Weekend Economists Examine Escape Artists and Con Men April 27-29, 2012
As suggested by live-saving DRDU, this weekend we focus upon Houdini and other escape artists--with one notable exception. I refuse to dig up Dick Cheney or any of that Administration. If it comes up in the news, okay. But I think 8 years was more than enough for any 10 lifetimes. And they escaped by cheating, IMO, not by any particular talent or cleverness.
So, what do we know about Harry Houdini?
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRTC5E8tZgz-N-KpeEtfsS1zuZbcJJQxaNJ4YYi-Pkn7P_MvaSrbA
Harry Houdini in 1899. Houdini in 1903 Houdini in 1922.
PODCAST FROM "FRESH AIR" (NPR) WBUR
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2010/11/26/houdini-exhibit-jewish
Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-born American stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice as Handcuff Harry, on a tour of Europe, where he would sensationally challenge different police-forces to try to keep him locked up. This revealed a talent for gimmickry and for audience involvement that would characterise all his work. Soon he was extending his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to hold his breath inside a sealed milk-can.
In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from a special handcuff commissioned by London's Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many suspected that these escapes were fabricated, it is ironic that Houdini was meanwhile presenting himself as the scourge of fake magicians and spiritualists. As President of the Society of American Magicians, he was keen to uphold professional standards and expose fraudulent artists who gave practitioners a bad name. He was also quick to sue anyone who pirated his own escape-stunts.
Houdini made a number of movies, but quit acting when it failed to bring in money. He was also a keen aviator, and aimed to become the first man to fly a plane in Australia, but according to the official definition of sustained flight, he was beaten to it by two others. Even the circumstances of his death were dramatic and mysterious. According to one version, a student in Montreal asked him if his stomach was hard enough to take any blow, to which he replied that it was, whereupon the student rained a series of blows on it before Houdini had had time to tense up. A few days later, he died of a ruptured appendix. But this may have been unconnected, as he had already been suffering appendicitis and refusing to seek medical attention.
Early life
Harry Houdini was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874. His parents were Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz (1829–1892), and Cecelia Weisz (née Steiner; 1841–1913). Houdini was one of seven children: Herman M. (1863–1885) who was actually Houdini's half-brother, by Rabbi Weisz's first marriage; Nathan J. (1870–1927); Gottfried William (1872–1925); Theodore "Theo" (1876–1945); Leopold D. (1879–1962); and Carrie Gladys (born 1882 – unknown year of death) who tragically was left almost completely blind after an accident in her childhood.
Weisz arrived in the United States on July 3, 1878, sailing on the SS Fresia with his mother (who was pregnant) and his four brothers. The family changed the Hungarian spelling of their German surname into Weiss (the German spelling) and Erik's name was changed to Ehrich. Friends called him "Ehrie" or "Harry".
They first lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. From 1907 on, Houdini would claim in interviews to have been born in Appleton which was not true and on April 6, 1874, on the Gregorian calendar or 13 days difference from the Julian calendar (March 24, 1874) in Hungary at that time.
According to the 1880 census, the family lived on Appleton Street. On June 6, 1882, Rabbi Weiss became an American citizen. Losing his tenure at Zion in 1887, Rabbi Weiss moved with Ehrich to New York City. They lived in a boarding house on East 79th Street. They were joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. Weiss became a professional magician and began calling himself "Harry Houdini" because he was heavily influenced by the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, and his friend Jack Hayman told him, erroneously, that in French, adding an "i" to Houdin would mean "like Houdin", the great magician. In later life, Houdini would claim that the first part of his new name, Harry, was a homage to Harry Kellar, whom Houdini admired.
In 1918, he registered for selective service as Harry Handcuff Houdini.
Magic career
Houdini began his magic career in 1891. At the outset, he had little success. He performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as "The Wild Man" at a circus. Houdini focused initially on traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the "King of Cards". But he soon began experimenting with escape acts.
In 1893, while performing with his brother "Dash" (Theodore) at Coney Island as "The Brothers Houdini", Harry met a fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner. Though Bess was initially courted by Dash, she and Houdini married in 1894, with Bess replacing Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis." For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.
Houdini's big break came in 1899 when he met manager Martin Beck in rural Woodstock, Illinois. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Beck arranged for Houdini to tour Europe. After some days of unsuccessful interviews in London, Houdini managed to interest Dundas Slater, then manager of the Alhambra Theatre. He gave a demonstration of escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard, and succeeded in baffling the police so effectively that he was booked at the Alhambra for six months.
