#investment – @nickkahler on Tumblr

For decades after its creation in 1952, the NSA — No Such Agency, in the old joke — was seen as all but leakproof. But since Mr. Snowden flew away with hundreds of thousands of documents in 2013, that notion has been shattered. The Snowden trauma led to the investment of millions of dollars in new technology and tougher rules to counter what the government calls the insider threat. But NSA employees say that with thousands of employees pouring in and out of the gates, and the ability to store a library’s worth of data in a device that can fit on a key ring, it is impossible to prevent people from walking out with secrets.

Scott Shane, Nicole Perlroth, and David E. Sanger, “Security Breach at the NSA,” 2017

nickkahler

The car emerged with an orchestrated push by the auto industry, and its reign was paved by a rising demand for gasoline and government investment in highways, roads, and zoning regulations. Similarly it was a democratic drive, with legislation to follow, that gave us sanitation laws and cleaned up our streets.

Brandon Keim, "Did Cars Save Our Cities from Horses?" 2014

nickkahler

Suppose, now, that a sum of money at the time of Christ had been left at 2% compound interest; for example the thirty pieces of silver off Judas. By what factor would it have multiplied up to the present time? We are approaching the year 2000 and in order to express our result in round numbers let us suppose that we are at the year 2000. Then one dollar at the time of Christ would amount, at 2%, to a quantity with over ninety-seven zeros. At any conceivable scale of evaluation one cent at the time of Christ put in a bank at 2% compound interest would amount to something like 10 to the 84 times all the value of the goods in the world at the present time. This is ridiculous, but it still has meaning.

Norbert Wiener, Vita Mathematica, 1989

#norbert wiener #interest #money #investment #economics #christ #jesus #mathematics #math #quote