Cab Thoughts 3/10/12

Insurance companies have always assumed a basic return of around seven percent on debt investments to cover their policy obligations. Now, with rates under 1%, what are they going to do? Those promises have been made and must be funded. How? By reaching for yield.

Blind dreamer: The old story of the baby kept isolated from all sound so that the ruler would know that the first word he spoke would be the first language of the world and hence he would know who the first people were. It was interesting about what the blind dream. No imprinted images. But, then again, how would he know?

Warren Buffet has never liked gold as an investment. He gives lots of reasons but there is an interesting translation of his antipathy in the background of his mentor, Benjamin Graham, the great investor. Graham, probably the father of American investing analysis, was very dismissive about gold, its value and investment qualities. Why? When Graham was investing it was illegal to own gold.

So contraception is a basic constitutional right. And people, particularly women, feel alarmed and persecuted by those who offer a constitutional argument against them. At the risk of quoting myself, who threatens a woman more, a guy who just doesn't think the government should deal in these matters or this guy, a beatified Progressive? http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/02/holmes-but-not-sherlock-1.html

One wonders about the recent "bounty" question in football and whether it might be introduced as a factor to muddy the concussion waters.

"Hume is among the 10 greatest intellects of mankind. His treatise on human nature, of course, is what he's remembered for the most; Adam Smith said that Hume was the greatest intellect that he ever met, and Smith knew all the great figures of the Enlightenment. At any rate, the point Hume makes in "A Public Credit" is that when a government has mortgaged all of its future revenues, the state lapses into tranquility, languor, and impotence. And he discussed various historical situations. Hume died in 1776, not long after reading Smith's "Wealth of Nations", which was also published in 1776. What we are seeing today is that Hume was correct —and some of the intervening smaller thinkers were not."---Dr. Lacy Hunt on the defects of debt stimulus.

It is generally believed that North America was colonized around 13,000 by tribes crossing the Bering Strait at a time when weather conditions allowed a frozen bridge between Asia and North America. Early toolmaking from this period of the earliest human invaders and human ancestors on the continent has characteristic qualities assigned the name "Clovis" (after finds in Clovis, New Mexico). Researchers have analyzed American spearheads of the period, called Clovis points, and found some inconsistencies. Clovis points match up much closer with Solutrean-style tools - but Solutrean toolmakers lived in France and Spain. This leads to some theories that are closer to sci-fi than academic with strange migrations and improbable boats. This is as close to an academic "make work program" as you can get.

The growing notion of sharing costs with others is just wonderful. The second highest income earner who buys a car: Volt. The average starting salary of a Georgetown Law graduate: $165,000. So we working stiffs buy their cars, pay for their family planning, underwrite their start-ups.
What's next, their cultural events? Oh, wait...