Cab Thoughts 10/26/13

"Faith in central banks today is equivalent to faith in the word dot-com in 1999 or faith in the eternal rise of housing prices in 2006."--Mauldin

While children tend to be a slight hindrance in the economy, when they mature and become young adults they usually become producers and contribute to growth estimated as about 1% of GDP expansion. When they become old, their contribution declines. So economic growth seems to be connected to a society's demographics. A low birth rate, combined with a low number of young adults with an expanding retiree population should reverse the expansive-driving demographics of the post-war West. (There is a big curve here. There must be production to meet consumption so an expanding productive base, regardless of the demographics, should compensate to some degree.)

The town of Benidorm in Alicante, Spain, had almost completed its 47-story skyscraper when it realized it excluded plans for elevator shafts.

Here are the ages of some of the nation's early founders as of July 4, 1776: Marquis de Lafayette, 18; James Monroe, 18; Gilbert Stuart, 20; Aaron Burr, 20; Alexander Hamilton, 21; James Madison, 25; Thomas Jefferson, 33; John Adams, 40; Paul Revere, 41; George Washington, 44; Samuel Adams, 53; Benjamin Franklin, 70. In the 1750s, the average person would live to only 36.9 years of age. The youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence was Edward Rutledge, 26, of South Carolina.

There is an interesting, if unproven and cynical, explanation of The American-Saudi rift: Natural Gas. The theory goes that Obama was tolerable despite his lack of help to the Saudis as long as he kept the growth of natural gas in check. But any growth during Obama's administration seems to depend on the growth of fracking and that his administration seemed to soften on it sent the Saudis over the cliff.

The war that Genghis Khan waged against the world was astonishing. He killed everyone who resisted. 1,600,000 people at Harat in 1220. At Nishapur, according to contemporaries, 1,747,000 died. China's population declined by more than 30 percent during the years of the Mongol conquest. The armies were organized by tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, each segment with its officers, who were chosen not according to favor or birth but proven ability. The Mongol soldier carried a double recurve bow of laminated horn, with a pull of 160 pounds, which fired arrows accurately up to a distance of 300 yards. He wore no armor, only leather. Khwarezm and Persia were crisscrossed with an elaborate underground irrigation system that since antiquity had sustained a thriving culture; the Mongols destroyed them. They killed the caliph of Baghdad, Islam's ruler, and the caliphate has never been restored. Arabic scholars contend that the region's economy has yet to recover fully from this devastation.

The price of oil in Indian rupees has gone from 1100 to 7800 in the last 10 years. Imagine what a change like that would do to the U.S.. And these politicians still act as if our costs are insignificant to a broader, visionary picture.

Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary biology, was also the father ten children with his cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

"Each excess was felt to be 'solved' by measures that in fact fueled following excesses; each crash was fought by an accommodating monetary policy, sowing the seeds for new bubbles and future crashes." French geophysicist and complex systems analyst Didier Sornette wrote this about economic bubbles as he expanded his thesis on "crisis" from the physical world (like earthquakes and avalanches) to economics. His basic thesis is that any sudden crisis is the result of longstanding structural instability and the precipitating factor, so easily seen and rectified, is not a cause anymore than the camel's back's last straw is.

According to the IMF, the Danish government's net debt is 10.3% of GDP, Australia's is 12.7%, New Zealand's 28.8%, the Netherlands' 35.5%, Canada's 35.9%, Germany's 56.2%, France's 86.5% — and the United States' 89%.

Electrical energy storage devices are rated by both the rate at which the storage device can deliver the energy, and the amount of energy it can deliver, at that rate. The rate is measured in Watts and its multiples, kilo (1000) Watts, mega (1,000,000) Watts, etc. The amount of energy a device can deliver is rated in Watt-hours (Watts multiplied by the number of hours), and its multiples.

SolarCity has never recorded a profit, but powered by subsidies, its stock price is $57 a share.

The idea of "government investment" is hardly new. In the 1830s, American States, seeing the spectacular success of the Erie Canal, thought all government "investments" would pay for themselves and started to borrow money like crazy. Towards the end of the 1830s most were either defaulting on their interest or frankly ignoring their debts. This little song popped up in the English press:

Yankee Doodle borrows cash,
Yankee Doodle spends it,
And then he snaps his fingers at
The jolly flat who lends it.
Ask him when he means to pay,
He shews no hesitation,
But says he'll take the shortest way,
And that's repudiation!

(Literary Gazette, London, January 1845)

There is a book review of "Fire and Ice" (Game of Thrones) in The New York Review of Books, no less, that I carefully avoided for fear of spoilers but which calls the books a "remarkable feminist epic."

Resign: (looks like "re-sign" but is the opposite--although both come from "signing") v: late 14c., "give up, surrender, abandon, submit; relinquish," from Old French resigner "renounce, relinquish" (13c.), from Latin resignare "to check off, annul, cancel, give back, give up," from re- "opposite" (see re-) + signare "to make an entry in an account book," literally "to mark" (see sign (v.)).
The sense is of making an entry (signum) "opposite" -- on the credit side -- balancing the former mark and thus canceling the claim it represents. The specific meaning of "give up a position" is first recorded late 14c. Sense of "to give (oneself) up to some emotion or situation" is from 1718. Related: Resigned; resigning. (online etymology)

American authors are making the tough decision to allow their books to be censored for sale in China, The New York Times recently reported.


Kathy Boudin, former Weather Underground member and convicted murderer, is on the Columbia University School of Social Work's faculty. Rehabilitation must work.

AAAAAnnnnnnddddddd.......a map:

All significant conquests and movements of Genghis Khan and his generals during his lifetime. His lifetime!