Famous Last Words--I'll Give It All Away

Steve Jobs' widow says:

"“I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth,” she told the New York Times. “I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings, and my children know that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.” [emphasis added]

IIRC Andrew Carnegie wanted to give away all his money.  He didn't accomplish that.  As the article at the link observes, there's still a Carnegie Foundation which gives away money each year.

Wjhy iis it hard for the rich to give away all their money (those who want to, like Carnegie and Jobs)?

• money has this way of earning more money, You have to run faster just to stay in one place, much less lower the stock of assets.
• those who manage the money as the donor grows old and after they die have a vested interest in keeping the flow of money going. 

Be Afraid--What Are the Odds

I think the odds for the Covid virus having major impact on American society are low.  I might be unduly affected by the experience of the Ebola panic, when a certain person was panicking (initials DJT).

On the other hand, I think the odds for a very screwed-up transition from the Trump administration to a Democratic president in 2021 are about 100-1 (assuming we do in fact defeat the man).  The Obama administration started the transition process back in the spring of 2016.  Of course they knew they were leaving, but Trump will have problems imagining that process so I don't expect him to approve any advance planning before Nov. 2020.  After election day, assuming again he's defeated which I'm not offering any prediction for, he will be in no mood to facilitate any planning, so the process will have to be carried out by career officials, otherwise known to Republican partisans as the swamp.

America Is Rich Country But Feels Like a Poor Country

I like the Kottke.org website. He recently spent some time in Vietnam and Singapore with some good pictures. (Saigon was home to lots of motorbikes when I was there 50+ years ago, but it's gotten more crowded since.) He has this observation:

" the main observation I came home with after this trip is this: America is a rich country that feels like a poor country. If you look at the investment in and the care put into infrastructure, common areas, and the experience of being in public in places like Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin and compare it to American cities, the difference is quite stark. Individual wealth in America is valued over collective wealth and it shows."

Bring on Self Driving Cars

Tesla says they average 1 fatality every 3 million miles.  The government says the US averages 1 fatality every 500,000 miles.  That tells me if we gave everyone a Tesla we could save 30,000 lives a year.

That's from this NYTimes article which should have been entitled: Teslas 6 times safer than driver-driven cars.

Disaster Coverage for Hemp

I'm still, I think the word is, bemused by the legalization of hemp.  The latest item is FSA issuing the rules for NAP coverage for 2020.  I don't know whether this is the first or second year for such coverage. 

I'm pleased to see the comparison of the provisions of the FSA NAP program and RMA's hemp insurance.  Almost all of the parameters are the same. Ever since the beginning of FCIC and AAA there have been complaints about the differences between the programs, most specifically the crop reporting dates.  Thousands of work hours and innumerable meetings have now been devoted to trying to resolve the differences, so it's good to see differences being resolved from the beginning.

Michael Milken--Angel or Devil?

Keith Williamson had a short post the other day: 

Reis Thebault, writing in the Washington Post, identifies Michael Milken as “the ‘junk bond king’ who was charged with insider trading…”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board says that Milken “was never charged with insider trading.”

I was curious so I checked wikipedia. 

In March 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Milken on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. The indictment accused Milken of a litany of misconduct, including insider trading, stock parking (concealing the real owner of a stock), tax evasion and numerous instances of repayment of illicit profits.

He pled guilty to six counts,  which likely were the least serious ones, securities and tax violations (i.e., not insider trading). So it sounds like a plea deal: the feds got jail time and a scalp on the wall; Milken avoided a long and expensive trial which might have resulted in much more serious penalties and which can be described as "technical", and therefore worthy of a pardon. 

The Return of the "Shorts"

Reading about Wall Street shenanigans in the 19th and 20th century often included discussions of "bears" and "shorts". It's easy to think those tactics are just a part of history, long since outmoded by federal regulation and modern finance.

Not so, according to this. Though to give the modern age it's due, it doesn't appear that there were underhanded things going on--just the ups and downs of a company pushing the envelopte.

Definitions of Farming: US Versus EU

Defining who is a "farmer" is complicated.  It's been 35 years since our legislation first tried to define "actively engaged in farming".

Yesterday I came across this piece, discussing EU's efforts first to define "active farmer" and now to define "genuine farmer".  The Irish are holding listening sessions with various farm groups (which are interesting in themselves, as different than US groups) which come up with various standards.

Hemp Insurance and Bureaucracy

Farmers.gov has a page on the announcement of hemp insurance and other aspects of growing hemp.

They note the need to report acreage to FSA, including their hemp grower registration number.  I searched on that and found this page for Virginia.  Virginia, of course, requires its own series of acreage reports

IMO this is a classic instance of how bureaucratic silos develop.  Something new comes up, and existing bureaucracies are assigned the job of implementing rules/laws. But since it's likely that the new responsibility doesn't fit neatly within the scope of one bureaucracy, we get duplication. 

I'd predict that 10 years from now the Virginia Hemp Growers Association will have formed and will be lobbying for a simplification and consolidation of paperwork requirements.

Presidential Health

As long as I'm discussing physical abilities today, I might as well offer my 2  cents worth on presidential health.

There's a current controversy over the release of medical records. I quickly agreed with Kevin Drum's post on medical and financial transparency.  Latter Twitter provided more information--Bloomberg is a qualified pilot, including helicopters, and passed an FAA medical exam last year; there's not that much difference among the types of medical information provided by current and past candidates--typically a physician's summary with some data but not really complete information.That includes Sanders.

Apparently Bloomberg had two stents inserted in the past, but not as aftermath to a heart attack.  Biden has survived brain surgery, which sounds scary but apparently doesn't have any meaning for the future.