Moonlapse

also brought us the most powerful empire from 1914-present. Wouldn't that be due more to the progressive 'revolution' of 1913 than the American Revolution?

Here's a better shot. It's part of a Salvador Dali portrait called In Voluptas Mors by Philippe Halsman.

I'll drink to that. Happy birthday!

The more the merrier! Here's another favorite Ravel piece, performed by Vlado Perlemuter no less: Sonatine Mod

Assez vif - Tr

Enjoy! Allegro moderato - Tr

Eh... I'll just drink my beer now and enjoy a short bout of ignorance.

All I can say is that the Comcast DVR by Motorola is pure crap, the Motorola MOXI was good, but the newest one barely functions. At least the local government has passed a law that will allow competing cable providers into the area. I have no complaints about the broadband service, though. BTW, $10,000,000 USD is equivalent to 364.20 Euros.

I know their powers are not even close to completely centralized, but what role are they currently playing as it relates to the economy? If anyone has anything close to central economic controls, it's the Fed, and they are using their monetary policy powers (and expanded powers recently) to attempt to create uninterrupted economic prosperity.

So what is the Fed? And what role are they currently playing?

But should interest rates be left to a central economic planner to determine in the first place?

If you find the answers, let me know.

We can just ignore derivatives and credit implosions now that we have some handouts to fix the whole problem! Never mind where the funding came from. "The money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump, the grocery store, and also give our economy a boost to help us pull out of this economic slowdown" -G. W. Bush "The money is going to help exacerbate the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump, the grocery store, and also give our economy a push to help turn this economic slowdown into stagflation." - Moonlapse

http://www.unrv.com/b2rss2.php There used to be a link but I removed the graphic to optimize the front page a bit. (We're pushing the limits of shared hosting)

Education/Educated: A population adequately informed in the sciences, (their) history, language, economic and political system such that they are enabled to consider the soundness and likely consequences of their and their government's decisions (through their elected representatives) in developing their system, for the benefit of both, the individual citizen and society. Faustus What is 'adequately informed' and who determines it? Science, history, language, economics, and political systems according to whom? Does simply being informed to a standard criteria automatically enable you to consider the soundness and likely consequences of anything? Is the use of force appropriate to educate a population?

Define education.

Anise doesn't bother me, I think Jager is fine if its nice and cold.

And what if these economies 'untie' themselves from ours by unloading depreciating dollar-based assets, similar to what Iran, Venezuela, and Iraq did by trading oil in Euros?

'New US political party' and 'viable' don't belong in the same sentence. Our two parties are simply feet shuffling us into statism. That's the essential long term effect and anything different enough to alter this is far too radical for the majority. Statism will inevitably fail and the process will start over, lessons forgotten or obscured.

Sure, as long as consumer spending stays up and we quit debasing our currency.

Yes, isn't it lovely? And if you don't fit into the Democrat/Republican glove, you can forget about it, it doesn't matter how much money you have.

Nevermind, I found it here, on page 286: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/2008/2008_erp.pdf Informative paper on the NAICS data used to create the graph: http://www.bea.gov/papers/pdf/SIC_NAICS.pdf Still trying to find the basic data that this was all compiled from, but there's very little information about it. BTW, I dislike NAFTA because free trade doesn't require government agreements, it requires the removal of artificial barriers. I haven't really developed my viewpoint on its exact effects, but I do think that we will need greater export capabilities to aid recovery from our current problems. I would really like to see statistics which include the "value of circulating capital goods, intermediate non-durable products, or of capital goods which are not yet finished or if so, pass from one stage to another during the process of production," of which I believe a great share is imported.

Do you have a link to the source? I'm not doubting what you are saying, BTW, I'm just interested in how the statistics are created. You may like this, it's from Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles from Jesus Huerta de Soto:

Is this measured in dollars? Is this nominal or adjusted? If adjusted, with what criteria? That graph aside here is a picture of current conditions from the Fed www.federalreserve.gov/FOMC/Beigebook/2008/20080305/fullreport20080305.pdf www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcminutes20080318.pdf

Google Desktop search beats the hell out of windows' search. I have almost 200 GB of data and it's practically a necessity in order to find some things. Here's some recommendations for keeping your stuff secure, all free: Firewall - Comodo (advanced) or Online Armor Anti-malware - Spyware Terminator (HIPS capability, but don't enable the Clam AV) and Threatfire (behavioral capability) Each works differently, and seem to work well together. If you are using Comodo or Online Armor with all options turned on, you won't really need these and it may cause conflicts) Firefox Addons - McAfee Site Advisor or WOT (better than Site Advisor IMO) and NoScript Antivirus (if you don't already have it) - McAfee VirusScan Plus (has own firewall - disable if using separate firewall) or AVG or Avast!