I hear what Marc is saying in "Led by the Stupid and Loathsome." I share some of that - some days I just despair, I really do. Then again, there are people out there standing tall. Celebrating those people is part of turning all this around.
In that vein, I give you Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Who has the guts to stand up and diss both the IMF, and America's "Speed 3" debt spectacular:
"When I was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1991, my 85-year old neighbor gave me a German 500,000 Mark note. He'd been in Germany during its hyperinflation and told me that in 1921, the note would have bought a house. In 1923, it wouldn't even buy a loaf of bread. He said, "I want you to have this note as a reminder. Your duty is to protect the value of the currency."
As you might guess, we're not making Mr. Hoenig's job any easier. But the fact that he said it, the way he said it, and his relentless emphasis on consequences, all deserve serious applause.
Leave a comment
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.