I'm troubled by the SPD vote which saw 76% of party members favoring a coalition with Angela Markel's Christian Democrats and approving a  leftistcoalition platform. A new German government can now be formed. The CDU was marginally short seats needed to govern Germany alone in the election 3 months ago. Yet nobody polled CDU party members to see if they favored a rise in the minimum wage, rent control, and a financial transaction tax.

In Israel over the weekend, ultra-Orthodox men wearing black hats over their side curls engaged in the public production of graven images, violating one of the 10 Commandments. They were making snowmen after a blizzard hit Jerusalem, (and also, alas, the homeless in the high Syrian hills.)

Last night I went to a Christmas party at a Harvard classmate's house, featuring caroling and eggnog, with roast ham or shrimp as the only buffet food. I'm seasonally ecumenical despite nagging kosher guilt. But what would my German ghetto forebears have said?

Harvard law school professor Alan Dershowitz is retiring at age 75 after 50 years teaching. Among the students of this also-lapsed Orthodox Jew was Pres. Obama.

Harvard is always to blame. Today parts of the campus were locked down because of a bomb threat. Unlike it was from Jews. Apart from the modern Science Center, one of the buildings which may have a hidden bomb is Victorian-style Sever Hall. I wrote a poem about Sever as an undergraduate:

Sever Hall once stood as/A monster of renown

Too ugly just to stand there/Too costly to tear down.

Some architect 'tis certain/Must list among his sins

The heinous crime of pouring/New wine into old skins.

With the Dow up c25% this year and Nasdaq up c28%, pity the brokerage forecasters who have to give their outlook for 2014. The analysts are not allowed to tell customers that stocks are expensive. To hint at there being any bubbles anywhere in the investing firmament is taboo.

More financial news follows from the Cayman Islands, Ireland, China, Jordan, Israel, Britain, India Australia, Indonesia, Colombia, Singapore, Spain, Germany, Canada, and Holland.

*Hands are reaching across the border as snowmen are also being built in Amman. The Delek Group and its partners in the operating Israeli offshore Tamar gasfield may be negotiating to sell some of their output to Jordan for producing natural gas across the Dead Sea from Israel Chemicals' site. Arab Potash like ISCHF is part of the western legal cartel run by Potash Corp of Saskatchewan (POT) which owns 28%.

Last week saw advances in a desalination project funded by the World Bank for the Red Sea to provide water to the Israeli south, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank.

*Telefonica and Royal KPN have abandoned their plan for TEF to buy KPN's German sub for $10.7 bn.

*GlaxoSmithKline of Britain is spending c$1bn to take 75% control of its Bombay Stock Exchange-listed Indian sub. Currently GSK owns only 50% but it wants to boost emerging market sales, not just to India.

*Covidien gave more color to its 2014 forecasts and reporting format today. The changes came because the Irish medical devices and supplies firm spun out Mallinckrodt (pharma) earlier this year. COV expects net sales in 2014 will rise 2 to 5% and operating margins to be 21.5 to 22.5%. It expects taxes to be 16-7%. However, it now expects that foreign exchange will reduce 2014 revenues by 1-1.25%.

It will now report sales to 3 destinations: the USA, other developed countries, and emerging markets. By product, medical supplies will be grouped with medical devices, and they will be broken down into: surgical, vascular, and respiratory and patient care (monitoring). The last segment is expected to be weakest in sales growth.

COV also reported that two previously announced transactions are not included in the guidance for 2014 until they close during Q1, notably the acquisition of Given Imaging of Israel which could add $40-50 mn in quarterly sales per quarter. The other pending deal is sale of its biosurgery line which would reduce sales by $15-20 mn/quarter. COV is also restating the current and prior year results for the new format.

*Our Ecopetrol share is down 3.8% after EC revealed that it will boost its capital spending by 11% in 2014, to $10.6 bn. The money will be used to drill c20 exploratory wells in the Colombian Eastern Plains and to revamp a refinery. The target output next year is 770 barrels of oil equivalent/day (boe/d) for wholly EC production and 819 boe/d including subs and joint ventures. It was also downrated to sell from neutral by Citigroup today.

*Compugen Ltd continues to sell down. My secret theory is that the CGEN selling is by Dr Phillip Frost who is trying to shore up his position in Opko Health, under attack from short-sellers Lakewood Capital. It is just a hunch; there is no reporting the Dr Frost owns a stake in CGEN which is an in silico (computer generation) drug discovery company.

*Guangshen Railway is up 6.5% in US trading this morning. No idea why. GSH.

*Haier, the Chinese appliance maker which leads the world in appliances via its Qingdao Haier Logistics sub, has pre-leased 377,000 sq ft from Global Logistics Properties' Liantang park near Shanghai which is near many highways. It joins another Haier 300,000 sq ft regional distribution site in Jiaonan, Qingdao. GBTZF is Singaporean and builds distribution sites in China, Japan, and Brazil via jv's with Singaporean and Canada sovereign wealth investors and other partners.

*Canadian Solar modules were installed atop schools in Clovis California in a project to be completed next month. It will save 8.4 mn kilowatt hours/yr costing $2.7 mn/yr for the school district, with 38,000 students. Excess power goes to local ute Cupertino Electric. Funding came via a $25 mn bond approved by voters. CSIQ then won the competitive bidding run by an independent energy advisor, Terra Verde Renewable Partners.

*This morning I sold half my Aberdeen Asia Pacific Income Fund, FAX, at $5.90. I sold half my PT Semen Indonesia, PSGTY, at $21.63. These positions were reduced for capital losses.

*I haven't yet picked up Africa Opportunity Fund (AROFF; ticker symbol changed)! A NY Africa hand asked why it is only investing 4% of its assets in South Africa. AROFF is opportunistically seeking underpriced positions. South Africa is the accessible gateway to Africa for most investors and the one where the most money flows. This is not to say there aren't attractive stocks in Jo'burg; we are working on another ADR now.

UPDATE: Please see this updated article for important corrections on AROFF

*Cameco has completed its mine development at troubled Cigar Lake in north Saskatchewan with the start of jet boring into uranium-rich ore. We sold CCJ too soon to take a loss and now have to wait 90 days to repurchase it.