The advantage of "big data"............

The question arises:  now that gasoline is so much cheaper than several years ago, what is happening to the extra money in consumer wallets (estimated at an average of $700 per year)?   The conventional wisdom has been that we are paying down debt or saving.  Not so fast, says Chase:

"The J.P. Morgan study sifts through data from 25.6 million holders of Chase credit or debit cards, allowing a more detailed look at spending habits from near the end of 2013, when gasoline prices were high, to early 2015, when they had bottomed out."

I would say that having access to the financial behavior of 25.6 million people, and having the computing power to make sense of it all, constitutes a significant advantage.  For the record, Chase's computers believe we are spending most of the "windfall."

Back story here.

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Opening paragraphs...........................

Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall.  One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.  The first was Pete Wolinsky, and unscrupulous private detective I'd met years before through Byrd-Shine Investigations, where I'd served my apprenticeship.  I worked for Ben Byrd and Morley Shine for three years, amassing the six thousand hours I needed for my license.  The two were old-school private eyes, hard-working, tireless, and inventive.  While Ben and Morley did business with Pete on occasion, they didn't think much of him.  He was morally shabby, disorganized, and irresponsible with money.  In addition, he was constantly pestering them for work, since his marketing skills were minimal and his reputation too dubious to recommend him without an outside push.  Byrd-Shine might subcontract the odd stretch of surveillance to him or assign him a routine records search, but his name never appeared on a client report.  This didn't prevent him from stopping by the office without invitation or dropping their names in casual conversations with attorneys, implying a close professional relationship.  Pete was a man who cut corners and he assumed his colleagues did likewise.   More problematic was the fact that he'd rationalized his bad behavior for so long it had become standard operating procedure.
-Sue Grafton, from the Prologue to W Is For Wasted

Paging Mr. Holmes................................

"Detective stories help reassure us in the belief that the universe, underneath it all, is rational.  They're small celebrations of order and reason in an increasingly disordered world."
-P. D. James