[SuzyQue]

Yes, but the more important point, at least, is that, following the Roman model, we will continue the inexorable downward slide, each new generation only somewhat aware of the losses of the last.

[faucetman]

As one famous intellectual said “Managing the decay”

[Nowhere Man]

Yes, but the more important point, at least, is that, following the Roman model, we will continue the inexorable downward slide, each new generation only somewhat aware of the losses of the last.

Everytime I look up at the Moon, I say to myself, "we put men up there and I remember seeing that when I was a small child." I'll be 46 in July. I often wonder when I'm an old an and point to the Moon and telling the children then, "yes, there was a time when we were able to put men on the Moon unlike now."

There is already a generation of adults out there that have never seen a man walk on the Moon live on TV. You'd have to be over 40 to remember seeing that. Shame, really. B-(

[muawiyah]

We finally put an end to the Empire Rome started about 1919 with the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire.

There are still some legal problems ~

[atomic_dog]

The Romans continued to use a medium of exchange with some, however small and decreasing, intrinsic value that acted as a brake however ineffective it ultimately was. The Romans never imagined such things as credit default swaps (CDS), high frequency trading (HFT) or commodities exchanges that enable the manipulation of prices up and down. They also never had the ability to conjure circulating currency out of thin air.

The economic mess is Euroland has not sunk to the level I expected by now. They have an amazing variety of tricks propping it up, foremost among them the willingness to lie completely and absolutely about what is going on. Eventually the whole house of cards is going to collapse and it will probably happen here in as little as three days. The average uninformed American will probably describe it as "all the money just vanished into thin air."

[redgolum]

We aren’t an Empire, yet. We still have an elected form of government. But each year we get closer and closer to the final end of the Republic.