Smart Greek Dude

"A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its
warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by
fools."
—

Thucydides


"Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy.
Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on
the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will
come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of
somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is
entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay. "
—

Thucydides

"In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own
shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they
would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by
their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their
enemies,on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to
anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could
win by their brains."
—

Thucydides

extreme events

Mandelbrot (1983) -
“Even though economics is a very old subject, it has not
truly come to grips with the main difficulty, which is the
inordinate practical importance of a few extreme events.”

Hmmmm

"Social science is a compendium of flawed thinking disguised as scientific understanding."

The wild world of sports

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with
hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic
pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the
shooting. "  -The Sporting Spirit - Orwell

Wilde

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

"If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism."

"If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

In India, a Factory Model for Hospitals Is Cutting Costs and Yielding Profits

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125875892887958111.html


By GEETA ANAND

BANGALORE
-- Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed
magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an
11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta
onto his stopped heart.


As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant
reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the
Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of
lower-cost medical care. The agreement is inked a few days later,
pending approval of the Cayman parliament.


Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's
cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a
fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart
hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared
with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000,
depending on the complexity of the surgery.

Albert

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein

Kill All the Bankers? There’s an App for That…

Among the 100,000-plus applications for the iPhone is one that allows users to “kill” bankers.

The TARP-inspired Bailout Wars
app lets iPhone users “take revenge on bankers” by “throwing them into
the air, blowing them up, shooting them down and shaking them so hard
their clothes fall off, writes American Banker. The point of the game,
made by Gameloft and selling for $.99 on iTunes, is to destroy bankers
in order to save both the White House (and US taxpayers’ money) from
greedy day traders, high risk investors, and finance CEOs.

The game’s description on iTunes reads:

Defend the White House and save the US taxpayers’ money before it
gets stolen! It’s time for you to give them what they deserve! [...]
It’s your only chance to really take revenge on bankers for the
recession they caused [...] Explore many different ways to beat
bankers: tap, grab, or shake them in the air. Bailout Wars current has
a three-and-a-half star rating on iTunes, with 219 users out of 492
giving the app a five-star rating.

Would You Buy 7-Eleven’s House Wine?

Published November 6, 2009

7-Eleven is making and selling its own wine. The convenience-store mega chain is putting out a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon under the label Yosemite Road that will retail at most stores for $3.99.

The move comes after corporate realized that wines priced $5 and under are enjoying double-digit sales. We’re guessing that 7-Eleven is trying to capitalize on Trader Joe’s popular Two-Buck Chuck wine.

http://globestcounterculture.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/would-you-buy-7-elevens-house-wine/

E-Mails Fuel Skeptics

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

......................

At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some
of the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct
was to ignore the correspondence as “just the way scientists talk.”

But
on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some
exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for
independent review.

He said that some e-mails mused about a way to discredit him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong.

“This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people’s reputations in very serious ways,” he said.

Dunkin’ Donuts Getting Bank Branches?

Published October 22, 2009

Pretty soon you might be able to apply for a loan before buying a coffee and doughnuts — under the same roof. Citizens Bank just opened a pretty-full-service branch in a Dunkin’ Donuts store in Bellingham, MA.

The unit has three teller windows, an ATM and is open seven days a week. According to a Dunkin’ spokesperson, this store is only a test and no more are planned in the near future.



http://globestcounterculture.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/dunkin-donuts-gets-bank-branches/

Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist

Human Error Blamed for Crediting New Stimulus Jobs to Nonexistent Places
By JONATHAN KARL
Nov. 16, 2009

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-saved-created-congressional-districts-exist/story?id=9097853

Medic Esthetic

Behold the beauty of imperfection! These white or skin-coloured shoes made of synthetic plaster, bandages, stainless steel, and other medical materials, aim to expose the taboo on physical deformities.

Florida has a public option for *********** insurance - How is it working?

Florida has a public option for property insurance.  Here is Randy Holcombe writing at The Beacon:

After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992 some
Floridians were having difficulty purchasing homeowners’ insurance.
(The reason: rates are regulated, and at the regulated rates some
properties are too great a risk.) So, the state government formed
Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, which is owned and operated by
the State of Florida.

As originally envisioned, Citizens would charge rates
above those charged by private insurers, to make Citizens the insurer
of last resort. Nevertheless, Citizens found plenty of customers.

After two bad hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005 property
insurance rates in Florida rose, and in his campaign for the office,
current Governor Charlie Crist promised voters that if elected he would
see that their property insurance bills “dropped like a rock.”

One tactic he used was to change Citizens’ rate structure
so it was competitive with private insurers. His idea, like President
Obama’s idea with health insurance, is that with a public option,
private insurers would have to keep their rates in line or risk losing
customers to the government insurer.

...Today about 30% of homeowners’ policies are written by
Citizens, which is the largest property insurer in the state. It’s
about to get bigger too. The largest private insurer, State Farm, had a
rate request rejected last year, and now is pulling out of the state
altogether (for property insurance; they’ll still insure your car)....