Houdini became widely known as "The Handcuff King." He toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, Houdini would challenge local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched. In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. Houdini claimed that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept. In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who alleged that he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he opened the judge's safe (he would later say the judge had forgotten to lock it). With his new-found wealth and success, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000, a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem, New York City.
HOUDINI'S HOUSE STILL STANDS TODAY
http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2011/01/discovering-278-home-of-houdini.html
From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in plain sight of street audiences. Because of imitators, on January 25, 1908, Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded repertoire with his escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him. These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water), riveted boilers, wet-sheets, mailbags, and even the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. Brewers challenged Houdini to escape from a barrel after they filled it with beer in Scranton, PA and other cities.
Many of these challenges were pre-arranged with local merchants in what is certainly one of the first uses of mass tie-in marketing. Rather than promote the idea that he was assisted by spirits, as did the Davenport Brothers and others, Houdini's advertisements showed him making his escapes via dematerializing, although Houdini himself never claimed to have supernatural powers.
In 1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the act had nothing to do with his death. Throughout his career, Houdini explained some of his tricks in books written for the magic brotherhood. In Handcuff Secrets (1909), he revealed how many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied force, others with shoestring. Other times, he carried concealed lockpicks or keys, being able to regurgitate small keys at will. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, moving his arms slightly away from his body, and then dislocating his shoulders.
His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind curtains, with him popping out free at the end. However, Houdini's brother, (who was also an escape artist, billing himself as Theodore Hardeen), discovered that audiences were more impressed when the curtains were eliminated so they could watch him struggle to get out. On more than one occasion, they both performed straitjacket escapes whilst dangling upside-down from the roof of a building for publicity.
For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in vaudeville. For many years, he was the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville. One of Houdini's most notable non-escape stage illusions was performed at New York's Hippodrome Theater, when he vanished a full-grown elephant (with its trainer) from the stage, beneath which was a swimming pool. In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America's oldest magic company. The business is still in operation today.
http://www.martinka.com/martinka/ MARTINKA & CO INC, 85 Godwin Ave, Midland Park, NJ 07432.
He also served as President of the Society of American Magicians (aka S.A.M.) from 1917 until his death in 1926. Founded on May 10, 1902 in the back room of Martinka's magic shop in New York, the Society expanded under the leadership of Harry Houdini during his term as National President from 1917–1926. Houdini was magic's greatest visionary. He sought to create a large, unified national network of professional and amateur magicians. Wherever he traveled, Houdini would give a lengthy formal address to the local magic club, making speeches, and usually threw a banquet for the members at his own expense. He said "The Magicians Clubs as a rule are small: they are weak...but if we were amalgamated into one big body the society would be stronger, and it would mean making the small clubs powerful and worth while. "Members would find a welcome wherever they happened to be and, conversely, the safeguard of a city-to-city hotline to track exposers and other undesirables."
For most of 1916, while on his vaudeville tour, Houdini, at his own expense, had been recruiting local magic clubs to join the SAM in an effort to revitalize what he felt was a weak organization. Houdini persuaded groups in Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City join. As had happened in London, Houdini persuaded magicians to join. The Buffalo club joined as the first branch, (later assembly) of the Society. Chicago Assembly No. 3 was, as the name implies, the third regional club to be established by the S.A.M., whose assemblies now number in the hundreds. In 1917, he signed Assembly Number Three's charter into existence, and that charter and this club continue to provide Chicago magicians with a connection to each other and to their past. Houdini dined with, addressed, and got pledges from similar clubs in Detroit, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cincinnati and elsewhere. This was the biggest movement ever in the history of magic. In places where no clubs existed, he rounded up individual magicians, introduced them to each other, and urged them into the fold.
By the end of 1916, magicians' clubs in San Francisco and other cities that Houdini had not visited were offering to become assemblies. He had created the richest and longest surviving organization of magicians in the world. It now embraces almost 6,000 dues paying members and almost 300 assemblies worldwide. In July, 1926, Houdini was elected for the ninth successive time President of the Society of American Magicians. Every other president has only served for one year. He also was President of the Magicians' Club of London.
In the final years of his life (1925/26), Houdini launched his own full-evening show, which he billed as "3 Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums Exposed".
THERE HAVE BEEN MANY IMITATORS, BUT NONE TO SURPASS THIS MAN. LET'S TALK ABOUT SOME OF THEM AND THEIR NEFARIOUS CONS AND ESCAPES, SHALL WE?
HEY BEN! CHECK OUT THE COIN TRICKS AT MARTINKA & CO. MAYBE YOU CAN ESCAPE THE DISASTER YOU'VE CREATED YET, WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE MASTER.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Federal Reserve balance sheet contains roughly $2.5 trillion worth of Treasuries, Fannie Mae bonds and mortgage-backed securities. But there is one asset the Fed considers invaluable. Credibility.
Most people think the central bank's job is manipulating interest rates, but the Fed is really in the business of making and keeping promises about the economy. Lately the Fed is obsessed with a narrow construction of credibility that is holding back the entire country.
The Fed has fetishized two-percent inflation.
WHO'S AFRAID OF 3%?
The Fed makes a very simple promise: It promises to keep inflation at a certain level every year. That level has changed over the past 30 years, but it's currently around 2% a year. If the economy is running too hot, the Fed raises interest rates. If it's running cold, it lowers rates.
For 30 years, this worked spectacularly. Recessions were rare and shallow. Inflation was low. Then 2008 happened. Even zero interest rates weren't enough to revive the collapsing economy. That's still mostly true now. In fact, our disappointing recovery is in large part the result of a central bank target that no longer serves the economy.
In 1904, the London Daily Mirror newspaper challenged Houdini to escape from a special handcuff that it claimed had taken Nathaniel Hart, a locksmith from Birmingham, five years to make. Houdini accepted the challenge for March 17 during a matinée performance at London's Hippodrome theater. It was reported that 4000 people and more than 100 journalists turned out for the much-hyped event. The escape attempt dragged on for over an hour, during which Houdini emerged from his "ghost house" (a small screen used to conceal the method of his escape) several times. On one occasion, he asked if the cuff could be removed so he could take off his coat. The Mirror representative, Frank Parker, refused, saying Houdini could gain an advantage if he saw how the cuff was unlocked. Houdini promptly took out a pen-knife and, holding the knife in his teeth, used it to cut his coat from his body. Some 56 minutes later, Houdini's wife appeared on stage and gave him a kiss. It is believed that in her mouth was the key to unlock the special handcuff. Houdini then went back behind the curtain. After an hour and ten minutes, Houdini emerged free. As he was paraded on the shoulders of the cheering crowd, he broke down and wept. Houdini later said it was the most difficult escape of his career.
After Houdini's death, his friend, Martin Beck was quoted in Will Goldstone's book, Sensational Tales of Mystery Men, in which he said that Houdini was bested that day and had appealed to his wife, Bess, for help. Goldstone goes on to claim that Bess begged the key from the Mirror representative, then slipped it to Houdini in a glass of water. However, it was stated in the book "The Secret Life of Houdini" that the key required to open the specially designed Mirror handcuffs was 6" long, and thus could not have been smuggled to Houdini in a glass of water. Goldstone offered no proof of his account, and many modern biographers have found evidence (notably in the custom design of the handcuff itself) that the Mirror challenge was prearranged by Houdini, and that his long struggle to escape was pure showmanship. In support of this, it has been reported that the sterling silver replica of the Mirror cuffs presented to Houdini in honor of his escape was actually made the year before the escape actually took place.
This was recently covered in depth on the Travel Channel's "Mysteries At The Museum" in an interview with Houdini expert, magician and escape artist Dorothy Dietrich of Scranton's Houdini Museum.
A full-sized replica of the Mirror Handcuffs, as well as a replica of the Bramah style key for it, is on display to the public at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA. This is the only public display of this style cuff anywhere.
Milk Can Escape
In 1901, Houdini introduced his own original act, the Milk Can Escape. In this act, Houdini would be handcuffed and sealed inside an over-sized milk can filled with water and make his escape behind a curtain. As part of the effect, Houdini would invite members of the audience to hold their breath along with him while he was inside the can. Advertised with dramatic posters that proclaimed "Failure Means A Drowning Death", the escape proved to be a sensation. Houdini soon modified the escape to include the milk can being locked inside a wooden chest, being chained or padlocked, and even inside another milk can. Houdini only performed the milk can escape as a regular part of his act for four years, but it remains one of the acts most associated with the escape artist. Houdini's brother, Theodore Hardeen, continued to perform the milk can (and the wooden chest variation) into the 1940s.
