Wisdom is seldom gained without suffering.
The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.
Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.
The momentum today behind the idea of a new global reserve currency reflects, in effect, the rise of the rest in world politics and economics, led by China.
The powershift began already several years ago, under the Bush administration, when the dollar became very volatile and started declining. That is when China shifted from having almost 100 percent of its reserves in dollars to 75 percent. Some countries went completely out of the dollar. The dollar, for all intents and purposes, lost its special reserve status and people starting talking about a portfolio, or basket, approach as a store of wealth instead of the dollar.
Policies seemed almost deliberately designed to suppress new enterprise and job creation. How many Americans will start a business if the interest rates are 150 percent?
China's accumulation of reserves is a result of the IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis a decade or so ago. If countries know they can't rely on the IMF to help them, their best defense is their own reserve cushion. In a time of spreading global recession, too much emphasis on savings in surplus countries like China can impede prospects for global growth.
All songs have a message whether it's I love you, do you love me or this government sucks in a basic format and then you expand upon your beliefs and your thinking process about what's going on around you in the world.
My mother was an ex-nun, and my father was a Franciscan brother, so I grew up believing in Jesus the way anyone would believe in Mom's first husband.
You're watching us and you don't realize how much makeup and how much lighting is involved when we look good. We have a lot of help where we are. I don't think that it's healthy for young girls to be looking at these beauty magazines and watching TV and these shows and thinking [that's the standard] there's more European attitude - you look at French film, Spanish film, they're a little more open to quirks and human nature. That we're not all symmetrical, not all the same shape we need more of that.
Our world loses out when the leadership doesn't reflect the led - when a minority makes decisions for the majority.