Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Monday, April 08, 2013

7 Timeless Margaret Thatcher Quotes for Conservatives

Spotted at RedAlert, seven of the Iron Lady's finest:

Today is truly a sad day for conservatives everywhere as news traveled fast that Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of Britain, has died at the age of 87. But as we mourn her death, we also celebrate the life of one of the most inspirational conservatives of all time by highlighting seven of her most memorable quotes.

Thatcher once said, “I fight on. I fight to win.” Her legacy lives on through these powerful words:

1. “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”


2. “Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.”


3. “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”


4. “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”


5. “My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”


6. “The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.”


And finally (paraphrasing St. Francis of Assisi):

7. “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.”


And Ann Althouse reminds us of another classic retort to liberalism:

"He would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy."


Godspeed, Milady. Godspeed.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Saturday, April 06, 2013

EXCLUSIVE VIEW: President Obama's Teleprompter as He Prepares to Explain the Latest Catastrophic Unemployment Numbers

Biff Spackle captured this snapshot from the White House Press Room prior to a press conference on the economy.


Of course this is satire. Obama will never be questioned by the press about his abysmal jobs record, or what he was doing during the assassinations in Benghazi, or what he knew about EPA administrator Lisa Jackson's unlawful use of cutout email addresses, or why he hasn't fired Attorney General Eric Holder over his arming of the Mexican drug cartels in Operation Fast and Furious.


Friday, April 05, 2013

Larry Elder: Family Breakdown Is At The Root Of Black America's Ills

The brilliant Larry Elder offers us the gut-wrenching results of the Democrat Party's "War on Poverty":

...census reports from 1890 to 1940 show that blacks were actually slightly more likely to marry than whites — therefore their children were slightly more likely than whites to be born into a nuclear, intact family.

Enter President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty." Johnson established "neighborhood centers," whose workers went door to door, apprising people of their welfare "rights and benefits." Welfare rolls exploded — increasing 110% during one three-year period in the '60s.

...Years ago, the late liberal Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., held hearings on the impact of federal government anti-poverty programs known as "urban renewal."

One resident after another testified about government waste, indifference, corrupt politics, overtaxation and the negative consequences of bulldozing old neighborhoods to make way for what became public housing.

An exasperated Proxmire finally said to one witness, "You would probably have better neighborhoods today if there had been no federal programs at all!"

Elder's book is a must-read.

Once I started I could not put the book down so read it in one evening. Without giving too much away, all I can say is that this is not just a book about a strict father and a son who grew up hating him. This is a story for ANYONE, MALE OR FEMALE who was raised by very strict parents. I identfied with many of the situations such as having my father come after us girls with a belt and me running away from home to escape from him.....But this book is more than just this. This book is incredible in that once we find out why Mr. Elder's father was so angry all the time, we come to understand him, sympathize with him and grow to love him for the enormous pains and sacrifices he made and the conditions he was forced to live with as a child growing up in a very ugly time in America. To me, this is a story about redemption, of understanding, of misconceptions due to lack of knowing one's circumstances they had to endure as a child, etc. It's a fabulous read and made me examine my own life and my relationship with my own father. Luckily, as with Larry Elder, I too, found out how much my father loved me and had many many years of a good relationship with him before he passed away.

If you have the time, it's worth a serious read. And a pass-around.


And don't miss: "How we lost the 'War on Poverty'."

Welcome back, Carter: Labor Force Participation Rate Drops to 1979 Levels; Real Unemployment at 11.6 percent

Oh, Madge, he's so historic!

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication [the] U.S. economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work. The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force, which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers.

But the "official" unemployment number dropped, don'tcha know?

Today, we got the laughable news that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force ... declined by 496,000. Which is precisely the issue: fudging the labor force participation rate is how the Obama administration has managed to maintain the myth the economy has grown under his leadership for the past 4+ years. It hasn't, and in fact if one re-normalizes for the recent long-term average participation rate of 65.8%, one gets a very different number. How different? A difference that is now at a record compared to what is reported.
...what the real unemployment rate is assuming normal growth of the labor force, which in March was 11.6%, up from 11.3% in February, and the highest since August 2012 when it was 11.7%.

This month the labor force participation rate plunged from an already horrific 63.5% to 63.3%, which is the lowest since 1979.

The fact that the headline unemployment number "dropped" at the same time is indicative of pure propaganda. Something that Pravda would publish during the days of the old Soviet Union.

It's truly sad what this federal government and its media apparatus has become.


Chart: St. Louis Fed.

Thursday, April 04, 2013

1933: American Cyprus

It's hard to believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to pull this off without an insurrection.

While people around the world may be appalled at the actions of the Cyprus government to close their banks and confiscate a portion of certain accounts, many in America claim it “will not happen here.” Perhaps they are correct for at least the immediate future, but far worse was done to Americans in 1933 and it could happen again.

On April 5, 1933, approximately one month after first taking office, Franklin D. Roosevelt commanded, via Executive Order No. 6102, “All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal reserve bank … all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933[.]”

By his executive order Roosevelt deprived Americans of their property “without due process of law” under the Fifth Amendment. To add injury to insult, he also ordered up to a $10,000 fine or ten years in prison or both for anyone who willfully violated any provision of his executive order.

America was deep into a financial crisis of its own at the time, known as the Great Depression, and his executive order was his chosen method for resolving it...

...In 1933, US paper currency, the Federal Reserve Note (FRN), was backed by gold, which required by law all banks to provide gold on demand to their depositors in exchange for FRNs. Since banks did not hold enough gold to meet the demands of the depositors who had lost confidence in the banks, the banks would have to liquidate their business to pay back the gold they owed.

By making it illegal for American citizens to own gold after May 1, 1933, Roosevelt gave the banks a “legal” recourse to default on their contractual agreements. Roosevelt saved the banks by confiscating the gold from American citizens and having Fort Knox built, at tax payer expense, ... store the gold he stole. His decree, in effect, made the normal, unavoidable uses of money a justification for “the seizure of that money from its rightful owners, in order supposedly to “protect the currency system” of the people based on”[1] the money he was confiscating.

Roosevelt used the term “hoarding” to describe the actions of people who lost confidence in their banks and withdrew the gold they had deposited in them. “What Roosevelt actually had in mind, but did not dare say in so many words, was that as a practical matter “hoarding” meant “withdraw[ing] and withholding” gold from the banks – and that therefore [our] gold could be confiscated in the bank’s interests...

If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, it is because similar actions were taken in the 2008-2009 bank bailouts in the United States. The only difference is that instead of gold confiscated from American citizens, the national government confiscated future earnings via liabilities placed against future tax revenue to bail out the banks.

Why should you care?

Well, earlier today Japan opened up a new front in the currency wars by announcing it will print money at a rate unseen since the days of the Weimar Republic.

The easiest prediction I've ever made? This won't end well.


The Run on Italy's Banks Has Officially Begun

The CEO of UniCredit, Italy's largest bank, says that Cypriot-style "haircuts" on bank deposits are "acceptable". Oh, and that said practice should become a model for salvaging banking executives' seven-figure bonus payments. You know, the same bankers whose investments have literally destroyed the balance sheets of countless financial institutions.

And how have Italians reacted?

Curious why so little has been said about cash flowing out of Italy's banks, especially when even UniCredit's CEO today proudly warned everyone he is all for confiscating uninsured deposits as long as "everyone else is doing it" - and no, he is not kidding, so when it does happen, nobody will be able to say they weren't warned ... Maybe it is because Italian cash is actually not leaving the country at all. Instead, real "wealth" is departing the boot-shaped nation, quietly and under the radar, as fast as it can in another form: gold...

As we can see illustrated in this example of capital flight.

Italian finance police had a lucky find on Easter Sunday during a routine check of a family car crossing into Switzerland: they discovered gold ingots worth about €4.5 million (CHF5.5 million) concealed in false compartments... The car was driven by a 53-year-old Italian resident of the Swiss canton of Ticino, described by the police as the legal representative of a Swiss company.

He was travelling with his wife and three children, apparently going for an Easter trip.

The police decided to examine the car more thoroughly when they saw how nervous the family looked. They found 12 gold bars wrapped up in newspaper hidden under the seats.

The driver “was unable to provide an explanation or to show a legitimate source for this large quantity of precious metal”, the police in Ponte Chiasso said. He and his wife gave “evasive answers”.

The man was immediately charged with money laundering. The ingots and the car were seized. Investigations are continuing into the source and destination of the gold.

There has been an upsurge in the smuggling of gold from Italy to Switzerland in the past few months since the Italian authorities launched a campaign against tax evasion and money laundering.

Truly portable wealth comes in very few forms. Gold has served in that role since the beginning of recorded history. And it has the added benefit of escaping the banksters' clutching fingers, seeing as they're admitting that QE-Infinity has about as much chance of succeeding as Obamacare.

Tyler Durden summarizes with the rhetorical question, "did we mention the confiscated product was gold: not euros, not Cypriot euros, not dollars, not palladium, not bitcoin... gold?"


Wednesday, April 03, 2013

"We mapped the human brain way before Obama's BRAIN Initiative"

The peerless People's Cube mapped the progressive's brain long before President Obama announced his ill-fated, $100 million "BRAIN Initiative" (Sequester? What Sequester?).


In related news, Debbie Wasserman-Schlitz (who was apparently asked to lay low after the DNC got her Q-scores) is whining that "a spare $250 million is a little tough these days."

This is, of course, one of the central nincompoops responsible for $3.2 trillion in "Stimulus" spending (and counting, since the original $800 trillion Stimulus is now baked into the baseline budget).

Washerman-Schlutt has it tough: President Obama, in comparison, is still handing out billions of our money in "green energy" scams, deficits and Sequester notwithstanding.


Ironically Juxtaposed Headlines o' the Day

Hat tip: me.

ING Fights Euro-Zone Woes With Data

April 3, 2013, 7:44 AM ET
Dutch banking giant ING hopes to right its own ship in the middle of this storm by using data to improve not only its understanding of who its customers are, but how they want to be treated. It is using traditional and next-generation data analytics to improve its execution of even the simplest transactions, such as sending out new bank cards, or contacting customers who have forgotten to take their cash out of the ATM using their preferred mode of communication.

If we need to work on consumer trust, then we need to know what influences trust,” ING’s CIO, Ron van Kemenade, tells CIO Journal...

###

Dutch bank ING's online customers find wrong balance in accounts

April 03, 2013 / Reuters
Dutch bank ING was inundated with complaints from retail and business customers in the Netherlands on Wednesday because their online accounts showed incorrect balances.

ING said that it had a problem with processing payments on Tuesday night and that balances online appeared incorrect even though the actual balances in the accounts were not affected. It said the problem was not caused by computer hacking.

Angry customers complained by phone, on social media and in person at bank branches. ING said that it did not know how many customers had been affected.

Reports: ING Bank Accounts Suffering From Catastrophic Errors

Twitter was ablaze earlier today with reports that global super-bank ING was suffering from catastrophic accounting errors, with some Dutch accounts incorrectly showing negative balances and others registering millions of Euros.


Several of the comments (translated by Google):

• "Problem solved. Before you look through - €1.3M"

• "Say # ING, where the f * ck is my money now gone?"

• "Balance for the third time changed today # ING"

• "Thanks ING from € 500, - to € 2,317,650 in the bank. - on the couch! Hope it also remains after jam! # ing # error "


Unconfirmed reports claim that the errors -- along with banking problems at the Netherlands' Rabobank -- are the result of a cyber-attack:

From top level sources I can confirm to you what you are seeing is an emerging pattern of various beta-tests using Stuxnet like algorithms to affect the banking networks the world over.

Although unsubstantiated, the reports have some level of credibility as the global banking system has been under a concerted series of attacks for the last several weeks.


Tuesday, April 02, 2013

The Sublime Genius of Dr. Paul R. Krugman

Oh, my.


Krugman's resume -- including his work with Enron, Fannie Mae, subprime mortgages, the Fed's preternaturally low interest rates, and his Cypriot-style deficit lunacy -- is one only fellow Democrat hack Jamie Gorelick could envy.


Hat tip: Amalaur.

Monday, April 01, 2013

The 6 Economic Charts That Vintage Media is Hiding From You

Business Insider offers 66 charts that are said to worry Wall Street insiders, but these are the six I found most troubling.





The Horrifying Chart I Recommend You Forward to Every Democrat Voter You Know

Along with a polite thank you note. You see, a picture -- along with the appropriate captions -- really is worth 1,000 words:

A. President Obama is inaugurated.

B. President Obama signs Obamacare into law. Thousands of pages of law and tens of thousands of pages of regulations (which have yet to be completed) have thrown large regulatory roadblocks at small businesses and either prevented hiring, forced layoffs or compelled the move of workers from full-time to part-time.

C. President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill into law, which prosecutes not a single banker and also fails to address the cause of the mortage meltdown, Fannie Mae. Just this month, the federal government itself admitted that "no one has any idea what compliance with financial regulations, including the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, actually costs."

D. President Obama signs an Executive Order creating a de facto "DREAM Act" amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States, bypassing a Congress that was unwilling to pass legislation to do so.

And a postscript: Obamacare really doesn't even fully kick in until January 1st 2014. Combined with "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" and untold new EPA regulations headed at energy companies, this administration appears bound and determined to crush entrepreneurship in the U.S.

Gird your loins.


NOT AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE: Most Irresponsible Spender in World History Urges Kids to Learn to Budget

The only man who makes George W. Bush look thrifty by comparison has proclaimed April the month of the year during which we should teach young people "how to budget responsibly". Seriously.

“I call upon all Americans to observe this month with programs and activities to improve their understanding of financial principles and practices,” [President] Obama said in an official proclamation released Friday... “My Administration is dedicated to helping people make sound decisions in the marketplace,” he said.

...The proclamation on the White House website links to two other government websites: the site for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and MyMoney.gov, which includes materials from 21 federal agencies.

Listed among the “popular topics” on MyMoney.gov is “Managing Debt and Credit,” which includes a link to a page on the Federal Reserve’s website called “Getting the most from your credit card.” Tip 2 on that page is: “Stay Below Your Credit Limit.”

When Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009 [the debt of the United States has increased about 60 percent or] $6,140,111,383,879.54... That means that under Obama the federal debt has increased $53,377 for each one of the 115,031,000 households the Census Bureau says there are now in the United States...

As an aside, the President is required by law to submit a proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year during the first week of February. He is two months late in doing so... and counting.

"Sound decisions" indeed. If you're of the Cloward-Piven School, that is.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Hegemony of the U.S. Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency Coming to a Quick and Untimely End [Cary]

Guest post by Lee Cary:

It’s happening incrementally – the unwinding of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. We're seeing trading countries strike reciprocal alignments to exchange each others currencies and not deal in the USD. And it’s picking up speed. Not overnight – but the end of the USD’s dominance is coming faster than we’re prepared for as a nation. And the media is largely silent on the topic. Go figure.

Thanks, World Reserve Currency, But No Thanks: Australia And China To Enable Direct Currency Convertibility

Over the weekend, Australia appears to have come to the same conclusion, with the Australian reporting that the land down under is set to say goodbye to the world's "reserve currency" in its trade dealings with the world's biggest marginal economic power, China, and will enable the direct convertibility of the Australian dollar into Chinese yuan, without US Dollar intermediation, in the process "slashing costs for thousands of business" and also confirming speculation that China is fully intent on, little by little, chipping away at the dollar's reserve currency status until one day it no longer is.

That said, this latest development in global currency relations should come as no surprise to those who have followed our series on China's slow but certain  internationalization of its currency over the past two years. To wit: "World's Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage In Direct Currency Trade", "China, Russia Drop Dollar In Bilateral Trade", "China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System", "India and Japan sign new $15bn currency swap agreement", "Iran, Russia Replace Dollar With Rial, Ruble in Trade, Fars Says", "India Joins Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, Will Transact With Iran In Rupees", and "The USD Trap Is Closing: Dollar Exclusion Zone Crosses The Pacific As Brazil Signs China Currency Swap."


Last week, it was China and Brazil.

China and Brazil agree currency trade deal

China and Brazil have agreed to trade the equivalent of up to $30 billion per year in their own currencies, moving to take almost half of their exchanges out of the dollar zone.

The three-year swap line agreement, signed before the start of a BRICS nations summit in South Africa, marked a step by the two largest economies in the group to change global trade flows long dominated by the US and Europe.


It was suggested as a goal early in the first Obama term when Tim Geithner let it slip (then backed off) that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to happen.


Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Ultimate Survival, Prepper, Economic Collapse and SHTF News Site: BadBlue Prep

You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to recognize that we live in perilous times.

Europe, with its decades of deficit spending and ill-conceived monetary union, is nearing a final reckoning. The United States has passed the historically significant mark of a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, which means an economic decline is all but certain.

Iran will soon deploy its first nuclear weapons, North Korea is threatening ICBM attacks on the United States itself, Russia resembles the old Soviet Union more and more each day, and the People's Republic of China is engaging in a massive military buildup.

We will get through these things: Americans always do. But the possibilities of economic dislocation, market instability, bank runs, and supply chain disruptions are real. And so the choice is simple: do you take simple precautions for yourself, your family, and your neighborhood? Do you anticipate temporary glitches in the fabric of infrastructure we take for granted? Do you plan ahead?

Or are you a drone?

BadBlue Prep -- http://BadBlue.com/Prep -- is a news site specifically designed to keep you current on the news that matters most. From preparing for a natural disaster, to survival skills, and everything in between, BadBlue Prep gives you the critical information you need to stay a step ahead.


Are you ready?


Friday, March 29, 2013

PHOTO: The Creative Genius of the Dependency State

Spotted at Common Sense Post:


Why expend all of that energy standing in line while waiting to get your government check? Just put your flip-flops in line -- that way you get to continue sitting on your butt and playing games on your free Obamaphone.


Thursday, March 28, 2013

Lies, Damn Lies, and "Comprehensive Immigration Reform"

As the "Gang of Eight" secretly negotiates some sort of grand, "comprehensive immigration reform" bill -- in conjunction with La Raza and the government of Mexico -- let's step back for a moment and consider the context:

• The union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been shut out of "negotiations"

• All negotiations are occurring behind closed doors -- in smoke-filled rooms, one would presume -- without any of the traditional legislative process that would permit the public (or most Senators, for that matter) to read and debate the bill

• In back-to-back interviews on Spanish language television, President Obama said that he is "confident that we can get it done" ("it" meaning Amnesty and open borders, one could surmise).

But let's drop back even further. Let's remember some key promises.


Do you recall all of the president's promises regarding Obamacare? How health care premiums would drop by an average of $2,500 a family? How if you liked your health care plan you could keep it? Remember all of the endless, Chavez-like speeches?

Yep, we do. Then please consider the following headlines from the last 24 hours alone:

Federal healthcare law could boost some California premiums by 30%: Los Angeles Times
Health insurance cost expected to skyrocket in 2014 under Obamacare: Times Free-Press
Study: Claims costs that drive premiums will rise 32 percent in under health law: Washington Post
CNN Reports On Rising Health Care Premiums Due To Obamacare: RCP
Health Care Law is Creating a Nation of Part-Time Workers: Free Enterprise

Insurance Prices Could Jump: Wall Street Journal
Health care law changes will be drastic for many: Star Beacon
Health care reform making many woozy: American Farm Bureau
Insurers expect premiums to rise sharply next year for some: UT San Diego
Sebelius: Some Insurance Costs Could Increase When Law Is Implemented: Kaiser Health News

When it comes to the Stimulus, Cash-for-Clunkers, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare and every other exercise in central planning, this president and the Democrat Party in general have a record only the 1962 Mets could love.

Obama makes Pinocchio look like George Washington.


Our Society's New Official Religion

Courtesy of Tyler Durden, Charles Gave describes the parameters of his new belief system.

...my new faith can be understood as follows:

1. Government allocates capital better than the private sector, and should use interest rates, exchange rates, price fixing, price controls or whatever artifice it deems fit to ensure that capital goes to where it is properly directed.

2.. The alpha and omega of the central bank’s proper role is to finance government spending.

3.. Money belongs to the government, as we have seen properly demonstrated this week in Cyprus.

4.. Property rights, the antediluvian obsession of the market fundamentalists, have been subject to a doctrinal revision “the template” as also shown this week in the eastern Mediterranean.

5.. As a result of this new paradigm, asset prices must rise for the foreseeable future so long as Heli I decrees that the money printers keep printing. How can asset prices fall while the US central bank is printing more than $80bn a month? Even the unreformed Bundesbankers will surely grasp that if the European Central Bank did the same thing, the euro's problems would disappear overnight and prosperity would swiftly return to southern Europe, (Really, Germans should not be allowed into politics until they have had a primer indoctrination at either Cambridge or Princeton.)

6.. More money creates more wealth, and more wealth, especially in real estate, creates more jobs—evidence to the contrary in Spain only represents a small setback on this road to happiness. As we all know, a rise in real estate prices leads to a massive increase in productivity, a prerequisite for an increase in the standard of living.

7.. Services or goods provided to the population by the government, borrowing money from the central bank to pay the fellows who produce the goods that nobody needs with money that does not exist, will add tremendously to the GDP. This is a sure sign that the right policy is being pursued.

8.. These goods and services anyway have a higher moral value than the ones produced in the private sector. One should simply compare the "social usefulness" (a favorite notion of Lenin and Stalin) of a nurse versus a hedge fund manager to be convinced. I rest my case.

So from now on, I will buy what the US, UK, French, Spanish, or for that matter Greek governments and central banks tell me to buy. I cannot afford to offend the new clergy. As a market “intellectual” the risks to my social standing, not to mention career prospects, are too high. One day if I keep my nose clean and my thoughts pure, I may just be admitted to the College of Cardinals.

Pity there's no separation of this church and state.


Image: William Banzai.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Stimulus Disease [White]

By Andrew Dickson White

EARLY in the year 1789 the French nation found itself in deep financial embarrassment: there was a heavy debt and a serious deficit...

...It was urged, then, that the issue of four hundred millions of paper, (not in the shape of interest-bearing bonds, as had at first been proposed, but in notes small as well as large), would give the treasury something to pay out immediately, and relieve the national necessities; that, having been put into circulation, this paper money would stimulate business; that it would give to all capitalists, large or small, the means for buying from the nation the ecclesiastical real estate, and that from the proceeds of this real estate the nation would pay its debts and also obtain new funds for new necessities: never was theory more seductive both to financiers and statesmen.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the statesmen of France, or the French people, were ignorant of the dangers in issuing irredeemable paper money; No matter how skillfully the bright side of such a currency was exhibited, all thoughtful men in France remembered its dark side. They knew too well, from that ruinous experience, seventy years before... the difficulties and dangers of a currency not well based and controlled.

They had then learned how easy it is to issue it; how difficult it is to check its overissue; how seductively it leads to the absorption of the means of the workingmen and men of small fortunes; how heavily it falls on all those living on fixed incomes, salaries or wages; how securely it creates on the ruins of the prosperity of all men of meagre means a class of debauched speculators, the most injurious class that a nation can harbor,—more injurious, indeed, than professional criminals whom the law recognizes and can throttle; how it stimulates overproduction at first and leaves every industry flaccid afterward; how it breaks down thrift and develops political and social immorality.

All this France had been thoroughly taught by experience. Many then living had felt the result of such an experiment—the issues of paper money... and there were then sitting in the National Assembly of France many who owed the poverty of their families to those issues of paper. Hardly a man in the country who had not heard those who issued it cursed as the authors of the most frightful catastrophe France had then experienced...

Somone pinch me: Juan Williams actually wrote a couple of paragraphs I agree with (and I'm not running a fever)

Actually, two consecutive paragraphs with which I agree:

Almost 50 years ago, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, the national out-of-wedlock birthrate was 7%. Today it is over 40%. According to the CDC, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for white children was just 2% in the 1960s. Today it is 30%. Among black children, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has skyrocketed from 20% in the 1960s to a heartbreaking 72% today. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock rate, which has been measured for a much shorter period, was below 40% in 1990 and stands at more than 50% as of the 2010 census.


When President Obama tried to speak to this crippling dynamic in 2008, he was basically told to shut up by Rev. Jesse Jackson. The Chicago-based activist said: "Barack was talking down to black people," then he added a vulgar threat about what he wanted to do in response. The moment revealed the high cost of speaking honestly about social breakdown in black America.

One of these days, Williams may even admit that we lost the "War on Poverty."