“The bigger the government the smaller the individual”
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Posted by M. C. on April 8, 2022
“The bigger the government the smaller the individual”
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Posted by M. C. on March 14, 2022
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Posted by M. C. on March 4, 2022
by Tyler Durden
Friday, Mar 04, 2022 – 06:30 AM
Authored by Mike Hobart via Bitcoin Magazine,
“There’s a problem with bank accounts, something happened… the transactions are being stopped, for whatever reason.”–Ukrainian activist Walter Lekh, in a Twitter Spaces conversation discussing avenues of donation in support of Ukraine.
Developments in Eastern Europe have taken center stage for much of the world in the past few days. Aggressive and consistent flows of reporting from the ground in Ukraine as the country sees Russian troops invade are dominating social feeds and headlines.Coming out of these updates of conflict and bloodshed have been reports of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been working directly with the Ukrainian government since 2015 now taking donations in bitcoin.Before this article goes any further, I would like to expressly advise that nobody donate any bitcoin funds until significant effort has been dedicated to verifying addresses as best as can be done. This article is not meant to be a political admission of support, nor a call to action. There are significant efforts being undertaken by multiple parties engaging in deception and confusion of information and traffic at this time. Also, for those who are partaking in any live streams of footage and/or social media postings of this conflict: Do not click on links provided by parties that you do not know or trust.This is an extremely volatile situation, and these areas have become a battleground for intelligence organizations, with hacker groups such as Anonymous joining in efforts. Taking part online in these areas may actively insert you into the digital crossfire.SourceOne such NGO is “SaveLife,” an organization that is claiming to be distributing funds on a 50/50 basis between supporting veterans and casualties of war, and equipping Ukrainian elements with necessary equipment such as body armor.SaveLife recently had its Patreon account frozen – echoing similar events around the Canadian Freedom Convoy, as well as many other tangentially-related scenarios that have occurred over the past two years with regards to centralized organizations actively working to limit freedoms of information as well as money transmission.This NGO, also known as Come Back Alive, was taking BTC donations leading up to the launch of this most recent escalation of aggression in Eastern Europe.At the time of writing, the address for SaveLife has received a total of over 346 BTC (about a $15 million dollar value), up massively in the last few days…
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bitcoin, non-governmental organizations, Ukraine-Russia, Walter Lekh | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2022
People across the political spectrum are recognizing multiple, growing threats: escalating Big Tech censorship of our political speech, the costs and corruption of Endless War, the spying of the US security state on American citizens, the dominance of neoliberal globalist institutions. Many believe that Bitcoin, by undermining the power of fiat money and enabling greater anonymity, can erode if not solve many of these problems. Glenn Greenwald speaks to one of the leading Bitcoin advocates, Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation, about the challenges and critiques of Bitcoin. (The part of their discussion about the environmental impact of Bitcoin will be published as a separate segment). Original Rumble video: https://rumble.com/vr9i0j-why-are-hil… Read Alex’s article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/b…
https://secure.hushmail.com/mail/#message/Inbox/1121821?show_images=1
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Posted by M. C. on October 29, 2021
Even when people stand to take delivery in gold there have been multiple instances where cash-settlement was forced on the buyer, presumably because the gold wasn’t there.
FYI, it’s in the contract. The COMEX reserves the right to NOT DELIVER gold. Force majeure is a thing, even in the United States.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/wall-street-is-setting-a-trap-for-bitcoin-buyers/
by Tom Luongo
So Tuesday October 19th, 2021 was supposed to be the day that changed everything for bitcoin.
And it may, just not in ways anyone bullish on crypto should be comfortable with.
Finally the SEC approved a Bitcoin ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Futures ETF (BITO) began trading this week to great fanfare in the cryptocurrency community. There was much rejoicing as Bitcoin hit a new all-time high which it has since given back.
On the heels of that announcement Valkyrie changed the proposed ticker symbol for its Bitcoin Strategies ETF, another futures-based product, to BTFD. Gotta love the cheek, there.
And while that’s all well and good, I have to tell you that I have sincere reservations about popping the virtual champagne here.
Because I’ve seen this story before…in gold and silver.
I remember those heady days when all the gold bugs thought an ETF would be just the thing to solve the ‘liquidity’ problem gold had. At the time they didn’t want to hear that this lack of liquidity was one of those good problems gold and silver had.
Once people dug into the prospectus of the proposed SPDR Gold ETF, which has since then changed its name to SPDR Gold Shares ETF, they found that GLD didn’t have to hold physical gold of any particular quality. They could hold the dreaded ‘paper gold.’
That was the key to these funds being just another layer of the Matrix.
They opened up those markets to another sink to drain demand into a black hole of infinite ‘liquidity’ which in the end did nothing to help the price of gold. In fact, just the opposite occurred. It took pressure off the physical spot market and the forex trading of gold and dumped billions of unsuspecting retail investors into the Midgewater Marshes of Wall St.’s hyper-financialization engine.
Or does no one remember the definition of ‘Getting Corzined?”
So, will that happen with bitcoin since these ETFs are even less tied to the underlying commodity than GLD and SLV? Before I answer that, let’s back up and set up some boundary conditions.
This ETF will trade and settle only in front-month Bitcoin futures contracts traded on the CME. These are cash-settled contracts that bear no relation to actual commodities futures contracts where the buyer is pledging to take delivery of a defined-amount of say, soybeans, and the the seller is pledging to deliver that amount of soybeans by a certain date.
In these contracts there is no delivery of bitcoin, the underlying commodity, here. The only thing delivered is cash.
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Posted by M. C. on April 7, 2021
We’ve seen Russia recognize the value of gold as a check against the weaponization of the dollar. Could bitcoin be next?
https://mises.org/power-market/88-years-ago-fdr-banned-gold-will-bitcoin-ban-be-next
Today is the eighty-eighth anniversary of Executive Order 6102, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” The order was one of the several disastrous responses to the Great Depression that succeeded in escalating the financial crisis. Later in the year, the US Congress would pass a resolution retroactively supporting the legislation; however, it was the determined autocratic leadership of FDR that made way for these unprecedented measures. It would be a crime for Americans to hold gold for over forty years, until President Gerald Ford reversed the order in 1974.
This episode has several lessons for the current financial environment, particularly given the acceleration of tyranny-by-expert rule that has taken over much of the worst this past year.
The underlying legislation that evoked by FDR’s executive order was the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917—a by-product of World War I—despite the fact that the US was in no way in a period of war in 1932. Similarly, we have seen war on terror–inspired financial legislation increasingly used against American citizens. For example, in the name of “fighting terrorism” the US PATRIOT Act significantly increased know-your-customer laws, empowering federal regulators to use the traditional banking system to better track the economic behavior of American citizens.
In the eyes of the federal government, “antiterrorism” legislation was quickly expanded to include additional missions—such as stopping money laundering and drug crimes. Increasingly, these bogeymen have been used by policymakers around the world to erode financial privacy assets—such as cash and secret Swiss bank accounts.
On the domestic side, we have increasingly seen US corporate actors demonstrate their loyalty to the progressive political zeitgeist by proactively cracking down on various dissident political figures and conservative action groups. Bank of America, for example, has debanked various gun manufacturers and also turned over client data following the January 6 protests at the US Capitol. These moves could prove useful if BoA needs another federal bailout from a Biden-Harris administration, but highlights the degree to which the modern financial system can be weaponized against a state’s political enemies.
The same playbook is being increasingly used to target bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that are beyond the reach of the state.
Earlier this year, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that cryptocurrencies are in her crosshairs, telling an industry roundtable that
[t]he misuse of cryptocurrencies and virtual assets is a growing problem…. I see the promise of these new technologies, but I also see the reality: cryptocurrencies have been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers; they’ve been a tool to finance terrorism.
European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has also called for global regulation of cryptocurrencies, responding to increased interest in these alternative assets. Of course, the increased interest in assets like bitcoin is itself a direct response to the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, ECB, and other global central banks responding to government-caused economic shutdowns in 2020.
While central bankers often publicly dismiss the role of nonpoliticized assets like gold and bitcoin in financial markets, in their own circles they understand the dangers that exist in allowing the public the option of opting out of their financial schemes.
For example, at an annual Federal Reserve conference in 2016, the late Marvin Goodfriend noted the role that cash played in limiting what antisaving policies a central bank could pursue. He advocated the abolishment of cash in return, and drew comparisons to the elimination of the gold standard. In 2018, an IMF report warned that cryptocurrencies could reduce demand in fiat money, and recommended “rigorously applying measures to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism” in an attempt to undermine this consumer behavior.
In addition, central banks have sought to compete with the convenience of digital currency by developing their own versions. China—whose central bank has been one of the most aggressive in credit expansion since 2008—has recently released a “digital yuan,” while the ECB is working on a “digital euro.”
As I noted in 2017, this could set up a “next generation” of global currency war between private crypto and state digital currency. Since it is the nature of a state to defend its power, we should expect to see regulators and central bankers around the world escalate regulatory and legal pressure against financial assets beyond their control.
As FDR’s gold crackdown showed, tyrants know the importance of controlling money in a time of crisis.
Thankfully, so far bitcoin has demonstrated resilience against the most forceful of state actions. For example, in countries like Morocco—which has banned bitcoin entirely—peer-to-peer trading of bitcoin has skyrocketed.
What will be interesting to see is whether countries that are suspicious of international governing organizations—such as the IMF, EU, and UN—recognize the political value of private money as a check against globalist political hegemony.
We’ve seen Russia recognize the value of gold as a check against the weaponization of the dollar. Could bitcoin be next?
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Posted by M. C. on March 7, 2021
It is a rigged game in favor of the insiders and you are not one of them. There is no way that the Fed is going to want to compete with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when the Fed is ready to introduce a Fedcoin.
I don’t doubt the Treasury and Fed are polling right now to test and see what story the public finds as the most acceptable justification for shutting down cryptocurrencies.
https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2021/03/how-government-will-shutdown-bitcoin.html
As a follow up to my post, Harvard Professor Warns Central Banks Will Never Allow Bitcoin to Go Mainstream, David Brown emails:
It would be helpful to understand the details when you say “The hammer is there whenever they want to use it”. The bitcoiners will say BTC is uncontrollable. My sense is, the devil is in the details. I have yet to hear a clear discussion of the “plumbing” of how they will clamp down, and the bitcoiners’ counter-arguments. It would be very enlightening.
RW response:
Well, bitcoiners would like you to focus on the “plumbing.”
They have all kinds of fancy arguments of this kind and that.
From another commenter at the post who talked about the plumbing:
Point being is that the selling point for bitcoin is that its payments are completely uncensorable as a result of the CPU cycles. Nothing and no one can stop you from sending a payment over the bitcoin network to whomever you want to.
Second level solutions can be built on top of bitcoin so you can buy your coffee, but having an unchangeable; indisputable, uncensorable way to send value is extremely valuable, even if you never buy coffee with it.
But shutting down bitcoin, in a way, is simple so you could never be able to buy coffee with it. It doesn’t matter what the plumbing is. Here is the law that could be enacted:
“The government hereby makes it illegal to conduct transactions in bitcoin.”
This instantly eliminates the ability for bitcoin to be used in retail transactions or in banking—or for an individual to be paid wages in bitcoin. If there are severe penalties, and there would be, what retailer or bank or cafe or other business is going to accept bitcoin in a transaction?
As for the uncensorable element, again we are talking about plumbing that has nothing to do with human exchanges.
Making bitcoin illegal would push bitcoin into the shadows, uncensorable or not. What are you going to do with bitcoin if it is in the shadows? Being a bitcoin dealer would be an extremely high-risk business. Transaction costs would soar. Indeed because of the nature of bitcoin transactions, the risk on any given exchange being exposed would be a lifetime proposition.
Bitcoiners focused on the “plumbing” fail to look at the situation from the non-plumbing transaction part of the exchange.
I hasten to add that as a first step, I don’t expect the government to shutdown bitcoin or other cryptocurrency trading right away. The first step will be more regulations to identify bitcoin holders.
In a discussion I had just yesterday on another topic with some Silicon Valley people, we talked for a bit about bitcoin. Our thinking went this way:
There is a massive amount of money to be made in shutting down bitcoin.
If you short it before the shutdown, you could make a lifetime-size amount of money that puts you on easy street if you are leveraged.
When the major league insiders are ready, this is what will happen.
Right now the more buying of bitcoin, the better for them. The more liquid the market, the more bitcoin can be shorted when the time is right. And the time will eventually come.
It is a rigged game in favor of the insiders and you are not one of them. There is no way that the Fed is going to want to compete with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when the Fed is ready to introduce a Fedcoin.
I don’t doubt the Treasury and Fed are polling right now to test and see what story the public finds as the most acceptable justification for shutting down cryptocurrencies.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bitcoin, Central Banks, Fedcoin | 1 Comment »
Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2021
https://mises.org/wire/dangers-lurking-behind-digital-euro
Neosocialist China does it, Sweden does it, and many other states want to do it, too: to issue digitized central bank money for everyone. The European Central Bank (ECB) is also working on such a scheme. It wants to launch “digital euro central bank money” as soon as possible. Many economists praise the project as an “innovation,” as an important and indispensable step in an increasingly digitized world.
