4. WHY NASRUDDIN RIDES BACKWARDS
Nasruddin was riding his donkey to the school while his pupils walked behind him. Nasruddin sat backwards, facing the children.
“You look funny riding backwards!” they said.
“If I faced forward, I’d have my back to you,” Nasruddin explained, “which wouldn’t be nice. If I faced forward and you walked in front, your backs would be towards me, which also wouldn’t be nice. If you walked in front facing backwards to see me, you wouldn’t see where you’re going and you’d probably fall down. So, me riding backwards facing you, just like this,” he concluded, “is really the best solution!”
This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-2022 Laura Gibbs.
Debasement of the dollar as a result of ill-use of leverage is destroying the global economy, and in Leverage, well known market commentator Karl Denninger follows the path of money throughout history to prove that currencies are debased when moneyed and powerful interests pull the levers of government and policy to enrich themselves at the expense of the masses. The result is ugly: the value of everything—including gold—falls, and even personal safety is at risk in a world where there is limited money even for essentials like food and fuel. History is littered with the collapse of monetary and economic systems from Rome to Germany to Zimbabwe.
I have two quotes from this book. The first is the epigraph and the second is what the author closed with.
As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
The wavelike movement affecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression, is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. — Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 1949
I picked up my new Kobo Libra 2 at the UPS Store yesterday after doing laundry and having breakfast at Taco Giro. Breakfast there was more expensive that what I remember it being when I left here last April. The laundry machines wanted more money as well but they were all new and seemingly worth the added cost.
When I got home I started the Kobo set up and had a hell of a time getting it to open. Finally went to Kobo Chat and after about a half hour got it to open although I’m not very happy with how I do it. So be it for now. I had a lot better luck in getting an ePub book to side load using the USB Cable connected to my laptop. That worked as advertised! Also was able to change the font size; the default was huge. I also became aggravated about Libra going to sleep on me every time I left her alone for just a few minutes so found a way to fix that. I’ll be reading the book that I loaded up during the weekend and will probably have more to say about Libra next week. So far so good with only some early on exasperation.
There was something that was important to me and I was unsure if I could get what I had read to work. That was how would I copy and paste quotes from the books that I’m reading on Libra? I found a site on the web that gave me three ways to do it and I started with Method #1 and it has worked. Or seems to have worked, I haven’t pasted anything to a WordPress posting yet so I may be speaking prematurely. We will see.