Kiva Stats

More good news from Kiva, a pioneer in micro-finance--their interest rates are substantially lower than the local competition:

Average Interest Rate Borrower Pays To Kiva Field Partner 22.91% (as of November 23, 2008)

Average Local Money Lender Interest Rate 85.22% (as of November 23, 2008)

Kiva's existence means that the poor can borrow money and create small businesses without being subject to usury. Even so, I don't like how high the interest rate is--23% still seems high to me, especially because the money given by Kiva lenders is given as an interest-free loan without expectation of re-payment. I'd like to see more transparency in terms of the overhead. I wouldn't be surprised to see nonprofits, especially international ones, without adequate bookkeeping. If some corruption comes to light, it would be devastating to the microfinance world, because it would scare away potential and existing lenders.

Malanga on Public Schools

The City, Autumn 2008 edition, has an article on poverty--"We Don't Need Another War on Poverty," by Steven Malanga. Mr. Malanga points out that all the money we've been throwing at schools hasn't resulted in better performance. This lack of improvement is what is spurring Congress to demand accountability from schools in some format:

[T]he U.S. has made vast investments in its public schools. According to a study by Manhattan Institute scholar Jay Greene, per-student spending on K-12 public education in the U.S. rocketed from $2,345 in the mid-1950's to $8,745 in 2002 (both figures in 2002 dollars)...Washington D.C. now spends more than $22,000 a year per student...

An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Study found that most European countries spend between 55 percent and 70 percent of what the U.S. does per student, yet produce better educational outcomes. If urban school systems are failing children, money has nothing to do with it. (from page 37, The City, Autumn 2008)

In the same issue, there is another interesting article by Michael J. Totten on "The (Really) Moderate Muslims of Kosovo."

Also, on page 121, Theodore Dalrymple recalls the British stiff upper lip and laments its decline:

I found his self-effacement deeply moving. It was not the product of a lack of self-esteem, that psychological notion used to justify rampant egotism; nor was it the result of having been downtrodden by a tyrannical government that accorded no worth to its citizens. It was instead an existential, almost religious, modesty, an awareness that he was far from being all-important.

Looks like the West needs more of that old time British culture.

Commonwealth Club

Some great websites re: the Commonwealth Club I recently found:

http://commonwealthlit.blogspot.com [Broken link]

http://weimarworld.blogspot.com [Still works as of March 2018]

http://commonwealthclub.blogspot.com [Outdated link]

Here's an interesting anti-regulation website:

http://overlawyered.com/

And an economics-related one:

http://delong.typepad.com

Dept of Homeland Security's Incompetence

Yet another reason Homeland Security is America's most incompetent government agency:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/21/60minutes/main4625729_page3.shtml

The American government is spending our taxpayer dollars trying to deport wives of Americans, including dead soldiers, solely because their interview did not occur before the unexpected death of the husband. In the 60 Minutes segment, called "Immigrant Widows Left In Limbo," one mother-in-law tearfully says, "This is America." It's heartbreaking to learn just how incompetent the Department Homeland Security is. I am writing my Congresspersons in both the House and Senate.

And here I thought the federal government couldn't top its previous pinnacle of incompetence, which was improperly jailing an innocent man for seven years. Mr. Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian of Algerian descent, was recently released by a judge--who was appointed by none other than George W. Bush himself. For the legal eagles, there's more about the Boumediene Supreme Court case here: The Most Significant Recent U.S. Supreme Court Case.

For even more on Mr. Boumediene, see WSJ, November 21, 2008, A6. The government jailed him for seven years on the basis of a "single, 'unnamed source.'" Basically, our United States government used secret evidence to jail a man on American-controlled soil for seven years, all the while insisting the man was not entitled to a trial. I'm with the mother-in-law featured on 60 Minutes, but I phrase her sentiment differently: "Is this the America we want, where the Department of Homeland Security appears to have no substantive checks on its powers and very little transparency?"

Ted Turner

I was going to post a review of Ted Turner's speech at the Commonwealth Club last week, but someone beat me to it:

http://weimarworld.blogspot.com/2008/11/ted-turner-on-old-media-plus-economic.html

Ted's book, Call Me Ted, is a quick read. It conveys his man-child personality, which masks a fiercely competitive spirit. Although the book is fun to read, the only real way to experience Ted is in person or on video--the book does as good a job of conveying his personality (several friends call him "crazy," and there's a story about him getting down on all fours at a business meeting asking whose shoes he had to kiss to get the deal done), but Ted is a man meant to be experienced in the flesh. Two interesting tidbits:

1. I am a fan of the San Jose Sharks and although our rivals are the Dallas Stars, I hate the Calgary Flames more because of playoff history. Apparently, the Calgary Flames used to be the Atlanta Flames. (page 105 of hardcover edition)

2. CNBC, the now-ubiquitous finance channel, used to be called the Financial News Network (FNN). The FNN was bought for around 100 million dollars by NBC in 1991. Turner was blocked from buying the channel, which he (correctly) believed would complement CNN's international and political coverage. (page 257 of hardcover edition)

Christopher Buckley

I like David Sedaris, Christopher Moore, and Chuck Thompson when it comes to laugh-out-loud funny books. A friend of mine pointed me to Christopher Buckley, who is featured in this month's Commonwealth Club magazine (p. 39):

You may know of the situation of the teenage boy who has to do a report for school on the difference between hypothetical and reality, so he goes to his father one night and asks him if he could give him a hand with it. The father thinks for a bit and he says, "Go ask your mother if she would sleep with a total stranger for a million dollars." So the son goes off and he comes back pretty quickly [and says] the answer is, You bet. So the dad says, "Go ask your sister," and the boy comes back quite lickety-split, and reports the answer as, "Totally." The dad says, "There you go. Hypothetically, we're sitting on two million bucks. In reality? We're living with a couple of hookers."

I think he's modifying something Churchill said, but it's still funny.

Day Trading

Although I've made many, many short-term trades, for the first time in over thirteen years, my brokerage has officially classified me as a "day trader." The exact definition is below:

The FINRA currently defines day trading as purchasing and selling, or short selling and purchasing to cover, the same security on the same day. A pattern day trader is defined as someone who makes four or more round-trip day trades in a five-business-day period, unless this activity is less than 6% of total trading activity in that period.

What happens now? The only differences appear to be 1) I have to maintain 25K in equity ("Pattern day trading accounts are required to maintain minimum equity of $25,000 on any day in which day trading occurs."); and 2) my margin buying power increases.