Cab Thoughts 3/23/16

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -Napoleon Bonaparte

There is some unhappiness among Hollywood people that black people are poorly represented in the Oscars. It is strange that affirmative action on race, which has become routine everywhere, seems to be off limits when it comes to the arts. Why should taste and quality in arts be immune? Charlotte Rampling has said affirmative action is reverse racism; of course it is. That is its purpose. It is excused by its motives. Clearly there is good racism and bad racism and all we need is a pure government to tell us which is which, and which liberties must be limited in the good's pursuit.

One of the great mysteries of the Iraq invasion was that they did not find WMDs. One would have thought that, if they did not find them, the U.S., the CIA--or somebody--would have planted them. That is what those guys are for. That they did not do it implies something. I don't know what. Maybe honesty. Really quite amazing.

"Slovenly" means negligent of neatness especially in dress and person; habitually dirty and unkempt "filled the door with her frowzy bulk","frowzy white hair","slovenly appearance." Is this word offensive to Slovenia and should it be banned?

Who is.....Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo?

One of the elements of the gradual metamorphosis of equality into sameness was on display in "The Martian." Not only were the action heroes women, they swore like sailors. It is a real sorrow that in our confusing equality with sameness, distinctions have become undesirable.

 
Belief in the global warming crisis, if true, gives its believers a great advantage of the potential of untold riches. If the temperature is rising, the South will become both unproductive farmland and undesirable living areas. They will probably buy land in the upper Midwest and inland Canada. Indeed, we could create a index of prices of the land in these areas that would reflect the sincerity of those with the warming insight. (This might actually be a good idea.)

Bush was the American leader and invaded Iraq as our representative. Hating him individually and not holding those who elected him--and those in the Congress who supported him--responsible as well misunderstands the nature of the state. We are not safely and distantly on the outside looking in. We must never be. We are responsible. Something is wrong, and dangerious, when the electorate begins to think itself "above it all."

On May 24, 1993, Sinaloa's rival cartel, Tijuana, recruited some trustworthy killers to strike at the heart of the Sinaloa cartel. Two important travelers were expected at the Guadalajara airport that day: El Chapo Guzmán and Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, who, as archbishop of the city, had railed constantly against the drug lords' power. The killers knew that El Chapo was traveling in a white Mercury Grand Marquis, a must for drug barons. The cardinal was in a white Mercury Grand Marquis as well. (Hmmmmm...) The Tijuana hit men started shooting at what they believed to be Guzman's car, and others -- El Chapo's bodyguards, maybe -- returned fire. The airport parking lot suddenly became a battlefield. The shoot-out left seven men dead, among them Cardinal Posadas Ocampo, while El Chapo managed to escape, unscathed. For years people wondered if the killers really wanted to eliminate the inconvenient cardinal, or if chance had merely played a bad joke on Posadas Ocampo that morning. It was only recently that the FBI declared the killing a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Turkey and Erdogan have for two years aided and abetted ISIS despite being part of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition. The reason is simple: Erdogan is terrified that the 15 million Kurds on Turkish soil will secede and join Kurdish-dominated regions in Iraq and Syria to finally forge the Kurdish state they've been longing for since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The bombing of Sultanahmet — the sacred territory that houses Istanbul's most iconic religious and historic monuments, such as the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace--may change that.
Erdogan has allowed the free flow of ISIS terrorists and weapons across Turkey's southern border — which ISIS used last summer to infiltrate Kobani, a Kurdish-controlled border town, and massacre 150 civilians. Most Turks loathe Erdogan's enabling of ISIS but were resigned to giving ISIS its pound of flesh, so long as it followed the example of Kurdish guerillas and left its major city centers alone — including the Kurdish car bombing Thursday of a police station in Diyarbakir province. But this cozy arrangement began to backfire because it pushed America, which has allied with the Kurds since the first Gulf War, even more into Kurdish arms. America has funneled arms and intelligence to Syrian Kurds who have mounted the only successful ground offensive against ISIS. To undermine this U.S.-Kurdish alliance and marginalize the growing Kurdish influence in the region, Erdogan was finally spooked last July into rounding up and imprisoning hundred of ISIS fighters ensconced in southern Turkey. Even more significantly, he allowed America to use Turkey's Incirlik air base to mount anti-ISIS air strikes. The Sultanahmet bombing is ISIS's blowback for this "treachery." But the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi Palace are sacred and attacking them may push Turkey further away from ISIS.
So it goes with politics and politicians, taking here and giving there. Until you can't.
Stay tuned.

A German town has banned Muslim immigrants from the town pool.  This was posted: "There have been complaints of sexual harassment and chatting-up going on in this swimming pool ... by groups of young men, and this has prompted some women to leave (the premises). This led to my decision that adult males from our asylum shelters may not enter the swimming pool until further notice." Islamic "chatting-up?"


Janet Yellin in 2010, August:

I, too, hope that the long disinflationary trend of the past two years will end, and I think a further disinflation seems unlikely. However, the evidence suggests that prices and wages react with a considerable lag to shifts in output and employment, and Japan provides a useful cautionary example. Japan’s deflation didn’t begin until the mid-1990s, a half-decade after the collapse of Japanese real estate and equity prices. Furthermore, during the early years of deflation, Japanese long-run inflation expectations remained well anchored, averaging about 1½ percent as measured by consensus forecasts. So, unfortunately, a Japan-style deflation remains a relevant worst-case scenario for us going forward.

Interestingly, Japan also tried to "escape" its deflation by hiking rates in August of 2000. The "success" of the rate hike lasted all of 7 months before Japan had to cut to zero. 

Amber is not a mineral, but the hardened resin of certain trees fossilized over long periods of time. According to the Swedish Museum of Amber, over 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus discovered that when amber was rubbed against cloth, it produced sparks and attracted feathers, husks, and small wooden splinters. This force was given the name "electricity after the Greek word elektron, which means “amber.”

 

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2009/08/enemy-of-good.html

“U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on ‘anti-poverty' programs since President Lyndon Johnson announced a ‘War on Poverty'” in 1964, writes the Heritage Foundation. And yet the poverty rate has not changed all that much, from 19 percent in 1965 to 14.8 percent in 2014.

 

Daniel Defoe wrote Moll Flanders in 1722. The full title was: "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c who was born at Newgate, and during a Life of continued Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five time a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent."

Defoe died while in hiding from creditors.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

"At root, the classical view of American constitutionalism examined all legal interventions under a presumption of error. The structural protections of the separation of powers, check and balances, federalism, and the individual rights guarantees built into the basic constitutional structure were all part of combined efforts to slow down the political process that, left to its own devices, could easily overheat." This is from  Richard Epstein’s The Classical Liberal Constitution in which he argues that modern Progressivism has discarded this "presumption of error,"  a presumption that individuals exercising the power of the state, even when democratically elected, always exercise such power with limited knowledge and under the strong temptation to enhance their own private welfare at the expense of the public. This obvious concern has somehow become a complex concept now. 

In 1967 a launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killed astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chafee. An investigation indicated that a faulty electrical wire inside the Apollo 1 command module was the probable cause of the fire. The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch scheduled for the next month. Imagine a fire killing these men before the program even launched. And imagine that on July 20, 1969,--two years later--astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. walked on the moon. One of mankind's greatest achievements. Can you think of one better?

"The engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit." This is a distinctive notion of John Maynard Keynes where savings is seen to remove money from consumption and thus from the economy. The other side of the argument is that savings are necessary for investment that will fuel business and job creation--two very distinct views.
 

“You’re seeing the beginning of Chelsea Clinton preparing to run,” says a donor who attended Chelsea’s rally at Dr. Paul Boskind’s Midtown home last week, where “limited availability guest” entry started at $250 and $2,700 “champion” tickets included a photo with Chelsea. Our insider says: “A dynasty is on the way.” The former first daughter, 35, has not been shy about her political ambitions, though where she’d begin her career in politics is anyone’s guess. Last March, Chelsea reportedly told Sky News that she’d “absolutely" consider seeking office. This makes sense as leadership is probably genetic, as the Capets and the Plantagenets knew. 

