Saturday, June 28, 2025

SatStats

On this day:
1776
American Revolutionary War: Thomas Hickey, Continental Army private and bodyguard to General George Washington, is hanged for mutiny and sedition.
1807
Second British invasion of the Río de la Plata; John Whitelock lands at Ensenada on an attempt to recapture Buenos Aires and is defeated by the locals.
1896
An explosion in the Newton Coal Company’s Twin Shaft Mine in Pittston City, Pennsylvania results in a massive cave-in that kills 58 miners.
1914
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the casus belli of World War I.
1919
The Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, formally ending World War I between Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, the United States and allies on the one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other side.
1969
Stonewall Riots begin in New York City marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.
1987
For the first time in the military history, a civilian target was attacked by chemical weapons when Iraqi warplanes dropped mustard gas bombs on the Iranian town of Sardasht in rwo separate bombing rounds, on four residential areas.

1989
The 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević delivers the Gazimestan speech at the site of the historic battle, which is later interpreted as foreshadowing the Yugoslav Wars. 600 years.
1994
Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult release sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan; 7 people are killed, 660 injured.
2005
War in Afghanistan: Three U.S. Navy SEALs, 16 American Special Operations Forces soldiers, and an unknown number of Taliban insurgents are killed

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An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. -Orlando Aloysius Battista, chemist and author (20 Jun 1917-1995)


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Someone tossed a grenade at the Norwegian ambassador’s residence near Tel Aviv. There’ve been no injuries, but it’s stirred alarm within a foreign ministry long focused on Israel-Palestinian issues (eg, the Oslo Accords).

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The UK’s new foreign intelligence agency (MI6) spymaster will be Blaise Metreweli.

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Over the past 60 years the share of disposable personal income that Americans spend on food at home has steadily fallen. Just under 12 percent in 1964, this share today is around five percent. In the 1950s the typical supermarket in the U.S. offered 6,000 items; today it offers 50,000. Still, Mamdani's going after this business--with a profit margin of 
1.6%
"People talk about capitalism and socialism and communism. There’s only two kinds of economic systems: the market-driven and the government-directed. That’s it! The more you move toward a state-directed economy, the less efficient and more corrupt it becomes."--Smith

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SatStats

Only 10% of crimes in Mexico are reported, and of those, only 16% are resolved.

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Social Security’s shortfall now equals 3.82% of taxable payroll or roughly 22% of scheduled benefit obligations. Avoiding insolvency eight years from now would require an immediate 27% benefit cut, according to former Social Security and Medicare trustee Charles Blahous.

Alternatively, legislators could raise the payroll tax from 12.4% to 16.05%. That’s a 29.4% increase. Or they could restructure Social Security so that only people who need the money would receive payments

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The share of U.S. households earning more than $100,000 (adjusted for inflation) tripled over the past five decades, and the share earning less than $35,000 fell by 25 percent.



Last year, Norway’s $1.5tn sovereign wealth fund revealed that it had lost NKr980mn, roughly $92mn, on an error relating to how it calculated its mandated benchmark.

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Americans spent $186 billion pets last year, more than was spent on childcare.

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1 million people now owe more than $200,000 in federal student loans.

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Roughly 50% college graduates have jobs that don’t use their degrees.

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Allen Iverson, who went broke despite earning nearly $200 million in salary and endorsements, is hanging on to reach his 55th birthday seven years from now, when he will receive $32 million from Reebok, thanks to a lifetime contract he signed with the shoe company in 2001.

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At the end of June, 8.5% of U.S. homes are worth $1 million or more, the highest share of all time.

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In 1960, the average American woman had 3.65 children in her lifetime. That’s fallen to about 1.6. But people will not have children for a tax break. Governments are responding with tax incentives.
Children are many things, not just an expensive asset, as a boat is. But you can repossess a boat.

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34% of Americans now use social media as their main source of news, second only to Brazilians at 35%.

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Apparently following the orders of a Farc rebel offshoot, locals in the cocaine-producing Micay Canyon have reportedly kidnapped 57 Colombian troops.

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The federal government’s debt is now over $28 trillion by one measurement. That’s $2 trillion more than last year and $6 trillion more than when the Biden-Harris team entered the White House. This debt stands at 100% of America’s GDP, which, other than a one-year exception at the end of World War II, is the highest ratio we’ve ever had. Unlike in 1946, today’s debt is only going to grow. Indeed, debt-to-GDP took a nearly 30-year dive to reach 23% in 1974. Today, federal debt is projected — again, under the rosiest scenarios — to rise to 166% in 30 years.

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The Refinitiv Lipper database gives the median turnover of a US mutual fund as 39%, implying a holding period of just 2.5 years.


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The global proportion of people now using TikTok for news each week is 17%, up 4% in just a year.

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Forty percent of people say they avoid the news.

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The Swiss and the Norwegians both cut their rates
The Fed (plus the Bank of England) held theirs steady, and
Brazil’s central bank hiked rates for the seventh straight meeting to 15%

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Private capital funds have taken more money from investors than they’ve distributed back to them in gains for six straight years, for a total gap of $1.56 trillion over that period.

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Germany will more than double its military spending by the turn of the decade under a new defense spending proposal approved by the government this week.

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