Stilltitled

Historically, recessions have been a time when new companies, like Microsoft, get born, and good companies separate themselves from their competition. It makes sense. When times are tight, people look for new, less expensive ways to do old things. Necessity breeds invention.

—Thomas Friedman

To avoid the inherent deficiencies of using sovereign currencies for reserves, there’s a need to create an international reserve currency that’s delinked from sovereign nations…Special drawing rights of the IMF should be given full play, and the international body should manage part of its members’ reserves…The excessive reliance on the credit of several sovereign currencies have added to the extent of risks and crises. A currency with stable value in the long term is required.
—PBOC via Bloomberg

In California and the West and, really, a lot of the country, we have to be ready for more waves of foreclosures coming through for at least the next year. And no one really knows how big those waves are going to be.
—Andrew LePage, an analyst with MDA DataQuick

Folger Library reveals lost secrets

Zombie hordes and liberal thought.

Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression. The State’s $2.8 billion cash shortage in July grows to $6.5 billion in September, and after that we see a double-digit freefall. Unfortunately, the State’s inability to balance its checkbook will now mean short-changing taxpayers, local governments and small businesses.
—John Chiang, California State Controller.

In 1992, Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, issued the i.o.u.’s to state workers; the workers immediately brought a lawsuit, contending that the i.o.u.’s violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. A federal judge approved a $558 million settlement, and some workers received additional vacation time.
—NYT