Michael B. Duff

The dollar may fall below 75 yen next year as it becomes the world’s “weakest currency” due to the Federal Reserve’s monetary-easing program, according to JPMorgan & Chase Co.

Before speaking, Rangel sat for several minutes trying to compose himself. He placed his hands over his eyes and then his chin, before he slowly stood up and said in a gravelly voice that was barely audible: "I don't know how much longer I have to live." Facing the committee members, he asked them to "see your way clear to say, 'This member was not corrupt.'"

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is putting together a net neutrality proposal and plans to take action on the controversial issue as early as next month, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.

Ever curious what Hogwarts would be like if the kids didn't have to spend most of their time fighting off the Dark Lord? We bet there would have been a lot more butter beer. And it would look like this.

Action-heavy video games can dramatically improve your ability to pick and choose relevant visual information from a chaotic field – a skill known as "visual attention". When compared to their non-gaming peers, gamers excelled at tests designed to quantify their visual attention.

the Netherlands bucks the women's-development narrative in a pretty odd fashion: it has extremely high indicators for gender equality in every way (education, political participation, little violence against women, ultra-low rates of teen conception and abortion) except that women don't work. Or not full-time, anyway, at anything like the rates at which women work in most OECD countries. Moreover, they don't seem to want to.

"I have never seen 'news' organizations like CNBS and Bloomberg whore themselves more for a company then for this GM IPO. It seemed like at least half of programming yesterday was all-GM, all-the-time. Fawning praise. Even Tom Keene got in the act today, proclaiming something about how other countries should take note of our prowess in turning things around."

Remember the 15-story hotel built in six days? Well, this 12-story apartment building fell down in three seconds.

"If you played role-playing games as a child, then you know they never worked as advertised. You'd sit down for an epic adventure with your friends only to find out that one of them can't pay attention, one is too stupid to be allowed near math, and one is ashamed of everything you're doing."

Similarly, at a time when most leading Progressives (including Wilson) supported racial segregation and turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Jim Crow South, Mencken attacked the lawlessness of “Klu Kluxry” and routinely praised (and published) the work of black writers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Walter White, and George Schuyler. White later said that Mencken pushed him to write his first novel, The Fire in the Flint, and then helped him secure a publisher.

The Great Depression occurred on the Fed’s watch, as have several other recessions. As for price stability, from the Fed’s creation (in 1913) to 1945, the dollar lost 45 percent of its value; between 1945 and 1980 it lost another 78 percent of its value; and between 1980 and today yet another 62 percent of the dollar’s value was inflated away. All told, during the less than 100 years that the Fed has been charged with keeping the value of the dollar stable, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value. This shrinkage in the dollar’s value since 1913 is especially striking in light of the fact that, between 1790 and 1913, the dollar’s value declined by only about 8 percent.*

So, instead of enjoying life as a newlywed, Cheng was sent to a women's labor camp, where she immediately went on hunger strike. She's to remain there for a year, for "disturbing social order."

Once you admit to yourself that gold and silver are not free "markets" in the traditional sense, you're halfway to Junior Turd level. The Evil Empire, at the behest of The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve actively manipulates/suppresses price through the creation of unbacked, "paper" gold. In short, they raid the price by picking moments of bid weakness to simply overwhelm the bids with an avalanche of sell orders. This causes a period of rapid price drops. Tomorrow I will post a price chart from November 3rd that clearly shows their dirty, unfair work.

Though the Netherlands is consistently ranked in the top five countries for women, less than 10 percent of women here are employed full-time. And they like it this way. Incentives to nudge women into full-time work have consistently failed. Less than 4 percent of women wish they had more working hours or increased responsibility in the workplace, and most refuse extended hours even when the opportunity for advancement arises. Some women cite the high cost of child care as a major factor in their shorter hours, but 62 percent of women working part time in the Netherlands don't have young children in the house, and mothers rarely increase their working hours even when their children leave home.

An amazing little economics lesson, courtesy of WoW. Best quote:

"Remember that people won't buy something if they feel it's too expensive and that they can wait it out. You're better off moving 100 items at 15 percent above your cost than you are moving 10 items at 30 percent."

You know how long it takes real merchants to figure this out?

Consider this video a preview of how much fun it will be to watch governments all across Europe come apart at the seams. I'm sure we can expect lifelong parasites who have been coddled for decades to respond to adversity with dignity, class and restraint. Rangel was just the beginning.

Mark Cuban: "First I pay off all my credit card debt and evaluate paying off any other debt I have. What I have left I put in the bank. Then I try to create as much transactional value as possible from that cash. I look at my annual budgets for everything and anything, and I look to see where I can save the most money on those items. Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk — replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of — is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere. Then whatever I have left I keep in the bank and let it earn nothing. Why? Because then its available for when I get a good opportunity."

Gorgeous.

The Air Force recently warned troops about the "devastating operations security and privacy implications" of location-based social networking services like Facebook Places and Foursquare. In other words: Don't check into your spy plane as it cruises over China.

The creators of the game say that one of their mandates is to show "how warfare affects civilians." In doing so, it feels as if it can stir the passions of gamers like me who typically lack any emotional connection to their virtual enemies.

Holy crap.

Thank you, Democrats! For defeating a bill that would have whitewashed mortgage fraud from coast to coast!

But that doesn't address the real question, which is whether Palin will be her party's best choice in 2012. There is much to be said on that topic, but in terms of electability, the evidence currently suggests that most of the other contenders would be better choices.

"The longer nature delays in avenging the offenses committed against her, the crueler her vengeance."
~ Don Colacho (Nicolás Gómez Dávila)