Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings July 2017 - 389

occurred in September 1884 and the last in December 1885.
Another murder, similar to those occurring in Austin, occurred
in San Antonio and two others occurred in Gainesville, Texas.
The murders all took place at night, and most of the early victims
were cleaning women who lived in shacks behind residential
houses. Some of the later murders were of prominent women
in the city. Each was brutal. The murderer was never identiﬁed! Similar brutal murders, all of women, started occurring in
London, England, in 1888, and many suspected that the Austin
murderer had moved to London! The London murderer was
never identiﬁed. The book also gives a good description of what
life was like approximately 130 years ago in our state capital.
PEI'S LEGACY IN DALLAS
I. M. Pei turned 100 years old in March 2017 (36). Pei's
architectural feats adorn the city of Dallas. His footprints are all
over the Dallas skyline. He designed Dallas City Hall (1977),
One Dallas Center (1979), Energy Plaza (1983), Fountain Place
(1986), and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (1989).
Pei said of his design of Dallas City Hall: "When you do a City
Hall, it has to convey an image of the people, and this had to
represent the people of Dallas. . . . The people I met-rich and
poor, powerful and not-so-powerful, were all very proud of their
city. They felt that Dallas was the greatest city there was and I
could not disappoint them." Renwei Chung, writing in The Dallas
Morning News, indicated that perhaps the most interesting fact
about the Dallas City Hall structure is that its three front pillars
are purely aesthetic. Pei added the pillars after Mayor J. Erik
Jonsson reacted to the apparent top-heaviness of the building.
The pillars are stairwells that originally had been concealed. Pei
convinced the city to add the 6-acre plaza in front of the building.
The Meyerson Symphony Center was Pei's ﬁrst commission on a
musical auditorium. This city owes this centenarian a big thanks!

GOOD TIPS FOR INVESTORS
Most physicians make enough money so that they are able to
invest in stocks or bonds or properties or other things. Warren
Buﬀett, the best investor in the last 60 years, apparently learned
a great deal from Phillip Carret, who died in 1998 at age 101
(40). Carret's investment career spanned 70 years, and he beat
the market soundly for 55 of those years. After he founded
Pioneer, our third oldest mutual fund, in 1928, his average
annual return was 13%, whereas the stock market over long
periods had annual gains of about 10%.
The following are Carret's famous 12 commandments for
investments. 1) Hold no fewer than 10 stocks covering ﬁve
industries. 2) Reevaluate every stock you own at least every
6 months. 3) Keep at least half of your money in incomeproducing securities, such as dividend-paying stocks. 4) Consider dividend yield the least important factor in analyzing any
stock. 5) Be quick to take losses and reluctant to take proﬁts.
6) Do not put more than 25% of your money into securities
about which detailed information is not readily available. 7)
Avoid inside information as you would the plague. 8) Seek facts
diligently; advice, never. 9) Ignore mechanical stock-picking
formulas. 10) Keep at least half your money in short-term bonds
when stocks are high, interest rates are rising, and business
is prosperous. 11) Borrow money sparingly and only when
stocks are low, interest rates are low and falling, and business
is depressed. 12) Set aside a moderate proportion of available
funds for the purchase of long-term options on stocks in promising companies. He also advised: "Always stay fully invested;
keep your portfolio well diversiﬁed." He also stated that "traders
rarely die rich; patient investors often do." When asked about
the most important thing he had learned about investing over
75 years, he answered "patience."

SOURCES OF RETIREMENT INCOME
Eileen Ambrose, writing in the AARP Bulletin, summarized
the 2014 sources of income for US retirees (38). The information comes from the Social Security Administration and is as
follows: Social Security, 33%; postretirement earnings, 32%;
pensions, 21%; savings and investments, 10%; and other, 4%.
My advice: keep working!

THE WORLD'S BILLIONAIRES
Forbes magazine published its ﬁrst listing of the world's
billionaires in October 1987 (41). That year there were
140 worldwide billionaires. Today, the number is 2043. The
largest number comes from the US. Number two is China, a
distant third is India, and a distant fourth is Russia. A number of countries make up the others. Twenty individuals have
been on every list since 1987, among them Bill Gates, Warren
Buﬀett, H. Ross Perot Sr., and David Rockefeller. No physicians are on that list. Steve Forbes believes, "If governments,
most especially the US, had pursued sensible monetary, physical,
and regulatory policies over the past 40 years, the number of
global billionaires would be 20,000-10 times the 2,043 listed."

CREDIT CARD DEBT
US credit card debt is now over $1 trillion, joining auto loans
and student debt in crossing that level and hitting its highest
mark since 2008 (39). This information comes from the Federal
Reserve. Rising consumer borrowing is often a positive sign for
the US economy, as it typically means consumers are spending
more. US consumers now owe $1.0004 trillion on credit cards,
up 6.2% from a year ago and up 0.3% from the beginning of
2017, and it is the highest amount since January 2009.

YAHOO'S DEPARTING CEO
Marissa Mayer has been at Yahoo as the CEO for nearly
5 years, and now Yahoo is being purchased by Verizon Communications for $4.5 billion (42). Her total compensation
from her tenure will amount to $228 million! The hefty payout
comes despite Ms. Mayer's inability to accomplish what she
was hired to do, namely revitalize the fading Internet icon after
high employee turnover and declining ad revenues. Something
is wrong with receiving a quarter-billion dollars for work done

PHYSICIAN COMPENSATION
Physician incomes have steadily increased over the years. In
2011, the average physician income in the USA was $206,000
and by 2017, it was $294,000 (37).

July 2017

Facts and ideas from anywhere

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings July 2017