Pater Familias

ONE DROP EVERY EIGHT OR NINE YEARS.

Philip — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:19:31 +0000

ONE DROP EVERY EIGHT OR NINE YEARS. There are some kinds of crude oil in California that are extremely viscous. So viscous that at room temperature you can turn a glass container of the crude upside down and no drop will flow out. But perhaps you just have to wait a longer time. Instapundit linked to this description of a science experiment (or, as the Popsci article by Amber Williams notes, a demonstration) that has been running since 1927. The physicist who set it up wanted to demonstrate that “tar pitch, a derivative of coal so brittle that it can be smashed to pieces with a hammer, is in fact a highly viscous fluid.” The tar pitch is kept at room temperature. Every eight or nine years a drop (or “dollop” falls and is collected. No one has ever been there when a drop has fallen., but there is now a webcam focused on the tar pitch. This article has the webcam and a picture of tar pitch which has been shattered by a hammer.

“VAPORIZING” OVER A BILLION DOLLARS.

Philip — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:01:19 +0000

“VAPORIZING” OVER A BILLION DOLLARS. It’s now three months since the MF Global bankruptcy. I posted earlier that, as with the Lehman bankruptcy, it seemed to be amazingly hard to locate the assets. It seems that most Lehman assets were eventually found after a long delay. As for MF Global, this post on Zero Hedge quotes a January 30 Wall Street Journal article by Scott Paterson and Aaron Luchetti. Instead of finding the assets (including customer accounts which were required to be segregated), after three months, the preliminary investigation seems to have determined that about $1.2 billion of assets could have “vaporized” during the week before the bankruptcy filing. The source for the quote is “a person close to the investigation.”

GREECE’S ADVANTAGE IN THE CHICKEN GAME.

Philip — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:00:18 +0000

GREECE’S ADVANTAGE IN THE CHICKEN GAME. One advantage that Greece has in the negotiations with respect to a possible Greek default is that Greece’s moves will not be required until after the deadline. The deadline for the funding from other insitutions that is needed to prevent a default on Greek debt is in March. The spending and other economic reforms that Greece is being asked to make would be made in the future. Thus far, in previous bailout negotiations, the Greeks have promised reforms, but haven’t made them. Now, with very little time to go before the deadline, as this AP article reports, Germany is asking Greece to “temporarily cede sovereignty over tax and spending decisions to a powerful eurozone budget commissioner before it can secure further bailouts, an official in Berlin said Saturday.” The impetus for the German demand is that: “During every verification mission last year, the troika found huge implementation shortfalls….”

BANK PREPARATIONS FOR A EURO DEFAULT.

Philip — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:06:56 +0000

BANK PREPARATIONS FOR A EURO DEFAULT. Gillian Tett says that banks are apparently making some secret contingency plans to deal with a euro breakup—plans that are kept secret just as the plans to deal with a U.S default were kept secret last year. Although there is an estimated 20% to 25% probability of a default event for the Euro, and although the default would be more serious than the “technical default” that the U.S. was facing (and may yet face again), Gillian Tett reports that apparently the preparations by European banks for a Euro default are less extensive than they were for the possible U.S. default. She thinks that European leaders would do well to study the planning that was made for the dollar.

HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT.

Philip — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:01:56 +0000

HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT. Gillian Tett describes how large banks in the United States made preparations in 2001 for a possible United States technical default which might have resulted from the Congressional impasse over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Banks stocked their cash machines with as much currency as they could. The largest banks were supposed to have spent about $50 million rewriting contracts to take account of a possible default. There were detailed discussions at senior levels about the problems both with other banks and with federal regulators.

MORE LOOKING AT THE FUTURE IN TERMS OF PROBABILITIES.

Philip — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:26:03 +0000

MORE LOOKING AT THE FUTURE IN TERMS OF PROBABILITIES. I was of course pleased to see a report by a good journalist which expressed the opinions of informed professionals. The article gives a useful idea of the range of uncertainty about what will happen with the euro. The same week, as this article in the Economist reports, the Federal Reserve Bank began publishing the predictions of all the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (the main policy making body of the Fed). The accompanying chart shows the great divergence of the 17 policymakers. For 2014, 5 of them think the appropriate federal funds rate will be greater or equal to 2%; 9 think it will be less than 1%. In the context of extremely low interest rates, the predictions reflect considerable uncertainty as to the course of the next three years.

A 25 % CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT?

Philip — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:24:19 +0000

A 25% CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT? In the Financial Times for January 27, Gillian Tett had the kind of article that I would like to see more of. She apparently talked to a number of senior bankers in Davos Switzerland for the big meeting and asked for their probability estimates for the breakup of the euro. The estimates are in the 20% to 25% range. The chance of the eurozone “muddling through” is thought to be about 70%. Kids, when I posted here almost two years ago about the possibility of the euro being threatened, the idea was startling enough to me that I reminded you (and myself) that we had had euros in our wallets.

CLARK GABLE AND THE 50TH BIRTHDAY.

Philip — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:44:41 +0000

CLARK GABLE AND THE 50TH BIRTHDAY. Adela Rogers St. Johns told me that she was on a television talk show once which was interrupted when Clark Gable telephoned in. He told the host to ask her about her 50th birthday. … Continue reading →

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON MISTRESSES.

Philip — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:42:59 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON MISTRESSES. Adela Rogers St. Johns had a theory, based on her reading, that all the great mistresses were great clowns. She said that she had Marion Davies in mind as the best example of the theory. Marion Davies was the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, and Ms. Rogers knew her well. In addition to her reading, living in Hollywood exposed her to a lot of mistresses.

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON DEFENDANTS IN CAPITAL CASES.

Philip — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:40:19 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS ON DEFENDANTS IN CAPITAL CASES. Earl Rogers only lost 3 out of the 77 murder cases he tried. His daughter said that every one of people that Rogers defended in capital cases was broken by the … Continue reading →

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS.

Philip — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:39:24 +0000

ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS. I posted here that Bill James believes that Clarence Darrow was guilty of bribing a juror and added that Earl Rogers, Darrow’s defense lawyer at Darrow’s trial for bribing the juror, also believed he was guilty. I had an independent reason for saying that. Kids, I spent 10 to 15 happy evenings having dinner with Adela Rogers St. Johns, who was the daughter of Earl Rogers. I have just checked her wikipedia entry; since she was born in 1894, my impression that she was in her mid 80′s when I knew her was correct. (You can wee her playing herself in Warren Beatty’s movie Reds.) She told me lots of stories about old Hollywood and about her father’s trials. I met her in the coffee shop of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She was living in one of the separate cabins on the grounds of the hotel which were highly sought after. We came to have dinner in the coffee shop most evenings while I was there. In one of our dinners, she told me that she had overheard Darrow telling her father that he was guilty of bribing the juror.

WAS CLARENCE DARROW A JURY TAMPERER?

Philip — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:34:59 +0000

WAS CLARENCE DARROW A JURY TAMPERER? John Farrell had an article in the Smithsonian (December 2011) which asked that question. Farrell has written a book which concludes that he did. Darrow was defending two unionists who were charged with setting off a bomb at the Los Angeles Times building in 1911. Twenty printers and newsmen were killed by the blast. Darrow’s chief investigator was arrested passing $4000 to a prospective juror; the investigator turned state’s evidence against Darrow. Darrow was charged with two separate counts of bribery which were tried separately. He was represented in both trials by Earl Rogers, a legendary defense attorney. Darrow was acquitted in one trial and the other resulted in a hung jury. Farrell has discovered a 1927 letter from Darrow to his son, Paul, instructing him to pay $4,500 to Fred Golding, a juror in Darrow’s first trial for bribing the juror in the bombing case. Farrell notes that $4500 would be equivalent to $55,000 today and asks: “Did Darrow bribe a juror while on trial for bribing jurors?” The Smithsonian article has a photo of Darrow’s letter to his son.