Our old friend and tennis partner Jack Suhl, who retired to the Algarve, was a friend and a bit of an alibi for Guenter Grass, a better known novelist than Jack's wife, Leonore Suhl, an American who also wrote in German. Jack fled Germany in 1937 for the US because he was Jewish by heritage if not belief. He attended George Washington High School in “The 4^th Reich” (Washington Heights, at the northern end of Manhattan) but could not afford college. He was not drafted because of some physical impediment.

After he became a wealthy businessman, Jack financed the education of both of his younger brothers, a professor and an engineer respectively. He then sold his packaging business and moved to Portugal where he got his German nationality restored.

It was only after his friend Jack died in 2007 that Grass revealed that he had been a member of the Waffen SS. Jack's ashes were placed in the crypt of the NYC Episcopalian Cathedral of St. John the Divine where Leonore (a non-Jew who emigrated to the US only after World War II) can lie beside him eventually.

Grass now joins Jack in whatever heaven agnostics go to, where they can discuss their newly divergent past.

The Hang Seng index is up by 10%, as Chinese investors buy through the link between Shanghai and Hong Kong. Shanghai was up about 2.2%. The big play is on Hong Kong.

But Chinese stock punters are buying only a limited number of stocks, usually ones they are already familiar with at home. They are eager to front-run the country's institutional investors by moving into Hong Kong while playing on their hope that China will add new stimulus measures to get the local economy to grow more.

Recent indicators are that Chinese growth is lagging. The latest figures on Chinese bank loans and money supply seem to herald slower growth. Its exports fell 15% last month and its import 12.7%, both harbingers of trouble.

But can the Beijing bureaucrats really get the Chinese aircraft carrier economy to change direction all on their own using monetary spigots? Will they be able to boost the GNP without a renewed bubble building? Will they be able to control the monetary spigot to get money to flow into productive investment rather than sink into regional money pits?

Does quantitative easing work in a command economy? Can a central bank make conservative Chinese spend?

I do not have the answer. I am not even sure that China has the answer.

The impact of Chinese stock buying goes well beyond China. It explains the boosted ruble in an economy many Chinese merchants and traders are familiar with. It helps explain why the Kospi, the South Korean stock index, is rising.

It may even explain some of the rise of our own US dollar despite the greenback being overvalued by most measures (including potential corporate profits.) The reason: big Chinese individual investors (not the little folk heading for Hong Kong) are buying boltholes in the US for their student children and themselves if they get into trouble with the modestly reformist regime over corruption and ill-got wealth.

It is my last NYC filing for the next few weeks so it is fully of lots of things to watch. And news from many places like Hong Kong, India, China, South Korea, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Britain, Canada, Israel, Ireland, Colombia, Spain, Brazil, Norway.

*Inexperienced stock pickers' moves into Hong Kong from China means for example that Tencent and AIA are both rising far more modestly than the index. TCTZF fell over 5% earlier as foreign punters realized it would not get the Chinese to buy. HK:1299 fell 1.4% for the same reason. I plan to get my HK listed share converted to AAGIY ADRs next month.

Deals

*Nokia confirmed that it is in “advanced” talks to acquire the wireless-server infrastructure arm of Alcatel-Lucent, ALU, via a public exchange offer. But there is a third participant in the marriage, La République de France, in the form of Pres. François Hollande lui-même.

ALU itself was cobbled together by combining US Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) with the French national champion. We owned it once but were advised to exit by my son, a French-born CFA.

Based on past history, Paris will aim to protect French jobs by limiting rationalization moves the Finnish firm would plan over product lines, sales, production, R&D, etc. The NOK-ALU talks are no more a done deal than those over Iranian nuclear plants. NOK is down below $8 again, a modest drop for an acquirer although it fell over 8% in European trading.

NOK bought out its former partner Siemens from their jv to boost its presence in cell infrastructure. It now owns NSN outright. It also is contemplating selling is HERE map sub at the right price, to finance acquisitions. The possible gains from a takeover include rationalization of operations to better take on competitors Ericssonand Huawei. For France, a stake in the largest company in telephone exchange equipment may be enough to overcome job protection, but I am not counting on it.

*The latest planned divestiture by Royal Bank of Scotland is of its Luxembourg sub which has about euros 20 bn under management. A potential buyer, according to The Financial Times, might be Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. We own non-cumulative preferreds from the UK bank which is currently 82% controlled by the government. While everyone would like to privatize, this is a long way off. When and if it occurs our prefs will be taken out at $25/sh. In the interval we get up to 8%.

