Saturday, August 2, 2014

Cab Thoughts 8/2/14

"The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness...
~Alexis de Tocqueville




Income taxation in the U.S. started under Wilson in 1913. The top rate was 7%. By the time Wilson left office in 1921, the top rate was 73.4%. Roosevelt raised it. Married people with no dependents who annually earned $500,000, for example, would have to pay a 98.7 percent tax rate in both 1944 and 1945. Those who earned $1 million each year of the war would owe a $1,006,750 in both 1944 and 1945. On the Senate floor on May 14, 1943, Senator Happy Chandler (D-KY) said, "All of us owe the government; we owe it for everything we have--and that is the basis of obligation--and the government can take everything we have if the government needs it."

A CNN poll shows Romney topping Obama in a re-election rematch by a whopping nine-point margin, 53 percent to 44 percent. That's an even larger spread than CNN found in November, when a survey had Romney winning a redo 49 percent to 45 percent. Two years ago, Obama won re-election with about 51 percent of the vote.

It takes 1.4 gallons of ethanol to produce the same energy as a gallon of gasoline.

Ray Donovan star Steven Bauer, 57, is dating 18-year-old Lyda Loudon, a source confirms to Us Weekly. According to her Twitter, Loudon is an "art-time nightmare-inspirer, journalist, host of Sarcasm Overdose, ceo, full-time wildchild, [and an] unsalvageable degenerate film/music/cigar/espresso addict." According to TeaPartyConference.org, Loudon founded "Tea Party Youth, the only youth-founded, youth-owned and youth-controlled movement exclusively dedicated to the Tea Party's future."




The search for yield entails taking  increasing risk as you go higher in return. This risk is a bit more quantifiable with bonds. In the period from 1970-2011, only 0.8% of municipal bonds rated investment grade defaulted (i.e., failed to make interest or principal payments) within ten years after issuance. In contrast, 7.94% of below-investment grade muni bonds defaulted during this time. This indicates that default risk, while not particularly high on an absolute basis, is much higher for below-investment grade munis - a potential issue when a weaker economy pressures the finances of state and local governments. In late 2008, most high yield municipal bonds lost about 20-25% in the three-month period from September through November. In contrast, investment grade funds shed approximately 10-13%. This was a unique time period, but it serves to illustrate that high yield bonds are at risk for a greater loss than investment grade bonds when the market turns south.

Who was...Gaetan Dugas, "patient zero?"

Patrick Sawyer arrived at Lagos' airport on July 20 and was isolated at a local hospital after exhibiting common Ebola symptoms. He told officials he had no direct contact with anyone who had the virus. (Sawyer is an American citizen who was in Africa caring for his dying sister who sounds as if she had Ebola. He was on an international flight, on his way home to the U.S..) Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days. His wife said--his wife--"Patrick was coming here. What if he still wasn't displaying symptoms yet and came? He could have brought Ebola here." The effort to evaluate people who might have come in contact with Sawyer has been limited because the airline has not provided the passenger lists for all three of the flights Sawyer took. This was an international flight. Probably privacy concerns.

A sequel to "Mad Max" is due out starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron.

Hedonics reduces the composit value of a thing to its constituent parts. The government uses this technique to calculate inflation. So a smart phone improves in what it offers and the government economist looks at that and says the price of the phone, while higher, is bdoing more; therefore the cost of the phone is actually declining. The NYT analyzed the cost of televisions and found, through hedonics, that the price of televisions has dropped 110%.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/09/marcellus-2.html

It has been revealed that the Russians successfully sneaked an "attack code" into the NASDAQ computer system. An attack code is not an espionage code, it is a military code designed to damage. Such codes are rare. Stutnex attacked the Iranian nuclear system and Iran destroyed two thirds of Saudi Aramco's computer network. 5 months of investigation by FBI and NSA offices could not determine exactly what the plan was. Bloomberg Businessweek has been pursuing the story, which has had little coverage, but has not been successful in getting many on the record. Now, back to the Kardashians....

Continuing the obsession with Piketty: Washington University professor Mark Rank shows that “12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.”

The Brookings Institution scholar Ron Haskins was pivotal for President Clinton’s welfare reform when his studies showed that in that era 75 percent of all new welfare cases started after new single motherhood. Only 12 percent of new cases started because of a decrease in earnings.

AAAAAAAaaaannnnnnnddddd.........a picture of the monastery of Wadi Qelt:
monastery-wadi-qelt-10





No comments: