MarkFord.net
The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
UK Government Report: COVID Deaths Among the Vaccinated
This sounds wrong, but I have seen it published a few times without contradiction (so far). So, I’m giving it to you. The UK government released a report at the end of February that said that seven out of 10 deaths from COVID-19 during January in England were in people who were fully vaccinated. All told, there were 1,086,434 cases of COVID in vaccinated individuals, accounting for 73% of all cases that month.
The Stock Market: What…
Worried about your stock portfolio? Here are some facts from Mitch Zacks (by way of JS) that may ease your concerns:
* S&P 500 earnings have been going up while the index has been falling. That means the P/E ratio on the US stock market has moved lower. (That’s a good thing. It means stocks have gotten cheaper relative to corporate earnings.)
* Most analysts expect the US economy and US corporations to grow in 2022. At Zacks Investment Management, the expectation is 7%.
* And since corporate earnings and revenue track GDP growth, Zacks also expect corporations to have a good year.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater  K and I visited Falling Waters about 10 years ago. It was a memorable day and a wonderful learning experience. If you are a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, you should check out Fallingwater. It represents a pivotal moment in his career – a masterpiece of organic architecture that thrust him back on the world stage after he’d largely been sidelined by The Great Depression. The project was a commission from a prominent Pittsburgh family that asked Wright to design a weekend home for them near a waterfall in Pennsylvania’s lush Laurel Highlands. Instead of designing a house that looked onto the falls, Wright built ithe falls into the house, mirroring the pattern of the surrounding rock ledges with cantilevered concrete “trays.” Fallingwater became a museum in 1964 and has been a hit ever since. We saw it about a decade ago. Like many of Wright’s extant structures, the house has been getting continuous repairs to keep it standing. But even with that going on, it was a great afternoon to walk though it and admire his genius. |
Five Causes of The Great Depression
On Black Monday, Oct. 28, 1929, the Dow Jones dropped nearly 13% in one day. That started a period of catastrophic declines that destroyed almost half of the Dow’s value in a single month. By 1932, at the nadir of the financial crisis, the nation’s public companies had lost 89% of their value. And the US economy didn’t fully recover from the damage that had been done until after WWII.
Why did it happen? Experts point to these contributing factors:
George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 60 plays, but he also wrote a lot of personal letters. I read once that he sent somewhere in the region of 250,000 letters and postcards during his lifetime, the majority in response to strangers seeking either advice, money, a photograph, an autograph, or Shaw’s presence at an event. Here are three of his replies:
Letter to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, 1928
“I am fully conscious of the honor done me by the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in asking me to lecture; but the condition that my subject should be non-controversial makes it impossible for me to accept the invitation. I never speak in public except on violently controversial subjects in a violently controversial way.”
Letter to the Hull Conference of Crematorium Authorities, 1926
“A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds and fish! Thank you for nothing. Blood sacrifices are not in my line.”
Letter to the Southwick Cricket Club, 1938
“Too old. Loathe cricket. No connection with Southwick; don’t even know where it is.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
To grabble is to grasp or grope – probably from the same Old English/Germanic origin as grapple (wrestle). Example from “The Tall Men” by William Faulkner: “A fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA and WPA and a dozen other three-letter reasons for a man not to work.”
A letter from a young, determined-to-become-wealthy, nephew:
“I’ve been looking at a lot of art recently as I would like to expand on what I already have. I’ve found this piece and would like to know your opinion on it and if you think it would be a good investment. I have the link below and a picture of it in case the link doesn’t work.”
My response:
Thanks for asking. No, I don’t think it’s a good investment.
As near as I can tell, this artist has no reputation in the world of “serious” art. He’s not collected by museums. Or institutions. Or wealthy people. He’s just an old fart like me trying to make money selling his art on Artsy.
If you absolutely love his work, buy the least expensive piece you can find (that you like). But expect the value of it to drop by 70% the moment you purchase it. I will explain more by sending you chapters of the book Im writing on this subject. Working title: The Art and Science of Investing in Art. Stay tuned!
– Your Uncle and Art Advisor
Mazzy Star: A new discovery…
“The Greatest Film Ever Made”?
About 30 years ago, I severed an Achilles tendon playing basketball. Post-surgery, I had to spend more than three weeks off my feet. I was very active athletically at the time, so the thought of being supine for 20 to 30 days was unthinkable. To feel better, I vowed to spend a good portion of that downtime doing new and useful things. One of them was to watch at least two dozen of the best movies ever made.
My primary resource was the American Film Institute. But I also looked at a half-dozen other “best movies” lists. In doing that research, one film was consistently at the top: Citizen Kane.
I watched it then and thought it was “good” in many ways, but not “great.” There were too many oddities about the film that left me feeling puzzled.
I watched it again about 10 years ago, and my opinion of it improved, from “good” to “quite good.”
And then I watched it earlier this week, and upgraded my rating once again.