It Takes a Village…
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Mrs. Cog and I live at the end of a dead end private dirt road off of a dead end state dirt road off of a paved road out in the middle of nowhere. The two combined dirt roads are a little more than a mile long and the paved road is five plus miles from the center of the local gas station/grocery store/tourist stop huddled just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We think of our place as a slice of heaven. Others might think of it as isolated at best and the last place they’d want to live at worst. Needless to say, there is not a lot of traffic passing in front of our home. We get the post man six days a week, the UPS man when we order something from civilization and the FedEx man once in a blue moon along with the occasional curious local checking out what’s going on up our road.
So when there is a knock on our front door, it is an extremely rare event. There was that lady a few months back who was lost and looking for someone we had never heard of. She didn’t even have a street address, so we shrugged our shoulders and sent her on her way. Then there is the neighbor from down the road who stops by every few months to see if the damn Yankees have died and are stinking up the place.
You get the picture! Continue reading It Takes a Village…
LOS ANGELES – One of the most pervasive myths about the United States is that the federal government has never defaulted on its debts. Every time the debt ceiling is debated in Congress, politicians and journalists dust off a common trope: the US doesn’t stiff its creditors.
There’s just one problem: it’s not true. There was a time, decades ago, when the US behaved more like a “banana republic” than an advanced economy, restructuring debts unilaterally and retroactively. And, while few people remember this critical period in economic history, it holds valuable lessons for leaders today.
Continue reading Learning from America’s Forgotten Default →