Everybody in Florida knows Citizens is a fiscal time bomb.
Already, every Florida insurance policy (on homes, boats, cars, etc.)
pays a surcharge that goes to Citizens, but Citizens still doesn’t have
sufficient reserves to weather a major hurricane. When one comes,
Florida taxpayers will be on the hook for the bill.

The legislature knows this, and actually passed a bill
last year that would have done a great deal to solve the problem by
partially deregulating rates private insurers could charge. State Farm
would have stayed in Florida had that bill taken effect, but it was
vetoed by the Governor. The public option is displacing private
insurance.

In Florida, the public option has meant a substantial
socialization of insurance, subsidization of the public option by those
who take a private option, and the creation of a fiscally-unsound
public insurance company despite the subsidy.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot.
Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a
healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon. —Winston Churchill

Free Photoshop Clone - reorganized GIMP’s tools, options, windows, and menus to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop

From Plastic Bugs:

If you’ve never used Photoshop before, you may not appreciate my GIMPshop hack. What I’ve done is renamed and reorganized GIMP’s tools, options, windows, and menus to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop’s menu structure and naming conventions. Many of the menu options and even whole menus were recreated to faithfully reproduce a Photoshop-like experience. After running my GIMPshop hack,you’ll find that Photoshop and the GIMP are strikingly similar.


GIMPshop is by no means a 1-to-1 copy of Photoshop and you may find some menu items that are not in perfect order. But GIMPshop’s pretty close, and I think it does the job. I’m getting lots of use out of it and I hope you do too.


http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294

Experts - Chimps Throwing Darts

Oct 28, 2009 |

Larry Swedroe: |

"I recently read Philip Tetlock’s book Expert Political Judgment, which presents his 20-year study about experts’ ability to predict the future. The insights he gleaned about the so-called experts who make prediction their business are certainly worth sharing, especially as he found they’re no better than the proverbial chimps throwing darts."

Expert-Political-Judgment

Ditch the Dollar

http://seekingalpha.com/article/168911-here-s-why-asia-must-eventually-ditch-the-dollar

"Nonetheless, if America continues to monetize debt at a trillion-dollar annual rate, and the United States continues to withdraw from international leadership, Asia will have no choice but to make its own arrangements. The Obama administration, in my view, will fail to reflate the burst consumer bubble. Attempting to do so by gunning the federal deficit up to 12% of GDP and ballooning the Fed balance sheet is one of the stupidest things the United States ever has done."

Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular Among Intellectuals ?

From  http://mises.org/story/3529

To a "man of system," to borrow Adam Smith's terminology, capitalism just isn't that exciting. Participants in the market economy are wholly beholden to consumer wants. The academics envision a grand world, where Great Men fight Great Wars, periodically inventing Great Things or developing Great Ideas. Instead, the market provides us with incremental processes, which expend enormous piles of resources, in a quest to make better Triscuits. It is hardly the stuff of high drama, to say nothing of Great History.

Under capitalism, the common man does not need an intellectual vanguard or a group of virtuous surrogates to make his decisions for him or to defend him against the rapacity of his fellows. He can do just fine without our help, thank you very much, and would be much obliged if we would go back to our ivory towers and leave him alone

10 economic lessons Rap

Verse I
Tradin’ this for that, call it tit for tat
We all face tradeoffs and that’s a fact because
Everything is in finite supply
That’s the reason why we all sell and buy

Next up is rule deuce, the next best use
Of money or time defines its true value
It’s more convoluted than just the simple cost
What else could you do? What opportunities are lost?

Decisions at the margin, yeah that’s the key
To understanding principle #3
Take your present situation and assume that it’s the best
If a change is worth more than it costs, then that’s your test

Lesson #4: it’s like the carrot and the stick
We break it down so you can see what makes the world tick
So why do we do the things that we do?
It’s a system of incentives that we all respond to

Chorus
Demand, supply
Listen up, learn this, and you’ll know why
We work, we buy
The price is right when the competition’s alive
(x2)

Verse II
Everyone in society can benefit from trade
#5 is a reminder that we shouldn’t let hope fade
Just use what you’ve got to produce your best
The money that you make will buy the rest

Lesson 6 is a trick, the invisible hand
Buyers and sellers clear markets without the man
The market system almost always prevails
But recognize, too, that markets can fail

Because of monopolies and the troubles they create
Uncle Sam comes along and he’s gotta regulate
That’s lesson #7: when government’s there
They oversee to guarantee that competition is fair

#8 says the future of a national State
Relies on services and products people create
If we sell and excel and we keep doing well
Then the money keeps going ’round just like a carousel

Chorus

Verse III
#9: keep an eye on that money supply
Printing too much paper sends prices sky high
A dollar means nothing, it’s just a nice name
If what it represents doesn’t stay the same

Number 10: there’s a tradeoff in the short run
Between unemployment and inflation
I really can’t explain the whole situation
You want the full story? Step up your education!

His answer was greeted with laughter

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSPEK14475620090601

June 1, 2009
Tom Bawden

Timothy Geithner moved today to reassure the Chinese Government that its huge holdings of dollar assets were safe as he reaffirmed his faith in a strong US currency.

Mr Geithner, in China on his first visit as US Treasury Secretary, sought to allay concerns that Washington’s growing budget deficit would fan inflation which, in turn, would undermine the dollar and US bonds.

“Chinese assets are very safe,” Mr Geithner said, answering a question after his opening address at Peking University this morning.

His answer was greeted with laughter by the students, who question the wisdom of China spending huge amounts of money on US bonds instead of improving domestic living standards.

Why dogs have floppy ears.

Dmitri Belyaev

From Wikipedia

Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev  was a Russian scientist, and academician. In the 1950s Dmitri Belyaev and his team spent many years breeding the silver fox and selecting only those individuals that showed the least fear of humans. Eventually, Belyaev's team selected only those that showed the most positive response to humans. He ended up with a population of foxes whose behavior and appearance was significantly changed. After about ten generations of controlled breeding, these foxes no longer showed any fear of humans and often wagged their tails and licked their human caretakers to show affection. They also started to have spotted coats, floppy ears, and curled tails.
At the time, biologists were puzzled as to how dogs evolved to have different coats than wolves. They couldn't figure how dogs got those genes from wolves. Belyaev saw his foxes as a perfect opportunity to find out how this happened. He and his colleagues began performing tests on the animals. When they checked the adrenaline levels of the domesticated foxes, they found that they were significantly lower than normal. This is feasible, because foxes that are not afraid of humans are going to produce less adrenaline around them. This explains the foxes' tameness, but it doesn't really explain their multicolor coats. The scientists theorized that adrenaline shares a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production.
Quote from NOVA's 'Dogs and More Dogs' program

NARRATOR: Suddenly, it all started to make sense. As Belyaev bred his foxes for tameness, over the generations their bodies began producing different levels of a whole range of hormones. These hormones, in turn, set off a cascade of changes that somehow triggered a surprising degree of genetic variation.
JAMES SERPELL: Just the simple act of selecting for tameness destabilized the genetic make up of these animals in such a way that all sorts of stuff that you would never normally see in a wild population suddenly appeared.

Dmitri Belyaev was director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (IC&G) of the present-day Russian Academy of Sciences from 1959-1985. He made significant contributions to the establishment of the IC&G and made efforts in the restoration and advancement of genetics in the USSR.

Let the good times roll.

"The good times too of high price almost always engender much fraud.
All people are most credulous when they are most happy; and when much
money has just been made, when some people are really making it, there
is a happy opportunity for ingenious mendacity."

Walter Bagehot
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market.
1873

Bob Farrell's 10 Rules for Investing

1. Markets tend to return to the mean over time.

When stocks go too far in one direction, they come back. Euphoria and pessimism can cloud people's heads. It's easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and lose perspective.

2. Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction.

Think of the market baseline as attached to a rubber string. Any action to far in one direction not only brings you back to the baseline, but leads to an overshoot in the opposite direction.

3. There are no new eras -- excesses are never permanent.

Whatever the latest hot sector is, it eventually overheats, mean reverts, and then overshoots. Look at how far the emerging markets and BRIC nations ran over the past 6 years, only to get cut in half.

As the fever builds, a chorus of "this time it's different" will be heard, even if those exact words are never used. And of course, it -- Human Nature -- never is different.

4. Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways.

Regardless of how hot a sector is, don't expect a plateau to work off the excesses. Profits are locked in by selling, and that invariably leads to a significant correction -- eventually. comes.

5. The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom.

That's why contrarian-minded investors can make good money if they follow the sentiment indicators and have good timing.

Watch Investors Intelligence (measuring the mood of more than 100 investment newsletter writers) and the American Association of Individual Investors survey.

6. Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve.

Investors can be their own worst enemy, particularly when emotions take hold. Gains "make us exuberant; they enhance well-being and promote optimism," says Santa Clara University finance professor Meir Statman. His studies of investor behavior show that "Losses bring sadness, disgust, fear, regret. Fear increases the sense of risk and some react by shunning stocks."

7. Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names.

Hence, why breadth and volume are so important. Think of it as strength in numbers. Broad momentum is hard to stop, Farrell observes. Watch for when momentum channels into a small number of stocks ("Nifty 50" stocks).

8. Bear markets have three stages -- sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend.

I would suggest that as of August 2008, we are on our third reflexive rebound -- the Januuary rate cuts, the Bear Stearns low in March, and now the Fannie/Freddie rescue lows of July.

Even with these sporadic rallies end, we have yet to see the long drawn out fundamental portion of the Bear Market.

9. When all the experts and forecasts agree -- something else is going to happen.

As Stovall, the S&P investment strategist, puts it: "If everybody's optimistic, who is left to buy? If everybody's pessimistic, who's left to sell?"
Going against the herd as Farrell repeatedly suggests can be very profitable, especially for patient buyers who raise cash from frothy markets and reinvest it when sentiment is darkest.

10. Bull markets are more fun than bear markets.

Especially if you are long only or mandated to be full invested. Those with more flexible charters might squeek out a smile or two here and there.

Thomas Sowell - 3 Quotes

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing."

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."