Chris

So, there's this guy who hangs out in an allyway behind a commercial building next to my house. He always drunk, usually loud, and sometimes obnoxious. He yells at my wife and makes her upset. I walk out and ask him to quiet down, but that rarely works. Honestly I couldn't care less if the guy wants to drink until his liver explodes, but his behavor is unacceptable. Other neighbors have called the cops on him, but they never do anything. He always says that his brother is a homocide officer, so if that's true... that's probably why he isn't arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Anyhow... I'm not sure how to deal with the situation. Suggestions?

In other words, do you find it suspicious that Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is suddenly a wanted "sex criminal" after posting leaked data from various "secret government communications" that bring to light back-room deals made by many governments? Or that the WIkileaks website is suddenly under DoS attacks? Or that various websites (Amazon.com, Paypal.com, etc.) suddenly feel the need to disrupt Wikileaks operations (not that there would be any "encouragement" from governments to do so)? Or that the Interpol internet "wanted poster" for Assange is suddenly one of the top results in a Google search for "Julian Assange"? (Note that no such wanted poster comes up when searching for "Osama Bin Laden")

If the governments of the world cannot contain their secrets internally, perhaps they shouldn't have so many secrets. After all, aren't back-room deals and treaties what lead to World War I?

If considering the price of coffee, corn, wheat, flour, oil, gasoline, etc relative to a physical quantity of gold required to purchase that commodity (ex. bbls oil per oz gold) how have prices changed over the past 250 years or so?

Do you feel that parents should be reimbursed their tax contributions if they choose to send their children to private school (i.e. is it fair that they have to pay twice)? Should the government provide school vouchers to send children to private school? Do children benefit from school choice?

Since the Federal Reserve has the ability to create money from nothing (checkbook money), what prevents them from creating as much as they want? The reserve ratio? Who sets the reserve ratio?

Doesn't a system which allows banks to loan many times the amount of money deposited in the bank (fractional deposit lending) favor the banks themselves?

In other words, are citizens more or less wealthy when the government collects or prints more money?

Robert Byrd, Daniel Inouye, Strom Thurmond, and Ted Kennedy all spent nearly half of a century (and counting, in the case of Inouye) in the Senate. Many other offices recycle the same politicians for many years. What mechanisms do they use to stay in power for so long?

Under the gold standard, the dollar was a bank note redeemable for a fixed quantity of gold. In other words, it was a paper receipt for a Troy oz of gold.

When the Federal Reserve creates a Federal Reserve Note, what do they promise to redeem it for? How does the Federal Reserve justify issuing new currency? What prevents the Federal Reserve from taking advantage of the ability to create money?

How well do they accomplish their goal of stabilizing the economy and protecting people from recessions and depressions? Since their creation on December 23, 1913, there have been recessions/depressions in 1918-19, 1920-21, 1923-24, 1926-27, 1929-33, 1937-38, 1945, 1948-49, 1953-54, 1957-58, 1960-61, 1969-70, 1973-75, 1980, 1981-82, 1990-91, 2001, and 2007-09.