© Victor1558
Once upon a time there was a land of milk and honey called the United States of America. America was a great country, but it faced a powerful enemy, the evil Soviet Union. In 1959, there was a trade exhibition of American products in Moscow, the capital of that evil empire. The vice president of America, one Richard Milhous Nixon, attended the exhibition on America's behalf.
A 29-year-old future journalist named William Safire was there at the exhibition representing the American building industry. Doing his job very well, he steered Nixon and his Soviet nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, toward a walk-through display of the typical American home.
As they toured the model American home, Nixon and Khrushchev debated the relative merits of the American and Soviet systems. The debate came to a climax in the kitchen, and so it went down in history as the "kitchen debate."
Khrushchev argued that the Soviet Union had surpassed America in rockets and high technology. Nixon responded by showing Khrushchev around the model American kitchen with its modern 1950s appliances. Nixon told Khrushchev how any ordinary American, a military veteran or a steelworker earning $3 an hour (worth
$24 today), could afford a brand-new home with modern appliances. And he was right.
In
The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 journalist and policy analyst Sam Pizzigati tells the story of how that American workers' paradise came to be. (
Seven Stories Press, 2012)
Comment: Comment: 'Quantitative easing' has been around as long as civilization(s) have relied on money. Economic historians refer to it as 'currency debasement':
Gold, currency debasement and the fall of the Roman Empire
The Telegraph, UK
April 15, 2013 Roman emperors had to do all the same things our 'monarchs of money' are doing today because everything was going to pot! Yes, certain types are well-positioned to take advantage of the chaos to enrich themselves (and thus speeding up the crash and spreading mass misery through society) - the senatorial class in Rome, the goldsmiths in medieval times and the banksters on Wall Street today - but given what we now know of the climatological and environmental factors that repeatedly bring down civilizations, it is probably more accurate to say that monetary collapse is a symptom of economic downturn, and not a cause...
Comets and the Horns of Moses