"Where are we going, Bake?" asked Bush
"We're going to heaven," said James A. Baker
"That's where I want to go." said Bush
--George Herbert Walker Bush. November 30, 2018
"We're going to heaven," said James A. Baker
"That's where I want to go." said Bush
--George Herbert Walker Bush. November 30, 2018
Faith and Longevity I love to hear centenarians relate the secret of their long healthy lives. Especially when they say something like "Good cigars and cheap whiskey!" But as a physician, I have to be more scientific.
The late President George Herbert Walker Bush serves as an example of just such scientific data. There is now a large body of research confirming the benefits of regular church attendance on quantity. . . https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/living-longer . . . and quality of life https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/religious-upbringing-adult-health/ https://ifstudies.org/blog/religious-service-attendance-marriage-and-health Is it the opportunity church life provides to connect and serve? The values learned from scripture? Or is it the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of individual believers? Whether these benefits relate to natural or spiritual influences cannot be determined, but the association is clear and consistent. (By the way, The Eagle FINALLY ran a religion section article from a local evangelical pastor. It is a good review of the related topic of free will vs materialism: https://www.theeagle.com/news/faith_and_values/values-based-in-spiritual-source-of-free-will/article_5a14efc2-7fa5-5879-9045-01b1fae2203c.html) Senator Dole's salute moved us because it symbolized the end of The Greatest Generation America will ever know. Their simple, humble values were rooted in family, church and community. Yet, they were strong enough to endure the Great Depression and literally save the world. Just how much have those values changed in the past half century? Consider that George's father, Senator Prescott Bush, refused to endorse his political ally Nelson Rockefeller for president due to the latter's divorce. There was no workplace sexual misconduct scandal or Playboy mistress. Just a belief that we shouldn't come to the point "where a governor can desert his wife and children." George Bush spoke frequently of the importance of faith, family and community service. These were influences that marked him from an early age and stayed with him throughout his long and prosperous life to his final moments on this earth. While faith and church attendance are not magic talismans guaranteeing longevity and happiness, they do appear to provide us and our families a measure of protection from the forces at work against us. One more reason to celebrate a life lived long and well. 
SHIP's Work in El Salvador to Grow There was a LARGE increase in support for www.shipinternational.org at this year's fundraising luncheon. MANY more Salvadoran kids will benefit thanks to the generosity of this community. Again, I can't think of a better way to address this current immigration crisis than this local Christian ministry which is providing safe, quality education to vulnerable children.
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Aggie Football in Review In August I told you we'd beat LSU (check) and finish the regular season 8-4 (check) thanks to starting QB Kellen Mond (check) and an improved Aggie defense (check). I missed calling every game right by a scant 130 miles--the distance between Clemson and Columbia, South Carolina. And the total point differential was five for those two games.
The Beagle was guilty of a premature, mid season Kool-Aid bath, predicting a Chik-Fil-A or Sugar Bowl match-up with tu, only to be drowned out by those cowbells. No matter, we will still finish ahead of the not-our-rivals in the final polls and recruiting rankings. Despite our not-NFL-secondary going against a future NFL QB at NC State, expect the Aggies to pressure and cover well enough to win and find ourselves on everyone's pre-season top 10. But don't buy into the play-off talk. . .until 2020. Market to Crash Before Next Recession! Yes. It will. But by the time we realize the recession has begun, most of the market losses will have already occurred. Yet a bear market does not always lead to the recession it is predicting. So much for the value of anyone's market predictions.
Speaking of which The Beagle began the year warning that at times like these investors become enamored with market returns, while discounting the possibility for losses. The correction (though no bear market, yet) shortly followed. So what to do for the next year? No one has any idea. But the next 10 years are, counter-intuitively, more predictable. As always, stocks will have a high probability of outperforming bonds--but which stocks? And here I think the theory that the markets are efficient machines, accurately valuing all assets based on all available information might have a small chink it it's armor. Because the difference in valuations between the US and international (and the emerging markets in particular) are extreme. While this has little predictive value for the next year, it has significant value for the coming decade. If you haven't maintained at least 1/3 of your stock investments overseas and at least 1/3 of that allocated to emerging markets, you are taking on too big of a risk that companies domiciled in our 25% of the world's economy will continue to outperform. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/24/infographic-heres-how-the-global-gdp-is-divvied-up/ Asia alone comprises 34% of the world's economy. Add in the emerging markets of Latin-America, eastern Europe and Africa and you have almost half the global GDP and most of the global economic growth occurring in the emerging markets. So don't neglect to keep at least 10% of your long-term portfolio here just because you can get burned--like you did in 2018. Life Lessons from the Seven OT Game In just the past three years, Aggies can claim two of the most improbable comebacks in the history of college athletics. Experts calculated the odds of a basketball team winning after being behind by 12 points with 35 seconds to play at 1 in 3,000.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-were-the-odds-of-texas-am-comeback-over-northern-iowa/ Similarly, ESPN's tracking of play-by-play, in game probabilities showed that when Kellen Mond's knee was ruled down, LSU's odds of winning the game fell from 100% to 99.7%. If you left Kyle Field at this point, you should at least take some comfort in knowing that your math skills are intact. Feel free to print out a hard copy of this issue of The Beagle so you can roll it up and swat the nose of the next Aggie that tries to tell you what chokers we are. Experienced this historic game with two of my kids who also learned some valuable life lessons in the process: 1) When dropping from a wall onto the playing surface--no, that's not it. . . 1) If you leave when your team looks hopelessly behind, you will miss ALL of the great comebacks. (A corollary to this is that if you skip all the games where we are big underdogs, you will miss ALL of the great upsets) 2) Until there's zeros on the clock, I told them to "Never give up, never give in, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,-in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." OK, that was Winston Churchill. http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~jcslee/poetry/churchill_nevergivein.html Or as P.H. DuVal Jr '51 said in The Last Corps Trip: I've seen them play since way back when, And they've always had the grit; I've seen 'em lose and I've seen 'em win, But I've never seen 'em quit. |