We used to have Columbus Day off, but it was traded for MLK Day and a holiday to be named later. Also, my morning train reads:
• How to Beat an Efficient Market (Morningstar)
• Don’t Starve the BLS (Roll Call) see also We’re doing a terrible job of measuring the modern workforce, and the feds know it (Wonkblog)
• Why People Invest in Hedge Funds (Wealth of common sense)
• Why everybody knows CEOs are overpaid, but nothing happens (The Conversation)
• Former Fed chair Bernanke no longer a Republican because the GOP has “lost its economic mind” (US News)
There seems to have been an explosion of articles in the media (NY Times, Business Insider, etc.) on expensive watches over the past couple of years. This may be the best indicator of all that we are in frothy times, particularly for the top 2%.
The economy will likely improve dramatically once we stop seeing these articles as it means that people will be focused on core business instead of “extracting value from assets”. Income inequality will also likely have declined which would hopefully generate more business revenues as the customer base would actually have money to be spent on things other than Swiss watches.
RE Expensive Swiss watches……. Due to: the Apple watch, the devaluation of the Yuan and anti corruption efforts in China, and a slow down in the Middle east Watch sales are falling rapidly (~10% in July) and the Swiss watch industry is doing a lot of PR to try to stimulate sales.
well if your in the top 2% you want to spend your money on some thing that might not be so easily noticed except among your peers
seems its not just banks that are TBTF
http://moneyweek.com/its-not-just-the-banks-our-companies-too-are-now-too-big-to-fail/
A good article on dam safety. The big advances in dam design occurred from about 1950 to 1980. So any dams that are older than about 60 years old were not built using modern engineering design and construction. There are many low-head dams throughout the eastern US that are pre-1950.
Dams tend to block fish passage, so it would be worthwhile to prioritize removal of obsolete dams that are no longer providing a real function, as their existence continually disrupts the ecosystem and creates significant hazard to downstream communities in flood conditions as sudden breaches cause instantaneous flows of large quantities of water.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151007-dam-failures-south-carolina-engineering-science/
This is a little inside baseball, but in general there’s nothing wrong with the old dams. Once the spillway capacity is exceeded and the first trickle of water goes over the top of an earth dam, the dam is toast – that’s just the way they’re designed. Every state has a dam safety office and the Corps of Engineers is also involved, so they know, or should know, exactly which dams have inadequate spillway capacity (since hydrology has advanced considerably since the 50s). I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if any high hazard dams failed in South Carolina since the high hazard dams are designed for the probable maximum precipitation (the theoretical maximum amount of water the atmosphere can hold coming down in a brief period of time) so a mere thousand year storm shouldn’t have been a problem for them. Which is not to say that every state dam safety office is on the ball – I worked on one earth dam that had a five-foot diameter tree on the down stream face.
well we are talking south Carolina arent we? what are the odds they are on the ball?
Special Columbus Day reads:
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Columbus Day is a reminder that nothing exists until a white guy “discovers” it
Jake Flanagin
October 10, 2015
http://qz.com/521321/columbus-day-is-a-reminder-that-nothing-exists-until-a-white-guy-discovers-it/
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Columbus – the real history
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Columbus Day – How Is That Still A Thing
Published on Oct 13, 2014
Christopher Columbus did a lot of stuff that was way more terrible than “sailing the ocean blue,” but we don’t learn about that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEwL-10s7E
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Was Columbus secretly a Jew?
By Charles Garcia, Special to CNN
Thu May 24, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Sunday marks the 506th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus
* Charles Garcia: Columbus was a Marrano, or a Jew who feigned to be a Catholic
* He says that during Columbus’ lifetime, Jews became the target of religious persecution
* Garcia: Columbus’ voyage was motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for Jews
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish/index.html
20%+ of Nobel prize winners are Jewish/Jewish heritage. Wouldn’t be surprised if Columbus was.
Seems like a good time to revisit this article.
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Rolling Stone
January 2010
Matt Taibbi: The Crying Shame of John Boehner
He’s a lazy, double-talking shill for corporate interests. So how’s he going to fare with the Tea Party?
John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich. The biographer who somewhere down the line tackles the question of Boehner’s legacy will do well to simply throw out any references to party affiliation, because the thing that has made Boehner who he is — the thing that has finally lifted him to the apex of legislative power in America — has almost nothing to do with his being a Republican.
….
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner-20110105
Interest Rates and the Shadow of the Future
Low rates put more emphasis on the future, high rates on the here and now. And that’s true for all investment, whether in nature, produced capital or human capital. It’s what r is fundamentally about. Low r stimulates economies by encouraging more spending on investment.
…It’s about as basic an economic truth as you’ll ever find.
NB: according to Thomas Piketty, if r (after-tax return on capital) is persistently greater than g (growth rate of economy) then income inequality will become greater over time. However Piketty himself notes that this is an empirical observation over a very extended history (centuries) but that observations over shorter periods are subject to factors such as institutional changes, policy emphases and political shocks that can alter the outcome.
“Matt Taibbi: The Crying Shame of John Boehner”. So why the big mystery on why the tea party loathed him?
hm. companies not paying their workers? and they have a federal contract? and nothing gets done? and we wonder why consumers dont have money?
http://media2.newsobserver.com/static/content/multimedia/projects/labor/labor02.html
and even when they get caught, they just fold up that company and start a new one, getting more tax dollars? really?
has the scotus gone rogue again?
http://angrybearblog.com/2015/10/what-i-want-bernie-sanders-to-know-before-tuesdays-debate.html
Feinberg interview was great. Your broad development is your wheelhouse, BR. Keep it up.
“Happiness increases (and stress decreases) if you are over 60, married, or religious — or if you have health insurance.”
Talk to a Canadian. Or a Nederlander. Or a French person.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-12/what-economics-nobel-winner-angus-deaton-shows-policy-makers