The ECB is also keen to make its intentions known, declaring that a digital euro will be accessible for everyone, robust, secure, efficient, and compliant with applicable law. However, it should be clear that the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably if and when a digital euro is issued. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
A digital euro is not “better money” than the euro that is already in circulation today. The planned digital euro is fiat money, just as much as euro cash and euro bank balances represent fiat money: they are all created “out of nothing” by the ECB, which has the monopoly of euro production. Just as is the case with the existing euro, the quantity of digital euros can be increased at any time, it is backed by nothing, and the digital euro carries a 100 percent risk of devaluation. As noted earlier, a digital euro would be a fiat euro.
The digital euro can either be “account based”—you keep it in an account held with the ECB—or it can be “token based”—money users receive a “token” that can be transferred from smartphone to smartphone via an app. Hoping for “anonymity” in payment transactions would be futile in both cases, one has to fear.
A look at China probably shows where the journey is headed: the Chinese digital central bank money is supposed to have a “controlled anonymity.” In other words, “only” the People’s Bank of China—that is, the Chinese Communist Party—should have access to the payment transaction data.
The ECB says the digital euro is a “complement” to cash and bank balances. But that’s not convincing. Because those who pay in cash obviously find it convenient and want to ensure their anonymity. Otherwise, they would pay electronically, i.e., transfer balances through PayPal, Apple Pay, or debit or credit cards.
In this context, it should be noted that people don’t just hold cash for payment purposes. They also demand it to protect themselves against bank failures, for example, or they also hold cash to be liquid even in the event of power outages, to be independent of online banking.
That said, the suspicion that the ECB is more interested in taking cash out of circulation cannot be refuted easily. But if only electronic payments are possible, what little remains of “financial privacy” will be gone. The citizen becomes completely transparent, much to the liking of the state and its beneficiaries.
As soon as cash has been pushed back or stripped away entirely, monetary policymakers can implement an uninhibited negative interest rate policy to devalue debt. Customers can no longer get out of the “bank balance sheet”; the final escape door is then locked.
It is unlikely that a digital euro will prevail naturally against cash. Rather, the ECB will have to make the use of cash unattractive: by raising the costs of cash by increasing fees at ATMs or through upper limits for cash payments, or through social stigmatization of cash (keywords: money laundering, terrorist financing, etc.).
The digital euro does not compete with crypto units such as bitcoin. After all, a digital euro is—as already mentioned—fiat money issued by the state, which is exactly what all those who are looking for better money do not want to hold.
Rather, the target group for the digital euro includes those who are basically content with the euro as it currently is and those who are worried about a potential banking crash. This group probably represents a fairly large number of people who come into question as a potential target clientele for the digital euro.
The plan is to allow for a 1:1 exchange of euro cash and commercial bank balances with digital euros. Economically speaking, this means that the ECB de facto insures the liabilities of the euro banks: the ECB transfers its creditworthiness, which is beyond any doubt stellar, to euro commercial banks.
With a 1:1 exchange option nobody has to worry about losing their money balances held at euro commercial banks, as the ECB has the monopoly of euro production. The ECB cannot go bankrupt; it can create euros at any time to settle its payment obligations, regardless of the amount.
That said, no one needs to worry that their balances held at a commercial bank could be lost if the bank goes bankrupt and the deposit protection fund fails. If a digital euro is publicly accepted, the scenario of euro commercial banks collapsing becomes unlikely; the euro money and credit system would be supported more than ever by the omnipotence of the ECB.
As is well known, in their Communist Manifesto (1848) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels named ten “measures” the implementation of which would lead to communism. The fifth measure reads as follows: “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state by a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly.” The issuance of a digital euro and the resulting consequences are undoubtedly another crucial step in bringing the Marxists’ vision of their desired revolution to fruition. Author:
Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Chief Economist of Degussa and Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.
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Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2021
A $7,500 investment in bitcoin in 2015, when economist Paul Krugman described it as “bubble” rooted in “libertarian ideology,” today would be worth $1.2 million.
In 1998, Paul Krugman predicted that by 2005 it would be clear that “the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
The prediction was so wrong and so widely circulated that Snopes has a page fact-checking the claim and affirming its veracity.
The internet is a vast place, but one would be hard-pressed to find another prediction that missed so badly. Which is why I was surprised to stumble across a 2015 prediction on bitcoin that whiffed just as wildly.
Coincidently (or perhaps not), this comment also comes from Krugman.
During a July 2015 roundtable discussion, Krugman was asked for his take on “disruptive digital currencies such as bitcoin.”
In a rambling two and a half minute response, Krugman described bitcoin as a currency rooted in “libertarian ideology,” a bubble that was just waiting to pop.
“It’s a technically sweet solution to a problem, but it’s not clear that problem has much economic relevance,” the Nobel Laureate explained.
The problem is, it’s clear Krugman didn’t understand those technical issues. He goes on to compare bitcoin to credit cards.
“If you’re looking for the idea that a currency doesn’t have to be something physical, it can be something virtual, that’s the system we already have,” he says. “If I want a way to make payments electronically, that’s, you know, credit cards.”
Krugman’s response suggests he had not actually studied bitcoin and didn’t really understand its value proposition or unique properties. Bitcoin has many of the same attributes as fiat money—it is easily transferable, divisible and fungible—but unlike fiat money, its supply is predictable and strictly limited.
Hubris among intellectuals isn’t exactly unheard of, but it’s a bit astonishing coming from Krugman, whose history is replete with whacky predictions and bad advice.
By design, bitcoin is increasingly difficult to create (“mine”). And, we know for a certainty that just 21 million bitcoins will be produced. This inherent scarcity makes bitcoin a far more durable form of currency than fiat money, an attribute that has nothing to do with credit cards.
Instead of discussing the attributes of bitcoin or even going into its weaknesses, Krugman mostly scoffs at cryptocurrencies and offers this bit of financial advice.
“Bitcoin looks like it really is a bubble in multiple senses,” Krugman says. “Certainly, [there’s] not a reason to hold that currency.”
If you listened to Krugman and decided to not buy bitcoin in 2015, you probably feel a bit like Blockbuster after turning down a $50 million offer to buy Netflix.
When Krugman made this prediction in July 2015, bitcoin was trading at roughly $300. On Thursday morning, bitcoin was trading at $47,500. This means that if you decided to ignore Krugman’s advice and buy 25 bitcoins for $7,500, you’d have nearly $1.2 million today.
To be fair to Krugman, predicting the future is hard. We live in a complex world with infinite moving parts. But we should acknowledge that.
Let’s look at it another way. Krugman was earning a $225,000 annual salary from City University of New York in 2015 (to study income inequality), a sum that does not include earnings from other ventures (book royalties, his New York Times column, etc.). If for one year Krugman bought bitcoin instead of stocks with ten percent of his income (pre-tax), he could have purchased 75 bitcoin for $22,500. That single investment would have netted him a $3.6 million profit.
To be fair to Krugman, predicting the future is hard. We live in a complex world with infinite moving parts. Our knowledge of the world—systems, choices, products, risks, etc.—is limited.
But we should acknowledge that. This awareness, the Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek pointed out, will in turn teach us a certain amount of intellectual humility.
“To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind…is to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world,” Hayek wrote in The Use of Knowledge in Society.
Krugman’s response is stark contrast to how fellow progressive Noam Chomsky responded when asked about bitcoin during a 2015 interview.
Alas, admitting the limits of knowledge is not something Krugman is known for. And it comes through when he all but sneers when asked about bitcoin, provoking laughter from the audience and the moderator.
This is a stark contrast to how fellow progressive Noam Chomsky responded when he was asked about bitcoin during a 2015 interview. Chomsky expressed skepticism, but he also acknowledged he hadn’t studied bitcoin closely.
“My first mind is that I don’t know enough to answer,” Chomsky said. “I looked into it to an extent, and the guesses seem to be pretty uncertain.”
It’s a far more refreshing answer than Krugman’s glib take.
Hubris among intellectuals isn’t exactly unheard of, but it’s a bit astonishing coming from Krugman, whose history is replete with whacky predictions and bad advice that turned out to be rather embarrassing. This ranges from a 2002 plea to intentionally create a housing bubble to fight recession (how did that housing bubble work out?), to empirical failures of his macroeconomic models, to the aforementioned claim that the internet’s economic impact would be “no greater than the fax machines.”
Again, it’s okay to be wrong about things. We’re human, we all make mistakes. But recognizing this basic truth should breed humility, not arrogance, and the ability to admit when we’re wrong.
Krugman remains a crypto skeptic, evidenced by columns in 2017 and 2018, and that’s okay. At least it looks like he’s done more homework since then. His primary hang-up is the idea that bitcoin is “untethered” in contrast to gold (which has intrinsic value) and fiat money (which is backed by government promises).
“If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless,” writes Krugman.
This is true, of course, but it could also be said of any currency (even gold).
I’ll admit that I had similar skepticism about bitcoin for years. Its value as a flexible but durable currency designed to be scarce was elusive and difficult to fully believe.
I don’t feel that way anymore. The value proposition as a durable currency resistant to inflation is real, especially at a moment when fiat money looks precarious because of mass pumping.
I bought my first crypto this week. Time will tell if the investment was wise or foolish.
But I promise one thing: If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bitcoin, crypto skeptic, Digital Currencies, Intellectual Humility, Paul Krugman | Leave a Comment »