Category: Aggregated

As readers and writers, we’re intimately familiar with the dots, strokes and dashes that punctuate the written word. The comma, colon, semicolon and their siblings are integral parts of writing, pointing out grammatical structures and helping us transform letters into spoken words or mental images. We would be lost without them (or, at the very least, extremely confused), and yet the earliest readers and writers managed without it for thousands of years. What changed their minds? In the 3rd Century BCE, in the Hellenic Egyptian city of Alexandria, a librarian named Aristophanes had had enough. He was chief of staff … Continue reading →

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the investment journal «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of ever more extreme central bank policies and bets on the comeback of gold. The global financial markets are under severe stress. The postponed interest rate hike in the United States, the fast cooldown of the Chinese economy and the crash in the commodity complex are causing a great amount of unease among investors. Fear is growing that the world slips into recession. «Central bank policy is intended to paper over the cracks in the systems. Seven years after the outbreak of the financial … Continue reading →

My friend Carolyn recently retired as a secretary of the business school at Loyola where I am employed as a professor. She was one of the sweetest and kindest persons I have ever met, and very helpful to me when I first arrived at Loyola in 2001. I didn’t know her husband Rodney all that well, but on the few occasions that I met him, he was the perfect match for her: also a lovely human being (I had a kinship with him as he and I were almost exactly the same age). As Murray Rothbard would have said of … Continue reading →

The Pope gave a speech to a joint session of the US congress.  It is worth examining the lies of commission and the lies of omission.  I will not comment on his statements that are contrary to the NAP – or even violations to the US Constitution; this post will already be long enough without having to comment on virtually every line of the speech.  For clarification, the Pope’s words will be in italics. I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. … Continue reading →