I’ll begin with a provocative thesis: socialism is ideological and free market thinking, while involving myth, is nonideological. I will show why socialism is ideological and why free market thinking involves myth but is nonideological by defining the terms myth and ideology and distinguishing them from each other.

While whispers of the current emerging market debt crisis, the result of the rapidly strengthening dollar, could be heard throughout the summer, virtually no one predicted the blow the dollar’s rise would deal to some other developed economies. But with the dollar reaching levels not seen in a generation, a battering is precisely what several are being unexpectedly dealt.

The Federal Reserve continues down the asset reduction path, but how long can it last? With various thoughts about the stock market, interest rates, recession, inflation, and possibly employment, the Fed has found itself in a race of few horses, where none can emerge as winner since there is no finish line.

In 1993 the New England Journal of Medicine came out with a very well-research report called Actual Causes of Death in the United States (repeated in 2004) which stated that 70% of our diseases are lifestyle related, and that eight of the nine leading causes of death in America are lifestyle related.