Mark Ford

Wednesday, November 2, 2022, San Jose, Costa Rica

November 2, 2022 No Comments

Three Social-Justice Trends Boosting Crime in Major Cities

In big cities across the USA, crime is soaring. Robberies are up. Assaults are up. Carjackings are up. And murders are up.

There are, no doubt, several reasons for this. Here are three:

* Cashless Bail: A solution to a political problem – the problem being that poor people, and in particular people of color, spend time in jail because they can’t afford to pay their bail. To achieve equity, those people are released after booking, without bail, so they don’t have to spend time in jail.

* Reclassification of Crimes: In some cities, many crimes that were previously classified as felonies have been downgraded to misdemeanors. These include various kinds of theft and assault, carjacking, and resisting arrest.

* Woke DAs: In many of these same cities, DAs are being appointed who believe their job is to work towards social justice by declining to prosecute crimes that they deem not to be prosecution worthy.

What has happened in these cities, some speculate, is that the word is out. You can commit all sorts of crimes without worrying about going to jail.

There may be more to this rise in crime, but these three trends are a big part of it. What’s especially vexing is knowing that a very large percentage of the crimes are being committed by repeat offenders.

An example from New York: Frank Abrokwa. On Feb. 21, he was arrested for smearing his feces into a woman’s face as she sat in a subway station. Local newspapers covered it. He was arrested, processed, and released within hours.

The very next day, he was arrested for shoplifting at a hardware store and threatening employees with a screwdriver. Released without bail.

A month earlier, on Feb. 5, he had been arrested for punching a 53-year-old man at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Again, he was released without bail.

A month before that, on Jan. 7, he had been arrested for hitting a stranger on a subway platform. He was released without bail.

Those are just four catch-and-release episodes concerning one man. But Abrokwa’s record is much more impressive than that. He’s been arrested 45 times.

Read the story here.

And watch the video here.

The Economy & Investing

November 2, 2022 No Comments

Speaking of Major Cities… Can You Afford to Live in One?

K and I are in LA this week, visiting four of our five grandkids. LA is a sprawling collection of little cities and towns, some of which are very nice, and most of which are ordinary and even depressing. But it is bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side, mountains and foothills on another, and desert on the east. It also has fantastic wealth. And, of course, it has Hollywood.

One thing LA doesn’t have, however, is affordable housing. If you are in the top 1% of income earners, you can live well there. If you are in the top 10%, you can live comfortably. If you are in the bottom 90%, it’s going to be a struggle.

For example, a very modest, two-bedroom house in a modest neighborhood anywhere in the city proper will cost you at least $1.5 million. Which is why so many people, including Number Two Son, are relegated to renting. But rents have been steadily rising since my boys came here nearly 20 years ago. A recent survey by SmartAssets.com ranked LA as the third most expensive city in the US, according to rental rates.

Here are the most expensive US cities, from a cost-of-rent perspective.

Market Update: Young Investors Are Fleeing the Trading Platforms

2020 and 2021 were big years for get-rich-quick strategies. Stimulus checks, meme stocks, crypto and NFT mania, and a bullish market in stocks brought in millions of new players. And many of these traders did well. According to the WSJ, 2.5 million became millionaires.

This year is a different story. Inflation is high. We are two-quarters into a recession. The stock market is floundering. And the Johnny-Come-Laters are running for the exits.

Cryptos have crashed and Robinhood, the app where most of the meme stock trading took place, has seen declining activity since the middle of the summer.

Alas! The Trillionaires Are Now Mere Billionaires!

Three of the biggest digital companies in the world – Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft – lost value after they reported disappointing earnings last week. The worst hit was Meta (formerly Facebook), which is now worth a paltry $270 billion, compared to its one-time valuation of $1.1 trillion.

Meta employees are worried. According to a source that spoke to the New York Post, Zuck told his employees, “You have three months to prove your worth, put in 200% effort, or you can resign now if you don’t like it.”

But as pointed out by Joel Bowman of Bonner Private Research, you’ve got to feel especially sorry for Zuck himself, who saw $100 billion of his personal net worth disappear (from $142 billion to a “mere” $38 billion).

Worth Considering

November 2, 2022 No Comments

“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you buy your own form of misery.” – Groucho Marx

Worth Watching

November 2, 2022 No Comments

The Shadow of Violence

Released Jul. 31, 2020

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

I found this one by flicking. I must have been in a dark mood, for it was the title that prompted me to click on the trailer. And it was the trailer (see below), with its shadowy cinematography, that persuaded me to hit the Play button.

I’m glad I did. The Shadow of Violence is a good movie. Probably a very good movie. It may be one of the best movies I’ve seen all year.

It’s the story of a former boxer that goes to work as an enforcer for a local crime family, while trying to maintain a good relationship with his autistic son. What I liked best about it were the amazingly good performances by the three lead actors: Cosmo Jarvis as Arm, Niamh Algar as Ursula, and Barry Koeghan as Dymphna.

Jarvis, in particular, is astonishingly good. There is a scene in which we see him speaking on the phone for what must be two or three solid minutes. It is absolutely mesmerizing. It’s like watching Marlon Brando in Streetcar.

It’s interesting to note that The Shadow of Violence was previously titled Calm with Horses, a reference to the lead character’s relationship with horses. And, as one reviewer said, it is also a reference to “his sensitive soul.” That original title is far better than the new one. Why did they change it? They must have thought it would do a better job of attracting attention. Did it work? I don’t know. But it worked on me.

You can watch the trailer here.

Fun and/or Interesting

November 2, 2022 No Comments

From BJ:

“I have appreciated your incisive analysis of our current economic situation. I wanted to add a timely tidbit of historical fact: Over the past 100 years, the surest sign of an oncoming financial crisis has been Philadelphia winning the World Series. Don’t believe me? Here are the facts: In 1929, the Philadelphia Athletics were WS champions. In 1980 and 2008, the Phillies were tops in MLB.”

So, umm… who are you rooting for?

Fun and/or Interesting

November 2, 2022 No Comments

The Costs of the COVID Shutdowns Are Coming In

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the COVID shutdowns were a bad idea. They did not curb the spread of the virus. If anything, they accelerated it. And there were negative consequences. Substantial ones. Like the decimation of the economy, including the end of many retail businesses, an increase in depression and suicide, and the retardation in learning for America’s students. Especially grammar school students for whom the mortality risk for COVID was close to zero.

Earlier this week, for example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released a report showing the largest decline in math skills ever recorded and a decline in reading levels that is the lowest in 30 years. Math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state, with the average score dropping eight points since 2019. And the average for fourth graders fell by five points. See the data breakdown for math here and reading here.

Worth Considering

November 2, 2022 No Comments

Why This Young Black Woman Stopped Hating the Police

After the Freddie Gray killing in 2015, there was a great deal of anti-police sentiment in communities all over America. One of the accusations heard repeatedly was that the police were “systemically racist.” And the most-often cited evidence for it was the fact that Blacks die from police shootings at a disproportionately higher rate than their percentage of the population (12% or 13%). In an essay I posted at the time, I pointed out that there was a problem with this arithmetic. A denominator problem, I called it. It’s the same problem that was responsible for the miscalculation of the mortality rate of COVID when that first broke.

When it comes to getting arrested, studies show that being a young Black male puts one at a greater risk of harassment and intimidation than being a Black female or a white man or woman. But those same studies show that it is not true of one’s chances of being shot and killed by police. Those chances are smaller.

I was surprised to learn this when I read about it for the first time. I was also surprised to learn that the person that headed up the largest study of this kind was a Black sociologist from Harvard. In this clip, a young Black woman talks about making the same discovery.