Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Hellenization

THE WALL OF WORRY APPEARS to be flattening? By the numbers, for the week ended Friday, December 11, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,471, up 83 points, or 0.8%. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed at 1106, essentially flat, and the NASDAQ Composite closed at 2190, down 4 points, or 0.2%.



AOL now stands independent of Time Warner. Should be interesting to see how it fares. Retail sales were up 1.3% in November, the third increase in four months, according to the Commerce Department. Goldman Sachs and other large commercial and investment banks are restructuring compensation and bonus structures. Oh well. This is too little, too late, and is most likely nothing more than posturing.


Apple plans to launch a tablet size computing device in early 2010. While Apple products aren’t taken seriously by many in the business community, their cute, easy to use, consumer driven products have certainly helped their bottom line. United Airlines has ordered 50 new wide-body, long haul jets from Boeing and Airbus.


Consumer credit outstanding fell by $3.5 billion in October, the ninth consecutive monthly decline. According to Vanguard economist Roger Aliago-Diaz, household debt in the U.S. jumped from 80% of personal income in 2000, to 110%, just before the 2008 financial crisis.


According to a recent report from the College Board, tuition increases for 2009-10 averaged 6.5% for public schools and 4.4% for private colleges. Are some colleges pricing themselves out of the market? In the category of random thoughts, I’ve wondered over the last few weeks how I would behave if I were 30 years old, and had personal annual cash flow of $50 million?


On a recent Sunday, 57.5% of the Swiss voted for a constitutional ban on the building of minarets attached to the country’s mosques. This vote appears to be notice to the Muslim community that the Swiss will not allow their culture to be overrun by Muslim philosophy and sharia law, as is happening across much of Europe. According to Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University, as reported by David Aikman, “Over the last two decades, Islam has been connected to so many controversial debates, violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, and forced marriage, to name a few, it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this Muslim presence as a positive factor”.


On the death of Alexander the Great, his kingdom was ruled by the Ptolemy’s and the Seleucid’s, who continued the Hellenization of Alexander’s holdings, including the Near East. In 165 B.C., Judas Maccabeus led a rebel army to victory over the Seleucids, freeing the Jews and establishing the Hasmonean Dynasty. This victory, and the subsequent rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, is celebrated each year as Hanukkah. In 2009, the eight day celebration began at sundown on Friday, December 11.


Quote of the week:


“A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, then asks you not to kill him.”


                                                                                                 Winston Churchill

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