The tub helps me relax, and it's a great place to read.

If I've made myself clear, I've misspoken.

Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.

...our market system depends critically on trust-trust in the word of our colleagues and trust in the word of those with whom we do business.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

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.

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.