FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

How did you put together all those predictions?

How is the CPI calculated and what's wrong with it?

• The offical government CPI FAQ on how its calculated, etc.
• Some of the issues we have with it under stating what is actually happening and the way its incorrectly calculated are:
  1. It is frequently incorrectly called or promoted or understood as a cost-of-living index, and was not designed for that purpose.
  2. Most taxes are not included.
  3. Substitutions are done when something goes up. If beef goes up and chicken doesn't for example, chicken prices are used instead of beef prices.
  4. On housing prices, something called "homeowners equivalent rent" is used even though over 2/3 of the people in the US live in a non-rented home, so any large increases in housing prices are not included.
  5. It does not attempt to measure a standard of living.
  6. It does not address many changes in health care, quality changes in products included, water and air quality, crime levels, consumer safety, or educational quality to name a few.
  7. Political bias exists to keep it lower than actual since many government payments are based on it.
  8. Various other statistical errors and biases.
  9. See hedonics, which also applies.
  10. Comparison of CPI rates before & after Boskin Commission changes were implemented, courtesy of Financial Sense.
  11. For a much more detailed discussion of this issue, see The Core Rate.
  12. One specific from June 2005 statistics; the CPI component for gasoline showed a 6.9% increase since June 2004, while the actual retail price was up well over 20%.

How does one know when to sell during a mania?

1. Study past manias to help identify them. See the false data page for examples.
2. Notice that prices usually go almost vertical in the last stage.
3. Notice that at the peak "everybody" thinks its a sure thing.
4. Notice that they can go far beyond what any rational interpretation would allow.
5. Use technical analysis and especially trend lines on a price chart that represents the item.
   For U.S. housing for example, the Philadelphia Housing Index and the Dow Jones REIT Index work for us.
6. When the item jumps the amount of the low from which the run started in a single month, week, and then finally a single day, it's very close to the end.

How does one identify a mania?

1. Extremes of popular, positive investor sentiment–the general belief that the price can only go up.
2. Core Beliefs that are based on fact, such as the value of the Internet during the Internet bubble, that drive early adopters into the market.
3. Apocryphal Beliefs that are later invented by those who are benefiting the most from the bubble, such as investment banks and venture capital firms during the Internet bubble, but readily accepted by everyone else who is also benefiting–to explain extreme price increases that go far beyond the level justified by the Core Beliefs.
4. A well developed system of sales, marketing and distribution, that includes the mainstream press, and employs an army of analysts, consultants, lawyers, accountants, and so on, all of whom adopt first the Core Beliefs and later buy into the Apocryphal Beliefs.
5. A duration that exceeds the warnings of bubble spotters by months or even years.

How are markets manipulated?

The 7 factors are required to develop a financial panic

What are the purposes of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy?

How about some basic & simple data on "peak cheap oil"?

• Peak oil does not mean running out of oil.
• Peak cheap oil does mean running out of 'inexpensive' oil.
• The planet Earth does have limited resources (they're not infinite in other words).
• Peak oil does mean that the total world production of conventional oil has occured or will occur.
• Oil companies can do nothing about increasing the actual quantity of oil available in planet Earth.
• Oil companies are neither 100% black or evil nor 100% white or good.
• In 1956, the geologist/geophysicist King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970's.
• U.S. oil production peaked in 1971.
• In 1956, the geologist/geophysicist King Hubbert predicted that conventional *world* oil production would peak in roughly the period 2005-2010.
• Many facts are in dispute. Some facts are just plain unavilable and some are subject to significant "spin".

How is money created in the U.S.?

1. The system of fractional reserve banking.
2. The Federal Reserve, by virtue of its ability to set certain interest rates, can encourage or discourage borrowing and therefore affect item #1.
3. The Federal Reserve doing open market operations.
4. Banks and the U.S. Treasury borrowing from the Federal Reserve via the Discount Rate or the Fed Funds Rate, and the Federal Reserve creates the money via a book keeping entry. Then #1 above applies. When the U.S. Treasury receives money from the Federal Reserve, this is usually also known as "monetizing the debt".
5. The Federal Reserve can also affect banks needs for funds via changes in reserve requirements, directly causing an effect on the fractional reserve system. Note that bank reserves plus currency in circulation is tracked by the monetary base.
6. Via tools such as the buying and selling of repos they can affect short term supply of and demand for money, and thereby affect #1.
7. Loopholes in banking laws and regulations allow certain types of lending and borrowing actions that are not subject to reserve requirements or reporting or oversight, so money can be created easily and in large quantities by simply moving it around in the financial system.
   • Government sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae borrow money very cheaply and then lend it out. They act similarly to a bank and item #1 applies again.
     (If you're really a economics masochist and have to know details of how this is done, see Doug Noland's work here. It's called Money Market Fund Intermediation.)
   • There are many other financial companies and entities and even financial instruments that act similarly to Fannie Mae.
     (If you just have to know... and we really don't recommend mentally abusing yourself and also leave it up to you to find definitions and understanding but... some of them are captive finance companies such as GE Capital, Wall Street brokerage houses, credit swaps, hedge fund activities, and other quite sophisticated and complex instruments like CDOs, asset or mortgage backed securities, and SPEs. These items all fall under the general term derivatives.)
   • An "outside" and indirect source, is central banks of other countries like Japan. They print their own money, and then use it to directly buy dollar denominated items from the Federal Reserve, or directly buy assets from other U.S. financial institutions.
   • Organizations like the FHLB and others are far off the beaten path but do create money.
8. Per the Humphrey Hawkins Act, "the Fed has the authority to buy foreign government debt, as well as domestic government debt. Potentially, this class of assets offers huge scope for Fed operations, as the quantity of foreign assets eligible for purchase by the Fed is several times the stock of U.S. government debt."
   Source of the quote is a November 2002 speech by Ben Bernanke of the Fed, located here.
9. There also exist some unusual and limited abilities of the Fed to directly buy certain short term financial instruments from the banks (source) to soften a crisis and aid banking liquidity.
10. Note that the actual currency is printed by the US Treasury, and only distributed by the Federal Reserve System. Total currency is less than 5% of the grand total of all dollars everywhere.
11. As far as the Fed's authority to create money and where it comes from: "...the testimony of Marriner Eccles before the House Committe on Banking and Currency on September 30, 1941. Marriner Eccles was the Governor of the Federal Reserve System in 1941. He is being questioned by Congressman Wright Patman about how the Fed got the money to purchase two billion dollars worth of government bonds in 1933.
    
    ECCLES: We created it.
    PATMAN: Out of what?
    ECCLES: Out of the right to issue credit money.
    PATMAN: And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government's credit?
    ECCLES: That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money."
    

How is money destroyed?

Where's your debt clock?

What is debt deflation?

Debt-Deflation

Thus governments strained their muscles to balance their budgets--thus further depressing demand--and to reduce wages and prices--in order to restore "competitiveness" and balance to their economies. In Germany the Chancellor--the Prime Minister--Heinrich Bruening decreed a ten percent cut in prices, and a ten to fifteen percent cut in wages. But every step taken in pursuit of financial orthodoxy made matters worse.

For once the declines in wages and prices in the Great Depression had passed some critical value, they knocked the economy out of its normal business-cycle pattern. Severe deflation had consequences that were much more than an amplification of the modest five to ten percent falls in prices that had been seen in past depressions.

When banks make loans, they allow beforehand for some measure of fluctuation in the value of the assets pledged as security for their loans: even some diminuation of the value of their collateral will not cause banks to panic, because if the borrower defaults they will still be able to recover their loan principal as long as the decline in the value of the collateral is not too high.

But what happens when deflation reaches the previously never seen amount of thirty, forty, or fifty percent--as it did in the Great Depression? Banks become keenly aware that their loan principal is no longer safe: that if the borrower defaults, they no longer have recourse to sufficient collateral to recover their loan principal. if the borrower defaults, and if bank depositors take the default as a signal that it is time for them to withdraw their deposits, the bank collapses.

As Keynes, wrote, once banks realize that deflation has significantly impaired the value of their collateral:

...they become particularly anxious that the remainder of their assets should be as liquid and as free from risk as it is possible to make them. This reacts in all sorts of silent and unobserved ways on new enterprise. for it means that banks are less willing than they would normally be to finance any project...

In looking at the tracks of interest rates in the Great Depression, you can see a steady widening of the gap between safe interest rates on government securities and the interest rates that borrowing companies had to pay. Even though credit was ample--in the sense that borrowers with perfect and unimpaired collateral could obtain loans at extremely low interest rates--the businesses in the economy (few of which had perfect and unimpaired collateral) found it next to impossible to obtain capital to finance investment.

Thus the banking system freezes up. It no longer performs its social function of channeling purchasing power from savers to investors. As a result private investment collapses; falling investment produces more unemployment, excess capacity, futher falls in prices, and more deflation; and further deflation renders the banking system even more insolvent.

Morever, not only past deflation but also expected future deflation depresses investment. Why invest now if you expect deflation, so that everything you would buy this year will be ten percent cheaper next year?

In the end the spiral of deflation will continue to depress the economy until something is done to restore solvency to the banking system, and break the anticipations of further falls in prices. A few economists understood this process at work during the Great Depression--Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, R.G. Hawtrey--but they did not walk the corridors of power at the nadir of the Great Depression.

What are the Three Laws of Motion?

1. An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. (This law is often called "the law of inertia".)
2. Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object).
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.

What is the original Hippocratic Oath?

Is there any truth to the North American Union and the Amero?

What can the Fed buy and sell in its Open Market Operations?

How about some hard facts about this Avian Flu thing?

What are the top five currencies in the world, ranked by amount in circulation in 2004?

1. Euro
2. U.S. dollar
3. Japanese Yen
4. China
5. United Kingdom

How about the population top ten?

1. China - 1,306.3
2. India - 1,080.3
3. European Union - 457.0
4. United States - 295.7
5. Indonesia - 241.9
6. Brazil - 186.1
7. Pakistan - 162.4
8. Bangladesh - 144.3
9. Russia - 143.4
10. Nigeria - 128.7

What is the Communist Manifesto anyhow?

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

What are cognitive biases?

• Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias.
• Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.
• Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.
• Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
• Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.
• Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
• Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one's own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
• Endowment effect — "the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it".[1]
• Focusing effect — prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
• Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
• Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
• Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
• Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
• Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.
• Loss aversion — "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".[2] (see also sunk cost effects and Endowment effect).
• Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
• Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
• Omission bias — The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
• Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
• Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
• Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
• Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
• Reactance - the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to reassert a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
• Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
• Status quo bias — the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same (see also Loss aversion and Endowment effect).[3]
• Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
• Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Do you have anything about the shadowy Bilderberger group that isn't from the extreme tinfoil hat brigade?

What are the official missions of various Central Banks?

What do you have on conformity?

Do you have anything on conspiracies besides Bilderberger stuff?

The eight most dangerous jobs in the world

1. Fishermen
2. Pilots and airline employees
3. Loggers
4. Structural construction workers
5. Waste management employees
6. Farmers and ranchers
7. Power-line technicians
8. Roofers

Can we please have some perspective on deaths from various causes?

• Black death - 50-75 million, approximately 25% of the known world's total population.
• Spanish flu, 1918 - 50-100 million, about 3-6% of the known world's total population.
• World War II, 55 million (U.S. share, about 400,000)
• China - Mao Zedong (1949-1975), 40 million (Nationalist or Kuomintang China, 1928-1949, about 10 million)
• Flu epidemic, 1918 - World wide, 30+ million which was 3% of the world population (estimates range from 20-100 million)(U.S. estimate is 600,000+)
• HIV/AIDs - 21 million as of 2006
• Nazi Germany, 20.9 million
• Russia - Stalin (1924-1953), 20 million (1917-1987, 61.1 million)
• World War I, 15 million
• Japan 1936-1945, about 6 million
• Holocaust - up to 6 million Jews (and many Christians, etc. too)
• Natural disasters - 1900-1999, 5+ million (floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. but not including drought or famine)
• Congo War, ended in 2002 - 3.8 million
• China floods, 1931 - 3.5-4 million
• Cambodia - Pol Pot (1975-1979), 1-2 million
• Malaria - world yearly, 1+ million (out of 300+ million cases)
• Czarist Russia (1900-1917), about 1 million
• U.S. Civil War - about 600,000
• Heart (cardiovascular) disease, U.S. - about 935,000 (total U.S. deaths per year in 2010, about 2.4 million per the CDC)
• Cancer, U.S. - about 550,000 (14,400 radon lung cancer deaths - National Cancer Institute, Oster, Colditz & Kelley, 1984 [more recent data - 21,000 deaths per year])
• Flu, World - yearly 500,000+ (U\S, about 53,000 - Source)
• Hurricane/cyclone Bhola, Bangladesh 1970 - 500,000+
• Hiroshima + Nagasaki - approximately 100,000-200,000 immediate, approximately 75-100% more on the long term.
• Medical errors - U.S. only, 210,000-440,000 per year 2013 study Another source
• Prescription drugs - U.S. only, 120,000 per year (source - Death by Medicine, by Dr. Gary Null)
• Vietnam war - U.S. only, 58 thousand (excludes the approximate 140 thousand suicides) Suicide stats
• French Reign of Terror, late 1700 - 55,000.
• Auto accidents - U.S. 2004 total 42,636 (alcohol related - 16,694), 2010 total 32885, (about 32,000 total in 1931, per the Wall St. Journal.)
• Korean war - about 37,000
• Flu, U.S. - yearly average 36,000, Source
• Suicide - U.S. yearly, 30 thousand (2000)
• U.S. Revolutionary War - about 25,000
• Guns - U.S. yearly, 15 thousand (32 thousand if suicides included) (1997) (Defensive Gun Use Study, a very under reported item)
• Food poisoning in U.S. - about 3000 (CDC source)
• Swimming pool deaths in U.S. - about 3000
• 9/11/2001 - approx. 3000
• 12/7/1941 Pearl Harbor - approx. 2400
• Killer wasps - about 100
• Fireworks - 4 deaths per year in the US (over 9000 serious injuries, about 40% from fireworks banned by the CPSC), per the American Pyrotechnics Association
• Shark attacks - "During the entire year of 2001, around the world there were just 68 shark attacks, of which 4 were fatal. Not only are these numbers far lower than the media hysteria implied; they were also no higher than in earlier years or in the years to follow. Between 1995 and 2005, there were on average 60.3 worldwide shark attacks each year, with a high of 79 and a low of 46. There were on average 5.9 fatalities per year, with a high of 11 and a low of 3" Source

• Heart disease: 631,636
• Cancer: 559,888
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
• Diabetes: 72,449
• Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
• Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
• Septicemia: 34,234

How about a list of countries that have had hyperinflations since 1985?

• 1982-1988, Mexico - 1000% (corrected in 1993 by a 1000:1 peso replacement)
• 1985, Bolivia - 12,000%
• 1989, Argentina - 3,000%
• 1990, Peru - 7,500%
• 1991-97, Russia - 700%
• 1993, Brazil - 2,100%
• 1993, Ukraine - 5,000%
• 1993-4, Yugoslavia - 1,000,000,000+% The Yugoslavian government's official position was that the hyperinflation occurred "because of the unjustly implemented sanctions against the Serbian people and state."
• 1999, Ecuador - 70%
• 2002, Argentina - 400%
• 2004, Zimbabwe - 133% (14 countries in 2004 had inflation rates over 15%)
• 2008 November, Zimbabwe - 6.5 sextillion percent (6.5 followed by 20 zeros)

What are the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse

1. Conquest
2. War
3. Famine
4. Death

What are the worst five hyperinflations in the last 100 years?

1. Hungary, 1945-1946 - 41.9 quadrillion peak percent per month (prices doubled every 15 hours)
2. Zimbabwe, Nov. 2008 - prices doubling about every 17 hours.
3. Yugoslavia, 10/1993-2/1994 - 5 quadrillion peak percent during the period (prices doubled every 18 hours)
4. Greece, 1941-1944 - 8.5 billion peak percent per month (prices doubled every 28 hours)
5. Germany, 1921-1923 - 3.25 million percent per month at its peak (prices doubled every 49 hours)

What were some of the price increases in the hyperinflation in France during 1790-1795?

• For a bushel of flour - 40 cents in 1790, increased to 45 dollars in 1795 (112x)
• For a bushel of oats - 18 cents, increased to 10 dollars (55x)
• For a cartload of wood - 4 dollars, increased to 500 dollars (125x)
• For a bushel of coal - 7 cents, increased to 2 dollars (71x)
• For a pound of sugar - 18 cents, increased to 12 ½ dollars (69x)
• For a pound of soap - 18 cents, increased to 8 dollars (44x)
• For a pound of candles - 18 cents, increased to 8 dollars (44x)
• For one cabbage - 8 cents, increased to 5½ dollars (69x)
• For a pair of shoes - 1 dollar, increased to 40 dollars (40x)
• For twenty-five eggs - 24 cents, increased to 5 dollars (21x)

What are some of the ways that governments disguise the true inflation rate?

• Just plain reporting incorrect data about money supply, rate of money creation, economic growth - i.e., lying.
• Ceasing the reporting of money supply or other important economic statistics. See here for an example.
• Altering how statistics like a Consumer Price Index are calculated (see above).
• Inventing concepts like a "core" Consumer Price Index, which excludes essential things like food and energy.
• Wage & price controls
• Favoring or encouraging redefinition of words like inflation to exclude major assets or goods from its definition.
• International currency controls, which make it more difficult to move money out of a country.
• Savings laws, designed to force people to hold money and not spend. Those will artifically and temporarily lower apparent inflation. Examples are war bonds, patriotic appeals, encouraging emergency funds, temporary taxes to discourage consumption, and the "Whip Inflation Now (W.I.N.)" program of U.S. President Ford in the mid 1970s.
• Adding limitations to a right to freely buy or sell specific items (the general case of wage & price controls or international currency controls).
• Public Relations programs to encourage incorrect, incomplete or deceptive media reporting.

What are some of the next probable financial issues or crises?

Under funded pension plans.

A little perspective on global liquidity, please?

Anything on morality?

Medicaid drug bill

Derivatives

Alternative Minimum Tax

Is there a counterpoint to the CERA report bashing 'peak oil'?

What nations have the most popular brands?

1. Australia
2. Canada
3. Switzerland
4. UK
5. Sweden
6. Italy
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. France
10. New Zealand
11. United States
12. Spain
13. Ireland
14. Japan
15. Brazil
16. Mexico
17. Egypt
18. India
19. Poland
20. South Korea
21. China
22. South Africa
23. Czech Republic
24. Russia
25. Turkey

What was it like right before the Great Depression?

What would the Fed do during a crisis with Fannie Mae or any GSE?

Nuclear power, good or bad or in between?

CEO Pay vs. the Average Employee?

Is Earth safe?

What's with this tinfoil hat thing?

What are the 5 steps to persecute or shut down a group or idea?

1. Identify the group or idea
2. Marginalize it via various P.R., propaganda and other tools, including the redefinition of specific words
3. Vilify (make vicious and defamatory statements about) the group or idea
4. Make laws against it
5. Enforce the laws

Is it really worse now?

• Movies "This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving pictures.'"
  - The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909
  
  
• Telephone "Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?"
  - Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926
  
  
• Comic books "Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!"
  - Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
  
  
• War This war is a defensive war. It was forced upon us by our enemies, who wish to destroy our nation. The only thing we cannot afford to lose in this war is our freedom, the foundation of our life and our future. No one has the right to complain about limitations on his personal freedom caused by the war.
  …
  Why of course the people don’t want war. But it is the leaders who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
  
  -- Joseph Goebbels, Sept 1943 (source - http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb45.htm)
  
  
• Rock and Roll "The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country."
  - Minister Albert Carter, 1956
  
  
• The Waltz "The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous inter­twining of the limbs, and close com­pressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was con­fined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion."
  - The Times of London, 1816
  
  
• Novels "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?"
  - Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790
  
  
• Lincoln on the Declaration of Independence [regarding the framers of the Declaration of Independence]: "These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. [Applause.] Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began -- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built."
  - Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, on August 17, 1858 (CWAL II:546)
  
  

What is the 'Doomsday Clock'?

Please list some unusual monetary "solutions"

Is there a connection between economics, investing and psychiatry?

What are the 7 Christian Virtues

What are the 7 Christian Deadly Sins

In the probably better known than left mysterious department, what would happen if a nuclear bomb hit your city?

How about a quote from Hitler, early in his career?

What legal powers does the Federal Reserve actually have?

(long & technical)