Thanks Scott. And Brian, my ideas about money are my own. I wanted to take economics in college but all the "schools" of thought were based on old ideas that have been around for centuries. One book would tell you how the money supply works and another would tell you how banks work, or how labor and management relationships shaped government policy. It all seemed, and still does seem, too complicated.

In college, I wanted to take a course in "basic" economics but it seemed like no one really teaches basic economics. They call it that, but it is really just rehashed theories. And I did not want to take a course unless I really felt the professor knew what economics was at it's core. So I never took a course in it and in all my readings since, I have never finished a book on economics because none of them taught what I wanted to know. It is kind of like the way I feel about music. I took guitar lessons for about 3 or 4 sessions about 30 years ago. The guy would show me something and I guess he was right, but his playing was awful.I didn't want to learn from somebody who was awful. I guess that is why they tell you to only take lessons from a "player" not a teacher. I did not need this guy teaching me a lot of bad habits- I can pick those up all by myself-

anyway I feel the same way about learning something important like how money works. I puzzle over it all the time. I never hear anyone talk about it except in terms of "investment strategies" or "supply side economics" etc. It is like there is this Elephant in the Room and nobody knows how to talk about it.

Economics is something I think about every day. Why are some people rich and some poor? I grew up very poor in South Albuquerque and my father was an impractical poet and dreamer who could not provide for his family, while my uncle was moderately wealthy and stable. I wanted to live with him. Over the years I began to believe that "prosperity" was more a state of mind, or at the very least, a state of expectation. I was seventeen before I had more than one pair of shoes. It didn't occur to me that I could. Now that was entrenched poverty! Realizing that I couldn't even imagine more than one pair of shoes and then recognizing, and being horrified by, my own poverty of mind, may have been my first thoughts about economics. So I have thought about this for a long time.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein