By the time you read this, it’ll be December 21st. The Mayan calendar will have ended and the world either will or will not end. Of end of the world scares go, this is an unlikely one, but I I know some people seriously believe in it. A lot more play off of it. A local Anime con has an Apocalypse theme, and people are having end of the world ( Read more... )

As a result of the Great Depression, a lot of very bright economists tried to figure out how to keep that nightmare from ever happening again. They came up with several solutions that seemed to work, and actually did through most of the last seventy years. One of those solutions was goosing the money supply whenever the economy seemed to be going ( Read more... )

For a history buff like me, the past nine months have been a wild ride.  I've read enough about the Great Depression to know how completely big, complex economies can spin out of control and how big of a mess that can cause.  I've also read enough about the 1918-1919 flu to know how vulnerable we are to something like that in an era with air travel ( Read more... )