While there is still mystery about why Wall Street and foreign bourses have gone all weak-kneed in 2014, I suspect: the polar vortex producing record-breaking cold weather through much of the USA early in December and even more icily during the first weeks of the year. This seems to explain the oddball statistics on joblessness which came out since then: low levels of hiring but many people dropping out of the jobless pool because they stopped looking for work. It also may explain the rush to buy Christmas presents on the Internet rather than in retail shops, and the failure of shipping companies to get them to recipients in time for the festivities.

Today another blizzard is predicted for the USA and airports are again shut and people with jobs told to stay home.

If I am right, the current 'meh' stock US markets are not necessarily setting a trend for the rest of the year. You can read statistical projections until your eyes glaze over, but there is no simply answer telling us if by various ratios like yield or price to book or price to sales – or that old hoary favorite, price to earnings – are high, low, or normal. But has the weather been abnormal!

The Economist this week did a multi-market survey of how exchanges are too high and reader WVS asked if I was taking a defensive posture. The answer is no. My failure to adopt a selling posture is influenced by the UK stock and currency boom. Plus good yields. I have a couple of meetings later today which may change my outlook.

We have been decade-long friends of the talented Shashi Tharoor, civil servant, novelist, chronicler of sports, cinema history, and Nehruvian policies in his native India. Shashi worked as a UN bureaucrat and was not backed by his own Nehru-successor government when he ran to become UN Secretary General. Asian Ban Ki-Moon got the job and Shashi returned to India, leaving in NYC his divorced first wife, a professor, and their twin sons. With him went his high-maintenance new wife, a redhead unsuited for India's sun.

Shashi informed us and others of his doings by blogging. He ran for parliament in his Malayalayalam homeland and then joined the government as deputy foreign minister.

In 2010, Shashi had to resign that position because of an imbroglio over a bid he made for a Premier League cricket team in his constituency. It was for new fast 20-20 cricket (less boring than the old and very profitable for club owners.). Details are fuzzy but one Sinanda Pushker, a rich Indian divorcee then living in Dubai, may have been a hidden beneficiary of Shashi's bid.

In a few months, the redhead got divorced and left for less sunny climes, Shashi had married Ms. Pushker, and went back into the cabinet in a lowlier position. Last week Ms Pushker blogged that Shashi was having an affair with a Pakistani lady journalist, Mehr Tarar, who was “stalking” Shashi. The Tharoor couple flew to New Delhi arguing loudly on the plane. After they booked into their Delhi hotel, Shashi left for several hours and on returning discovered Sinanda Pushker dead in their room. The verdict appears to be that she overdosed on prescription pills.

The overlap with the French presidential couple has made this story big. Mlle. Trierweiler, the mistress-in-residence of Pres. François Hollande, also took too many pills in reaction over his latest lover, but as a savvy reporter she stopped in time.

When I vented yesterday about financial mis-allocation into Chinese real estate and shadow banking excesses, I failed to mention frothy shares. The GNP numbers came in above Beijing forecasts, but at a 21^st century low. Moreover, you cannot believe the numbers.

Yesterday in Shenzhen, no fewer than 7 initial public offerings of new shares were suspended because they had risen over 45% during their first trading day. This had to be a Chinese gambling phenomenon, taking place before European markets opened, while Wall Street was shut for Martin Luther King Day.

Other IPO's have been withdrawn by JPMorgan, according to Reuters, because they are aimed at enriching the families of Chinese hired by the investment bank. Meanwhile a mega-takeover of IBM basic computers is being plotted by Lenovo. If you think the LNVGY officers haven't taken a position in Big Blue already, I have a bridge to sell you.

In fact yesterday's growth figures may also include distortions from Chinese profit seeking. The country's gross national product can be boosted by fake exports priced to give an offshore related entity gains which can be imported back into China off the books for speculation in stocks, money market funds, takeover bids, or property. So GNP may have been inflated by round-tripping RMB. That the numbers don't jibe is a long-standing problem with China. It doesn't mean that George Soros is right to short the country overall. But it does put a damper on some of the excess enthusiasm for China's miracle growth by some simplistic analysts and newsletters.

More from Finland, Brazil, Norway, Canada, Israel, Ireland, and Britain.

*Marine Harvest, which I suspect is issuing long-planned US shares, is no longer trading its ADRs. However, on the grey market, they are priced at $1.23, a nice jump from our cost of $1.14. Ah lox!

