Literature

“For two hundred and fifty years, the machine has been replacing Man and destroying the handcraftsman. Pottery is spewed out of molds and presses. Works of art have been replaced by identical gimcracks stamped out on a die. Call it progress, if you wish! The artist is restricted to abstractions, confined to the world of ideas. He must design

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov

“Under the reign of William III, the charging of interest was soon allowed and bank-friendly laws were introduced. Given the previous repeated defaults by indebted kings and a raid on the national mint; Parliament and creditors of the state (namely the merchants and goldsmiths) lobbied for the creation of a privately owned Bank with public

Unproductive credit creation (for non-GDP transactions) will result in asset price inflation, bursting bubbles and banking crises as well as resource misallocation and dislocation. In contrast credit used for the production of new goods and services, or to enhance productivity, is productive credit creation that will deliver non-inflationary

Banks decide where to allocate credit in the economy. The incentives that they face often lead them to favour lending against collateral, or existing assets, rather than lending for investment in production. As a result, new money is often more likely to be channeled into property and financial speculation than to small businesses and

Little Fly,

Thy summer’s play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink, and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing…

William Blake

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

Asimov

“In the fall, do leaves on the trees still change color if no one is there to see them?”

Last July I read a book about the Great Depression. In it they described a carnival tent, kept at arm's length from the others, where men would gather at night. And they would peer through a gauzy curtain to watch a woman lie on a fainting couch and await the coming dawn. The men could not make out her face, or even if she was truly beautiful, but