acaiguana said, "So, tell me in the last 80 years or so, when was the last time the world had a 'great depression'?"

This is very much a tangent and not meant as an argument for or against anything, but I had to throw this in... We know that there's not been an international financial crisis since the Great Depression, approx 78 years ago.

But what was the one before The Crash of '29 ? Give up, it was the "Hamburg Crash of 1857", aka in the U.S.A. as "The Panic of 1857". How about the one before that? "The Bankruptcy of the French Monarchy" in 1789... Before that? The South Sea Bubble of 1721... Before that? Almost everyone remembers this one b/c it sounds so silly, the Tulip-Bulb-Bubble of 1637.

So going forward from the Tulip-Bubble, 84, 68, 68, 72, there's been a major event roughly every 70-85 years. Could it be a pattern of some sort? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose if we get past say 2017 without another major crash, we'll know its not. But I will say that there could be some bubbles out there, in foreign mkts, derivatives, hedge funds...  However if we listen to those in the biz, the "old rules don't apply" b/c we've entered into a "totally new paradigm".   

No need to get constitutional.

JDW

Wounded skier, beware of mistakes.

News media: Scoreboard for terrorists

The epitomy of the "new and improved congress"

Remember the dem minimum wage, stem cell, Medicare... promises in 2006? What have they passed? What will they pass? Maybe there is a reason they are dancing in the courts. If the conservatives turned off the music imagine what it would look like.

JDW

Wounded skier, beware of mistakes.

News media: Scoreboard for terrorists

The most hilarious part of the discussion is when Valerie Plame was asked why she could be considered covert if everyone knew she was working at CIA headquarters, and she answered that CIA agents are trained in detecting and avoiding being tailed.

Obviously, if everyone knew she was working there ... it wasn't a question of avoiding a tail. If professionally avoiding tails was the issue, no one would have known about her at all. Her answer was completely inane.

How do covert CIA agents enter and exit headquarters?

Here's the Dim response:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: New Hampshire Democratic Party
March 21, 2007 Contact: Evan Carlson
(603) 225-6899

STATEMENT FROM KATHY SULLIVAN ON TOBIN DECISION

CONCORD, NH - The following is a statement from State Party Chair Kathy
Sullivan on the decision for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to remand
the case against former Republican National Committee Northeast Regional
Director James Tobin to the district court for further proceedings:

"We are disappointed in the court's decision that the jury instructions were
not sufficient. We expect that when the case returns to New Hampshire the
Department of Justice will vigorously pursue the prosecution and conviction
of Mr. Tobin. The Court did find that nothing precludes a rational jury
from concluding that Tobin was a conspirator or that he knew and agreed to
the general means of the disruption of Democratic Party phone lines.

This decision will not have any impact on our request for an investigation
into whether political considerations played a role in Department of Justice
decisions relating to this case.

"The National Republican party has invested millions of dollars defending
James Tobin, but we believe that despite their best efforts to continue
stonewalling the phone-jamming scandal, justice will be served."

I somehow messed up the link, should be fixed now, this is the same one if all went well in the mysteries of WYSIWIG HTML.
JMR