"The bold effort the present bank (Second National Bank of the US) had made to control government, the distress it has wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
Andrew Jackson
"What a crazy time we live in. Domestic politics have devolved into an ongoing hostage crisis in which the opposition party threatens to blow up the financial universe every six months or so, and the leading political minds in the country can't figure out how to keep this from being a permanent feature of our budgetary process.
Meanwhile, global monetary policy is drifting in the direction of semi-permanent stimulus, and no one has any idea how it all ends. It's two different runaway-freight-train action movies going on at the same time. God help us."
Matt Taibbi, The Mad Science of the National Debt
Chart courtesy of Ralph Dillon at
Global Financial Data.
