Leonard Liggio has died, at the age of 81.

He was my friend for close to sixty years, and I came to know him well. Today my mind is filled with thoughts and memories of him.

Leonard was a Catholic, a scholar, and a libertarian.

I’ve been critical of the Obama administration in the past, so it’s nice to find something positive to say.

Last week in The American Spectator, Emily Zanotti noted that the Obama administration refuses to intervene and shut down flights between West Africa and the US: “Yesterday, the White House reiterated that a ban on flights originating in outbreak countries is not on the table.” According to Zanotti, the rationale is that any disturbance of air travel would negatively impact West African economies.

Zanotti is skeptical of this rationale, saying:

The fiftieth anniversary of the First World War in 1964 felt nothing like the current centennial observances. It is worth asking what has changed. When I was growing up in the sixties in a small town in Texas, World War I seemed as remote to me as the Revolutionary War. Not that the conflict was not unknown to me. In our city park there was a statue of a First World War soldier and a memorial to hometown sons who had died in the war. And my grandmother and grandfather told me stories of relief and celebration in 1918 at the war’s end.

Swiss National Bank governors sound a lot like Fed and ECB central bankers when it comes to the upcoming Swiss referendum on gold. It might deprive them of needed “flexibility.”  And you might be surprised by how much the SNB has increased the country’s money supply since 2008, despite our image of the Swiss franc as a more stable (or less unstable) currency:

Economists at the Federal Reserve have devised a new indicator, which they hold will enable US central bank policymakers to get better information regarding the state of the labor market. The metric is labeled as the Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI).

Note that one of the key data points Fed policymakers are paying attention to is the labor market. The state of this market dictates the type of monetary policy that is going to be implemented.

I have previously reported about a friend of mine and her experience with Obama Care. Earlier this year her catastrophic health insurance was canceled as insufficient under Obama Care regulations. Her monthly premiums would have increased by several hundred percent to get the cheapest available qualifying coverage. Instead she was given a “better” plan that cut her premiums by more than 90% of what she was paying for her catastrophic coverage.

It was reported today that Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen earns over $200,000 as head of the world’s biggest central bank. Amazingly, there are at least 113 employees at the Fed’s Washington DC headquarters that earns more than she does!

MADRID (MarketWatch) — $201,700 a year doesn’t seem like chump change. That’s what the Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen earns as head of the world’s biggest central bank.