 

Unco: a bit old with an interesting background. adjective: Unusual; remarkable; strange. adverb: Remarkably; extremely. noun: 1. A stranger. 2. News. Ety: A variant of uncouth, from uncuth, from un- (not) + cuth (known), from cunnan (to know). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know), which also gave us know, recognize, acquaint, ignore, diagnosis, notice, normal, gnostic and agnostic Earliest documented use: 1410. Usage:

“‘You’re unco late, dear,’ she would say wearily.”
George Douglas Brown; The House with the Green Shutters; McClure, Phillips & Co.; 1902.

 

Less Antman is a financial advisor from California with a wise website. He describes himself a Taoist, meaning he goes with the flow and treats life as an adventure to be experienced rather than a problem to be solved. This is part of a recent commentary:
I despise market commentary, both for the presumption that anyone really knows the reason for short-term movements and because it distracts people from the fact that investing in equities is a matter of long-term ownership in the businesses that provide the world’s goods and services. Fluctuations in human emotions explain more of the short-term movement in stock prices than do changes in the fundamental value of the businesses.
Nonetheless, the market panic that opened 2016 deserves mention here, not because I predicted it (I certainly did not) nor because I know when it will end (I certainly do not). Now is a great time to remind people why equities, over the long haul, have trounced bonds and bank accounts as investments: few people would put up with the volatility of equities if they didn’t expect a better return. Or as Nick Murray so beautifully puts it: “The ride is the reason for the return.”
My favorite definition of a bear market is “that period of time during which stocks are returned to their rightful owners.”
Stockholders are owners of businesses, and owners get paid last, after employees, contractors, suppliers, and creditors. So changes in available revenue affect owners first, and that is the source of a great deal of uncertainty and occasional outright panic. Point granted: stocks are much more volatile than bonds and cash, and employees have a much more predictable flow of wages than their bosses do of dividends and capital gains.
Yet since owners are paid last, in the long run they can be expected to be paid most — not always and certainly not in all companies, but for someone who owns a globally diversified portfolio of the world’s productive businesses, it’s a pretty good guess. My purpose in life is to tell my clients this as often as necessary.
So might I suggest that you remind yourself, during scary times like these, why you’re invested in stocks? You’re providing the service of accepting the short-term uncertainty that others want to avoid.
 

Nate Silver has a blog called "538," so named after the concept that there are significant and specific "endorsers" in American politics that signals direction. This was initiated by the book “The Party Decides.” His summary: You ought to pay attention to what influential people who care about a party nomination are doing, since they can have a lot of say in the outcome. Indeed, that’s probably a better representation of “The Party Decides” than the idea that a monolithic establishment always wins.

Here is part of his column on Trump and the book's implications:

"...many Republican elites have no professional incentive to oppose Trump even if they personally dislike his politics or think he’d be a poor nominee. That’s fair enough. But the whole point of forming a party is to work together to facilitate the party’s interests. In that sense, the GOP would qualify as a weak, fraying party if it can’t avoid nominating Trump, a candidate who might at once reject large parts of the party’s traditional platform and potentially cost it a highly winnable general election.

That’s not to say the Republican Party would disappear after a Trump nomination — there would almost certainly still be something named the Republican Party — but it could conceivably be transformed into something more in Trump’s image, perhaps more in the direction of a European populist party. Trump’s nomination could even trigger a political realignment. Such things are rare, occurring perhaps once every several decades, but nominees like Trump are awfully rare, too.

Or maybe not. “The Party Decides” isn’t wrong, not quite yet. While most of the book’s focus is on the “invisible primary” phase of the campaign, it also presents statistical evidence that party elites continue to exert influence on the outcome well after Iowa and New Hampshire have voted.¹⁴ Furthermore, on the previous three occasions when party elites failed to reach a consensus before Iowa (these were the 1988 and 2004 Democratic nominations and the 2008 Republican race), the parties nevertheless wound up nominating fairly conventional candidates (Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and McCain). If Marco Rubio winds up the Republican nominee after all, the theory will come out looking pretty good. And if it’s Jeb Bush, somehow, the party’s powers will seem miraculous."

AAAAAaaaaannnnnnnddddddd........ancient Greek laptops: