“
It's complicated.'
'So's quantitative easing. But I still get that it means printing money.
”
”
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
“
When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.
”
”
Ron Paul
“
Get serious about telling me where that money is," said Conté, "or I'll kick your ass so hard every piece of shit that falls out of it for the rest of your life will have my gods-damned heel print on it.
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
“
In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it.
”
”
Sally Wentworth (Summer Fire (Atlantic Large Print Series))
“
The problem is this: in order to make money- lots of money- we don't need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.
”
”
Walter Moers (The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4))
“
debt eats equity but central banks can feed debt by printing money instead.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
REMEMBER THAT INFLATION IS ONLY THE ACT OF PRINTING MONEY IN EXCESS OF GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT. THEY COULD BLAME IT ON THE PRICE OF WIDGETS OR OIL ONLY BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNEW THE REAL CAUSE. THE REAL CAUSE AND THE ONLY CAUSE OF INFLATION IS THE PRINTING OF MORE MONEY BEYOND THE GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT.]
”
”
Milton William Cooper (Behold a Pale Horse)
“
Government does not create resources when it taxes people and prints money; it merely redistributes the wealth.
”
”
Ron Paul
“
The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
”
”
Alan Furst (Night Soldiers (Night Soldiers, #1))
“
Although the word 'economy' may bring the term money to the minds of many, the truth is that for the whole of society money is nothing more than an artificial instrument that allows real things to be done, otherwise , the government could make us all rich simply by printing more bills. It is not money but the volume of goods and services that determines whether a country is poor or prosperous.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy)
“
It was all part of a way of doing things in the United States that, as I would gradually realize, forced you to be constantly on guard, constantly worried that whatever amount of money you had or earned would never be enough, and constantly anxious about navigating the complex and mysterious fine print thrown at you from every direction by corporations that had somehow managed to evade even the bare minimum of sensible protections for consumers.
”
”
Anu Partanen (The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life)
“
Next, Cohn repeated what everyone was saying: Interest rates were going to go up over the foreseeable future. I agree, Trump said. “We should just go borrow a lot of money right now, hold it, and then sell it and make money.” Cohn was astounded at Trump’s lack of basic understanding. He tried to explain. If you as the federal government borrow money through issuing bonds, you are increasing the U.S. deficit. What do you mean? Trump asked. Just run the presses—print money.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
“
The money… will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully.
'Imps,' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Making Money (Discworld, #36; Moist Von Lipwig, #2))
“
The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.
”
”
Jeffrey Tucker
“
If the government controls, guarantees, channels, or directs investment, it is not capitalism. Pivotal to the investment process is interest rates. For entrepreneurs to control capital, interest rates must reflect its real cost rather than merely the cost of printing money. Otherwise the money printers will dominate investment.
”
”
George Gilder (The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does)
“
Mr. Worthington,
I understand that you do not control Chuck and Jasper.
But you see, I am in a similar situation. I do not control the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. The devil is saying, "PRINT THE PICTURE PRINT THE PICTURE TAPE IT UP ALL OVER SCHOOL DO IT DO IT DO IT." And then on my right shoulder, there is a little tiny white angel. And the angel is saying, "Man, I sure as shit hope all those freshmen get their money bright and early on Monday morning." So do I, little angel. So do I.
Best Wishes,
Your friendly Neighboorhood Nemesis.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
“
The newspaper of today far too often rush into print with stories that are essentially little more than tips, or hints of something toxic or criminal. For lack of time, money or skilled staff, we are besiege with "he said, she said".
”
”
Seymour M. Hersh (Reporter: A Memoir)
“
The remarkable thing was that everyone accepted the entire process, seemingly as normal as physical laws of nature, despite the fact that it was really as ethereal as a rainbow. The money did not physically exist. Even “real” money was only specially made paper printed with black ink on the front and green on the back. What backed the money was not gold or something of intrinsic value, but rather the collective belief that money had value because it had to have such value.
”
”
Tom Clancy (Debt of Honor (Jack Ryan, #7; Jack Ryan Universe, #8))
“
What do you mean? Trump asked. Just run the presses—print money.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
“
Each copy is guaranteed—or double your money back—to be printed on genuine paper of enough pages to hold the covers apart.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (Robert Heinlein's Expanded Universe: Volume One)
“
Ronan wasn’t exactly sure why he was angry. Although Gansey had done nothing to invoke his ire, he was definitely part of the problem. Currently, he propped his cell between ear and shoulder as he eyed a pair of plastic plates printed with smiling tomatoes. His unbuttoned collar revealed a good bit of his collarbone. No one could deny that Gansey was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, he was so polished that it was bearable, though, because he was clearly not the same species as Ronan’s rough-and-ready family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City, Gansey’s hair was scuffed and his cargo shorts were a greasy ruin from mucking over the Pig. He was barelegged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
“
There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common money. Are you a dummy?
”
”
Roald Dahl
“
Printing dollars at home means higher inflation in China, higher food prices in Egypt and stock bubbles in Brazil. Printing money means that U.S. debt is devalued so foreign creditors get paid back in cheaper dollars. The devaluation means higher unemployment in developing economies as their exports become more expensive for Americans. The resulting inflation also means higher prices for inputs needed in developing economies like copper, corn, oil and wheat. Foreign countries have begun to fight back against U.S.-caused inflation through subsidies, tariffs and capital controls; the currency war is expanding fast.
”
”
James Rickards (Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis)
“
Like all canned food, love has an expiration date, a price tag, and a warning label. In order to love, you need to check the price tag to see if you have enough money in your wallet, observe the warnings given in fine print, and finish matters before the expiration date. Only then is it a smooth process for everyone.
”
”
Kim Un-Su (The Cabinet)
“
Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.
”
”
Lee Child
“
Give a typical employee a million, and, he is most likely to use the money to print his CV on fancier paper.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Blood might be thicker than water, but both were thinner than money
”
”
Katherine Reay (The Printed Letter Bookshop (Winsome, #1))
“
For as long as the government could print more money and have that money accepted by its citizens and foreigners, it could keep financing the war.
”
”
Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
“
At the same time, France’s president Charles de Gaulle was turning in his country’s dollars for gold because he was concerned the U.S. was printing money to finance its spending.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
Volcker relied on public opinion, integrity, and persistence to overcome the political pressure to finance government spending the easy way, by printing money rather than by taxation.
”
”
William L. Silber (Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence)
“
We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and a pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.
”
”
Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation)
“
I feel compelled to point out," said Sophie finally, "that you've just refused to take money from me now because I'm drunk. But you've invited me to a party where you presumably try to get a lot of people drunk and then ask them for money."
"Yeah, it's not unethical if you print invitations.
”
”
Alexis Hall (Boyfriend Material (London Calling, #1))
“
If the world economy is going to revive, I believe commodities
are going to lead it back up. If the world economy is not going to
revive, commodities are still the place to be—especially with governments
printing so much money. Look at the 1970s. The world
economy was in the tank, but commodities did very well.
”
”
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
“
It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.
”
”
Thomas Merton (The Seven Storey Mountain)
“
And the irony is that the war purchases are recorded as a positive for economic growth and the GDP. Though the war spending is an economic negative and provides no improvement in the people’s standard of living, the government statisticians brag about an upward blip in the GDP. Besides, these bills are paid for by borrowing and printing money, thus increasing future debt obligations and causing higher prices for the next generation.
”
”
Ron Paul (Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity)
“
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."
"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."
"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything- obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artists?”
“Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.”
“Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
Well, I wasn't going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there any quality which distinguishes his work from that of twenty struggling writers one could name? Of course not. He's a clever, prolific man; so are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing will become the rule. Men won't succeed in literature that they may get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in literature.
”
”
George Gissing (New Grub Street)
“
What is hyperinflation? It is the dramatic process of an established currency losing its usefulness as money. Prices rise rapidly and uncontrollably as a result of excessive money printing and a loss of confidence in the currency.
”
”
Philip Haslam (When Money Destroys Nations: How Hyperinflation Ruined Zimbabwe, How Ordinary People Survived, and Warnings for Nations that Print Money)
“
I’ll say this for military research: If money and men can do it, it gets results. Print another billion, hire another thousand scientists and engineers, then in some incredible, left-handed, inefficient fashion the answers come up.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Door into Summer)
“
The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the "public opinion" that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid "progress" enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.
Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded
slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.
”
”
Ludwig Klages (Cosmogonic Reflections: Selected Aphorisms from Ludwig Klages)
“
We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy Earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank, but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it “gross domestic product.
”
”
Kathleen Dean Moore (Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril)
“
By controlling the mass media – television, newspapers, radio, and print – the secret organization with the code name, Rothfellers, convinced people on earth to rebuild their weapons systems as a means of providing money and jobs for everyone. Computer games such as Tron, Space Commander, Defender, and PacMan, replaced Monopoly and other home games during the last of the twentieth century. The games were a scheme of the Rothfellers, with the aid of President Sam Emen, to secretly prepare young boys and girls for nuclear wars by programming their minds to handle computertized warfare. Such preparation would be useful, once the draft was brought into full force.
”
”
Sophia Stewart (The Third Eye)
“
When I was a teenager in Boston, a man on the subway handed me a card printed with tiny pictures of hands spelling out the alphabet in sign language. I AM DEAF, said the card. You were supposed to give the man some money in exchange.
I have thought of that card ever since, during difficult times, mine or someone else's; surely when tragedy has struck you dumb, you should be given a stack of cards that explain it for you. When Pudding died, I wanted my stack. I still want it. My first child was stillborn, it would say on the front. It remains the hardest thing for me to explain, even now, or maybe I mean especially now - now that his death feels like a non sequitur. My first child was stillborn. I want people to know but I don't want to say it aloud. People don't like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card.
”
”
Elizabeth McCracken (An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination)
“
Ecofont is designed to save ink, money and eventually the planet, but heaven save us from worthy fonts. Ecofont is a program that adds holes to a font. The software takes Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman and prints them is if they had been attacked by moths. They retain their original shape but not their original form, and so lose their true weight and beauty... a study at the University of Wisconsin claimed that Ecofonts, such as Ecofont Vera Sans, actually uses more ink and toner than lighter fonts such as Century Gothic...
”
”
Simon Garfield (Just My Type: A Book About Fonts)
“
Growing your own food is like printing your own money.
”
”
Ron Finley
“
It's strange that we print 'In God We Trust' on the back of his leading competitor.
”
”
James W. Miller
“
One makes his own meanings as the counterfeiter prints his own money: both know full well that the value of either rests solely in the gullibility of its recipient...
”
”
Dan Garfat-Pratt (Citations: A Brief Anthology)
“
Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Cosmic Ordering is a licence to print money.
”
”
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
“
A fool and his money are soon parted but don't worry, The Fed always prints more.
”
”
Brian Spellman (We have our difference in common 2.)
“
Money is made to be spent. They ain’t printing no more time.
”
”
Bre Shadae (Prince : Love Always Wins (The Richards Book 3))
“
I would argue that correctly setting the interest rate is the most important thing a society can do. The proper way to do this is to let the marketplace decide.
”
”
Lawrence Lepard (The Big Print: What Happened To America And How Sound Money Will Fix It)
“
The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. Had to borrow it from the Mafia, in fact. So he's in their database now—retinal patterns, DNA, voice graph, fingerprints, footprints, palm prints, wrist prints, every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it—almost—those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
“
The government wants to fool its people by doubling the minimum wage but at the same time printing more than enough money into circulation. We can't solve problems by creating more problem for generations to come which is why Bitcoin and some other decentralized finance applications powered by blockchain technology looks to be our only hope of creating a better future.
”
”
Olawale Daniel
“
Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big,
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
How about the Federal Reserve, then, which has convinced millions that the paper it prints “is” “real” “money”? Prank or fraud? Or perhaps some species of magick that only other sorcerers can understand?
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death)
“
There are four types of levers that policy makers can pull to bring debt and debt service levels down relative to the income and cash flow levels that are required to service them: Austerity (i.e., spending less) Debt defaults/restructurings The central bank “printing money” and making purchases (or providing guarantees) Transfers of money and credit from those who have more than they need to those who have less
”
”
Ray Dalio (A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises)
“
In 1960, The New York Times printed an advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices” that attempted to raise money to defend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against perjury charges in Alabama. Southern officials responded by going on the offensive and suing the newspaper. Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan and Governor Patterson claimed defamation. A local jury awarded them half a million dollars, and the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan changed the standard for defamation and libel by requiring plaintiffs to prove malice—that is, evidence of actual knowledge on the part of the publisher that a statement is false. The ruling marked a significant victory for freedom of the press, and it liberated media outlets and publishers to talk more honestly about civil rights protests and activism.
”
”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption)
“
But you see, I am in a similar situation. I do not control the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. The devil is saying, "PRINT THE PICTURE PRINT THE PICTURE TAPE IT UP ALL OVER SCHOOL DO IT DO IT DO IT." And then on my right shoulder, there is a little tiny white angel. And the angel is saying, "Man, I sure as **** hope all those freshmen get their money bright and early on Monday morning."
So do I, little angel. So do I.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
“
Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Whether in their policy of religious tolerance, devising a universal alphabet, maintaining relay stations, playing games, or printing almanacs, money, or astronomy charts, the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism. Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, the Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions. They searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries. They did not have to worry whether their astronomy agreed with the precepts of the Bible, that their standards of writing followed the classical principles taught by the mandarins of China, or that Muslim imams disapproved of their printing and painting. The Mongols had the power, at least temporarily, to impose new international systems of technology, agriculture, and knowledge that superseded the predilections or prejudices of any single civilization; and in so doing, they broke the monopoly on thought exercised by local elites.
”
”
Jack Weatherford (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World)
“
The hard work and big money you used to spend on frequent purchases of print and TV advertising now move to repeated engineering expenses and product failures. If anything, marketing is more time-consuming and expensive than it used to be. You’re just spending the money earlier in the process (and repeating the process more often). This is worth highlighting: The Purple Cow is not a cheap shortcut. It is, however, your best (perhaps only) strategy for growth.
”
”
Seth Godin (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)
“
Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Whether in their policy of religious tolerance, devising a universal alphabet, maintaining relay stations, playing games, or printing almanacs, money, or astronomy charts, the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism.
”
”
Jack Weatherford
“
Cohn was astounded at Trump’s lack of basic understanding. He tried to explain. If you as the federal government borrow money through issuing bonds, you are increasing the U.S. deficit. What do you mean? Trump asked. Just run the presses—print money.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
“
On economic matters Garrett had a brilliant simplicity. In November 1913, while editor of the Annalist, he began a monthly column on money in Everybody’s, writing as John Parr. One of the most common questions from readers was why the government simply didn’t print money to spend on public works, instead of borrowing it at interest. It was a variant of the Coxey idea. Garrett explained that money is not wealth, but a claim on wealth, and that you do not add to wealth by creating more claims to it.4
”
”
Bruce Ramsey (Unsanctioned Voice: Garet Garrett, Journalist of the Old Right)
“
When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.
”
”
Benjamin Franklin (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin)
“
One simple and basic fact of life is that no individual – or group of individuals – can ever be wise or knowledgeable enough to run society. Our core fantasy of “government” is that in some remote and sunlit chamber, with lacquered mahogany tables, deep leather chairs and sleepless men and women, there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. These living man-gods have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result.
”
”
Stefan Molyneux (Everyday Anarchy: The Freedom of Now)
“
gold standard,” which the United States had dropped in 1933. Ever since, the Treasury had been printing money freely to finance first the New Deal and now the war. Howard feared that someday the United States might wind up like Germany in the 1920s, when people had to cart wheelbarrows of money down the street to buy a head of cabbage—the direct result of Germany being forced to deplete its gold stock to pay reparations after World War I.1 The economic chaos that resulted was one of the major factors that had led to Hitler.
”
”
Alice Schroeder (The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life)
“
Throughout history, rulers have run up debts that won’t come due until long after their own reigns are over, leaving it to their successors to pay the bill. Printing money and buying financial assets (mostly bonds) holds interest rates down, which stimulates borrowing and buying. Those investors holding bonds are encouraged to sell them. The low interest rates also encourage investors, businesses, and individuals to borrow and invest in higher-returning assets, getting what they want through monthly payments they can afford.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
people to make money, the great minister Russel H. Conwell, author of Acres of Diamonds, said, “Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them.
”
”
David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big)
“
How can trade be bad if you don’t make money
even when it’s good?” inquired Gleed, reasonably
applying the information Harrison had given him.
Jeff’s big moon eyes went over him slowly then
turned to Harrison. “So he’s another bum off your
boat, eh? What’s he talking about?”
“Money,” explained Harrison. “It’s stuff we use to
simplify trade. It’s printed stuff, like documentary
obs of various sizes.”
“That tells me a lot,” Jeff Baines observed. “It
tells a crowd that has to make a printed record of
every ob is not to be trusted — because they don’t
even trust each other.
”
”
Eric Frank Russell (The Great Explosion)
“
In effect, Wisconsin politicians forced the owners of these 8,000 small, family-owned and taxpaying businesses to turn over a month’s profits so the money could be given to one of the biggest companies in the world, General Electric, and its partners to make a film glamorizing violent theft.
”
”
David Cay Johnston (The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind)
“
A “beautiful deleveraging” happens when the four levers are moved in a balanced way so as to reduce intolerable shocks and produce positive growth with falling debt burdens and acceptable inflation. More specifically, deleveragings become beautiful when there is enough stimulation (i.e., through “printing of money”/debt monetization and currency devaluation) to offset the deflationary deleveraging forces (austerity/defaults) and bring the nominal growth rate above the nominal interest rate—but not so much stimulation that inflation is accelerated, the currency is devaluated, and a new debt bubble arises.
”
”
Ray Dalio (A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises)
“
The only way that the Treasury can redeem its debt to the Social Security Administration is to borrow the money from the public, run a surplus in its other activities or have the Federal Reserve print the money—the same alternatives that would be open to it to pay Social Security benefits if there were no trust fund.
”
”
Mark R. Levin (Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto)
“
Because the dollar is the dominant currency in world trade, capital flows, and reserves, it is the world’s leading reserve currency, which puts the US in the enviable position of being able to print the world’s money and to inflict sanctions on its enemies. The US now has an arsenal of sanctions, which is its most used arsenal of weapons.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
So many are looking for the Illumination version of self. I’m a healer, I’m a prophet, I’m a pastor, I need money, I need to be noticed, I’m popular online, so I must be right all the while the everyday stuff of ordinary life exhibiting the marvel of the grace of God is what we are called to be for the rest only get’s a “Depart from me!” Matthew 7:21-23.
”
”
John M. Sheehan (Sonnet of A Man [Print Replica])
“
In the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, the government struggled to maintain a large enough money supply in metal coins and resorted to money printing, especially in times of war and natural or human-caused disaster. The problems with collecting taxes made the incentive to print even stronger. This caused high inflation or hyperinflation, making matters worse.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
A party, or any institution that is in power or in opposition, does all things to get only for its own goal and interests, no matter in a legal way or through illegal resources, like forces, print and electronic media, and negative propaganda among the people , spending the millions of money for this. It is called dirty politics by the support of evil spirits.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Very little, really, in life is lost; material things, now and then; money which is material but necessary, often; friends, relatives, sometimes through estrangements. True love never, I believe. Death does not rob us of the essential person we have loved and still love. It deprives us of the physical presence, but never of the spiritual closeness, or of memories.
”
”
Faith Baldwin (Evening Star (Thorndike Large Print General Series))
“
Italian reporters uncovered evidence that the Vatican had invested in Istituto Farmacologico Serono, a pharmaceutical company that made birth control pills, as well as Udine, a military weapons manufacturer (there were also unconfirmed newspaper reports of church money in gunmaker Beretta, a Monte Carlo casino, and a printing firm that published pornographic magazines).
”
”
Gerald Posner (God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican)
“
was sprawled on the family-room couch, half asleep in front of a Clint Eastwood movie. A can of ginger ale and an empty bag of pretzels sat on the table in front of him. He opened one eye and saw Maura, then looked at Greg and winked. “Hey, little buddy . . . I see your ladyfriend is here.” Greg felt the urge to lash out, like he’d done with Eileen and Brittany at school on Friday morning. But this time he didn’t take the bait. He said, “We’re just copying some artwork. For a project we’re doing. And it’s gonna make noise. We have to.” Ross heaved himself up off the couch, shut off the TV, burped, mumbled, “’Scuse me” in Maura’s general direction, and went looking for a quieter place to waste another hour or two. Greg said, “I got this paper that’s good and bright, but it’s not as thick as regular copy paper. Makes it easier to fold.” After placing the first master sheet face down on the glass, he pushed Print, and then held up the copy for Maura to see. Pointing at a gray area, he said, “See that? I can change the settings and make that part darker. It ought to be solid black. Except for that, it’s a good copy.” The machine beeped as Greg made the change, and then he pushed the Print button.
”
”
Andrew Clements (Lunch Money (Rise and Shine))
“
Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.’
('Left from Dhakeshwari')
”
”
Kunal Sen
“
The murder was debated in the media, and different theories were espoused in print and on the radio and on morning chat shows. Experts were brought in to explain, condemn, justify Alicia’s actions. She must have been a victim of domestic abuse, surely, pushed too far, before finally exploding? Another theory proposed a sex game gone wrong—the husband was found tied up, wasn’t he? Some suspected it was old-fashioned jealousy that drove Alicia to murder—another woman, probably? But at the trial Gabriel was described by his brother as a devoted husband, deeply in love with his wife. Well, what about money? Alicia didn’t stand to gain much by his death; she was the one who had money, inherited from her father. And so it went on, endless speculation—no answers, only more questions—about Alicia’s motives and her subsequent silence.
”
”
Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient)
“
Most importantly, I was seeing the confluence of huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political, and values gaps in roughly a century; and the rising of a new world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (the US) and the existing world order.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
What happened to your arm?" she asked me one night in the Gentleman Loser, the three of us drinking at a small table in a corner.
Hang-gliding," I said, "accident."
Hang-gliding over a wheatfield," said Bobby, "place called Kiev. Our Jack's just hanging there in the dark, under a Nightwing parafoil, with fifty kilos of radar jammed between his legs, and some Russian asshole accidentally burns his arm off with a laser."
I don't remember how I changed the subject, but I did.
I was still telling myself that it wasn't Rikki who getting to me, but what Bobby was doing with her. I'd known him for a long time, since the end of the war, and I knew he used women as counters in a game, Bobby Quine versus fortune, versus time and the night of cities. And Rikki had turned up just when he needed something to get him going, something to aim for. So he'd set her up as a symbol for everything he wanted and couldn't have, everything he'd had and couldn't keep.
I didn't like having to listen to him tell me how much he loved her, and knowing he believed it only made it worse. He was a past master at the hard fall and the rapid recovery, and I'd seen it happen a dozen times before. He might as well have had next printed across his sunglasses in green Day-Glo capitals, ready to flash out at the first interesting face that flowed past the tables in the Gentleman Loser.
I knew what he did to them. He turned them into emblems, sigils on the map of his hustler' s life, navigation beacons he could follow through a sea of bars and neon. What else did he have to steer by? He didn't love money, in and of itself , not enough to follow its lights. He wouldn't work for power over other people; he hated the responsibility it brings. He had some basic pride in his skill, but that was never enough to keep him pushing.
So he made do with women.
When Rikki showed up, he needed one in the worst way. He was fading fast, and smart money was already whispering that the edge was off his game. He needed that one big score, and soon, because he didn't know any other kind of life, and all his clocks were set for hustler's time, calibrated in risk and adrenaline and that supernal dawn calm that comes when every move's proved right and a sweet lump of someone else's credit clicks into your own account.
”
”
William Gibson (Burning Chrome (Sprawl, #0))
“
The pity is that many Americans outside the elite bubbles know exactly what’s wrong, but our leaders seem determined to do nothing about it. Any attempt to cut the government chains and anchors off businesses so they can get back to growing, innovating, and creating jobs is demagogued as “tax breaks for the rich” or “favors for the one-percenters.” Never mind that many of those who would benefit are small-business owners who’ve been decimated over the past few years, first by the economic meltdown, then by government policies put in place to “fix” it. The money printed by the Fed to keep the economy pumped up flows to Wall Street, not Main Street, so small businesses aren’t borrowing it to pay for expansion. Even if they wanted to expand, about a third of all U.S. workers are employed by businesses with fifty or fewer employees, and Obamacare insures that if they hire a fifty-first, they’ll face crippling new costs for mandated health care.
”
”
Mike Huckabee (God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy: and the Dad-Gummed Gummint That Wants to Take Them Away)
“
was not an economist. So, in thinking about how to solve the problem, I decided to start with the big picture. The root cause of inflation in Brazil was really very simple: The government spent more than it earned. When the budget turned up a big deficit every year, as it inevitably did, the government printed more money to cover the difference. Any grade-school student knows, however, that you can’t just print endless amounts of cash without having something tangible to back it up.
”
”
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir)
“
It’s a shame you don’t laugh more often.'
'Don’t get used to it.'
'I wouldn’t dare. I kind of like the fact that it’s a rarity because it makes it even more special.' Her smile is infectious, making the corners of my lips turn up in return. No one has called my laugh special. Hell, I don’t think I’ve been labeled special in any other way that wasn’t derogatory. It makes me feel…good. Appreciated. Valued in a way that has nothing to do with how much money I make or what kind of job I have.
”
”
Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
The great irony, then, is that the nation’s most famous modern conservative economist became the father of Big Government, chronic deficits, and national fiscal bankruptcy. It was Friedman who first urged the removal of the Bretton Woods gold standard restraints on central bank money printing, and then added insult to injury by giving conservative sanction to perpetual open market purchases of government debt by the Fed. Friedman’s monetarism thereby institutionalized a régime which allowed politicians to chronically spend without taxing. Likewise, it was the free market professor of the Chicago school who also blessed the fundamental Keynesian proposition that Washington must continuously manage and stimulate the national economy. To be sure, Friedman’s “freshwater” proposition, in Paul Krugman’s famous paradigm, was far more modest than the vast “fine-tuning” pretensions of his “salt-water” rivals. The saltwater Keynesians of the 1960s proposed to stimulate the economy until the last billion dollars of potential GDP was realized; that is, they would achieve prosperity by causing the state to do anything that was needed through a multiplicity of fiscal interventions. By contrast, the freshwater Keynesian, Milton Friedman, thought that capitalism could take care of itself as long as it had precisely the right quantity of money at all times; that is, Friedman would attain prosperity by causing the state to do the one thing that was needed through the single spigot of M1 growth.
”
”
David A. Stockman (The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America)
“
I woke a few moments ago from a fever and a host of interlocking fever dreams, one after the next. There was one where I was in London, walking through old abandoned formerly beautiful buildings, all of them about to be demolished. Sometimes I'd find myself walking past the enormous line of people waiting to attend the television memorial for a dead author friend of mine, but his memorial was a television spectacular with comedians and big band music. There was the one where I had accidentally connected my bank card to a portable printer and the little printer kept printing cash but on the wrong paper and at the wrong size, so my money had huge, incredibly detailed faces on it, works of art that could not be spent. Then I woke from one dream into another: I was asleep in the passenger seat of the car, and saw that we were driving through a densely populated town, and that the driver was also asleep. I tried hard to wake her up and failed, and knew that no one was in control, no one was at the wheel, and soon someone was going to be killed, and I was shouting and calling without effect; but I whimpered and snuffled enough in the real world that my wife stroked my face and said, "Honey? You're having a nightmare," and, finally, I woke for real.
But I woke into a world in which, somewhere, I am still being driven through my life by a sleeping driver, in which money is only good as art, in which we can write the finest books but at the end the crowds will come out and say good-bye for the entertainment, in which the buildings and cities we inhabit will relentlessly be destroyed by progress and time: a world colored by dreams and illuminated by them, too.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman: Overture)
“
U.S. paper money is printed in sheets of 32 notes. Sometimes, the sheets are misfed into the high-speed presses, resulting in misplaced or upside-down serial numbers. In 1976, a shopper in a Dallas supermarket checkout line was handed a note mistakenly printed with $20 on one side, $10 on the other. At least three currency sheets with the error were printed in 1974, so there may be as many as 96 double-denomination notes in existence. About 20 have been found. Depending on its condition, one of these bills could be worth much more than either face value.
”
”
Old Farmer's Almanac (The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015)
“
Johnny,the super,stares forward.His new tangerine hair half blinds me above a purple,leopard print shirt.I swing the door wide.“Come in,Johnny.”He eyes Fenris.“I think I’ll stand here,if you don’t mind.Gobbledepoop.”“Yeah, okay.”I lift my purse from the kitchen counter and scrounge for my wallet.Handing Johnny
a number of bills, I say, “This should square us, dude. I’ll be out tomorrow.”
“Shame.” He flips through the money, his lips silently counting. “You pay on time, and you’re quiet.I like things serene and peaceful.”I glance at his flaming hair. “I can see that about you.
”
”
Julie Reece
“
Have you ever been in a place where history becomes tangible? Where you stand motionless, feeling time and importance press around you, press into you? That was how I felt the first time I stood in the astronaut garden at OCA PNW. Is it still there? Do you know it? Every OCA campus had – has, please let it be has – one: a circular enclave, walled by smooth white stone that towered up and up until it abruptly cut off, definitive as the end of an atmosphere, making room for the sky above. Stretching up from the ground, standing in neat rows and with an equally neat carpet of microclover in between, were trees, one for every person who’d taken a trip off Earth on an OCA rocket. It didn’t matter where you from, where you trained, where your spacecraft launched. When someone went up, every OCA campus planted a sapling. The trees are an awesome sight, but bear in mind: the forest above is not the garden’s entry point. You enter from underground. I remember walking through a short tunnel and into a low-lit domed chamber that possessed nothing but a spiral staircase leading upward. The walls were made of thick glass, and behind it was the dense network you find below every forest. Roots interlocking like fingers, with gossamer fungus sprawled symbiotically between, allowing for the peaceful exchange of carbon and nutrients. Worms traversed roads of their own making. Pockets of water and pebbles decorated the scene. This is what a forest is, after all. Don’t believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence. As I stood contemplating the roots, a hidden timer triggered, and the lights faded out. My breath went with it. The glass was etched with some kind of luminescent colourant, invisible when the lights were on, but glowing boldly in the dark. I moved closer, and I saw names – thousands upon thousands of names, printed as small as possible. I understood what I was seeing without being told. The idea behind Open Cluster Astronautics was simple: citizen-funded spaceflight. Exploration for exploration’s sake. Apolitical, international, non-profit. Donations accepted from anyone, with no kickbacks or concessions or promises of anything beyond a fervent attempt to bring astronauts back from extinction. It began in a post thread kicked off in 2052, a literal moonshot by a collective of frustrated friends from all corners – former thinkers for big names gone bankrupt, starry-eyed academics who wanted to do more than teach the past, government bureau members whose governments no longer existed. If you want to do good science with clean money and clean hands, they argued, if you want to keep the fire burning even as flags and logos came down, if you understand that space exploration is best when it’s done in the name of the people, then the people are the ones who have to make it happen.
”
”
Becky Chambers (To Be Taught, If Fortunate)
“
It was not as if the rest of the nation was suffering from want. .. Americans were experiencing a war-related economic boom. these same citizens might be enjoying an unusual level of prosperity, but they were not aboutto share it with their struggling national government and their even more beleaguered army. Without an ability to raise its own taxes, the Continental Congress had been printing its own money to pay for the war. But after five years of churning out bills that had become almost worthless, Congress was left with few options. By the spring of 1780 every thing was beginning to grind to a terrible and tragic halt.
”
”
Nathaniel Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (The American Revolution Series))
“
To reiterate, in the upwave, debt is increased and financial wealth and obligations rise relative to tangible wealth to the point that these promises to pay in the future (i.e., the values of cash, bonds, and stocks) can’t be met. This causes “run on the bank”-type debt problems to emerge, which leads to the printing of money to try to relieve the problems of debt defaults and falling stock market prices, which leads to the devaluation of money and in turn to financial wealth going down relative to real wealth, until the real (inflation-adjusted) value of financial assets returns to being low relative to tangible wealth. Then the cycle begins again.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail)
“
By 1986 the CIA was spending 70 per cent of its entire operations budget funding a Muslim jihad to kill Russians. The whole campaign was managed by a bunch of Islamists who were giving the lion’s share of the US money and weapons to people who wanted to kill Americans. The US was happy to use Islam as a rallying cry. The CIA funded the printing of Korans to be distributed throughout the region, and the University of Nebraska produced primary-school textbooks, known as ‘the ABC of Jihad’, which taught children the alphabet and to count with Kalashnikovs and swords instead of apples and oranges, and were filled with images of Islamic warriors. Alphabet
”
”
Christina Lamb (Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World)
“
A bank that can’t deliver enough hard money to meet the claims being made on it is in trouble whether it is a private bank or a central bank, though central banks have more options than private banks. That’s because a private bank can’t print the money or change the laws to make it easier to pay their debts, while some central banks can. Private banks must either default or get bailed out by the government when they get into trouble, while central banks can devalue their claims (e.g., pay back 50–70 percent) if their debts are denominated in their national currency. If the debt is denominated in a currency that they can’t print, then they too must ultimately default.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
What on paper looks flawless can behave differently out in the wild, especially when copied and further adapted downstream. What people actually do with your invention, however well intentioned, can never be guaranteed. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph so people could record their thoughts for posterity and to help the blind. He was horrified when most people just wanted to play music. Alfred Nobel intended his explosives to be used only in mining and railway construction. Gutenberg just wanted to make money printing Bibles. Yet his press catalyzed the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation, and so became the greatest threat to the Catholic Church since its establishment.
”
”
Mustafa Suleyman (The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future)
“
When I say my wound became political in the years that followed, I don't mean that my involvement in the anti-war movement was somehow insincere or that I have any regrets about my activism. As a champion of the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the poor, and the oppressed, I found a new outlet for the somewhat irrational but nevertheless strong sense I had of being an outsider in a group - uncomfortable, awkward, and quick to feel a slight. Political feeling can't exist without identification, and mine inevitably went to people without power, In contrast, right-wing ideologies often appeal to those who want to link themselves to authority, people for whom the sight of military parades or soldiers marching off to war is aggrandizing, not painful. Inevitably, there is sublimation in politics, too. It becomes an avenue for suppressed aggression and anger, and I was no exception. And so it was that armed with passion and gorged on political history, I became a firebrand at fourteen. For three years, I read and argued and demonstrated. I marched against the Vietnam War, helped print strike T-shirts at Carleton College after the deaths of four students at Kent State, attended rallies, raised money for war-torn Mozambique, signed petitions, licked envelopes for the American Indian Movement, and turned into a feminist. But even then, I didn't believe all the rhetoric.
”
”
Siri Hustvedt (A Plea for Eros: Essays)
“
the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalism’s belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to keep on growing throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
With the simple suspension of gold redeemability, governments’ war
efforts were no longer limited to the money that they had in their own
treasuries, but extended virtually to the entire wealth of the population.
For as long as the government could print more money and have that
money accepted by its citizens and foreigners, it could keep financing
the war. Previously, under a monetary system where gold as money was
in the hands of the people, government only had its own treasuries to
sustain its war effort, along with any taxation or bond issues to finance
the war. This made conflict limited, and lay at the heart of the relatively
long periods of peace experienced around the world before the twentieth
century.
”
”
Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
“
When credit cycles reach their limit, it is the logical and classic response for central governments and their central banks to create a lot of debt and print money that will be spent on goods, services, and investment assets in order to keep the economy moving. That was done during the 2008 debt crisis, when interest rates could no longer be lowered because they had already hit 0 percent. It also happened in a big way in 2020 in response to the plunge triggered by the COVID pandemic. That was also done in response to the 1929–32 debt crisis, when interest rates had similarly been driven to 0 percent. At the time I am writing this, the creation of debt and money has been happening in amounts greater than at any time since World War II.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
So Germany can’t pay France and Britain and France and Britain can’t pay America because the Gold Standard says money = gold and America already has all the gold. But America won’t forgive the loans so Germany starts printing dumpsters full of money just to keep up appearances until one U.S. dollar is worth six hundred and thirty BILLION marks. There’s so much cash, kids are building money forts it is tragic/pimp as hell. Britain does convince America to go easy and lower the interest rates on the loans but in order to do that America has to lower ALL THE INTEREST RATES so everybody back in the U.S. is like “SWEET FREE MONEY BETTER USE IT TO BUY STOCKS” and they just go nuts the whole stock market goes completely bonkers shoe-shine boys are giving out hot tips hobos have stock portfolios and the dudes in charge are TERRIFIED because they know that at this point the market is just running on bullshit and dreams and real soon it’s gonna get to that part in the dream where you’re naked at your tuba recital and you never learned to play the tuba. There are other people who are like “NAW THE MARKET WILL BE GREAT FOREVER PUT ALL YOUR MONEY IN IT” but you know what those people are? WRONG. WRONG LIKE A DOG EATING MAYONNAISE. The market goes down like a clown and a bunch of people lose a bunch of money. It happens on a Tuesday and everybody calls it Black Tuesday and then it happens again on Black Thursday also Black Monday. Everyone is so poor they have even pawned their creativity.
”
”
Cory O'Brien (George Washington Is Cash Money: A No-Bullshit Guide to the United Myths of America)
“
Fiat-money! Let the State 'create' money, and make the poor rich, and free them from the bonds of the capitalists! How foolish to forego the opportunity of making everybody rich, and consequently happy, that the State's right to create money gives it! How wrong to forego it simply because this would run counter to the interests of the rich! How wicked of the economists to assert that it is not within the power of the State to create wealth by means of the printing press!- You statesmen want to build railways, and complain of the low state of the exchequer? Well, then, do not beg loans from the capitalists and anxiously calculate whether your railways will bring in enough to enable you to pay interest and amortization on your debt. Create money, and help yourselves.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (The Theory of Money and Credit)
“
All you have to do to make money in Indonesia is to figure out what no one else is doing,' Ade said. It made me think of how often I had noticed copy-cat businesses in smaller Indonesian towns. I was caught out by it early on. In Waikabubak, for example, every third shop prints photos. Even the little tailor opposite the market has a sideline in photo printing. This made me lazy; having promised to print photos and send them to people before I left Waikabubak, I thought: I'll do it in the next town I go to. But the next town is all pharmacies- there's not a single photo printer. Here it's wall-to-wall perfume sellers, there it's all hair salons... 'People see a business doing well, and they just copy it,' said Ade. 'The concept of market saturation is not well understood.
”
”
Elizabeth Pisani (Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation)
“
And what people want to own, of course, is real estate. So a dental hygienist with bad credit making forty thousand dollars a year felt that she deserved to park her ass in a million-dollar home. With a little creative financing, and as long as housing prices continued to rise, she believed that she could afford a million-dollar home. And as long as the dental hygienist continued to pay interest on the mortgage for the million-dollar home, as long as housing prices continued to rise, as long as more loan officers approved more loans for more dental hygienists with bad credit who could continue to pay the interest on their overblown mortgages, housing prices would indeed stay stratospheric, and banks could print money based on that certainty. And, like your nursery rhyme, that was the house that Jack built.” Kalchefsky
”
”
Jade Chang (The Wangs vs. the World)
“
Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the harmonious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and children play, and start catching passers-by with his lasso. He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physiological needs which are considered private as discreetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human societies. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff.
His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his faith in the "naturalness" of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled "Confidential" or "Top Secret" that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no one does, for each man is more urgently concerned with finding a loaf of bread. Strangely enough, the world goes on even though the offices and secret files have lost all meaning. Farther down the street, he stops before a house split in half by a bomb, the privacy of people's homes-the family smells, the warmth of the beehive life, the furniture preserving the memory of loves and hatreds-cut open to public view. The house itself, no longer a rock, but a scaffolding of plaster, concrete, and brick; and on the third floor, a solitary white bath tub, rain-rinsed of all recollection of those who once bathed in it. Its formerly influential and respected owners, now destitute, walk the fields in search of stray potatoes. Thus overnight money loses its value and becomes a meaningless mass of printed paper. His walk takes him past a little boy poking a stick into a heap of smoking ruins and whistling a song about the great leader who will preserve the nation against all enemies. The song remains, but the leader of yesterday is already part of an extinct past.
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Czesław Miłosz (The Captive Mind)
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It was nothing short of a coup. Imagine getting the world's richest capitalist states to print money that alllows you to build a new type of capital stock. Imagine this type of capital stock comes with the inbuilt superpower to get billions of people to reproduce it on your behalf for free. Imagine further that this capital, funded by state monies and reproduced by citizens free labor, intensifies your power to extract surplus value from proletarians who are working for shrinking wages under worsening conditions--but also from capitalists forced to remove their wares from traditional markets and to sell them via your cloud capital. You wouldn't even need to laugh all the way to the bank since you would be much wiser to keep your stupendous gains stowed in some digital wallet with your cloud capital empire rather than in an account with a pathetic banker
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Yanis Varoufakis (Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism)
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Here’s a crash course in the economy,” said Hunter. “Americans get up each morning and go to factories and farms and fire stations and work their whole lives, creating actual products you can hold in your hands. Or some service that benefits. I mean, what the fuck’s that about?” “Work isn’t good?” “It’s the damn workers who crashed the economy.” “I thought it was you,” said Serge. “Don’t be a comedian.” Hunter started counting off on his fingers. “They lost their retirement accounts, their mortgages, their homes, even their jobs. Can’t these assholes do anything right?” “You on the other hand?” “We ended up with all the cash. And then the people turned to the government and went, ‘Holy shit! What happened to all our goddamn money? Do something!’ So the government takes even more money from the workers and—this part is absolutely priceless—they give it all to us again! Now you tell me who’s the success story.” “But what’s so hard about accepting free money?” “That’s exactly what I was thinking when half the country screamed, ‘I’ll kick your fucking ass if you give me health care!’ ” “Sounds too good for words,” said Serge. “It’s good enough for one word,” said Hunter. “Socialism.” Serge pounded the bar with his fist. “Fuck socialism.” “Don’t say that!” Hunter took a swig. “I love socialism.” “You do?” Hunter nodded hard. “Finest word in the English language. Just mention socialism, and everyone gets blinded by rage, takes their eyes off us and prints up T-shirts that insult the president.” Bleadoph raised his hands toward the ceiling in exultation. “Thank God he was elected!” “Forgive my ignorance,” said Serge, “but weren’t the bailouts socialism?” Hunter shook his head. “It’s only socialism if the money goes down, not up.” “A toast,” said Serge. “To socialism!” “To socialism!
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Tim Dorsey (Electric Barracuda (Serge Storms #13))
“
That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thrombosis, something of that sort. A sort of heart in the wrong place, isn't it? Anyhow -- there it is. Everything seems obliged to go through it now; it can hold up things, stimulate things, give the world fever or pain, and yet all the same -- is it necessary, Irwell? Is it inevitable? Couldn't we function economically quite as well without it? Has the world got to carry that kind of thing for ever?
"What real strength is there in a secondary system of that sort? It's secondary, it's parasitic. It's only a sort of hypertrophied, uncontrolled counting-house which has become dominant by falsifying the entries and intercepting payment. It's a growth that eats us up and rots everything like cancer. Financiers make nothing, they are not a productive department. They control nothing. They might do so, but they don't. They don't even control Westminster and Washington. They just watch things in order to make speculative anticipations. They've got minds that lie in wait like spiders, until the fly flies wrong. Then comes the debt entanglement. Which you can break, like the cobweb it is, if only you insist on playing the wasp. I ask you again what real strength has Finance if you tackle Finance? You can tax it, regulate its operations, print money over it without limit, cancel its claims. You can make moratoriums and jubilees. The little chaps will dodge and cheat and run about, but they won't fight. It is an artificial system upheld by the law and those who make the laws. It's an aristocracy of pickpocket area-sneaks. The Money Power isn't a Power. It's respectable as long as you respect it, and not a moment longer. If it struggles you can strangle it if you have the grip...You and I worked that out long ago, Chiffan...
"When we're through with our revolution, there will be no money in the world but pay. Obviously. We'll pay the young to learn, the grown-ups to function, everybody for holidays, and the old to make remarks, and we'll have a deuce of a lot to pay them with. We'll own every real thing; we, the common men. We'll have the whole of the human output in the market. Earn what you will and buy what you like, we'll say, but don't try to use money to get power over your fellow-creatures. No squeeze. The better the economic machine, the less finance it will need. Profit and interest are nasty ideas, artificial ideas, perversions, all mixed up with betting and playing games for money. We'll clean all that up..."
"It's been going on a long time," said Irwell.
"All the more reason for a change," said Rud.
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H.G. Wells (The Holy Terror)
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Based on my readings of history, my readings of existing conditions, and my understanding of how the economic machine works, the promises that are denominated in the world’s reserve currencies, most importantly the dollar, are too large and growing too fast to be paid in hard money. In other words, the debt that is denominated in these currencies is an overhang, so money will probably be printed to service debts and debt growth4 and interest rates will probably be held below inflation and economic/income growth rates. This reflects the fact that the major reserve currency countries are late in their debt/money/capital market/economic cycles and that wealth will probably be increasingly redistributed from those who have a lot of it to those who don’t have enough of it in one way or another. The extent to which these things will be true will vary from country to country, though it will likely be worldwide.
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Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
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Lincoln labored mightily in the political trenches of the Whig and Republican parties for nearly three decades on behalf of this economic agenda, but with only minor success. The Constitution stood in the way of the Whig economic agenda as one American president after another vetoed internal improvement and national bank bills. Beginning with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, Southern statesmen were always in the forefront of the opposition to this economic agenda. According to Lincoln scholar Mark Neely, Jr., Lincoln seethed in frustration for many years over how the Constitution stood in the way of his political ambitions. Lincoln thought of himself as the heir to the Hamiltonian political tradition, which sought a much more centralized governmental system, one that would plan economic development with corporate subsidies financed by protectionist tariffs and the printing of money by the central government. This
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Thomas J. DiLorenzo (The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War)
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There's a swell book that's out of print now. Maybe Seven Stories will bring it out again. It's called The Writer and Psychoanalysis by a man who's now dead named Edmund Bergler. He claimed he had treated more writers than anyone else in his field, and being that he practiced in New York, he probably did. Bergler said that writers were fortunate in that they were able to treat their neuroses every day by writing. He also said that as soon as a writer was blocked, this was catastrophic because the writer would start to go to pieces. And so I said in a piece in Harper's, or a letter I wrote to Harper's, about "the death of the novel": People will continue to write novels, or maybe short stories, because they discover that they are treating their own neuroses. And I have said about the practice of the arts that practicing any art—be it painting, music, dance, literature, or whatever—is not a way to make money or become famous. It's a way to make your soul grow. So you should do it anyway.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.
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Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
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The Air Force has always had more money than sales resistance, and they bought a one-year program (probably for something in the order of a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars) and in June of 1961 Hawkins and Summers punched the “start” button and the machine started to shuffle IBM cards. And to print out structures that looked like road maps of a disaster area, since if the compounds depicted could even have been synthesized, they would have, infallibly, detonated instantly and violently. The machine’s prize contribution to the cause of science was the structure, to which it confidently attributed a specific impulse of 363.7 seconds, precisely to the tenth of a second, yet. The Air Force, appalled, cut the program off after a year, belatedly realizing that they could have got the same structure from any experienced propellant man (me, for instance) during half an hour’s conversation, and at a total cost of five dollars or so. (For drinks. I would have been afraid even to draw the structure without at least five Martinis under my belt.)
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John Drury Clark (Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants (Rutgers University Press Classics))
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1595, Richard Field, fellow-alumnus of the King Edward grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, printed The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chaeronea: translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot, abbot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the Kings privie counsell, and great Amner of France, and out of French into English, by Thomas North. This was the book that got Shakespeare thinking seriously about politics: monarchy versus republicanism versus empire; the choices we make and their tragic consequences; the conflict between public duty and private desire. He absorbed classical thought, but was not enslaved to it. Shakespeare was a thinker who always made it new, adapted his source materials, and put his own spin on them. In the case of Plutarch, he feminized the very masculine Roman world. Brutus and Caesar are seen through the prism of their wives, Portia and Calpurnia; Coriolanus through his mother, Volumnia; Mark Antony through his lover, Cleopatra. Roman women were traditionally silent, confined to the domestic sphere. Cleopatra is the very antithesis of such a woman, while Volumnia is given the full force of that supreme Ciceronian skill, a persuasive rhetorical voice.40 Timon of Athens is alone and unhappy precisely because his obsession with money has cut him off from the love of, and for, women (the only females in Timon’s strange play are two prostitutes). Paradoxically, the very masculinity of Plutarch’s version of ancient history stimulated Shakespeare into demonstrating that women are more than the equal of men. Where most thinkers among his contemporaries took the traditional view of female inferiority, he again and again wrote comedies in which the girls are smarter than the boys—Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Rosalind in As You Like It, Portia in The Merchant of Venice—and tragedies in which women exercise forceful authority for good or ill (Tamora, Cleopatra, Volumnia, and Cymbeline’s Queen in his imagined antiquity, but also Queen Margaret in his rendition of the Wars of the Roses).41
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Jonathan Bate (How the Classics Made Shakespeare (E. H. Gombrich Lecture Series Book 2))
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From studying 50-plus civil wars and revolutions, it became clear that the single most reliable leading indicator of civil war or revolution is bankrupt government finances combined with big wealth gaps. That is because when the government lacks financial power, it can’t financially save those entities in the private sector that the government needs to save to keep the system running (as most governments, led by the United States, did at the end of 2008), it can’t buy what it needs, and it can’t pay people to do what it needs them to do. It is out of power. A classic marker of being in Stage 5 and a leading indicator of the loss of borrowing and spending power, which is one of the triggers for going into Stage 6, is that the government has large deficits that are creating more debt to be sold than buyers other than the government’s own central bank are willing to buy. That leading indicator is turned on when governments that can’t print money have to raise taxes and cut spending, or when those that can print money print a lot of it and buy a lot of government debt.
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Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
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Yes, I do think the ruling class in America would like to grab everything for themselves, because they were brought up that way, and early American Puritans somehow had it wired into their religion that poverty is a sign that God doesn't like you, that you're not "saved," that money, on the other hand, is a sign of God's approval. They say the middle class in this country is shrinking, but I don't really know who the "they" is in that sentence. I tend to think there's a natural process of balances -- that when the very rich press their luck too far, there's a danger of a backlash, and the rich know it. There's often a time when the bully on the playground does one bad thing too many and all the little weaklings gang up on him, and that's the end of that particular pattern. I look at that stuff as a novelist, and as a human being, but I try not to get too worked up about it. I think of myself as wearing the invisible tee shirt with "You can kill me but you can't impress me" printed on it. Every second I spend laughing is a second I don't have to think about Vice President Cheney, for instance.
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Carolyn See
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The popular 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma illustrates how AI’s personalization will cause you to be unconsciously manipulated by AI and motivated by profit from advertising. The Social Dilemma star Tristan Harris says: “You didn’t know that your click caused a supercomputer to be pointed at your brain. Your click activated billions of dollars of computing power that has learned much from its experience of tricking two billion human animals to click again.” And this addiction results in a vicious cycle for you, but a virtuous cycle for the big Internet companies that use this mechanism as a money-printing machine. The Social Dilemma further argues that this may narrow your viewpoints, polarize society, distort truth, and negatively affect your happiness, mood, and mental health. To put it in technical terms, the core of the issue is the simplicity of the objective function, and the danger from single-mindedly optimizing a single objective function, which can lead to harmful externalities. Today’s AI usually optimizes this singular goal—most commonly to make money (more clicks, ads, revenues). And AI has a maniacal focus on that one corporate goal, without regard for users’ well-being.
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Kai-Fu Lee (AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future)
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This new religion has had a decisive influence on the development of modern science, too. Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses. When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually, ‘Will this project enable us to increase production and profits? Will it produce economic growth?’ A project that can’t clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture. Conversely, the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalism’s belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to keep on growing throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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In a traditional society, individuals are aware that they will need children to support them in the future, and so will spend their healthy young years starting a family and investing in giving their children the best life possible. But if long-term investment in general is disincentivized, if saving is likely to be counterproductive as money depreciates, this investment becomes less profitable. Further, as politicians sell people the lie that eternal welfare and retirement benefits are possible through the magic of the monetary printing press, the investment in a family becomes less and less valuable. Over time, the incentive to start a family declines and more and more people end up leading single lives. More marriages are likely to break down as partners are less likely to put in the necessary emotional, moral, and financial investment to make them work, while marriages that do survive will likely produce fewer children. The well-known phenomenon of the modern breakdown of the family cannot be understood without recognizing the role of unsound money allowing the state to appropriate many of the essential roles that the family has played for millennia, and reducing the incentive of all members of a family to invest in long-term familial relations.
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Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
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We had heard rumours of what people referred to as a ‘phantom accounting system’, also called zappers and phantom ware. This phenomenon was unheard of in South Africa at the time. The more formal term used to describe this kind of criminal financial-management software is a ‘sales-suppression system’. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in which South Africa has observer status, issued a guide on these systems in 2013.10 On the surface, the technology seems like a supposedly normal accounting system, used mainly by retailers. It has all the expected features: it records stock, sales, invoices, receipts and taxes. It can print daily, weekly and monthly accounting records. Yet the software has a feature that can blank out certain sales and receipts. You can set it to suppress, for instance, every fourth sale, or random sales of a particular value, whichever you prefer. The effect is that, on paper, your stock, sales and receipts would balance for tax purposes. All you would have to do is click on a secret place on the screen, or type a particular code on the keyboard, and the unrecorded sales and receipts would reflect. One would then be able to take this money out of the company’s takings for the day, week or month, and people would be none the wiser.
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Johann van Loggerenberg (Rogue: The Inside Story of SARS's Elite Crime-busting Unit)
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In Germany, the Depression was the final nail in the coffin of the Weimar Republic. Germany needed loans to pay its reparations, but once the Depression hit, its funding dried up and hyperinflation ensued as the government printed more money in a desperate effort to come up with the funds to repay what it owed. The collapse of the Weimar Republic was a textbook case of what happens when democracy and capitalism fail; angry, desperate people became willing to go along with a suspension of the most basic civil liberties in the hope that order and prosperity would be restored. Parties and politicians embracing fascism—a philosophy animated by extreme nationalism that called for government control of virtually all aspects of political and economic life—gained ground in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan. By 1932, the Nazi Party had become the largest party in the German parliament; a year later, Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He quickly consolidated power, dismantled democratic protections, formalized harsh discrimination against Jews and others, and began rearming Germany. Hitler broke through the military constraints set by the Versailles Treaty. The absence of a French or British response taught Hitler the dangerous lesson that he could assert German rights as he saw them with little to fear.
