Thoughts & Musings from James McNiven
Almost 158 years ago, on the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, as he watched a play. It could have been different. In March of 1858, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was reorganized as the Seneca Oil Company, with New Haven CT banker James Townsend becoming President… Continue reading A Petroleum Strike Might Have Saved Lincoln
It’s really pretty simple. In order for a society to reproduce itself, each woman must have 2.1 children during her fertile period, which normally lasts from, say 14-42 years of age, more or less. This is called a fertility rate, as opposed to a birthrate. A stable population fertility rate is reached by counting one… Continue reading Aging and Economies
Early in 1870, while the Wyoming Governor was away in the East, Edward Lee became the Acting Governor. He, with the legal help of one of the state Supreme Court Justices, appointed three women to vacancies for Territorial Justice of the Peace positions. The terms were shortened in order to put them on a consistent… Continue reading Wyoming, 1870 – The Accidental First Suffragettes: a Political Breakthrough for Women
In essence, the bubble problem is tied to borrowing, that is, to put it [more or less] in the words of a character in the movie Popeye, "If you lend me money for a hamburger today, I’ll pay you back on Monday". Presumably, there would be an extra charge for taking the risk, called interest.… Continue reading Just Bubbling Along
Updated from an earlier version published in May 2017 in factsandopinions.com. Like a lot of people in North America and Europe, I lived through years and years of paying attention to the Soviet Union, and later, Russia. It always seemed to me that this huge country, with the largest land area in the world, and possessor… Continue reading Why Bother with Russia?
I have sometimes used this quip in the above title to describe what went on in much of the American land policy with respect to Native Americans. An awful lot of land was acquired from various ‘chiefs’ who were deemed by the American authorities to have had the legal right to sell property presumably owned… Continue reading ‘I Stole It Fair and Square’
Every inhabited part of the United States is visited by these men. I have seen them on the peninsula of Cape Cod and in the Neighborhood of Lake Erie, distant from each other more than six hundred miles. They make their way to Detroit, four hundred miles farther, to Canada, to Kentucky, and, if I… Continue reading Retailing “Yankee Notions”
I wrote this 6 years ago, before President Trump more or less established the Status Quo Ante in US Cuba relations. This is a lightly revised piece from then. I knew Cuba in the old days before President Obama unleashed the second American invasion of that Caribbean island. This one was not a military one,… Continue reading Havana Dreamin’
In these days of ‘gig’ employment and lots of home delivery options, we may forget why there is a day dedicated to those who work for a living—that is, most of us. In the late 1800s, there was a lot of labour unrest, in part because of long hours, over-controlling bosses, low pay and dangerous… Continue reading A Story for Labour Day
I want to talk about a book I just read, but first some reminiscing is in order. Fifty-seven years ago, in January 1964, I showed up at the Center for Research on Economic Development (CRED) at the University of Michigan. I had had a fairly mediocre academic record for two years as an undergraduate engineering… Continue reading A Big Renaissance
Old Professor by the Sea 