At #88 you ask banks lacking cash reserves to back up potential defaults on outstanding loans are causing inflation. For the purposes of clarity, we should agree that inflation is defined as Williams defined it in his column.
As banks don't print money, your question is nonsense. Perhaps you meant that overall prices increase more in response to a significant number of loan defaults and bankruptcies than as a response to an increase in the money supply.

I don't know why it irritates me so when somebody wears their 'most recent books read' list on their proverbial sleeve. Oncealwaysamarine, in your reply #10, 'geniuses' are outliers by definition. Reply #21, 'outcasts' would have been more apt a term than 'outliers'. Geez, maybe I'm just fed up with the term 'outliers' everywhere I look. Sort of like 'paradigm' ten or so years ago. Stop the inane trendiness. Malcom Gladwell isn't so outstanding or original. He is not so 'outlying', except in book sales, perhaps.

judicial and educational institutions might conclude that those Americans of significant black African descent are inherently inferior beings in need of institutional protection from impossibly high educational, employment and social conduct standards.
One would hope this impartial observer would look beyond the surface scum of race-huckstering political manipulation and see that black Americans' dismal statistical scores are largely a result of the killing hand of "kindness" born of unfounded guilt. Collective-minded do-gooders are punishing us all with their insulting affirmative-action, bar-lowering mindset.

The Senate's slavery apology carries as much weight as one you or I may issue upon hearing of a friend's auto accident. Though you weren't the one that t-boned him, you instinctively say "I'm sorry", a sort of empathy proclamation. The sincerity of this resolution is on par with that of each member of the Senate when they promised to uphold and defend the Constitution.

"...After all, the basic premise of insurance (any discipline...car, homeowners, life or health) dictates that we purchase protection against unknown, or unexpected, catastophic expenses."
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Yet medical insurance is used by people for every single visit to the clinic, including planned physicals and checkups. What's unexpectedly catastrophic about a checkup or the flu (an expected, yearly occurance)? Perhaps the act of viewing the real bill, should you not be using an insurance company? The amount of that bill having been inflated by the millions before you abusing insurance through complete ignorance of cause and effect, of course.

HP manufactured a spiffy scientific calculator during the 90's that proved useful to me and other professionals in the field, primarily due to its elegant design, programmability and the expansion slots for memory and third-party software cards. A generation of land surveyors and civil engineers cut their teeth on the HP 48GX, then... HP stopped making it. Seeing how whole (cottage) industries had come into being based on manufacturing third-party software for the 48GX, not to mention the captive user base of nerdy engineering types, I really feel that HP's calculator division should have been nationalized by the US government upon cessation of 48GX production. The only thing is, apart from a fanatical cohort of surveyors and engineers,...

All this talk about medical insurance is making my head hurt. Please, will somebody explain to me why it is preordained that a third party must handle the financial transaction between me and whatever manner of doctor or medical service I might use? I own a house, which often requires painting or gutter cleaning, but for whatever reasons beyond my comprehension the firm who insures my house won't pay the guys I hire to do the work. Same with my car - Geico refuses to reimburse me for the cost of replacing brake pads and windshield wipers, both of which are required by law to be on my car - under penalty of eventual imprisonment. What's so special about a physical or wart removal? Why did everybody decide that it was cool to run up the...

All this talk about medical insurance is making my head hurt. Please, will somebody explain to me why it is preordained that a third party must handle the financial transaction between me and whatever manner of doctor or medical service I might use? I own a house, which often requires painting or gutter cleaning, but for whatever reasons beyond my comprehension the firm who insures my house won't pay the guys I hire to do the work. Same with my car - Geico refuses to reimburse me for the cost of replacing brake pads and windshield wipers, both of which are required by law to be on my car - under penalty of eventual imprisonment. What's so special about a physical or wart removal? Why did everybody decide that it was cool to run up the...

Interestingly, many of those in whom I've confided regarding my anti-driver registration sentiment advertise an anti-gun regulation, pro liberty sentiment themselves - and, they invariably reply that abolishing driver's licenses is wacko, as if being registered by the government confers an ability to better handle an automobile. They eventually agree that the operator's test (the standard one) is not a demanding on, and sometimes will admit that perhaps the government's interest in registering automobile owners is not one of safety, but of order.

Ultimately, "self ownership" and the commensurate responsibility for one's self and actions depends on the amount of power one has over the surrounding environment they find themselves in. Seeking food and securing shelter may be accomplished solely within the confines of your own property, with varying amounts of interference from others depending on applicable environmental or zoning regulations. Things become a bit more complicated should it be required by circumstances for you to be employed by another. Withholding taxes, Social Security etc. take a bit of your labor's worth, and the simple fact that economically worthwhile employment may require the use of motorized transport... namely, a car owned and registered on your behalf by...