, who as Greeks today, also celebrated default as an act of patriotism, ended up struggling more than Chile who paid its creditors.

Recently Argentina went back into default. Few want to invest, Argentina is still an international business pariah. Chile instead, is the economic star of South America. Tsipras said he asked for a “No” vote so Greeks could negotiate better terms to stay in the euro. Greeks believed him.

They will soon learn that they were deceived. Greece will run out of euros, leave the euro and go through much more pain than it would have gone had they voted yes. Argentina still has runaway inflation, currency controls, and a fractured society of haves and have not. Exchanging pesos to dollars is still illegal, Argentines live in fear of their savings being once more raided by the government, as it will probably happen this week in Greece.

And this is in spite of having an incredible commodity export capability unavailable to Greeks. Greece has little to export other than tourism. A devaluation will attract cheap tourism, something that Greece doesn’t need. Greeks will work harder to make less euros. Not a bright future ahead.

Terrorists calling themselves Muslims killed mostly other Muslims and some non Muslims in horrific attacks in Tunisia, France, Kuwait, Somalia and Kurdistan, all today. That is already extremely troubling.  But what is as concerning is world apathy towards terrorism.  These attacks have a combined number of victims greater than the Atocha attack in Spain of 2004.  There is close to 500 injured and over 200 dead.  But we are getting so used to terrorism that media doesn’t care as much.  Children, women, tourists, worshippers all dead and my news feeds mostly talk about Uber in France. Is this another normal day? Are we getting used to a world in which hundreds die in the hands of Islamic State every day?

US spends more on health care than any other nation, yet Americans live less than those in any developed nation. US spends almost  half of what the whole world spends in the military, yet it almost loses every war. US spends more on police and incarceration per capita than any other developed nation yet it has the highest homicide and crime rates. And yet USA has the best managed corporations, the most Nobel Prizes, the best universities, the most creative and recognized writers, movie makers, artists, Internet companies. What surprises me about US is the failure to recognize how broken defense, health care and the administration of justice are. Especially when everything else in the USA is so incredibly well managed. If US cut military and incarceration spending by 20% it could give affordable college, housing, and health care to all of those who need it. And it would be probably as safe as other developed nations who offer these protections to all their citizens. If you want to understand why European countries, Australia, Japan have populations who live longer, commit less crime, go much less frequently to jail and are on the average healthier and better educated, you just need to see how they allocate their government budgets. They spend proportionately less on the military, less on police, less on the legal system, less on health care, more on redistribution of income, more on education.

As parents we are supposed to teach our kids to be patient. But in my case one big learning from being a parent has been to learn to be patient myself. To enjoy being patient. Today in Miami I spent hours at the playground, playing with stuffed animals, throwing ball at the pool, following David and Mia around the garden playing hide an  seek and uselessly trying to explain that the whole point of hide and seek is not to shout “here I am daddy”.  If you are a CEO and a father you have to learn to switch pace from going at jet speed to crawling. And sometimes you want to stop way before they do. But you go on pretending to be an elephant or a horse or the king of the mermaids, you do it because they are happy and their happiness is your happiness. As some people are into slow food I know slow parenting works best. Especially when I watch Nina who is such a patient mom. Parenting is not about quality time, when parenting quantity is quality. I once read that 80% of great parenting is showing up. And it is.