Now, I Only Play Very Occasionally, And

The Recent Period Has Been Marked By A Transformation To An Economy That Is More Productive As Competitive Forces Become Increasingly Intense And New Technologies Raise The Efficiency Of Our Businesses...while These Tendencies Were No Doubt In Train In The "old," Pre-1990s Economy, They Accelerated Over The Past Decade As A Number Of Technologies With Their Roots In The Cumulative Innovations Of The Past Half-century Began To Yield Dramatic Economic Returns.

What We Have Found Over The Years In The Marketplace Is That Derivatives Have Been An Extraordinarily Useful Vehicle To Transfer Risk From Those Who Shouldn't Be Taking It To Those Who Are Willing To And Are Capable Of Doing So.

The More Flexible An Economy, The Greater Its Ability To Self-correct In Response To Inevitable, Often Unanticipated, Disturbances And Thus To Contain The Size And Consequences Of Cyclical Imbalances.

The Abandonment Of The Gold Standard Made It Possible For The Welfare Statists To Use The Banking System As A Means To An Unlimited Expansion Of Credit. In The Absence Of The Gold Standard, There Is No Way To Protect Savings From Confiscation Through Inflation. There Is No Safe Store Of Value. Deficit Spending Is Simply A Scheme For The Hidden Confiscation Of Wealth. Gold Stands In The Way Of This Insidious Process. It Stands As A Protector Of Property Rights. If One Grasps This, One Has No Difficulty In Understanding The Statists' Antagonism Toward The Gold Standard.

The Iraq War Is Largely About Oil.