Jim’s Quote of the Day:
"Gold is money, and nothing else." – J.P. Morgan, testifying under oath to Congress before the Pujo Commission, 1913
"Gold is money, and nothing else." – J.P. Morgan, testifying under oath to Congress before the Pujo Commission, 1913
"A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing." – Proverbs 20:4
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." – John Adams (1735-1826)
“Determine what is best for the government, and know that is what the powers are working to make happen. [Monetary] inflation is what is ‘best’ for a government with enormous debt’. – Ayn Rand
"With the exception only of the period during which the gold standard was in effect, virtually all governments throughout history have used their exclusive power to issue money, as a method to defraud and plunder the people." – Friedrich von Hayek
“The typical individual is addicted to low quality leisure. He watches prime time television. He reads very little. He does not subscribe to economic newsletters or spend much time on financial web sites. He does not think about the distant future, which he defines as anything beyond this month’s paycheck.” – Dr. Gary North
"Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos." – Camille Paglia
"There was no court in Holland which would enforce payment. The question was raised in Amsterdam, but the judges unanimously refused to interfere, on the ground that debts contracted in gambling were no debts in law. Thus the matter rested. To find a remedy was beyond the power of the government. Those who were unlucky enough to have had stores of tulips on hand at the time of the sudden reaction were left to bear their ruin as philosophically as they could; those who had made profits were allowed to keep them; but the commerce of the country suffered a …
"America’s most precious metals are Gold, Silver, and Blued Steel." – Frank in Maine (a SurvivalBlog reader)
"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence." – 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v. Moylan, 1969
"For more than six hundred years– that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215–there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting …
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." – Harry S. Truman, August 8, 1950
“While 2008 will probably be best known as the year that global stock markets had their values cut in half, it was really much, much more. It was a year in which every major asset class – stocks, real estate, commodities, even high-yield bonds – suffered significant double-digit percentage losses, resulting in the destruction of over $30 trillion of paper wealth. To blame this on subprime mortgages alone would be to dismiss an era of leveraging that encompassed derivative structures of all types, embodying a belief that economic growth was always and everywhere a certainty and that asset prices never …
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." – Edmund Burke, 1770
“It was the Wild West. If you were alive, they would give you a loan. Actually, I think if you were dead, they would still give you a loan.” – Steven M. Knobel, a founder of the appraisal company Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson, that did business with Washington Mutual (WaMu) until 2007, as quoted by The New York Times