Comments for Elias-Bachrach family blog

Comment on Blowing Shofar at the kotel by Ann

Ann — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:18:07 +0000

Fascinating

Comment on Blowing Shofar at the kotel by art finkle

art finkle — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:36:42 +0000

For full explanation of Shofar, its influence on prayer and its historical antecedents going back to the Temple sacrifices,
go to:

WebPage

https://sites.google.com/site/shofarwebpage/

Comment on Blowing Shofar at the kotel by David

David — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:45:33 +0000

Who knew that Hazzanut was spycraft?

Comment on Rami Levy by Ari

Ari — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:10:25 +0000

@Reuven while I highly doubt it’s anything as formal as a meeting, there does seem to be a lot of industry wide collusion in several important industries in Israel. I was going to write something about the banks but have been having trouble researching them because the banking industry a little bit foreign to me and has a high degree of complexity. Certainly RL has accused the grocery industry of collusion in the past, and even haaretz reported that there was an “unwritten rule” against cell phone companies trying to compete with each other directly.

Comment on Rami Levy by Reuven

Reuven — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:06:35 +0000

I can’t speak for Cell Plans in Israel, but somebody once told me the story of an unofficial meeting between the execs of the various Israeli dairy companies where they decided the pricing for the next quarter. And last summer, remember the mysterious jump in cottage cheese prices that hit Israel? That wasn’t a supply issue, somebody just picked the new price. The kind of stuff that would land people in jail in America is just the way business is done in Israel. The regulators simply look the other way… Hats off to Rami Levy, for refusing to raise the cottage cheese prices then, and for refusing to collude on Cell Phone pricing now…

Comment on Rami Levy by Ari E-B

Ari E-B — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:54:34 +0000

@David

That’s actually an excellent point that I had completely overlooked. RL has even commented that they’re going to keep costs down so they can pass savings on to consumers. (Amongst other things, they’re not going to be buying expensive real estate in malls).

My math was clearly wrong, but I still stand by my underlying premise – the fact that there is so much room for price cutting as soon as it suddenly became necessary shows that some collusion (whether overt or “unwritten”) between the 3 mobile providers that is finally being eliminated by competition from RL.

Comment on Rami Levy by David

David — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:49:38 +0000

RL sounds like a wonderful development. One note about profit margins – there is marginal cost (how much they have to pay for additional minutes on pre-built infrastructure) and then there is first-unit cost (how much up-front spending is required to do the development and deployment). Telcos have a TON of the latter, and low marginal costs. Their margins may not be obscene – they may have been using per-minute retail charges to cove the assorted other business costs (customer (dis)-service, capacity planning and upgrade, maintenance, etc), and this may not be reflected in their wholesale pricing. Interestingly, billing is one of the qualitatively more-difficult elements of telecom deployment and management (due to the need for ridiculous levels of accuracy in logging, etc).

In the US, the wholesale / retail pricing arrangements are heavily regulated – I don’t know whether the Israeli regulations are similar (but I suspect not), but their wholesale group may only be responsible for covering marginal cost rather than (say) depreciation.

Comment on Texas and Iraq by William

William — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:20:20 +0000

President George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq as part of a multinational coalition to stop Saddam Hussein from harassing his neighbors. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq because of intelligence reports of WMD, and because Saddam Hussein continued to defy the will of the international community and continued to attack American fighter jets enforcing the no-fly zone.

Rick Perry, on the other hand, has insufficient knowledge of the facts on the ground, and I believe his judgment to be suspect. Both Presidents Bush had a far-better understanding of the issues than does Governor Perry – and his thought-processes should not be compared with those of two former Presidents of the United States, a club that he will not be joining.

Comment on Language pollution by Jason Schoenbrun

Jason Schoenbrun — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:44:27 +0000

Good point, ווווו would be amazing!

Comment on Language pollution by Ari

Ari — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:36:12 +0000

ווודווורט ? yeah, not pretty.