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“We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is.

What is the moral foundation of your economic beliefs? Do economic beliefs even require a moral foundation?

Do you find it natural to accept the varied religious beliefs of others even if they contradict your own? On the other hand, are you often at odds with people who espouse different economic beliefs and policies? Why, especially if the former forms the foundation for the latter?

Would you ever use the ballot box to force others to practice your religion or make them pay to build you a church? Why do you find it easy to do this with your economic beliefs, compelling others to foot the bill for the public policies you promote?

"I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat so long as it catches mice." -- Deng Xiaoping, who opened China to foreign investment after 1978

I can't say we hardly knew ya, because you've been a fixture in our lives for so long. But you've grown old and feeble, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to compete in a changing world.

Sure, we know it's been hard trying to do so having to pay such high wages and benefits. Then again, things aren't exactly cheap in Japan or Germany, and their automakers don't seem to have any trouble kicking your butt.

Doctors used to live by an ethic of, "First, do no harm." And most still do.

But in recent decades a large core of health care providers -- from doctors to hospitals to insurance companies -- took over the industry. And they transformed that motto first to, "Do no harm to the bottom line," and then, "Build those profits as fast as you can as long as your patient isn't hurt in the process."

Nice piece in today's NYTimes about communists in Spain weathering the financial crisis.

By VICTORIA BURNETT
Published: May 25, 2009

MARINALEDA, Spain—The people of this small Andalusian town have never been shy about their political convictions. Since they occupied the estate of a local aristocrat in the 1980s, they and their fiery mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, have been synonymous in Spain with a dogged struggle for the rural poor.

Our system is reeling, and we're at risk of seeing a meltdown of proportions no bailout can hope to solve.

Wonder why? One symptom is the bursting of the home-equity bubble. As home prices steadily drop back down toward their more typical historical levels, more and more homeowners are finding they owe more than their homes are worth, with little hope prices will go back up any time soon.

Here's an article at Dollars and Sense that reports one in five homeowners are "upside down," or to put it in the current vernacular, "under water" (they're drowning in debt).

“It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money.” – Harvard University law professor Friedrich Kessler on the Weimar Republic hyperinflation (1993 interview)

Some worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, when a wheelbarrow full of paper money could barely buy a loaf of bread. An April 29 editorial in the San Francisco Examiner warned:

“With an unprecedented deficit that’s approaching $2 trillion, [the President’s 2010] budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. So every senator and representative who votes for this monster $3.6 trillion budget will be endorsing a spending spree that could very well turn America into the next Weimar Republic.”1

Looking for a new job and wonder what to put on your resume? You might just want to read What Employers Want to See on Your Resume -