*The speculation is that Cameco will sign a uranium deal with India during PM Narendra Modi's visit next week. India, which has 21 reactors operating now, wants to add another 17 over the next decade. CCJ has never supplied India with nuclear fuel.

*Veolia Environnement won a 3-yr contract to supply supply waste-water and water treatment to South Korea's largest nuclear power plant at Kori which has 8 reactors. The contract amount was not given. Korea is the world's 3^rd largest generator of nuclear power and Kori supplies about a third of the total (7,900 megawatts/hr) from a southeastern site. VEOEY.

Drug News

*Compugen won from the US NIH the right to use in-house human T-cell tumor-antigen recognition biological systems and materials the govt developed to speed up its immune checkpoint research to clinical trials against cancer. The Israel firm says that along with its recent deal with Johns Hopkins University's cancer research center, this will enable it to move simultaneously in researching multiple immune checkpoint biologics. CGEN fell on the news.

*Alkermes added a cancer drug to its pipeline, outside its current brain and central nervous system franchise of drugs for schizophrenia, depression, and multiple sclerosis. ALKS will present a novel selective effector cell activator immuno-oncology drug candidate at the American Assn for Cancer Research next weekend.

*Teva moved further in its deal with Eagle Pharma over benamustine, a rapid infusion product to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia and certain forms of non-Hokgkin lymphoma. The orphan drug's new drug application (NDA) was accepted by the US FDA. The two firms signed an accord in Feb. for Eagle to get the approvals and run the trials, after which Teva will take on marketing and distribution of benamustine Eagle will supply. Teva will present new multiple scleroris data at the Am. Assn of Neurology conference in Washington DC.

*Indivior reported a substantial insider manager purchase of shares on Mar. 30 to the LSE. Insiders sell for many reasons, but they buy for only one: to make money. INVVY.

Heavy Industry

*Joining in the attack on BP plc, Citigroup downgraded it to neutral from buy. It is a takeover candidate but its price has soared after the Shell-BG deal. Conoco-Phillips, a potential BP acquirer, is selling some non-core US oil and gas assets using Wells Fargo as intermediary.

*Ecopetrol got approvals from the cabinet in Colombia to divest its 5.3% stake inInterconexion Electrica sub which boosted its price.

*Dick Davis Dividend Digest tipped Abengoa Yield, ABY, the spun-off MLP of our Abengoa, ABGB. I prefer the parent because it is also finding other private deals for selling assets, to reduce the capital it needs to build classic and renewable energy plants, transmission, and other infrastructure worldwide. When the Spanish firm can get cheaper funding than the ~3% it pays ABY it will not feed assets to ABY.

*Vale is up 4%+ so far. I know not why.

*Delek Group subs reported that Israel Electric Group opted to exercise its options to increase volumes of gas supplied to it by the offshore Tamar gasfield. IEC also extended its contract to the end of 2019 and indicatd it may extend it further up to 2020. This effect of the pro-business Netanyahu PM negotiations undermines the attack on Tamar gas pricing by various bits of the Israeli price control and competition bureaucracies.

Noble Energy which is used to producing in troubled waters offshore Israel, added acreage near the Falklands (Malvinas) Islands with its buy of 75% of the licenses of Argos Resources where it will begin drilling in the autumn.

*Currency factors boosted our Global X MSCI Norway ETF, NORW, tipped by Gen. Joe Shaefer (USAF-Ret.) who deserves a salute from us despite his trying to avoid currency moves with his picks in other parts of Europe and Japan.

Smoked Salmon

*Meanwhile, in Norway's other dominant sector after oil, smoked salmon, got a strongly negative review by Monty Spivak in Seekingalpha.com. He tore into Marine Harvest Group, MHG, mostly based on charts and concern over potential losses of market share in Russia and Ukraine which was only about 5% of MHG sales in 2013 (the last year for which we have data). Our reporter and chief taster on MHG, Harry Geisel, commented that most of Mr. Spivak's analysis is based on “technical trading” and added: “Interestingly, he considers John Fredriksen's participation a 'positive'.”

Most analysts argue that the ex-Norwegian's influence is a negative. Mr. Spivak did point out that Marine has had to restate its financials once and suspended its dividend in the past, both typical of Fredriksen operations. Mr Fredriksen these days is a non-domiciled resident of Britain and a citizen of Cyprus, for tax reasons. He is associated with the oil search industry in his native land rather more than salmon.

Another odd feature of Mr. Spivak's blog is that he seems to be unaware that the there an ADR and talks about the MNHVF shares traded OTC rather than those on the NYSE. And he worries that the dividend is insure.