Cab Thoughts 12/13/14

The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama

A group calling themselves Guardians of Peace hacked 40GB of Sony internal corporate data. The scale is astonishing. The information includes employee criminal background checks, salary negotiations, and doctors’ letters explaining the medical rationale for leaves of absence, spreadsheets containing the salaries of 6,800 global employees, along with Social Security numbers for 3,500 U.S. staff. And there is extensive documentation of the company’s operations, ranging from the script for an unreleased pilot written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. More: a Word document titled “Passwords” that contained an executive’s computer, LotusNotes, and American Express usernames and passwords, as well as Amex credit card numbers, expiration dates, and four-digit security codes. The attack knocked much of Sony's network off line with malware that wipes drives of PCs, making them unable to operate. It is expensive to repair them because each drive needs to be manually replaced or re-imaged. 

NYU professor Nouriel Roubini says there is low growth, and low inflation in much of the world and there is liquidity. That leads to asset inflation, an inflation that has to retreat in a market decline. He predicts 2016.

 

There are about five million wild pigs in 39 states, mostly the southeast, who cause at least $1.5 billion in damages and control costs each year, according to a 2007 survey, mostly to agriculture.  There is a $20-million federal initiative to get their numbers under control. Pigs were first introduced in the 1500’s to what is now the southeastern U.S. by Spanish explorer, Hernando DeSoto. In the early 1900’s, Eurasian or Russian wild boar were introduced into portions of the United States. The American wild pig is the result of the cross breeding.

 

Juggernaut: noun: 1. Anything requiring blind sacrifice. 2. A massive relentless force, person, institution, etc. that crushes everything in its path. Ety: From Hindi jagannath (one of the titles Krishna, a Hindu god, has), from Sanskrit jagannath, from jagat (world) + nath (lord). A procession of Jagannath takes place each year at Puri, India. Devotees pull a huge cart carrying the deity. Some have been accidentally crushed under the wheels (or are said to have thrown themselves under them). Earliest documented use: 1638.

 

Here is a fine, coherent and short analysis of the markets and investments in them from Les Antman: "Nobody can tell you that an equity portfolio, even a globally diversified one, is safe. But the so-called safe havens aren’t safe, either, whether we are talking about the short-term or the long-term. If the businesses that provide the world’s goods and services do not continue to operate and earn reasonable returns over time, governments will not be able to raise any decent amount of revenue by taxation, and will either print increasingly worthless pieces of paper or default. Gold cannot buy non-existent products: it also depends on continued productivity in society. Production is the foundation of any livable future: there is no reward for successfully predicting the end of the world."

 

Who is...Ann Dunham?

 

Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May spoke recently about the risk of asteroids to life on the earth. His group is trying to raise awareness--read money--about the problems but also the solutions he says are already available. He is the former lead guitarist of the rock band Queen.Yes, he is.

 

American businesses and families pay $1.9 trillion annually to comply with federal regulations. $353 billion of these costs from EPA alone. EPA wants to decrease allowable ozone levels to 70 or even 60 ppb, which many researchers say is below natural ozone levels. Natural ozone levels! Even Jackson Hole and Teton County, Wyoming could be out of compliance, mostly due to emissions from pine trees. The EPA uses advisory groups in its decision-making. One is the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee; fifteen CASAC members have received more than $180 million in federal money since 2000.

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/12/lame-duck.html

 

Another amazing fortuitous--and really unlikely--find. A comic opera written by Raymond Chandler and never published has been uncovered at the Library of Congress, according to The Guardian. The paper notes that the 48-page libretto to The Princess and the Pedlar marks a departure from the detective fiction for which Chandler is best known. Registered for copyright in 1917 when he was still a teenager, the opera predates Chandler's first novel by two decades and bears traces of Gilbert and Sullivan, quite unlike his later work.

 

Watson's 1962 Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA has sold at auction in New York for $4.7 million, a world auction record for any Nobel prize. He was the seller.

 

One of the problems with free markets and competition is some people lose. (This--people losing--I think, is one of the great problems for liberal thinkers.) From 1870 to 1897 wheat prices fell from $1.06 to 63¢ a bushel, corn from 43¢ to 30¢ a bushel, and cotton from 15¢ to 6¢ a pound. Most of the time farmers received even less for their crops. The primary cause of their problem was overproduction resulting from increases in the acreage of farms and increased yields per acre due to improved farming methods, as well as the advent of railroads that made it easy to get produce to Eastern markets. So people were punished for doing something bell and better.
More, global competition from Argentina, Russia, and Canada enhanced by oceangoing steamboats made international transportation cheaper and ended an era of American agricultural export advantages.
This period of time saw one-third of farmers move to the cities for other work as they lost their employment on small family farms.

The same thing is happening with the U.S. petroleum producers now.

In what must be one of the most astonishing athletic comebacks in history, Lindsey Vonn won a World Cup race, her first in two years. It rivals Evelyn Ashford's gold medal after her two pregnancies.

 

William Caxton was England's first printer. He had an astonishing influence on English and English writing. Many of the 100 books and pamphlets he produced were his own translations, and many contained his own prefaces and epilogues, providing anything from personal details to literary criticism. Caxton also took responsibility for not only publishing what he thought was the best and most edifying British writing of the day (first editions of The Canterbury Tales and John Gower's Confessio Amantis), but for helping to clean up and stabilize the language.

What passes for discussion in Greek labor problems: The President of Attica Taxi Association (SATA) said that taxi drivers cooperating with Uber “should be hanged at Syntagma Square” for being traitors – “Judas” as he called them.

Some groups are always allowed hyperbole. Some are not.

 

George Orwell was a strange mix. He was a devout Socialist but wrote with ferocity against totalitarianism. He fought against the Fascists in Spain and was shot in the throat. Returning to England he was unable to fight in Europe but was an activist at home, encouraging home and domestic readiness should England be invaded. "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage," he wrote, "is the symbol of democracy."

 

AAAAaaaaaaannnnndddddd..... a picture of Dr. Brian May, CBE, PhD FRAS: