“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. “
-CHARLES DARWIN

By now most readers expect to open EVA each Friday and read our take on the ever-changing financial markets. Occasionally, something arises that’s compels us to deviate from our normal range of topics.

“This is the great danger America faces.  That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups…each seeking to satisfy private wants.” 
-BARBARA JORDAN, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND CONGRESSWOMAN

A third way? Last week’s EVA was the first installment in a two-part series on what I believe is one of the most important books in recent years:  Woody Brock’s American Gridlock:  Why the Left and Right Are Both Wrong.

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we have lost in information.” 
-T. S. ELIOT

Let there be hope. Hope is one of the simplest yet most comforting words in the English language, at least when it comes to the real deal. 

“Clearly, things are weaker than we thought when we made plans for this year.”
–UPS CFO KURT KUEHN

POINTS TO PONDER

1.  Retail sales have now fallen for three straight months.  This has occurred just 2% of the time since WWII and in all instances except one (late 2000) the US was already in recession. 

“Only the government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.”   
-MILTON FRIEDMAN

The Taylor House Rules.  Numerous past EVAs have highlighted the famous, at least to monetary authorities and economists, “Taylor Principle” (aka, the Taylor Rule),