The Lewins (on the left) with Rufino Tamayo 

Bernard Lewin was born in Germany in 1906. In 1938, he fled the Nazis with his wife Edith, immigrated to the United States, and became a US citizen. He tried several professions before becoming an art dealer and collector. Eventually, with Edith’s help, he accumulated the world’s largest private collection of modern Mexican art.

Lewin was a personal friend of Rufino Tamayo and David Alfaro Siqueiros. His collection included the only portrait of Frida Kahlo by Diego Rivera that was not part of a mural.

Before his death in 2003, the Lewins donated more than 2,000 pieces to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. These included works by Carlos Mérida, José Clemente Orozco, Rafael Coronel, and Francisco Zúñiga.

About Race and Income 

The average income for White households in the US is $72,000 a year. That is 35% higher than American households that identify as Latino, and 70% higher than African American households.

But White households are not at the top of the ladder. Asian Americans make about 25% more than that, at $98,000 a year.

Another Step Closer to the Digital Dollar 

Longtime readers know I’ve been predicting that the US will adopt a digital dollar that will ultimately replace our paper currency. And (as I noted on Feb. 3) the first step was taken on Jan. 19 with the Fed’s announcement that it was “opening a review to determine the feasibility of having a US digital dollar.”

The second step was taken last Wednesday, when President Biden issued an executive order on cryptocurrencies. Among other things, the order directed several government agencies to examine the risks and benefits of digital assets and develop a strategy for the use of digital dollars. Click here.

Crazy!

It’s estimated that more than 11 million people were killed throughout the many proxy wars fought by the US and the Soviet Union. This includes the Algerian War (1954 to 1962), the Taiwan Strait Crisis (1958), the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, the Tibetan Uprising of 1959 to 1962, the various Central American revolutions from 1960 to 1996, the Congo Crisis of 1960 to 1965, the Eritrean War of Independence (1974 to 1991), the North Yemen Civil War (1962 to 1970), the Dhofar Rebellion (1962 to 1976), the Sand War of 1963, the Dominican Civil War of 1965, the Chadian Civil War of 1965 to 1979,  the Thailand Insurgency (1965 to 1983), the Bolivian Campaign (1966 to 1967), the Korean DMZ Conflict (1966 to 1969), the South African Border War (1966 to 1990), the Malaysian Insurgency of 1968 to 1989, the Al-Wadiah War of 1969, the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the Yemenite War of 1972, the Angolan Civil War (1974 to 2002), the Ethiopian Civil War (1974 to 1991), the Western Sahara War (1975 to 1991), the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (1975 to 1999), the Cambodian Vietnamese War (1977 to 1991), the Mozambican Civil War (1977 to 1992), the Yemenite War of 1979, the Soviet Afghan War (1979 to 1989), the Afghan Civil War (1989 to 1992), the Angolan Civil War (1974 to 2002), the Nepalese Civil War (1996 to 2006), the 1975 to 2008 insurgency in Laos, and, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict (1948 to present).

Noteworthy: About the Stock Market

Since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the average market drawdown from geopolitical shocks has been just 5%. And the market bottomed, on average, 22 days later and recovered within 47 days.

One example: The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US sent the S&P 500 down 4.9% in one day and 11.6% overall. But the market bottomed just 11 days later and recovered in one month.

As my friend and colleague Alex Green pointed out recently: “Corrections and bear markets are great opportunities to accumulate positions in companies that are likely to outperform when the market bounces back.”

Interesting: About Life Expectancy in the US

The states with the highest life expectancy are Hawaii, California, New York, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. The states with the lowest life expectancy are Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia, and Mississippi. Overall, Americans are expected to liver 78.8 years.

(Findings based on death rates in 2019.)

Speaking of thinking… 

Here is an interesting fact about the human brain:

 The brain does creative work better when it’s tired.

 If you’re tired, your brain is not as good at filtering out distractions and focusing on a particular task. And because of that, it’s less efficient at rejecting subtle distinctions among competing ideas. But this makes for an advantage when it comes to what we call “creative thinking.” Because creative thinking often involves seeing connections that the focused brain might reject. In other words, when your brain is fuzzy, it can take advantage of fuzzy logic and thus be open to new ideas.

Click here to read a Scientific American article that explains how distractions can actually be a good thing for creative thinking.

Curious: About the Inflation Rate

The core inflation rate, for some reason, does not include two metrics that are very important: the price of food and the price of fuel. That seems bizarre to me. Those are two of the most important commodities that affect the wallets of everyday Americans

Economic and financial historians sometimes talk about “primary trends” – i.e., long-term swings in one direction or another. In a recent issue of The Daily Reckoning, Bill Bonner gives examples for the US stock markets:

“Stocks hit a high in 1929, after which investors waited 27 years (inflation adjusted) for a new high. Measured from the bottom, in 1932, prices rose for 34 years to reach the next top, in 1966.

“Then, it was down again, with investors in a losing trade for the next 29 years. Finally, in 1995, the Dow traded once again (inflation adjusted) at levels last seen in 1966.

“And then, with the Dow at 5,300, it was off to the races with another huge bull market run, which took it over 36,000 in 2021. From the bottom of that cycle – which came in August 1982 to today – stocks have been going up for nearly 40 years.”

Interesting: God Bless You! 

This de rigeur reply to a sneeze has a very interesting origin. It came into use as a result of a mandate by the Roman Catholic Church. On Feb. 16, 600, Pope Gregory I issued a papal edict stating that the phrase “God bless you” was the correct response whenever a Christian was within earshot of a sneeze. The pope hoped to ward off illness and death by encouraging Christians to answer any sneeze with a blessing.

After the relaxation of US immigration policy in the early 1960s, Black immigration climbed sharply. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the foreign-born Black population in the US increased seven-fold by 1980, tripled again between 1980 and 2005, and then tripled once again by 2013. By 2019, foreign-born Black immigrants in the US were at 4.6 million, up from 2.3 million in 2000.

Interesting facts: Black immigrant households earn, on average, $57,000. That is about 10% lower than non-Black immigrant households ($63,000), but nearly 30% higher than the average income for US-born Black households ($39,000).

Previously called multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder is a mental illness arising from traumatic events and/or abuse in childhood.

Symptoms (criteria for diagnosis) include:

* The existence of two or more distinct identities (or “personality states”).

* Ongoing gaps in memory about everyday events, personal information, and/or past traumatic events.

The symptoms cause significant problems in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning. The attitude and personal preferences (e.g., about food, activities, clothes) of a person with this disorder may suddenly shift and then shift back. The identities happen involuntarily and cause distress.

Interesting; Obesity by Country 

In the Feb. 7 issue, I referred you to a video about obesity. Following are some facts about obesity that I’ve found since then. Not necessarily surprising, but nonetheless edifying:

* About 30% of the populations of the US, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain are obese.

* The populations of Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands are less fat, with 20% of the population measuring as obese.

* In Japan, obesity is rare. Less than 4% of the population is obese.

Math Challenge: Check This Out 

A fun look at a fascinating but complex math concept – using information theory to solve Wordle. (Watch, via YouTube.)

* 43.4 million – the number of borrowers who have federal student loan debt.

* $11.7 million – the value of a cube that a German artist created from 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold. The cube sits in New York City’s Central Park with its own security detail.

* 1,600 – the number of retro baseball cards glued to a bedroom wall that a family found while renovating their new home in Idaho. The wall of cards was hidden behind roof shingles the previous owners had tacked on.

* 9% – the rate of the corporate tax the United Arab Emirates will introduce for the first time in 2023.