The American Museum of Magic has the “Milk Can” and "Overboard Box" used by Harry Houdini.
Chinese Water Torture Cell
In 1912, the vast number of imitators prompted Houdini to replace his Milk Can act with the Chinese Water Torture Cell. In this escape, Houdini's feet would be locked in stocks, and he would be lowered upside down into a tank filled with water. The mahogany and metal cell featured a glass front, through which audiences could clearly see Houdini. The stocks would be locked to the top of the cell, and a curtain would conceal his escape. In the earliest version of the Torture Cell, a metal cage was lowered into the cell, and Houdini was enclosed inside that. While making the escape more difficult (the cage prevented Houdini from turning), the cage bars also offered protection should the front glass break. The original cell was built in England, where Houdini first performed the escape for an audience of one person as part of a one-act play he called "Houdini Upside Down". This was so he could copyright the effect and have grounds to sue imitators (which he did). While the escape was advertised as "The Chinese Water Torture Cell" or "The Water Torture Cell", Houdini always referred to it as "the Upside Down" or "USD". The first public performance of the USD was at the Circus Busch in Berlin, on September 21, 1912. Houdini continued to perform the escape until his death in 1926.
Suspended straitjacket escape
One of Houdini's most popular publicity stunts was to have himself strapped into a regulation straitjacket and suspended by his ankles from a tall building or crane. Houdini would then make his escape in full view of the assembled crowd. In many cases, Houdini would draw thousands of onlookers who would choke the street and bring city traffic to a halt. Houdini would sometimes ensure press coverage by performing the escape from the office building of a local newspaper. In New York City, Houdini performed the suspended straitjacket escape from a crane being used to build the New York subway. After flinging his body in the air, he escaped from the straitjacket. Starting from when he was hoisted up in the air by the crane, to when the straitjacket was completely off, it took him two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. There is film footage of Houdini performing the escape in the Library of Congress. After being battered against a building in high winds during one escape, Houdini performed the escape with a visible safety wire on his ankle so that he could be pulled away from the building if necessary. The idea for the upside-down escape was given to Houdini by a young boy named Randolph Osborne Douglas (March 31, 1895 – Dec 5, 1956), when the two met at a performance at Sheffield's Empire Theatre.
Overboard box escape
Another one of Houdini's most famous publicity stunts was to escape from a nailed and roped packing crate after it had been lowered into water. Houdini first performed the escape in New York's East River on July 7, 1912. Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so Houdini hired a tugboat and invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, then nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was then lowered into the water. Houdini escaped in fifty-seven seconds. The crate was pulled to the surface and found to still be intact with the manacles inside. Houdini would perform this escape many times, and even performed a version on stage, first at Hamerstein's Roof Garden (where a 5,500-gallon tank was specially built), and later at the New York Hippodrome.
Buried Alive stunt
Houdini performed at least three variations on a "Buried Alive" stunt/escape during his career. The first was near Santa Ana, California in 1915, and it almost cost Houdini his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help. When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his assistants. Houdini wrote in his diary that the escape was "very dangerous" and that "the weight of the earth is killing."
Houdini's second variation on Buried Alive was an endurance test designed to expose mystical Egyptian performer Rahman Bey, who claimed to use supernatural powers to remain in a sealed casket for an hour. Houdini bettered Bey on August 5, 1926, by remaining in a sealed casket, or coffin, submerged in the swimming pool of New York's Hotel Shelton for one hour and a half. Houdini claimed he did not use any trickery or supernatural powers to accomplish this feat, just controlled breathing. He repeated the feat at the YMCA in Worcester Massachusetts on September 28, 1926, this time remaining sealed for one hour and eleven minutes.
Houdini's final Buried Alive was an elaborate stage escape that was to feature in his full evening show. The stunt would see Houdini escape after being strapped in a strait-jacket, sealed in a casket, and then buried in a large tank filled with sand. While there are posters advertising the escape (playing off the Bey challenge they boasted "Egyptian Fakirs Outdone!"
, it is unclear whether Houdini ever performed Buried Alive on stage. The stunt was to be the feature escape of his 1927 season, but Houdini died on October 31, 1926. The bronze casket Houdini created for Buried Alive was used to transport Houdini's body from Detroit back to New York following his death on Halloween.Walmart's Mexican bribery scandal is shining the spotlight on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an obscure law that's become a bane for some of the world's largest corporations...The statute, generally referred to as the FCPA, was passed in 1977 and bans individuals and companies from bribing foreign government officials to win business or influence their decision making. Those who run afoul of the law can face large fines or prison time. For decades after it was enacted, it was barely used. But in the last five years, it has evolved from an obscure vestige of the post-Watergate era into into one of the most talked about and feared laws in America's board rooms.
Just ask Walmart.
CHILD OF THE WATERGATE SCANDAL
There was a time when American businesses didn't fret much about foreign bribery, much less what federal prosecutors might do about it. Rather, it was considered an ugly but necessary aspect of doing business in the graft-plagued developing world. That changed in the wake of Watergate.
The path from Nixon's dirty tricks to the problem of foreign corruption was a bit roundabout, to say the least. At the tail end of the Watergate congressional hearings, a group of business executives testified to making illicit payments to the president's re-election campaign. Their admission perked the interest of Stanley Sporkin, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division, who wondered how those contributions would have been accounted for on the companies' books. He began an investigation, which eventually revealed that the same slush funds used to funnel money to political campaigns at home were also used to pay bribes abroad. The federal inquiry expanded, and more than 400 corporations eventually confessed to collectively making more than $300 million worth of corrupt payments overseas. This wasn't the first time U.S. companies had been caught doling out cash to foreign governments. After giving the Lockheed Corporation a $250 million federal loan guarantee to avoid bankruptcy in 1971, federal regulators discovered that the airplane maker had bribed public officials in Japan, Italy and the Netherlands to win government contracts. The revelations became national embarrassments in the countries where the deals had occurred. The Lockheed affair and the shocking outcome of Sporkin's detective work both contributed to a sense that reform was necessary. As Andrew Spalding, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law, has written, U.S. policy makers worried that such rank corruption would become a Cold War liability both by harming our relationship with allies and by discrediting capitalism. ...The FCPA eventually passed under the Carter administration, making the United States the first country to officially outlaw foreign bribery. The law then promptly faded from memory. Cases were rare and little talked about. However, by the 1990s, old concerns about the law began to re-emerge.
Before the FCPA's passage, its opponents argued that criminalizing foreign bribery would put American companies at a disadvantage against international competitors from countries with looser laws -- some governments actually allowed corporations to deduct their bribe payments from their taxes -- and would discourage them from doing business in corruption-prone parts of the world. In 1995, John Hines, Jr. of Harvard's Kennedy School released a paper arguing U.S. companies were in fact investing less in countries where bribery was prevalent than they might have otherwise. When the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agreed on an international convention against bribery, the Clinton administration pushed Congress to adopt it by arguing it would level the playing field for U.S. businesses, which were allegedly losing $30 billion a year in business to less scrupulous competition. Even after the convention was adopted, the FCPA still remained largely beneath the radar. That changed dramatically in 2007. The graph below, based on annual report by the law firm Shearman & Sterling, shows how the yearly number of Department of Justice cases brought against corporations more than doubled in middle of the last decade.
The penalties paid out by companies also surged, peaking at more than $1.7 billion in 2010.
What brought on the sudden shift isn't entirely clear. The Sarbanes Oxley Act's accounting reforms might have made it more difficult for companies to hide bribes on their books. Meanwhile, the United Nations adopted its own convention on corruption in 2003, and there may have been a sense that the United States needed to show good faith by enforcing its own laws more stringently. If you're to believe comments from Justice Department officials at the time, the Bush Administration simply thought that combating graft was important to the growth of global business. Others have been skeptical of the DOJ's motives. A 2010 Forbes article argued that the only beneficiaries of the government's crusade seemed to be white collar defense lawyers, who reaped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fees from companies conducting lengthy internal investigations... Increasingly, the FCPA has become a tool for American prosecutors to police the world's large multinationals. Corporations whose shares trade on American exchanges are considered fair targets. So are corrupt transactions that pass through American banks. Using that theory, the Justice Department brought a case against against Japan's JPC, a company that, as the Shearman & Sterling report put it, had "no apparent commercial connection with the United States whatsoever." Rather than test the government's arguments in court, and risk criminal convictions for their executives, most companies have chosen to settle using deferred prosecution agreements.
MUCH MORE
HEADS UP: The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index went negative this week (via @ivanthek).
Here's a 3-year look at the index, which tries to capture how well economic data is coming in compared to analyst expectations.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-citigroup-economis-surprise-index-goes-negative-2012-4#ixzz1tLxvXOxX
The index seems to matter.
This fantastic chart from Reuters' Scotty Barber shows the connection between the index and the forward 3-month relative performance of stocks. vs. bonds.
Always wanted to be an It Girl, didn't you, b&r?
A flapper was a girl in the 1920s who was considered to be testing the acceptable behavior of previous generations. In the slang of the period, she was "the it girl." She wore short skirts, bobbed hair, smoked in public, did not obey all the rules of her parent's, listened and danced to the new music known as jazz and rebelled against the norms and morals of the generation of her elders.
Movie career
In 1906 Houdini started showing films of his outside escapes as part of his vaudeville act. In Boston he presented a short film called Houdini Defeats Hackenschmidt. Georg Hackenschmidt was a famous wrestler of the day, but the nature of their contest is unknown as the film is lost. In 1909 Houdini made a film in Paris for Cinema Lux titled Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini à Paris (Marvellous Exploits of the Famous Houdini in Paris). It featured a loose narrative designed to showcase several of Houdini's famous escapes, including his straitjacket and underwater handcuff escapes. That same year Houdini got an offer to star as Captain Nemo in a silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the project never made it into production.
Houdini swims above Niagara Falls in a scene from The Man from Beyond, 1922
It is often erroneously reported that Houdini served as special-effects consultant on the Wharton/International cliffhanger serial, The Mysteries of Myra, shot in Ithaca, New York, because Harry Grossman, director of The Master Mystery also filmed a serial in Ithaca at about the same time. Houdini had nothing to do with "Myra", which treated spiritualism as real, something he never would have approved of. The actual consultants on the serial were pioneering psychic investigator Hereward Carrington and magician Aleister Crowley.
In 1918 Houdini signed a contract with film producer B.A. Rolfe to star in a 15-part serial, The Master Mystery (released in January 1919). As was common at the time, the film serial was released simultaneously with a novel. Financial difficulties resulted in B.A. Rolfe Productions going out of business, but The Master Mystery led to Houdini being signed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation/Paramount Pictures, for whom he made two pictures, The Grim Game (1919) and Terror Island (1920).
While filming an aerial stunt for The Grim Game, two biplanes collided in mid-air with a stuntman doubling Houdini dangling by a rope from one of the planes. Publicity was geared heavily toward promoting this dramatic "caught on film" moment, claiming it was Houdini himself dangling from the plane. While filming these movies in Los Angeles, Houdini rented a home in Laurel Canyon. Following his two-picture stint in Hollywood, Houdini returned to New York and started his own film production company called the "Houdini Picture Corporation". He produced and starred in two films, The Man From Beyond (1921) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923). He also founded his own film laboratory business called The Film Development Corporation (FDC), gambling on a new process for developing motion picture film. Houdini's brother, Theodore Hardeen, left his own career as a magician and escape artist to run the company. Magician Harry Kellar was a major investor.
Neither Houdini's acting career nor FDC found success, and he gave up on the movie business in 1923, complaining that "the profits are too meager". But his celebrity was such that, years later, he would be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 7001 Hollywood Blvd).
In April 2008 Kino International released a DVD box set of Houdini's surviving silent films, including The Master Mystery, Terror Island, The Man From Beyond, Haldane of the Secret Service, and five minutes from The Grim Game. The set also includes newsreel footage of Houdini's escapes from 1907 to 1923, and a section from Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini à Paris (although it is not identified as such).
Victor García, left, Cristina Fernández-Aparicio Ruiz, Albert Girones and Carolina Martínez are among the young professionals who have been drawn to Germany from Spain for employment.
SCHWÄBISCH HALL, Germany — While much of southern Europe is struggling with soaring unemployment rates, a robust Germany is desperate for educated workers, and it has begun to look south for the solution.
In the last 18 months, it has recruited thousands of the Continent’s best and brightest to this postcard-perfect town and many others like it, a migration of highly qualified young job-seekers that could set back Europe’s stragglers even more, while giving Germany a further leg up.
One of those helping forge the new era is Cristina Fernández-Aparicio Ruiz, 36, a newly arrived engineer from Spain, where unemployment just hit a depression-level 24.4 percent. She is working at an industrial company near here, trying to find a way to make a new elevator part mesh with older components.
Her German is spotty. But the company, Ziehl-Abegg, assigned her a mentor who made sure she had someone to sit with at lunch. And if she needed help finding a doctor or going to the supermarket, the company was ready to help with that, too.
With one month to go in the data series, US Total Non-Farm Payrolls have averaged 131.08 million in 2011. The problem is that the US is a Very Large System, and needs growth to support its array of future obligations, primarily Social Security and the debt it incurs to run its military budget, and other entitlements. If you had told someone ten years ago that Total Non-Farm Payrolls would be at similar levels in 2011, that likely would have sounded impossible, or extreme. But the fact is, US Total Non-Farm Payrolls averaged 131.83 million ten years ago, in 2001. The implications for this lack of growth are quite dire. | see: United States Total Non-Farm Payrolls in Millions (seasonally adjusted) 2001-2011.
With less economic growth, and no growth in global oil production leading to permanently higher oil prices, the United States is trying to operate its Empire at previous levels. Now you know why the country along with the rest of West has gone more deeply into debt. The population keeps growing, obligations keep expanding, inputs costs keep rising. But growth keeps slowing. | see: Global Average Annual Crude Oil Production mbpd 2001 – 2011.
Care to forecast the US will return to economic growth, given energy prices and aggregate levels of debt in the OECD nations? Good luck with that. The US could certainly increase taxes, and reduce government spending. But that won’t restore economic growth. How about increasing annual government deficits more rapidly, to double our debt even faster? Good luck with that too. As I have written before, the energy limit and total debt now trump the tiresome argument between Austrians and Keynesians, rendering the conversation moot.
There was a time when many “experts” forecast that oil prices would come back down, and that global oil production would increase. Six years later, you don’t hear much from these people anymore. Their books, asserting there never was or would be an oil crisis, can now be had for .99 cents through used bookstores on the Amazon network. I expect them to be joined by economic revival advocates, no later than mid-decade. Growth in real terms, in the OECD nations, has now basically come to an end.
AND THAT IS WHY, BOYS AND GIRLS, SOLAR IS FINALLY COMING INTO ITS OWN, 42 YEARS AFTER EARTH DAY.
... last week’s address by PIMCO Vice President El-Erian to the St. Louis Fed is one you absolutely MUST not miss. And to save you the trouble of deciphering the economics code words, I dedicate most of this issue to the key points he makes — First and foremost, four of the world’s largest central banks have gone absolutely berserk, running the money printing presses like never before in history:
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) had already been printing money like crazy ever since their bubble economy burst in the early 1990s. So when the debt crisis struck in 2008, the size of their balance sheet assets, which measure the cumulative total of a central bank’s money printing operations, was already the biggest in the world: About 20% of their economy. Then, when the shock waves of the Lehman Brothers collapse struck Japan, what did they do? They stepped up their money printing operations EVEN further — to about 30% of GDP. (See yellow line in chart above.) Other than Brazil in the 1970s or Germany in the 1920s, no other major nation — or group of nations — on the planet had ever gone that far! (Until, that is, Europe, which I’ll get to in a moment.)
Meanwhile …
At the U.S. Federal Reserve, no Fed Chairman in history — not even notorious easy-money advocates like Arthur Burns or Allen Greenspan — had EVER run the money printing presses for any extended period of time. But Fed Chairman Bernanke changed all that. Soon after the debt crisis hit in 2008, he nearly TRIPLED the size of the Fed’s balance sheet from about 6% of GDP to almost 17% of GDP. And in the years since, he has pumped it up even further to about 20% of GDP! (Red line in chart.) The Bank of England (BOE) has mostly been expanding its balance sheet in lock step with the Fed (green line). But in the global race to print money, it’s the European Central Bank (ECB) which has been leading the pack in the past year or so, suddenly expanding their balance sheet from about 20% of GDP to close to 30% GDP (blue line).
This is absolutely massive! Heck, in the 1990s and 2000s, just the money-printing operations by ONE central bank (the Bank of Japan) changed the world: Global investors borrowed abundant amounts of cheap money in Japan and poured it into risky investments around the world, helping to create some of the largest bubbles — and busts — in history. Now, imagine FOUR central banks doing the same thing at the same time! That’s what we have today! And that’s why the folks at PIMCO say it’s so dangerous. PIMCO VP’s Critical Question: What Happens If the Central Banks FAIL in Their Giant Experiment to Cure Global Economic Ills with Paper Money?
The answer lies in three simultaneous disasters:
* Instead of elected leaders running the world, central bankers take the wheel. Presidents and prime ministers become little more than back-seat drivers.
* Instead of a capitalist economy financed with savings, we create a debtist economy financed with paper money.
* Instead of financial markets for prudent investors, we create financial markets dominated by reckless speculators.
Why This Is So Urgent …
You can make money when select investments surge in value — not only because of the money printing but also because they’re solid in their own right. And you can make even MORE money when bubbles burst — as they inevitably do.But there’s one catch …To Make Money in This Bubble-and-Bust World, You MUST Be a Contrarian! You cannot follow the crowd and assume there’s “safety in numbers.” Quite the contrary, it’s the frenzy of crowds that creates the bubbles, and it’s the panic of crowds that brings on the busts. You can’t just jump on a megatrend and stick with it for nearly a lifetime. That may have been possible in the past. But it’s virtually impossible in the bubble-and-bust world of the 21st Century! You can’t expect diversification alone to protect you. Instead, the key to success is to carefully select cream-of-the-crop investments that can survive and thrive even in the worst of times.
Unfortunately, most of Wall Street’s investment “wise men” still don’t get it. Their philosophy, strategy and tactics are largely drawn from their experiences of that big 50-year megatrend of the second half of the 20th Century called “the postwar boom.” But those theories are almost entirely irrelevant to investing today! Far MORE important is the investment wisdom learned in the FIRST half of the 20th Century — a period, which, like today, was dominated by giant bubbles and busts. That’s when my father, J. Irving Weiss — along with his contemporaries — made most of their fortunes. And that’s when such fortunes would have been impossible without Contrarian Investing!
SNYOPSES OF OTHER CONTRARIAN INVESTORS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THEIR STRATEGIES AT LINK
I leave you today with some of his (FATHER'S) words of wisdom:
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix. Eyewitnesses to an incident at the Princess Theater in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini's death was caused by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered a surprise attack of multiple blows to Houdini's abdomen.
The eyewitnesses, students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley), proffered accounts of the incident that generally corroborated one another. The following is Price's description of events:
Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied groggily in the affirmative. In this instance, he was hit three times before Houdini could tighten up his stomach muscles to avoid serious injury. Whitehead reportedly continued hitting Houdini several more times and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain.
Houdini reportedly stated that if he had had time to prepare himself properly, he would have been in a better position to take the blows. He had apparently been suffering from appendicitis for several days prior and yet refused medical treatment. One source states that his appendix would likely have burst on its own without the trauma. Although in serious pain, Houdini continued to travel without seeking medical attention.
When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 °F (40 °C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital.
Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31, aged 52. In his final weeks, he optimistically held to a strong belief that he would recover, but his last words before dying were reportedly, "I'm tired of fighting".
After taking statements from Price and Smilovitz, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.
Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. A statuary bust was added to the excedra in 1927, believed to be the only graven image in a Jewish cemetery anywhere. In 1975 it was knocked over and destroyed. Temporary ones were placed there until 2011 when a group who came to be called The Houdini Commandos from The Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA placed a permanent bust with the permission of Houdini's family and the cemetery. To this day the Society holds a broken wand ceremony at the grave site in November. Houdini's widow, Bess, died on February 11, 1943, aged 67, in Needles, California. She had expressed a wish to be buried next to him but instead was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester, New York, as her Catholic family refused to allow her to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Houdini's death is descripted in 30th episode of 1000 Ways to Die.
Proposed exhumation
On March 22, 2007, Houdini's great-nephew (the grandson of his brother Theo), George Hardeen, announced that the courts would be asked to allow exhumation of Houdini's body. The purpose was to investigate the possibility of Houdini being murdered by Spiritualists, as suggested in the biography The Secret Life of Houdini. In a statement given to the Houdini Museum in Scranton, the family of Bess Houdini opposed the application and suggested it was a publicity ploy for the book. The Washington Post stated that the press conference was not orchestrated by the family of Houdini. Instead, the Post reported, it was orchestrated by authors Kalush and Sloman, who hired the PR firm Dan Klores Communications to promote their book.
In 2008 it was revealed the parties involved never filed legal papers to perform an exhumation.
