Choking on Gresham’s Law

Yup. A trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there; first thing you know we'll be talking about real money. (more...)

A Crazed Start

2010 is upon us and it's an exciting start to a new year. What will the year bring? Using history as our guide we'll get a new beginning full of promise, hope and certainly the unexpected as well as the crazy, bizarre and demented behavior of those around us. In past years others have documented this type of behavior (e.g., the Darwin Awards) and, of course, you have to ask, "What were they thinking?". The usual response?" It seemed like a good idea at the time!"

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6 Billion & Thriving?

Devastation. Destruction. Extinction. Oblivious to the end the human plague marches boldly forward covering the planet and consuming all that stands before it. Rising from near extermination it's a powerful epic struggle for survival whose heroic success has unfortunately sown the seeds of our own demise. As Pogo has astutely observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

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Consumption, VAT’s dat?

I've written before about the plight of American industry, how this plight affects the country and its industrial base, and how it can possibly be addressed. I'll not repeat those arguments here but instead focus on just one aspect of that plight. Sadly and regrettably learn more »

Abortion, Contraception, Morals & Rights

Rancor, character assignations, and selfishness that, unfortunately, is what I all too often find in trying to research these contentious issues and the situation saddens me. For some time now these issues have bothered me. I couldn't (still can't fully) sort out the various issues from the sound bites and PR slogans. Hoping to gain enough insight (more...)

Regulation or Strangulation

Personally I prefer my food to be healthy and not poisoned or contaminated and products that are reasonably safe which will not blow up, catch on fire or otherwise harm me or my children. Thus I'm all for some official (and effective) cultural/economic regulation as long as it doesn't strangle the economy. read why and how

The Naked Economy

"Look, the economy has no clothes", we marvel as we watch unemployment grow, watch our life savings evaporate before our eyes, and see crisis after crisis evolve.

"What? " you protest. "Things can't be that bad. Don't we know more than ever about running an economy. Surely this is really just a minor bump and those in charge will fix things! In fact aren't things starting to get better."

Oh yeah, you go on believing that fairy tale and while you're at it buy some swamp land in Florida to retire on. As Abe Lincoln once said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Maybe so, but apparently you can fool the people for a long time, long enough it seems to create an economic disaster.

Throw the Rascals out!!

Banks in trouble, high unemployment, poor paying jobs, the housing market in shambles, credit crunches, our infrastructure falling down - the list goes on and on and on. What an economic mess we're in. And I think it is much worse than is reported. Why? Well, let me elaborate: