The concepts nation and nationality are relatively new in the sense in which we understand them. Of course, the word nation is very old; it derives from Latin and spread early into all modern languages. But another meaning was associated with it.
From the daily email from the Wall Street Journal:
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech that he remained worried about inflation, that risks to prices were tilted mainly toward the upside, and tight labor markets especially have the potential to drive prices higher even as the economy gets roughed up by the deteriorating home market and a tough patch for the auto industry. It was thus a relief to the markets to hear that labor inflation is being stuffed back into a cage, and stock futures bounded higher this morning on the news.
There’s been much talk about the Rumsfeld memo written before his departure, the one that recommended change in the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy. But there’s been little talk of the strange specifics in the memo, specifics which provide profound insight into the workings of the imperial state. For the naïve among us, here is your education.
In particular, I’m thinking of the following chilling passage:
An employee at the Mises Institute just received a call from his cell-phone service provider. They are cutting off his service, and waving all fees for the last month. It seems that his use was dominating by roaming, which required the use of a tower for which the service had to pay. The company must have concluded that his use was costing more than the company was gaining in service fees from the customer. Now this customer will have to find another provider.
Bank credit, as the term is used in this volume, stands for credit extended by banks to borrowers. Bankers frequently use the term in the plural, meaning advances made to their borrowing customers.
We are sitting around a dinner table following a mammoth St. Martin’s Day feast—myself and three other professors, and our wives, and my ten-year-old who never liked the kids’ table anyway—when one professor is asked about his upcoming conference trip to Oxford. The conference topic is diversity.
In April 1898 the United States went to war with Spain for the stated purpose of liberating Cuba from Spanish control, writes Thomas Woods. Several months later, when the war had ended, Cuba had been transformed into an American protectorate, and Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines had become American possessions. When the US government decided not to grant independence to the Philippines, Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo determined to resist American occupying forces. The result was a brutal guerrilla war.
Always one of the more sensible of our supposed monetary Guardians, Jerry Jordan, former President of the Cleveland Regional Fed has contributed a piece to the St. Louis Fed’s latest ‘Review’ in which he draws extensively — if not 100% correctly — upon Hayek and Mises
