Saltwater Famous Quotes

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.

horses…” The mortals were no longer listening. They were much more interested in making money, and while the countryside around their city was great for growing olives, it was too hilly and rocky for horses to be much use. It was kind of ironic. The people of the city would eventually become famous sea traders, exporting their olive oil; but they turned down the sea god Poseidon’s patronage. He might’ve done better if he’d offered them trained whales. So Athena won the contest, and that’s why the city is named Athens, after her, when it could have been named something cool like Poseidonopolis. Poseidon stormed off, literally. He forgot his promise not to take revenge and almost destroyed the lower part of the city with a huge flood, until finally the Athenians agreed to build a temple on the acropolis honoring both Athena and Poseidon. The temple is still there. If you go, you can see the marks left by Poseidon’s trident where he struck the rock to make the saltwater spring. There are probably still olive trees around, too. But I doubt you’ll see any horses. After that, Poseidon got a little obsessed with finding a city to sponsor, but he didn’t have any luck. He fought with Hera for the city of Argos. Hera won. He fought with Zeus for the island of Aegina. Zeus won. He fought with Helios for the city of Corinth and almost won, but Zeus said, “No, you guys split it. Helios, you can have the main city and the acropolis. Poseidon—you see that little skinny strip of land next to the city? You can have that.” Poseidon just kept getting shafted—or lightning-bolted, or olive-treed.