An antidote, if only we'd take it.......

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

-Paul Johnson

An unpleasant bump................................

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

I know I did...............................

via

Opening paragraphs... (dedicated to us history majors everywhere who sometimes forget there is not much new going on)..............

When Baltimore merchant George Peabody sailed for London in 1835, the world was in the throes of a debt crisis.  The defaulting governments weren't obscure Balkan nations or South American republics but American states.  The United States had succumbed to a craze for building railroads, canals, and turnpikes, all backed by state credit.  Now Maryland legislators, with the bravado of the ruined, threatened to join other states in skipping interest payments on their bonds, which were largely marketed in London.  As one of the three state commissioners assigned to renegotiate the debt, Peabody urged officials to tone down their rhetoric and placate British bankers.  But American legislators found it easier to pander to the hatred of foreign banks rather than to raise new taxes to service debt.
-Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan