"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." -Frederic Bastiat, 1848
According to the FBI, America averaged 20,919 murders per year in the 1990s, and 16,211 per year in the 2000s; reported rape per 100,000 Americans dropped from 42.3 in 1991 to 27.5 in 2010. Robbery has dropped from 272 per 100,000 in 1991 to 119 in 2010. There were nearly 4 million fewer property crimes in 2010 than there were in 1991. The U.S. population grew by 60 million during that period. But I will bet the average age rose as well.
Liu Xia, poet and wife of Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, has been hospitalized for heart problems in Beijing. Although she has not been charged with a crime, she has lived under house arrest since 2010. Just a little thing in China.
David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital is suing the web site Seeking Alpha over information posted by one of its bloggers revealing a position Greenlight had Micron, a position they say could have been known only by an insider. This might be a very interesting freedom of the press question. Einhorn is famously tough and sticks to his guns.
Canadian ice dance silver medalists Tessa Virtue raises a difficult problem: Her last name might cause concern in the post-modern world. Many might find "virtue" judgmental. This might be worse than the Washington Redskins. Perhaps she should change it.
Who are...Layla and Majnun?
Dan Henninger has an interesting observation about modern politics: The demand for brand maintenance. Modern citizens are relentless for product reliability and will analyze and change with little loyalty. Blackberry, Sony, Lululemon have all experienced success with shocking reversals. The Democrats had several defeats recently in California within their own party with incumbents overturned because of their identification with unions, a former strong point. As government products are always hard to deliver well, identification with government products might create problems for the Democrats. He feels "out in the world beyond what Washington manufactures and spins, no one would get away with putting out a product as flawed as ObamaCare." A bit disturbing seeing the voter/citizen as consumer.
China and Japan sold a lot of American debt the last three months. The buyer was, surprisingly, Europe.
The Energy Department says wind and solar will supply only one-tenth of the nation's energy needs by 2040 - up only slightly from today's 7%. Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station that covers a vast area of desert requires more than 5 square miles of mirrors to produce enough electricity to light 140,000 homes. It would take roughly 3,600 Ivanpahs to supply all the country's electricity needs. These solar plants generate a lot of heat and kill a lot of birds. Interestingly wind power farms have received a waver for killing protected eagles.
The Ivanpah solar thermal system in California's Mojave Desert:
Acedia: n: sloth. Late Latin, from Greek akēdeia, from a- + kēdos care, grief. One of the seven deadly sins in Christian theology. The others are pride, wrath, greed, lust, envy, and gluttony.
Tom Steyer, a hedge fund executive, plans to spend $100 million to help make climate change an issue in this year's elections.
He might be willing to lay out even more, and he's looking to spend it in states that are also important for 2016. This has become nuts. One guy? $100 million?
Novelist James Patterson, whose mysteries, thrillers, children's books and romances have sold hundreds of millions of copies, is donating $1 million of his personal fortune to independent bookstores across the country.
Golden Oldie:
So experts are not always experts to everyone. The Rube-publicans believe the CBO economic experts but not the global warming experts. The Democrats believe the global warming experts but not the CBO economic experts. Or maybe they have their own, special experts. Or maybe this stuff is so soft the numbers can be read any way.
AAAAAAaaaannnnnnnnddddd.......a graph of the movement of the large cap index fund from an article suggesting boom and bust is becoming a routine part of the economy:
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