The Bank of England today announced it will cut interest rates to .25%, a new historic low. This is the first interest rate cut since the BoE set rates to .5% in 2009, and a continuation of the global trend to push rates closer to 0% (and below.) The BoE also announced a new quantitative easing program that will buy £10 billion corporate bonds and expand its holdings of government debt by £60.
Professional golfer Phil Mickelson was back in the news this summer thanks to a 2014 federal investigation into an insider trading case. It is alleged that Mickelson owed high stakes sports gambler Billy Walters a considerable amount of money in July of 2012.
Americans have long regarded owning a home to be largely synonymous with the so-called “American dream” although high homeowernship rates are not necessarily synonymous with a high-income prosperous society. Switzerland and Germany, for example, have homeownership rates well below that usually found in the US.
[From the Introduction.]
Every policy discussion, in the media or the political arena, touches inevitably on the sensitive issue of economic growth. Over the past year, these discussions have revolved primarily around the sluggish growth experienced by European economies, Japan, the U.S., and even China. A recent VOX article tries to identify some of the possible reasons for this slow growth, i.e. present eight existing theories for what it calls “the big puzzle in economics today”.
51. The Student Revolution
Recently I wrote in these columns of the accelerating revolutionary mood on the nation’s campuses. It is now clear that I underestimated the scope and depth of the looming student rebellion: for that rebellion is not only occurring now on American campuses, but throughout the world.
52. Assassination — Left and Right
The tragic murder of Senator Robert Kennedy points up an interesting fact about all the recent assassinations and assassination attempts that has gone unnoticed: that every single murder or attempted murder was of a leader of what may broadly be called the “Left” — John Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Malcolm X, “Red Rudi” Dutcshke, the West German student leader, Medgar Evers, and the Reverend Martin Luther King. How is it that among this spate of murders, no right-wing leader has been assassinated?
53. French Revolution — 1968
Whether it fizzles, as it seems finally to be doing, or triumphs, there are many lessons to be learned from the phenomenal month-long French Revolution of 1968. First, it gives the lie, once and for all, to the widespread myth that revolutions, whether or not desirable, are simply impossible in the modern, complex, highly technological world. When the mythologists were confronted with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Algerian, and Cuban revolutions, all clearly triumphant, they said: Oh, well, perhaps there can still be revolution in the underdeveloped countries, but not in the Western world.
54. Draft Boards
One of the most powerful forces in the system of conscription slavery in this country is also one of the most secret and least known: your friendly local draft board. Until very recently, the membership of each local board was shrouded in total secrecy. Even now, when official policy is at last to make the names public, it is virtually impossible to rout out the names from the Selective Service bureaucracy, and to answer such vital questions as: How are the draft boards selected? Who selects them? And on what criteria?