*AB Inbev, the combo of Budweiser and Stella Artois, the parent of our former Ambev Brazilian brewery shares has bought back Korea's Oriental Brewery from KKR, the private equity group, for $5.8 bn, 3x what it sold KOB for in 2008 ($1.8 bn) at the height of the global financial crisis. The sale was to cut InBev debt from the merger. Its top brass, led by CEO Carlos Brito, collected $2.5 bn in bonuses (via options) from the InBev board in return for slashing debt by $9.4 bn, including the sale of the Korean firm. It also spun out its Brazilian holdings via two share classes, merged last year, when we sold out of ABEV. The executives will not turn in their bonuses after reversing the KKR deal.

*The Uralkali contract price for potash to China has today been set at $305/metric tonne, about 24% below the price set before the Urakali Russian-Belarus cartel broke up last year. This is marginally higher than worst-case forecasts. For Israel Chemicals, which ships via Eilat to Asian markets, it is a mixed blessing since ISCHF faces fierce strikes over layoffs at its Dead Sea Works to offset the drop in demand for its higher-priced potash. ISCHF is under extreme pressure from the lefty Israeli unions for diversifying its operations outside the Jewish State, good business but bad politics.

*The other fertilizer firm we recommend, Agrium of Canada, today issued new lower profits guidance for Q4. It warned that it now expects profits to come in at about 80 cents/sh vs an earlier estimate of $0.80-1.25. The main issue is the price and supply of potash. AGU was able to offset the drop in both supply and demand for potash with its retailing arm (Viterra) but it is not enough. The new forecasts include some one-off adjustments but exclude others including foreign exchange options, Viterra costs, non-recurring, and non-operational gains and losses. Frankly, it includes whatever AGU management wants to throw into the pot prior to a planned corporate reorganization being worked on.

*According to Monday's Financial Times' Fund Management section which I only read late yesterday, Nordea Bank asset management officers are planning to boycott Israeli companies and banks when they invest later this year. The new program is aimed at settlements in the West Bank which cannot be hived off from the main Israeli economy.

An article by Madison Marriage (her real name), not distributed in the US, reveals that among the boycott leaders is the “Nordic” bank HQ'd in Sweden and active in the London market (it has branches in Scandinavia, Finland, Poland, and the Baltic countries, having been formed by desperate merger during their financial crisis in the waning days of the 20^th century.) While our Finnish financial conglomerate, insurer Sampo Oy, did not subscribe the latest Nordea capital increase, it remains a key shareholder owning c21% of the bank. SAXPF has always been firmly free-market principled, typified by its former CEO Björn Wahlrus, now chairman of Nordea. But Swedish government meddling and its do-good pension funds may override his mandate.

Ironically, Israeli companies like Delek Group are now negotiating with Turkey openly and with Arab states (like Jordan and Egypt) unofficially to sell offshore gas from the Tamar and Leviathan Mediterranean fields. Existing inter-Arab pipelines can be reversed. DGRLY may be acceptable to Jordan but not Sweden!

A delegation of some 100 Israeli business men and women is making its way to the Davos (Switzerland) World Financial Forum where on Jan. 26 they meet with opposite numbers from the Palestine territories and non-Middle East diplomatic and business attendees for a “Breaking the Impasse” forum Your editor owns stock in Ormat, ORA, a US company with Israeli links owned by one of the Israeli businesswomen, Yehudith Bronicki., which builds thermal power plants.

*Ireland's Covidian plc was rated overweight with a raised $80 target price by Jefferies Group analysts. COV is $68 and change.

*GlaxoSmithKline, the dominant partner of ViiV Halthcare. Will gain from European Commission approval of Tivicay (dolutegravir), an integrase inhibitor, in combo with other drugs for HIV-infected patients aged 12 or older. It beat other new drugs in trials for patients who had developed resistance to existing AIDS drugs they were taking. GSK has a minority partner in ViiV into which they transferred their AIDS drug pipelines, Pfizer.

*Teva will buy out all minority holders of NuPathe, which is signed to acquire for $3.15/sh, over and above the upfront payment of $3.65/sh (already a 20% premium from before the deal). The extra payment will be paid if milestones are met for its Zecuity drug. NuPathe (PATH), a developer of neurological drugs, will pay $5 mn to Endo Health as termination fees; Endo offered 20% less than TEVA. The deal is expected to close next month and Teva will put the milestone fees into an escrow account. The deal was done in the Teva CEO interregnum by its chief scientist, Dr. Michael Hayden, whose background is in neurological drugs.

*Compugen named Dr Drew Pardoll, a Johns Hopkins Medical School specialist in oncology and genetics, to its scientific advisory board. This is a signal that CGEN's pipeline of genetic cancer checkpoints is going to be important.

*CAE is beating its records, having sold 43 full-flight simulators this year so far. By list prices, the contracts are worth $70 bn but often are discounted. While Air Canada from its homeland and another North American airline accounted for 2 of the orders, the bulk seems to be going to fast growing Asian carriers. The Canada deal is for a Boeing 787 FFS to be delivered in 2016.