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Richard N. Haass (The World: A Brief Introduction)
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1. As the Industrial Revolution proceeded, modern society created for itself a self-congratulatory myth, the myth of “progress”: From the time of our remote, ape-like ancestors, human history had been an unremitting march toward a better and brighter future, with everyone joyously welcoming each new technological advance: animal husbandry, agriculture, the wheel, the construction of cities, the invention of writing and of money, sailing ships, the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, the steam engine, and, at last, the crowning human achievement—modern industrial society! Prior to industrialization, nearly everyone was condemned to a miserable life of constant, backbreaking labor, malnutrition, disease, and an early death. Aren’t we so lucky that we live in modern times and have lots of leisure and an array of technological conveniences to make our lives easy?
Today I think there are relatively few thoughtful, honest and well-informed people who still believe in this myth. To lose one’s faith in “progress” one has only to look around and see the devastation of our environment, the spread of nuclear weapons, the excessive frequency of depression, anxiety disorders and psychological stress, the spiritual emptiness of a society that nourishes itself principally with television and computer games…one could go on and on.
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Theodore John Kaczynski (Technological Slavery)
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this I say,—we must never forget that all the education a man's head can receive, will not save his soul from hell, unless he knows the truths of the Bible. A man may have prodigious learning, and yet never be saved. He may be master of half the languages spoken round the globe. He may be acquainted with the highest and deepest things in heaven and earth. He may have read books till he is like a walking cyclopædia. He may be familiar with the stars of heaven,—the birds of the air,—the beasts of the earth, and the fishes of the sea. He may be able, like Solomon, to "speak of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on the wall, of beasts also, and fowls, and creeping things, and fishes." (1 King iv. 33.) He may be able to discourse of all the secrets of fire, air, earth, and water. And yet, if he dies ignorant of Bible truths, he dies a miserable man! Chemistry never silenced a guilty conscience. Mathematics never healed a broken heart. All the sciences in the world never smoothed down a dying pillow. No earthly philosophy ever supplied hope in death. No natural theology ever gave peace in the prospect of meeting a holy God. All these things are of the earth, earthy, and can never raise a man above the earth's level. They may enable a man to strut and fret his little season here below with a more dignified gait than his fellow-mortals, but they can never give him wings, and enable him to soar towards heaven. He that has the largest share of them, will find at length that without Bible knowledge he has got no lasting possession. Death will make an end of all his attainments, and after death they will do him no good at all. A man may be a very ignorant man, and yet be saved. He may be unable to read a word, or write a letter. He may know nothing of geography beyond the bounds of his own parish, and be utterly unable to say which is nearest to England, Paris or New York. He may know nothing of arithmetic, and not see any difference between a million and a thousand. He may know nothing of history, not even of his own land, and be quite ignorant whether his country owes most to Semiramis, Boadicea, or Queen Elizabeth. He may know nothing of the affairs of his own times, and be incapable of telling you whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Commander-in-Chief, or the Archbishop of Canterbury is managing the national finances. He may know nothing of science, and its discoveries,—and whether Julius Cæsar won his victories with gunpowder, or the apostles had a printing press, or the sun goes round the earth, may be matters about which he has not an idea. And yet if that very man has heard Bible truth with his ears, and believed it with his heart, he knows enough to save his soul. He will be found at last with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, while his scientific fellow-creature, who has died unconverted, is lost for ever. There is much talk in these days about science and "useful knowledge." But after all a knowledge of the Bible is the one knowledge that is needful and eternally useful. A man may get to heaven without money, learning, health, or friends,—but without Bible knowledge he will never get there at all. A man may have the mightiest of minds, and a memory stored with all that mighty mind can grasp,—and yet, if he does not know the things of the Bible, he will make shipwreck of his soul for ever. Woe! woe! woe to the man who dies in ignorance of the Bible! This is the Book about which I am addressing the readers of these pages to-day. It is no light matter what you do with such a book. It concerns the life of your soul. I summon you,—I charge you to give an honest answer to my question. What are you doing with the Bible? Do you read it? HOW READEST THOU?
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J.C. Ryle (Practical Religion Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians)
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The extreme consolidation in the corporate world over the past three decades has produced a playing field so rigged against consumers that pursuing the basics of life can feel like navigating a never-ending series of scams. It’s as if everyone is trying to trick us in the fine print of pages and pages of terms of service agreements they know we will never read. The black box is not just the algorithms running our communication networks—almost everything is a black box, an opaque system hiding something else. The housing market isn’t about homes; it’s about hedge funds and speculators. Universities aren’t about education; they’re about turning young people into lifelong debtors. Long-term care facilities aren’t about care; they’re about draining our elders in the last years of life and real estate plays. Many news sites aren’t about news; they’re about tricking us into clicking on autoplaying ads and advertorials that eat up the bottom half of nearly every site. Nothing is as it seems. This kind of predatory, extractive capitalism necessarily breeds mistrust and paranoia. In this context, it’s not surprising that QAnon, a conspiracy theory that tells of elites harvesting the young for their lifeblood (adrenochrome), has gone viral. Elites are sucking us dry—our money, our labor, our time, our data. So dry that large parts of our planet are beginning to spontaneously combust. The Davos elite aren’t eating our children, but they are eating our children’s futures, and that is plenty bad. QAnon believers imagine secret tunnels underneath pizza parlors and Central Park, the better to traffic children. This is fantasy, but there are tunnels—literal Shadow Lands—under some major cities, and they do house and hide the poor, the sick, the drug-dependent, the discarded. Under the flashing lights of Las Vegas, hundreds or even thousands of people really do live in a sprawling network of storm tunnels.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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You said, Mother, that criticism would help me. But how can it, when it's so contradictory that I don't know whether I've written a promising book or broken all the ten commandments?" cried poor Jo, turning over a heap of notices, the perusal of which filled her with pride and joy one minute, wrath and dismay the next. "This man says, `An exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness. All is sweet, pure, and healthy.'" continued the perplexed authoress. "The next, `The theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies, spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.' Now, as I had no theory of any kind, don't believe in Spiritualism, and copied my characters from life, I don't see how this critic can be right. Another says, `It's one of the best American novels which has appeared for years.' (I know better than that), and the next asserts that `Though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is a dangerous book.' 'Tisn't! Some make fun of it, some overpraise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. I wish I'd printed the whole or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged."
Her family and friends administered comfort and commendation liberally. Yet it was a hard time for sensitive, high-spirited Jo, who meant so well and had apparently done so ill. But it did her good, for those whose opinion had real value gave her the criticism which is an author's best education, and when the first soreness was over, she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.
"Not being a genius, like Keats, it won't kill me," she said stoutly, "and I've got the joke on my side, after all, for the parts that were taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd, and the scenes that I made up out of my own silly head are pronounced `charmingly natural, tender, and true'. So I'll comfort myself with that, and when I'm ready, I'll up again and take another.
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Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
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The Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve Bank was founded in 1913. Most people think that this bank is an American Federal Company. That is just as wrong as the conviction that the Bank of England belongs to the British Crown or to the whole of England. The Federal Reserve is in the hands of the Rothschilds and company. In his speech before the Senate, on December 15, 1987, Senator Jesse Helms said: “The principal instrument of the control over the American economy and money is the Federal Reserve System.” The Federal Reserve has a monopoly over the expenditure of the dollar as a world currency and determining the interest rate, and it disposes of a lot more monopolies. How does the Federal Reserve Bank operate? Suppose the United States government needs a couple of billion dollars for its expenses that cannot be paid with taxes income. At that moment it addresses the Federal Reserve Board. Then government bonds for the needed billion dollars are printed in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. After these bonds are handed over to the bankers of the Federal Reserve, the board grants a loan to the government in the amount of the bond issue. The Federal Reserve draws interest from the government from the day the bonds are delivered. From that day on the government is allowed to draw checks against the Federal Reserve for the amount of the bonds. What are the consequences of this incredible transaction? The government simply saddles the people with a billion dollar debt to the Federal Reserve Bank, apart from the interest on interest that also has to be paid by “ordinary people”. What does the Federal Reserve have to say about “their” money? “Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries.”[76] When the Federal Reserve needs new, or more, currency to transact its business, it takes the bonds over to the United States Treasury for safekeeping and asks the Treasury Department for the billions of dollars of new currency it needs. The Bank is accommodated on condition that it will pay the printing bill. It only pays for the expenditure costs of the banknotes, which are no more than a mere 500 dollars for ink and paper!
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Robin de Ruiter (Worldwide Evil and Misery - The Legacy of the 13 Satanic Bloodlines)
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The school is teeming with activity. The rooms are small and large, many are special-purpose rooms, like shops and labs, but most are furnished like rather shabby living or dining rooms in homes: lots of sofas, easy chairs, and tables. Lots of people sitting around talking, reading, and playing games. On an average rainy day—quite different from a beautiful suddenly snowy day, or a warm spring or fall day—most people are inside. But there will also be more than a few who are outside in the rain, and later will come in dripping and trying the patience of the few people inside who think the school should perhaps be a “dry zone.” There may be people in the photo lab developing or printing pictures they have taken. There may be a karate class, or just some people playing on mats in the dance room. Someone may be building a bookshelf or fashioning chain mail armor and discussing medieval history. There are almost certainly a few people, either together or separate, making music of one kind or another, and others listening to music of one kind or another. You will find adults in groups that include kids, or maybe just talking with one student. It would be most unusual if there were not people playing a computer game somewhere, or chess; a few people doing some of the school’s administrative work in the office—while others hang around just enjoying the atmosphere of an office where interesting people are always making things happen; there will be people engaged in role-playing games; other people may be rehearsing a play—it might be original, it might be a classic. They may intend production or just momentary amusement. People will be trading stickers and trading lunches. There will probably be people selling things. If you are lucky, someone will be selling cookies they baked at home and brought in to earn money. Sometimes groups of kids have cooked something to sell to raise money for an activity—perhaps they need to buy a new kiln, or want to go on a trip. An intense conversation will probably be in progress in the smoking area, and others in other places. A group in the kitchen may be cooking—maybe pizza or apple pie. Always, either in the art room or in any one of many other places, people will be drawing. In the art room they might also be sewing, or painting, and some are quite likely to be working with clay, either on the wheel or by hand. Always there are groups talking, and always there are people quietly reading here and there. One
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Russell L. Ackoff (Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track)
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The US traded its manufacturing sector’s health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The US bet wrong.
But like a losing gambler who keeps on doubling down, the US doesn’t know when to quit. It keeps meeting with its entertainment giants, asking how US foreign and domestic policy can preserve its business-model. Criminalize 70 million American file-sharers? Check. Turn the world’s copyright laws upside down? Check. Cream the IT industry by criminalizing attempted infringement? Check. It’ll never work. It can never work. There will always be an entertainment industry, but not one based on excluding access to published digital works. Once it’s in the world, it’ll be copied. This is why I give away digital copies of my books and make money on the printed editions: I’m not going to stop people from copying the electronic editions, so I might as well treat them as an enticement to buy the printed objects.
But there is an information economy. You don’t even need a computer to participate. My barber, an avowed technophobe who rebuilds antique motorcycles and doesn’t own a PC, benefited from the information economy when I found him by googling for barbershops in my neighborhood.
Teachers benefit from the information economy when they share lesson plans with their colleagues around the world by email. Doctors benefit from the information economy when they move their patient files to efficient digital formats. Insurance companies benefit from the information economy through better access to fresh data used in the preparation of actuarial tables. Marinas benefit from the information economy when office-slaves look up the weekend’s weather online and decide to skip out on Friday for a weekend’s sailing. Families of migrant workers benefit from the information economy when their sons and daughters wire cash home from a convenience store Western Union terminal.
This stuff generates wealth for those who practice it. It enriches the country and improves our lives.
And it can peacefully co-exist with movies, music and microcode, but not if Hollywood gets to call the shots. Where IT managers are expected to police their networks and systems for unauthorized copying – no matter what that does to productivity – they cannot co-exist. Where our operating systems are rendered inoperable by “copy protection,” they cannot co-exist. Where our educational institutions are turned into conscript enforcers for the record industry, they cannot co-exist.
The information economy is all around us. The countries that embrace it will emerge as global economic superpowers. The countries that stubbornly hold to the simplistic idea that the information economy is about selling information will end up at the bottom of the pile.
What country do you want to live in?
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Cory Doctorow (Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future)
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Leonard H. Stringfield 1)Retrievals of the Third Kind: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody. The first formal research paper presented publicly on the subject of UFO crash/retrievals at the MUFON Symposium, Dayton, Ohio, July, 1978. Original edition, dated April, 1978, was published in MUFON Proceedings (1978). Address: MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, Texas 78155. If available, price___________. 2)Retrievals of the Third Kind: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody,Status Report I. Revised edition, July, 1978, word processed copy, 34 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 3)UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome, Status Report II. Published by MUFON. Flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 37 pages. Available only at MUFON address: 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, Texas 78155. Price, USA___________. 4)UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence, Status Report III, June 1982; flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 53 pages. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 5)The Fatal Encounter at Ft. Dix -- McGuire: A Case Study, Status Report IV, June, 1985. Paper presented at MUFON Symposium, St. Louis, Missouri, 1985. Xeroxed copy, 26 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 6)UFO Crash/Retrievals: Is the Coverup Lid Lifting? Status Report V. Published in MUFON UFO Journal, January, 1989, with updated addendum. Xeroxed copy, 23 pages. Available at author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 7)Inside Saucer Post, 3-0 Blue. Book privately published, 1957. Review of author's early research and cooperative association with the Air Defense Command Filter Center, using code name, FOX TROT KILO 3-0 BLUE. Flexible cover, typeset, illustrations, 94 pages. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. 8)Situation Red: The UFO Siege. Hardcover book published by Doubleday & Co., 1977. Paperback edition published by Fawcett Crest Books, 1977. Also foreign publishers. Out of print, not available. 9)Orbit Newsletter, published monthly, 1954-1957, by author for international sale and distribution. Set of 36 issues. Some issues out of stock, duplicated by xerox. Available at author's address -- see below. Price of set, USA___________. 10)UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, Status Report VI, July, 1991; flexible cover, book length, 81.000 words, 142 (8-1/2 X 11) pages, illustrated. Privately published. Available from author's address. See below. Price, USA___________. Prices include postage and handling. Mailings to Canada, add 500 for each item ordered. All foreign orders, payable U.S. funds, International money order or draft on U.S. Bank. Recommend Air Mail outside U.S. territories. Check on price. Leonard H. Stringfield 4412 Grove Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 45227 USA Telephone: (513) 271-4248
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Leonard H. Stringfield (UFO Crash Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum - Status Report VI)
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In the 1860s, during its civil war, the US suspended gold convertibility and printed paper money (known as “greenbacks”) to help monetize war debts. Around the time the US returned to its gold peg in the mid-1870s, a number of other countries joined the gold standard; most currencies remained fixed against it until World War I. Major exceptions were Japan (which was on a silver-linked standard until the 1890s, which led its exchange rate to devalue against gold as silver prices fell during this period) and Spain, which frequently suspended convertibility to support large fiscal deficits. During World War I, warring countries ran enormous deficits that were funded by central banks’ printing and lending of money. Gold served as money in foreign transactions, as international trust (and hence credit) was lacking. When the war ended, a new monetary order was created with gold and the winning countries’ currencies, which were tied to gold. Still, between 1919 and 1922 several European countries, especially those that lost the war, were forced to print and devalue their currencies. The German mark and German mark debt sank between 1920 and 1923. Some of the winners of the war also had debts that had to be devalued to create a new start. With debt, domestic political, and international geopolitical restructurings done, the 1920s boomed, particularly in the US, inflating a debt bubble. The debt bubble burst in 1929, requiring central banks to print money and devalue it throughout the 1930s. More money printing and more money devaluations were required during World War II to fund military spending. In 1944–45, as the war ended, a new monetary system that linked the dollar to gold and other currencies to the dollar was created. The currencies and debts of Germany, Japan, and Italy, as well as those of China and a number of other countries, were quickly and totally destroyed, while those of most winners of the war were slowly but still substantially depreciated. This monetary system stayed in place until the late 1960s. In 1968–73 (most importantly in 1971), excessive spending and debt creation (especially by the US) required breaking the dollar’s link to gold because the claims on gold that were being turned in were far greater than the amount of gold available to redeem them. That led to a dollar-based fiat monetary system, which allowed the big increase in dollar-denominated money and credit that fueled the inflation of the 1970s and led to the debt crisis of the 1980s. Since 2000, the value of money has fallen in relation to the value of gold due to money and credit creation and because interest rates have been low in relation to inflation rates. Because the monetary system has been free-floating, it hasn’t experienced the abrupt breaks it did in the past; the devaluation has been more gradual and continuous. Low, and in some cases negative, interest rates have not provided compensation for the increasing amount of money and credit and the resulting (albeit low) inflation.
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Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
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These senators and representatives call themselves “leaders.” One of the primary principles of leadership is that a leader never asks or orders any follower to do what he or she would not do themselves. Such action requires the demonstration of the acknowledged traits of a leader among which are integrity, honesty, and courage, both physical and moral courage. They don’t have those traits nor are they willing to do what they ask and order. Just this proves we elect people who shouldn’t be leading the nation. When the great calamity and pain comes, it will have been earned and deserved. The piper always has to be paid at the end of the party. The party is about over. The bill is not far from coming due. Everybody always wants the guilty identified. The culprits are we the people, primarily the baby boom generation, which allowed their vote to be bought with entitlements at the expense of their children, who are now stuck with the national debt bill that grows by the second and cannot be paid off. These follow-on citizens—I call them the screwed generation—are doomed to lifelong grief and crushing debt unless they take the only other course available to them, which is to repudiate that debt by simply printing up $20 trillion, calling in all federal bills, bonds, and notes for payoff, and then changing from the green dollar to say a red dollar, making the exchange rate 100 or 1000 green dollars for 1 red dollar or even more to get to zero debt. Certainly this will create a great international crisis. But that crisis is coming anyhow. In fact it is here already. The U.S. has no choice but to eventually default on that debt. This at least will be a controlled default rather than an uncontrolled collapse. At present it is out of control. Congress hasn’t come up with a budget in 3 years. That’s because there is no way at this point to create a viable budget that will balance and not just be a written document verifying that we cannot legitimately pay our bills and that we are on an ever-descending course into greater and greater debt. A true, honest budget would but verify that we are a bankrupt nation. We are repeating history, the history we failed to learn from. The history of Rome. Our TV and video games are the equivalent distractions of the Coliseums and circus of Rome. Our printing and borrowing of money to cover our deficit spending is the same as the mixing and devaluation of the gold Roman sisteri with copper. Our dysfunctional and ineffectual Congress is as was the Roman Senate. Our Presidential executive orders the same as the dictatorial edicts of Caesar. Our open borders and multi-millions of illegal alien non-citizens the same as the influx of the Germanic and Gallic tribes. It is as if we were intentionally following the course written in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The military actions, now 11 years in length, of Iraq and Afghanistan are repeats of the Vietnam fiasco and the RussianAfghan incursion. Our creep toward socialism is no different and will bring the same implosion as socialism did in the U.S.S.R. One should recognize that the repeated application of failed solutions to the same problem is one of the clinical definitions of insanity. * * * I am old, ill, physically used up now. I can’t have much time left in this life. I accept that. All born eventually die and with the life I’ve lived, I probably should have been dead decades ago. Fate has allowed me to screw the world out of a lot of years. I do have one regret: the future holds great challenge. I would like to see that challenge met and overcome and this nation restored to what our founding fathers envisioned. I’d like to be a part of that. Yeah. “I’d like to do it again.” THE END PHOTOS Daniel Hill 1954 – 15
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Daniel Hill (A Life Of Blood And Danger)
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remember that inflation is only the act of printing money in excess of gross national product. They can blame it on the price of widgets or oil only because you never knew the real cause. The real cause and the only cause of inflation is the printing of more money beyond the gross national
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Milton William Cooper (Behold! a Pale Horse, by William Cooper: Reprint recomposed, illustrated & annotated for coherence & clarity (Public Cache))
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Buffett says it’s a political phenomena, not an economic one. As long as politicians lack self-restraint, they will print a lot of money at some point. Though it is probably two years or more down the road, Buffett sees “substantial inflation” and “rates we’ve never seen before.
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Daniel Pecaut (University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting)
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think it was because they cost sixty dollars, but Mama would never admit that there was something we couldn’t afford. She’s a good one for making excuses when it comes to spending money.) Sherilyn’s bustling around the food table in a zebra-print tankini. The boys—Kyle, Jack, Tommy, and Hugh Sasser—are in
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Jenny Han (Shug)
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What satisfies or furthers your creative or artistic goals? This is the reason you got into writing in the first place. Even if you put this on the back burner in order to advance other aspects of your writing and publishing career, don’t leave it out of the equation for long. Otherwise your efforts can come off as mechanistic or uninspired, and you’re more likely to burn out or give up. What earns you money? Not everyone cares about earning money from writing, but as you gain experience and a name for yourself, the choices you make in this regard become more important. The more professional you become, the more you have to pay attention to what brings the most return on your investment of time and energy. As you succeed, you won’t have time to pursue every opportunity. You have to stop doing some things. What grows your audience? Gaining readers can be just as valuable as earning money. It’s an investment that pays off over time. Sometimes it’s smart to make trade-offs that involve earning less money now in order to grow readership, because having more readers will put you in a better position in the future. (For example, you might focus on writing online, rather than for print, to develop a more direct line to readers.)
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Jane Friedman (The Business of Being a Writer (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing))
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Even when they insult you they do it to your face. That’s the only way they can let you know they’re superior to you. They might die and leave you all their money, but somewhere in the fine print in that will they’ve got to let you know you were a good nigger but you’re still a nigger.
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Billie Holiday (Lady Sings the Blues)
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And every dollar they saved was worth less with every financial crisis, while the government just printed more money to preserve the stock markets, the financial status of the elites, and the banks who served them.
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Kenneth Eade (An Evil Trade (Paladine Political Thriller))
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As a physics major, before getting her hands dirty in New York, she had assumed that money is printed by a nation’s central bank, from where it is distributed to commercial banks. But while this is indeed how cash is created, cash accounts for only 3 per cent of all money. What of the remaining 97 per cent? Surprise and then foreboding were the reactions of every student to whom she had explained how the missing 97 per cent was created – and by whom: not by central banks but by commercial and investment bankers. At this point, her students would ask, ‘Without access to state-sanctioned printing presses, how do private bankers create money?’ ‘Simple,’ she would reply. ‘Every time a banker approves a loan of, say, one million dollars for Jack, a typical business customer, the banker just types 1,000,000 on Jack’s bank statement. However incredible it may seem, that’s all it takes. Bankers create money by granting loans by typing in some numbers!’ The crucial thing, she would explain, is that these numbers are typed into a shared database – or ledger – to which only the bankers have access. When their customers transfer this ‘money’ between them – when Jack transfers numbers from his account to the account of a supplier, say Jill, or of a builder, say Bob, or of a worker, say Kate, and when in turn, Jill, Bob and Kate transfer their numbers on, in the same way, to others to whom they owe money – these numbers simply migrate from one cell in the database to another. For this system to be sustainable, and not merely a pyramid scheme, there is a single condition: that, somewhere down the line, the one million dollars which some banker typed into existence on Jack’s behalf results in new goods and services whose total market value exceeds one million dollars. It is from this surplus that the banker takes his interest and Jack his profit. This is what Iris was referring to as a fool’s wager when she said that bankers plundered value from the future, or when Costa had once claimed that capitalism, like science fiction, trades in future assets using fictitious currency. It is in their nature that the wealthier bankers become by creating money, the more money they tend to create. The danger of such a system, of course, is that the banks end up typing into existence sums of money vastly larger than the market value of the goods and services created as a result of Jack, Jill, Bob and Kate’s endeavours. At the point when the bankers have collectively created money sums greater than the resulting values, the present can no longer repay the future for the money it borrowed from it. The moment Jack, Jill, Bob and Kate get a whiff of this, they may demand their bank balances in cash, sensing that the total value on the bankers’ database is lower than the actual value of their customers’ assets. ‘At that point, a bank run sets in,’ Eva would tell her students, ‘and that’s when the system comes crashing down.
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Yanis Varoufakis (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
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Then there’s the whole world of sports madness where billionaire owners somehow manage to get regular taxpayers to underwrite the cost of new stadiums that are basically a license to print money for the monopoly-protected owners.
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Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
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other words, the Grace Committee said that all of America’s billions of dollars in annual income tax pays the interest the Federal Reserve Bank charges the US government to print money. Not
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John Scura (Battle Hymn: Revelations of the Sinister Plan for a New World Order)
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The government wants to fool you by doubling the minimum wage and at the same time doubling the money printing. If you look at it critically, they haven't solved the problem of escalated poverty and lack, which is why Bitcoin and other blockchain technology related projects might be your safe haven.
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Olawale Daniel
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Indirectly getting a lion’s share of patent medicine revenues, the newspapers netted more money from selling advertising to these firms than did the patent medicine firms from selling their potions after expenses. “Should the newspapers, magazines, and medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisements, the patent medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic” as past financial follies and frauds. He pointed out that Hearst alone generated over half a million dollars from patent medicine advertising. But as Adams knew well, the economics of publishing was such that once the printing cost of an edition was met, each incremental advertising dollar generated was nearly all margin and dropped right to the bottom line—neither Hearst nor anyone else was likely to turn away from the industry’s largesse.
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Bhu Srinivasan (Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism)
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In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur. Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur. I say “and” rather than “or” because now you have to be all of the above. Not just one. An artist must also be an entrepreneur. That’s it. Those ARE your choices. Cubicles are getting commoditized. And when that happens, they empty out. I saw it with my own eyes when I visited my investor friend and stared out his office windows at the vacant vertical city. And now I see it happening every day. It’s not something that can be changed with laws or with printing money or with a change in values. It’s history now. The world has already changed, and all the pieces are just falling into place. Which side will you be on?
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James Altucher (Choose Yourself)
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Flipping through them inside the envelope, I noticed they had consecutive serial numbers, which was something I had never seen before. This made me think, with a bodily sort of vividness, of the millions of twenty-dollar bills printed before and after mine and the endless possibilities they represented. The things they could buy, the problems they could solve. My father was right: money was a divine essence that could embody itself in any concrete manifestation.
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Hernan Diaz (Trust)
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If you will smell $, you will feel Blood odour ,
For US every war, every conflict is a peak season that prints money..
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Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
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The other classic—if you can find it—is Donald Cressey’s Other People’s Money (1953), which introduced the fraud-triangle psychological model. Since this one is out of print and widely stolen from libraries
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Dan Davies (Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World)
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The wealth effect is one pillar supporting the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy and profligate money printing since 2008. The transmission channels are easy to follow. If rates are low, more Americans can afford mortgages, which increases home buying, resulting in higher prices for homes. Similarly, with low rates, brokers offer cheap margin loans to clients, which result in more stock buying and higher stock prices.
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James Rickards (The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System)
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she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.
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Karen Weinreb (The Summer Kitchen)
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The US’s having a federal debt of $19 trillion or $190 trillion is actually only as relevant as its position in the global power hierarchy. The US will never default as long as it remains a global empire, and all major nations buying US bonds know this deep down. The US can just make it up by way of its central bank, the Federal Reserve, which extends to a financial system with great global power, also ensuring the power of the US dollar. If debts are in dollars, the US simply makes more. Although people often argue that the US is in debt to a private banking cartel (its central bank) and that is a problem in itself, it is really irrelevant in the broad view. The whole thing is mostly a sleight-of-hand arrangement that lets the US government borrow endlessly while the banking system gets special political treatment. No one in the US government and its central bank cartel really cares about US government debt because money is made out of thin air. They only care about public regulation and public perception, not government spending or government debt. In the words of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.”51
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Peter Joseph (The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression)
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The key elements in creating a micromovement consist of five things to do and six principles: 1. Publish a manifesto. Give it away and make it easy for the manifesto to spread far and wide. It doesn’t have to be printed or even written. But it’s a mantra and a motto and a way of looking at the world. It unites your tribe members and gives them a structure. 2. Make it easy for your followers to connect with you. It could be as simple as visiting you or e-mailing you or watching you on television. Or it could be as rich and complex as interacting with you on Facebook or joining your social network on Ning. 3. Make it easy for your followers to connect with one another. There’s that little nod that one restaurant regular gives to another recognized regular. Or the shared drink in an airport lounge. Even better is the camaraderie developed by volunteers on a political campaign or insiders involved in a new product launch. Great leaders figure out how to make these interactions happen. 4. Realize that money is not the point of a movement. Money exists merely to enable it. The moment you try to cash out is the moment you stunt the growth of your movement. 5. Track your progress. Do it publicly and create pathways for your followers to contribute to that progress.
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Seth Godin (Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us)
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When the next negotiation session came around on March 15, Nichols confidently pulled out a printed copy of the report and confronted U.S. Soccer’s representatives with it. U.S. Soccer responded that the jump in profitability for the women’s team was an aberration—not part of the larger pattern in the federation’s finances. “An aberration?” Nichols responded. “Aberrations don’t occur multiple years in a row. Aberrations aren’t projected. You guys have projected profitability. You projected the women to bring in more than the men.” What U.S. Soccer’s executives told him, and have maintained in the federation’s defense ever since, is that over the previous four-year cycle—which includes World Cups for both teams—the men brought in more revenue than the women. Both sides agree that is true. The gap in revenue between the national teams had historically been large—but the long-term trend showed the gap was shrinking. Since the 2015 World Cup, the gap had flipped and the women had been bringing in more money.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
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43. How much does it cost to make a dollar? American dollars, like all printed money, start out as pieces of paper and ink used to print the value on them. Printing money is a complex process, which uses special paper and ink, along with a number of security measures which prevent conunterfeiting. Taking mass production into account, and the fact that nobody will ever print a single dollar bill, but a large number of them in a bulk, the printing price may come up surprisingly cheap. It costs less than 10 cents to print a $1 bill. A mere 10 cents per dollar bill is enough to cover the industry expenses. To make things weirder, making coins is much more expensive – forging a penny costs just a bit under $0.025 (2.5 cents). A real bargain is, of course a $100 bill – it costs exactly the same as a $1 bill.
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Tyler Backhause (101 Creepy, Weird, Scary, Interesting, and Outright Cool Facts: A collection of 101 facts that are sure to leave you creeped out and entertained at the same time)
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Anthony Lee Zhang, a professor at the University of Chicago, once tweeted, “As resources get cheaper, we find progressively dumber uses of them.” Things like artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, virtual reality, and potential innovations like quantum computing will of course change how we interact with the world. But we have gotten very good at taking raw materials out of the earth and making things out of them. However, the cost of repairing things (labor) has skyrocketed, hence the “I’ll buy cheap things because they’re cheap rather than repairing those I already have” mindset.
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Kyla Scanlon (In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work)
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Prices rose by the hour. Restaurants didn’t bother printing menus. By the time the bill arrived, the price had changed. American visitors couldn’t spend their money because no German had marks enough to exchange them. People carted money through the streets in wheelbarrows. The cost of one loaf of bread rose to 4.6 million marks.
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Marianne Monson (The Opera Sisters)
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I mean it, Mr. Rearden. And I know what the word means and it’s the right word. I’m tired of being paid, with your money, to do nothing except make it impossible for you to make any money at all. I know that anyone who works today is only a sucker for bastards like me, but . . . well, God damn it, I’d rather be a sucker, if that’s all there’s left to be!” His voice had risen to a cry. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Rearden,” he said stiffly, looking away. In a moment, he went on in his woodenly unemotional tone. “I want to get out of the Deputy-Director-of-Distribution racket. I don’t know that I’d be of much use to you, I’ve got a college diploma in metallurgy, but that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. But I think I’ve learned a little about the work in the two years I’ve been here—and if you could use me at all, as a sweeper or scrap man or whatever you’d trust me with, I’d tell them where to put the deputy directorship and I’d go to work for you tomorrow, next week, this minute or whenever you say.” He avoided looking at Rearden, not in a manner of evasion, but as if he had no right to do it.
”
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
He’d spent months tracking down the book, so tiny it would fit in a doll’s hands, but so precious it had cost him an indecent amount of money. A miniature illuminated manuscript, crafted by the skilled hands of the smallest of the lesser Fae—one of the first printed books in existence. It hadn’t been meant for reading—but he’d figured that someone who adored books as much as Nesta would savor this piece of history. Even if she resented all things Fae. He’d regretted throwing it into the river the moment it had vanished under the ice, but … he’d been foolish that night.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
(Even Lululemon had its own distinctive vernacular. It was printed all over their shopping bags, so customers would walk out of the store carrying mantras like, “There is little difference between addicts and fanatic athletes,” “Visualize your eventual demise,” and “Friends are more important than money”—all coined by their so-called “tribe” leader, Lululemon’s founder, Chip Wilson, an aging G.I. Joe type just like Greg Glassman whose acolytes were equally devout. Who knew fitness could inspire such religiosity?)
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Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism—Understanding the Social Science of Cult Influence)
“
Song Renzong, anxious to encourage trade, helped this sensible practice along: sometime early in his reign, a royal office was established in the city of Chengdu to print these receipts in set amounts. The woodblock receipts, circulated through the markets of Song China, served as the world’s first paper money.14
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Susan Wise Bauer (The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade)
“
A party, or any institution that is in power or opposition, does all things to get only its own goal and interests, no matter in a legal way or through illegal resources, like forces, print and electronic media, and negative propaganda among the people, spending the millions of money for this. It is called dirty politics by the support of evil spirits.
Most of the political parties criticize the party in power, not for the best of the people, but to get the power for themselves.
Political parties are national and democratic assets, not leaders; don’t destroy them; however, remove corrupt and criminal ones from them. Undoubtedly, political parties constitute the key mother pillar of all pillars of democracy; no state can achieve its goals and interests without them.
The day you vote is an opportunity to vote not for a leader but for a party manifesto and constructive thoughts and plans. Indeed, you will have good fortune, a bright and joyful social status, and prosperity will always be a part of your society and life.
Political parties in every society are a convenient avenue and beneficial wager for those donors who donate and rule the world, not through bona fide democracy and its genuine process. As a result, the people of the world remain slaves even in a civilized environment in their societies.”
A coalition, in a political term, defines a conditional and non-significant journey that starts risking the collapse without notice, whereas it also mirrors a hollow and unstable organ to decide and solve wide-scale subjects and issues.
In the third world, political leaders run political parties in the frame of their factory management.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
Meanwhile, German inflation worsened. The government was printing so much money that newspaper presses were commandeered. Thirty paper mills worked around the clock to satisfy the need for bank notes. Prices soared so fast that wives would meet their husbands at factory gates, collect their wages, and then rush off to shop before the next round of price increases. In January 1922, about two hundred marks equaled one dollar. By November 1923, it took over four billion marks to buy a dollar. A stamp on a letter to America cost a billion marks. At the end, in a final absurdity, prices doubled hourly.
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Ron Chernow (The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance)
“
Who is your ideal target market? Be as specific as possible about all the attributes that may be relevant. What is their gender, age, geography? Do you have a picture of them? If so, cut out or print a picture of them when you think about and answer the following questions: • What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up in their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling? • What are they afraid of? • What are they angry about? • Who are they angry at? • What are their top daily frustrations? • What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives? • What do they secretly, ardently desire most? • Is there a built-in bias in the way they make decisions? For example, engineers are exceptionally analytical. • Do they have their own language or jargon they use? • What magazines do they read? • What websites do they visit? • What’s this person’s day like? • What’s the main dominant emotion this market feels? • What is the ONE thing they crave above all else? These are not theoretical, pie-in-the-sky questions. They are key to your marketing success. Unless you can get into the mind of your prospect, all your other marketing efforts will be wasted
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Allan Dib (The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd)
“
At least Japan had sufficient domestic savings to fund its escalating national debt and printed its own currency. Europe’s stricken periphery wasn’t so fortunate. Take Draghi’s homeland. In the fifteen years since the start of the euro project, Italy enjoyed no increase in income per capita and labour costs climbed relative to Germany’s, rendering Italian exports uncompetitive. Italy’s public debt trailed only Japan’s and Greece’s. Italian banks were loaded down with hundreds of billions of euros of bad debts. Many of its largest businesses were certified zombies. Political sclerosis accompanied the economic version. The IMF warned that ‘in the absence of deeper structural reforms, medium-term growth is projected to remain low.’30 Without adequate economic growth, Italy’s sovereign debt problems and the Eurozone’s existential crisis remained unresolved. As in Japan, easy money bought time, but time was wasted.fn6
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Edward Chancellor (The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest)
“
The rest of section eight lays out the other things that Congress is allowed to do. The list is pretty extensive, so we will hit the high points. - Borrow money. - Regulate trade between other countries, between the states, and between Indian tribes. - Develop rules for Naturalization. - Print money and provide punishment for printing fake money. - Establish a post office. - Promote the progress of science and useful arts. - Set up federal courts that are subordinate to the Supreme Court. - Punish Pirates and other offenses committed on the high Seas. - Declare war. - Raise and support an Army and Navy as well as make the rules for governing them. - Call up the Militia to execute laws, quell an uprising, or repel a foreign invasion. - Provide a system for States to man, equip, and train their own Militias. - Allow the Federal government to buy land to set up government buildings, forts, docks, etc.
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John Vandusen (Blueprint of Freedom: Simplified Guide to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution)
“
No one has called me special. Hell, I don't think I've been labeled special in any other way that wasn't derogatory. It makes me feel... good. Appreciated. Valued in a way that has nothing to do with how much money I make or what kind of job I have.
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
What's the point of having so much money when you'll never have the chance to enjoy it?
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
If money was no object, what would you do?
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
Direct response marketing is designed to evoke an immediate response and compel prospects to take some specific action, such as opting in to your email list, picking up the phone and calling for more information, placing an order or being directed to a web page. So what makes a direct response ad? Here are some of the main characteristics: It’s trackable. That is, when someone responds, you know which ad and which media was responsible for generating the response. This is in direct contrast to mass media or “brand” marketing—no one will ever know what ad compelled you to buy that can of Coke; heck you may not even know yourself. It’s measurable. Since you know which ads are being responded to and how many sales you’ve received from each one, you can measure exactly how effective each ad is. You then drop or change ads that are not giving you a return on investment. It uses compelling headlines and sales copy. Direct response marketing has a compelling message of strong interest to your chosen prospects. It uses attention-grabbing headlines with strong sales copy that is “salesmanship in print.” Often the ad looks more like an editorial than an ad (hence making it at least three times more likely to get read). It targets a specific audience or niche. Prospects within specific verticals, geographic zones or niche markets are targeted. The ad aims to appeal to a narrow target market. It makes a specific offer. Usually, the ad makes a specific value-packed offer. Often the aim is not necessarily to sell anything from the ad but to simply get the prospect to take the next action, such as requesting a free report. The offer focuses on the prospect rather than on the advertiser and talks about the prospect’s interests, desires, fears, and frustrations. By contrast, mass media or “brand” marketing has a broad, one-size-fits-all marketing message and is focused on the advertiser. It demands a response. Direct response advertising has a “call to action,” compelling the prospect to do something specific. It also includes a means of response and “capture” of these responses. Interested, high-probability prospects have easy ways to respond, such as a regular phone number, a free recorded message line, a website, a fax back form, a reply card or coupons. When the prospect responds, as much of the person’s contact information as possible is captured so that they can be contacted beyond the initial response. It includes multi-step, short-term follow-up. In exchange for capturing the prospect’s details, valuable education and information on the prospect’s problem is offered. The information should carry with it a second “irresistible offer”—tied to whatever next step you want the prospect to take, such as calling to schedule an appointment or coming into the showroom or store. Then a series of follow-up “touches” via different media such as mail, email, fax and phone are made. Often there is a time or quantity limit on the offer.
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Allan Dib (The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd)
“
Often, no matter how careful you tried to be, sheer exhaustion would lead to errors that weren’t caught until it was too late. Sometimes it was due to what we called the F9 mistake. Back then, computers were very slow, so you didn’t want to wait for the spreadsheet program to recalculate automatically every time you made a change. You would instead turn off that feature, but then you needed to be careful to remember to hit F9 at the end, which would trigger the recalculation of data throughout the model. There were always stories about analysts who made a bunch of changes and then forgot to hit F9, printing the books with faulty numbers. They might realize during the client presentation, or perhaps after the meeting, that the wrong data had been utilized. The models were so complicated that usually no one would notice, but people were making big decisions based on erroneous information. How many deals were done, we wondered, or people laid off because some sleep-deprived analyst got a model wrong? Steve forgot to hit F9; ten thousand people got fired.
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Christopher Varelas (How Money Became Dangerous: The Inside Story of Our Turbulent Relationship with Modern Finance)
“
Notice the irony: in a world ideologically dominated by monetary conservatism, and ringing with long sermons about the perils of printing money, the effective money supply had been turned over to privateers [private banks] bent on flooding the markets with money of their own making [ex. CDOs, which act as stores of value + means of exchange]. How did this differ, really, from handing the Fed’s printing presses over to the mafia? There is not much difference, is the honest answer.
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Yanis Varoufakis (The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy)
“
A party, or any institution that is in power or in opposition, does all things to get only for its own goal and interests, no matter in a legal way or through illegal resources, like forces, print, and electronic media, and negative propaganda among the people, spending the millions of money for this. It is called dirty politics by the support of evil spirits.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
The nation is teetering on financial ruin due to the unconscionable profligate spending, borrowing, taxing, and money printing by the federal government. Several decades ago, Dr. Milton Friedman, an iconic economist and Nobel laureate, concluded that “it is not in the interest of a legislator to vote against a particular appropriation bill if that vote would create strong enemies while a vote in its favor would alienate few supporters.
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Mark R. Levin (The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic)
“
The only cure for inflation is to reduce the rate at which total [government] spending is growing.”90 “[N]either the businessman, nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a printing press in their basement on which they can turn out those green pieces of paper we call money.
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Mark R. Levin (The Democrat Party Hates America)
“
With the crises of 2008, the government made clear that not only was it willing to grant "too big to fail" institutions the right to print money, but to itself create almost infinite amounts of money to bail them out if they managed to get themselves into trouble by making corrupt or idiotic loans. This allowed institutions like Bank of America to distribute that newfound cash to the very politicians who voted to bail them out and, thus, secure the right to have their lobbyists write the very legislation that was supposed to "regulate them." This, despite having just nearly destroyed the world economy. It’s not entirely clear why such firms should not, at this points, be considered part of the federal government, other than that they keep their profits for themselves. (p. 79-80)
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David Graeber (The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement)
“
Because what’s the point of having so much money when you’ll never have the chance to enjoy it.
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
The leveling effects of fairness concerns were significantly mediated by regime type. In World War I, the democracies of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada were prepared to “soak the rich,” whereas more autocratic systems such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia preferred to borrow or print money to sustain their war effort. The latter, however, later paid a high price through hyperinflation and revolution, shocks that likewise compressed inequality. Especially during World War I, before a common template for funding mass mobilization warfare had been established, the mechanisms of leveling therefore varied considerably between countries.
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Walter Scheidel (The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Book 69))
“
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph so people could record their thoughts for posterity and to help the blind. He was horrified when most people just wanted to play music. Alfred Nobel intended his explosives to be used only in mining and railway construction. Gutenberg just wanted to make money printing Bibles. Yet his press catalyzed the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation, and so became the greatest threat to the Catholic Church since its establishment.
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Mustafa Suleyman (The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future)
“
Apart from money printing and interest rates. It is the rich, those who refuse to pay taxes and spend their capital, who will ultimately cause inflation and the downfall of a nation.
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Mwanandeke Kindembo
“
The most primitive tribes of Australia and Africa, like the Eskimos of today, have not yet reached finger-counting, nor do they have numbers in series. Instead they have a binary system of independent numbers for one and two, with composite numbers up to six. After six, they perceive only “heap.” Lacking the sense of series, they will scarcely notice when two pins have been removed from a row of seven. They become aware at once, however, if one pin is missing. Tobias Dantzig, who investigated these matters, points out (in Number: The Language of Science) that the parity or kinesthetic sense of these people is stronger than their number sense. It is certainly an indication of a developing visual stress in a culture when number appears. A closely integrated tribal culture will not easily yield to the separatist visual and individualistic pressures that lead to the division of labor, and then to such accelerated forms as writing and money. On the other hand, Western man, were he determined to cling to the fragmented and individualist ways that he has derived from the printed word in particular, would be well advised to scrap all his electric technology since the telegraph.
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Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man)
“
Mostly Pakistani electronic and print media are talking, spreading, and participating in the foreign policy agenda against Islam, the Armed Forces, Pakistan, and the Pakistani nation by receiving funds for that purpose.
It is common sense to understand that no one will do anything against their people and land without getting any reward or money. They have organized the so-called "Amn Ki Aasha"; they are not on the "Mission of Peace" but on the "Mission of Destruction" of the moral, Islamic, and cultural values of our society.
They are open traitors and agents of foreign secret agencies, especially Indians. The agencies never leave proof or signs of their involvement behind them. We should, as a Muslim nation and as a great Armed Forces of the world, first trace and clean up the traitors and agents at home and within us, and then turn to others, out of the homeland.
The enemies who are active in destroying our beloved Pakistani security and peace, our media is the ugly enemy of our defense system; it should and must be brought to justice and addressed for peace and security.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
When the government prints money, everyone is temporarily happier. But a lot of them are being tricked, and eventually they’re going to regret their former “good fortune.
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Steven E. Landsburg (The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics)
“
Gutenberg himself had printed the first mass-produced Indulgences in 1454 while he was working on his Bible project, and by the end of the fifteenth century they had become an untrammelled money-making racket for the Church. At the time of Luther’s protest, Indulgences were being sold at an unprecedented rate to raise money for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
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S. Denham Wade (As Far as the Eye can See: A History of Seeing)
“
The Kane Company board is filled with a bunch of old men who sit around talking about how much money they've made, without actually discussing the important matters at hand.
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
Mostly Pakistani electronic and print media are talking, spreading, and participating in the foreign policy agenda against Islam, the Armed Forces, Pakistan, and the Pakistani nation by receiving funds for that purpose.
It is common sense to understand that no one will do anything against their people and land without getting any reward or money. They have organized the so-called "Amn Ki Aasha"; they are not on the "Mission of Peace" but on the "Mission of Destruction" of the moral, Islamic, and cultural values of our society.
They are open traitors and agents of foreign secret agencies, especially Indians. The agencies never leave proof or signs of their involvement behind them. We should, as a Muslim nation and as a great Armed Forces of the world, first trace and clean up the traitors and agents at home and within us, and then turn to others, out of the homeland.
The enemies who are active in destroying our beloved Pakistani security and peace, our media is the ugly enemy of our defense system; it should and must be brought to justice and addressed for peace and security.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
When governments tax the people, it's an attempt to control the means of production. They don't need the money, they're printing it anyway. They need the labor.
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Anje Kruger
“
Make your money make money: Buy a printing press and some blank currency paper.
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Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
It’s good enough for one word,” said Hunter. “Socialism.” Serge pounded the bar with his fist. “Fuck socialism.” “Don’t say that!” Hunter took a swig. “I love socialism.” “You do?” Hunter nodded hard. “Finest word in the English language. Just mention socialism, and everyone gets blinded by rage, takes their eyes off us and prints up T-shirts that insult the president.” Bleadoph raised his hands toward the ceiling in exultation. “Thank God he was elected!” “Forgive my ignorance,” said Serge, “but weren’t the bailouts socialism?” Hunter shook his head. “It’s only socialism if the money goes down, not up.
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Tim Dorsey (Electric Barracuda (Serge Storms #13))
“
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If you stop to think about it for a few minutes, you can’t help but conclude that the modern world has gone completely insane. Face it. Global conditions are one big chaotic swirling minefield threatening to tear through our trailer park. Meanwhile we consider which new golden gadget to buy while our government prints more money
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Ed Robinson (Leap of Faith: Quit Your Job and Live on a Boat)
“
the crisis prompted the issue of emergency paper money: in Britain, £1 and 10s Treasury notes; in the United States, the emergency currency that banks were authorized to issue under the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908.46 Then, as now, the authorities reacted to a liquidity crisis by printing money.
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Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition)
“
complaints from France that Washington was exploiting its reserve currency status in order to collect seigniorage from America’s foreign creditors by printing dollars, much as medieval monarchs had exploited their monopoly on minting to debase the currency.
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Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition)
“
Social security cannot stop due to the large scale human dependence on the program for basic needs. Congress has the mandate to continue this program and the Federal Reserve has the ability to print money to bail it out. So, do not live in fear expecting the worst because this entitlement program is not going away anytime soon.
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Lee Johnson (Creative Retirement for Women)
“
Little do they know how hard it is for educated young people in the city, competing against thousands of others, to find a decent job, especially if they have no connections. Some of the unhappiest people I met were young men in Bujumbura, after all these years of sacrifice, desperately looking for a job, month after month after month. Some don’t even manage to find the money to print their final theses, and will thus never get their degrees. They worked so hard, got so close, and then they still find the door closed. It is my impression that these are not people who are inclined to violence and self-destruction: they are too serious for that, they have given too much, they want to belong to the system more than anything else. And so they doggedly keep on going, asking around, trying to ingratiate themselves with more powerful people (including any foreigners they can get to meet), waiting for the day they will get a job, any job, anywhere.
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Peter Uvin (Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi (African Arguments))
“
Got himself fired for pulling a sword on an acknowledged perp. Slid it right through the fabric of the perp’s shirt, gliding the flat of the blade along the base of his neck, and pinned him to a warped and bubbled expanse of vinyl siding on the wall of the house that the perp was trying to break into. Thought it was a pretty righteous bust. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale. Oh, the weasels had an excuse: said that a thirty-six-inch samurai sword was not on their Weapons Protocol. Said that he had violated the SPAC, the Suspected Perpetrator Apprehension Code. Said that the perp had suffered psychological trauma. He was afraid of butter knives now; he had to spread his jelly with the back of a teaspoon. They said that he had exposed them to liability. The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. Had to borrow it from the Mafia, in fact. So he’s in their database now—retinal patterns, DNA, voice graph, fingerprints, footprints, palm prints, wrist prints, every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it—almost—those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. But it’s their money—sure they’re careful about loaning it out. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him, because they knew him. When he got the loan, he had to deal personally with the assistant vice-capo of the Valley, who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. So it was like being in a family. A really scary, twisted, abusive family. CosaNostra
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Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
“
She thrust the pink box she was holding into Mr. Rutherford’s hands before she opened up her reticule and pulled out a fistful of coins. Counting them out very precisely, she stopped counting when she reached three dollars, sixty-two cents. Handing Mr. Rutherford the coins, she then took back the pink box, completely ignoring the scowl Mr. Rutherford was now sending her. “This is not the amount of money I quoted you for the skates, Miss . . . ?” “Miss Griswold,” Permilia supplied as she opened up the box and began rummaging through the thin paper that covered her skates. Mr. Rutherford’s brows drew together. “Surely you’re not related to Mr. George Griswold, are you?” “He’s my father,” Permilia returned before she frowned and lifted out what appeared to be some type of printed form, one that had a small pencil attached to it with a maroon ribbon. “What is this?” Mr. Rutherford returned the frown, looking as if he wanted to discuss something besides the form Permilia was now waving his way, but he finally relented—although he did so with a somewhat heavy sigh. “It’s a survey, and I would be ever so grateful if you and Miss Radcliff would take a few moments to fill it out, returning it after you’re done to a member of my staff, many of whom can be found offering hot chocolate for a mere five cents at a stand we’ve erected by the side of the lake. I’m trying to determine which styles of skates my customers prefer, and after I’m armed with that information, I’ll be better prepared to stock my store next year with the best possible products.” “Far be it from me to point out the obvious, Mr. Rutherford, but one has to wonder about your audacity,” Permilia said. “It’s confounding to me that you’re so successful in business, especially since not only are you overcharging your customers for the skates today, you also expect those very customers to extend you a service by taking time out of their day to fill out a survey for you. And then, to top matters off nicely, instead of extending those customers a free cup of hot chocolate for their time and effort, you’re charging them for that as well.” “I’m a businessman, Miss Griswold—as is your father, if I need remind you. I’m sure he’d understand exactly what my strategy is here today, as well as agree with that strategy.” Permilia stuck her nose into the air. “You may very well be right, Mr. Rutherford, but . . .” She thrust the box back into his hands. “Since I’m unwilling to pay more than I’ve already given you for these skates, I’ll take my money back, if you please.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr. Rutherford said, thrusting the box right back at Permilia. “Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I have other customers to attend to.” With that, he sent Wilhelmina a nod, scowled at Permilia, and strode through the snow back to his cash register.
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Jen Turano (At Your Request (Apart from the Crowd, #0.5))
“
As long as politicians lack self-restraint, they will print a lot of money at some point.
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Daniel Pecaut (University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting)
“
You may think that sending equipment hidden in a gift to prisoners is purely an invention of the movies, yet you might be surprised to learn it happened for real - and most likely in a more amazing way that you would expect. In the Second World War, Germany allowed the International Red Cross to send packages to POWs; amongst the items the Nazis permitted was a Monopoly set. With this in mind, Allied forces made special versions of the game that helped the prisoners to escape. German, French and Italian money was hidden amongst the standard Monopoly notes; a metal file was hidden within the board itself; a small compass could be found in one of the playing pieces and maps of the camp the prisoners were in were printed on silk and hidden inside the house and hotel pieces!
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Jack Goldstein (101 Amazing Facts)
“
The golden age of discount retailing, where developing a store in a well-chosen location was a formula for printing money, has come to an end.
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Greg Thain (Store Wars: The Worldwide Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace, Online and In-store)
“
Capitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions. It was both descriptive and prescriptive – it offered an account of how money worked and promoted the idea that reinvesting profits in production leads to fast economic growth. But capitalism gradually became far more than just an economic doctrine. It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think. Its principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom and even happiness all depend on economic growth. Ask a capitalist how to bring justice and political freedom to a place like Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, and you are likely to get a lecture on how economic affluence and a thriving middle class are essential for stable democratic institutions, and about the need therefore to inculcate Afghan tribesmen in the values of free enterprise, thrift and self-reliance. This new religion has had a decisive influence on the development of modern science, too. Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses. When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually ‘Will this project enable us to increase production and profits? Will it produce economic growth?’ A project that can’t clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture. Conversely, the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalism’s belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to keep on growing throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill. Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs. New discoveries in fields such as biotechnology and nanotechnology could create entire new industries, whose profits could back the trillions of make-believe money that the banks and governments have created since 2008. If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are heading towards very rough times.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)