Private Equity

Private equity investors are different from venture capitalists, who provide a cash infusion to small startups and hope they blossom into the next Facebook. Nor are they stock traders making split-second decisions to buy or sell shares in public companies. Rather, private equity funds aim to take control of a business for a relatively short time, restructure it and resell or liquidate the company at a profit.

It is mariner’s opinion that private equity firms are the most evil and destructive element of uncontrolled capitalism. The impact on local newspapers across the country has been in the news. Small newspapers are disappearing because of private equity take-overs.

It is a form of thievery. Mariner knows about four billionaires who bought a bank and immediately foreclosed on every mortgage – creating great financial hardship for homeowners. The billionaires either received immense amounts of cash when property owners could pay off their mortgages or took title to properties well below their market price. The event was a tragedy for mortgage holders and demonstrates the disregard of private equity for any form of moral behavior.

Propublica reports that private equity manages over six trillion dollars in the US economy. The Congress, of course, does not attempt to change the tax structure advantages.

An unexposed impact of private equity is the disregard for employees who are summarily laid off, fired, and whose retirement benefits are redirected to private equity.

Does the reader have a hobby?

Ancient Mariner

Cars learn more than students

֎ Politico – Cars are capable of amassing data on nearly every aspect of a drive, from road conditions to whether or not you’ve gained weight since the last time you sat in the driver’s seat. If you connect your phone to the car’s Bluetooth system, it’s also capable of knowing your contacts.

And while most of the data that cars collect is about the vehicle itself, like the engine temperature or the tire pressure, there’s a growing market for more personal driver data, such as the driver’s name and location, driven by industries like insurance, marketing and car repairs.

Where are mariner’s ponies when he needs them? As far as he is concerned, his 2002 Silverado just went up in value.

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We may think we’re smart, maybe . . . But we certainly aren’t educated.

Mariner’s wife found this British test given to 11-year-olds for acceptance to higher education schools. Having read the test, one wonders what school children do all day in today’s schools.

֎ As a service to Spectator [magazine] readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

  1. Write out in your best handwriting:-

‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o’ Dee.’

The western wind was wild and dank with foam,

And all alone went she.

 

The western tide crept up along the sand,

And o’er and o’er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land –

And never home came she.

  1. Parse fully ‘And call the cattle home.’
  2. Explain the meaning of o’ Dee, dank with foam, western tide, round and round the sand, the rolling mist.
  3. Write out separately the simple sentences in the last two lines of the above passage and analyse them.
  4. Write out what you consider to be the meaning of the above passage.

GEOGRAPHY

  1. On the outline map provided, mark the position of Carlisle, Canterbury, Plymouth, Hull, Gloucester, Swansea, Southampton, Worcester, Leeds, Leicester and Norwich; Morecambe Bay, The Wash, Solent, Menai Straits and Lyme Bay; St Bees Head, The Naze, Lizard Point; the rivers Trent and Severn; Whernside, the North Downs, and Plinlimmon; and state on a separate paper what the towns named above are noted for.
  2. Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from?
  3. Name the conditions upon which the climate of a country depends, and explain the reason of any one of them.
  4. Name the British possessions in America with the chief town in each. Which is the most important?
  5. Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?

LATIN

  1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of:- operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.
  2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque.
  3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.
  4. Give in columns the perfect Indic. and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo.

Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.

  1. Translate into Latin:-
  2. The general’s little son was loved by the soldiers.
  3. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
  4. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
  5. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.
  6. Translate into English:-

Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.

ENGLISH HISTORY

  1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?
  2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.
  3. State what you know of – Henry II’s quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.
  4. What important results followed – the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?
  5. How are the following persons connected with English History,- Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?

 

ARITHMETIC

  1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.
  2. Add together £132 4s. 1d., £243 7s. 2d., £303 16s 2d., and £1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)
  3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles, &c.
  4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.
  5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at £5 3s. 71/2d. each.
  6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.
  7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s., and 16 sheep cost £22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.
  8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.
  9. Simplify 183/4 – 22/3 ÷ 11/5 – 31/2 x 4/7.
  10. Find the square root of 5.185,440,100.
  11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 11/2ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.
  12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to £108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?

These papers were kindly sent in by Humphrey Stanbury, whose father took the exam, and passed.

https://rense.com/general75/pass.htm

[The next post will present a standard 1954 civics test on the U.S. Constitution. Most schools no longer teach civics – perhaps one of the reasons democracy is threatened today.]

Aging

Before we start, here’s a headline for the reader:

122 candidates running for election in November believe the 2020 election was stolen. Yes, Virginia, democracy is in great danger.

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֎ Mariner’s wife came across unusually good coverage of a looming issue that gets little press. Published by Forbes, the article[1] discusses the related issue of shrinking population versus today’s attitude toward older people.

It is true that most wealthy nations have shrinking populations. Population size is measured by the fertility rate (the total number of children that would be born to each human female if she lived to the end of her child-bearing years). For a population to sustain its numbers, the fertility rate must be 2.1 children per female. China has a fertility rate of 1.15, Australia and the United States have rates of 1.6 and Japan has a rate of 1.3.

As the average age of the population grows older, there are fewer women of child-bearing age. The average age of a US citizen has risen from 29.5 in 1960 to 38.6 today. It is frustrating to some that the very antidote for falling population is immigration – both mathematically and economically. Racial prejudice is a damaging phenomenon.

Associated with the shift in average age is the impact it has on the workforce. The UN suggests there will be around 30 million fewer people of working age in the world’s five largest economies. Changing the general attitude toward older people being inept and brain-dead will be difficult. Research has shown retired folks to be quite capable although some jobs involving strength or dexterity may have to be modified. Further, as the tech industry already has learned, older folks aren’t as interested in new technologies –they are rife with Luddites like mariner.

This issue will grow slowly, like a 1950 Ford reaching 90 miles per hour. It is growing slowly now but will become a serious, rapidly interfering issue in a few years.

Ancient Mariner

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2022/07/25/shifting-our-aging-society-from-a-burden-to-an-asset/?sh=1b91126e2756