Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Cab Thoughts 11/19/14

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.--deTocqueville





A new cybercrime gang is hacking high-profile hotel guests through the hotel WiFi service.
 
There is a rumor that the politicians think the Democrat Mary Landrieu  runoff election in Louisiana could hinge on her displaying support for the Keystone pipeline. This might create the delicious moment where she proposes a vote on it, the Democrats favor it and the Rubes block it.
 
Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer reportedly turned down a six-year, $144 million offer from the Detroit Tigers in spring training last year.
 
Who is....Afton Elaine Burton?
 
On investment advisors: "In total, the industry generates approximately $600 billion in active fees every year." Six hundred billion dollars in fees to investment managers to help "beat the market." The concept of "beating the market" is referred to as generating "alpha," and it is the entire reason that we give $600 billion to these people in the first place. And how do they do? Well, in 2006, "the percentage of funds delivering 'true' alpha [meaning from skill, not luck] had shrunk to only 0.6 percent." "Researchers followed the returns of 715 US stock mutual funds, which had posted top quartile performance as of March 2010. Only two of the funds persisted in remaining in the top 25 percent throughout the subsequent four-year period (March 2010 to March 2014)." (From a State Street study)
 
Kentucky’s borders are within 600 miles of more than 65% of the nation’s population. That is curious so it must mean something.
 
George Orwell responded to Hayek's writings on economies with both praise and criticism, stating, "in the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of." Yet he also warned, "[A] return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the state."
This, I think,  contains the basic conflict between Progressivism and the Hayek-conservative, deTocqueville position. But it is more than a philosophical difference, it is practical. Hayak showed that manipulation of the economy, fueled too much by debt and not enough by productive income, sacrificed long term decisions for short term ones--the exact error we criticize quarter-bottom-line-obsessed companies for. 
 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest group of people not in the labor force are those who don’t want a job, a remarkable statement on the nation’s work ethic. The federal job counter said that 85.9 million adults last month didn’t want a job, or 93 percent of all adults not in the labor force.
 
The average word length in English: 8.2 characters, in German: 11.7 characters.
 
When you "delete" a file, it gets moved to the trash or recycle bin in your operating system. However, emptying the trash or recycle bin doesn't remove that data. The only thing removed when you empty the trash or recycle bin is the master file table reference, which merely tells the operating system where the file was located. Essentially, you're only removing the map to the data—not the data itself—while also giving the operating system permission to overwrite that area of the hard drive. This is why some data is recoverable with special software or the right set of skills.
 
Bank employees are fleeing Moscow as business comes to a halt due to Western sanctions.
 
A double-bylined piece by the Associated Press and Kieran Corcoran  suggests that the Saudis were at the very least financially complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Specifically, they cite new court documents in which Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," claims that an unnamed Saudi Arabian prince paid for the 9/11 attacks by paying for the flying lessons that he and the other 19 terrorists took.
 
Golden oldie:
 
The economy has been growing at roughly 2% since the end of the Great Recession, a very mediocre recovery. At least a third of that growth has come directly from the oil fracking boom, which is all about technology and nothing about government policy. Further, much of the ancillary growth in the economy has come from the availability of low-cost energy to manufacturing, encouraging large manufacturers to come back from all over the world to locate near what will be a long-term supply of plentiful, cheap natural gas.
 
On the Hope and Change front: There is a thesis that President Obama, in the waning years of his presidency, may turn to something, anything, to create a personality, a signature quality, to his presidency. Some think that area could be the dreaded environment question. He did not take advantage when Democrats had a filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2009 and the first weeks of 2010, and the House had already approved a “cap-and-trade” plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And the BP oil spill offered Obama a perfect chance to speak to the country about the dangers of fossil fuels, but he didn’t use his presidency’s first Oval Office speech in June 2010 to make the case for that specific piece of legislation.
Sometime an idealistic vision arrives later--even, perhaps, cynically.

AAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd........a chart:



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