Recent Comments

1. 11 days ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   I thought about saying something here but changed my mind.

2. 16 days ago on Matt Davies

   I agree more should be done about corporate monopoly power. But that’s not what the Fed can do. Crony capitalists were making unreasonable profits before the inflation. What the Fed shouldn’t do is slow the economy with high interest rates when low interest wasn’t the cause of the inflation.

3. 18 days ago on Matt Davies

   This inflation was caused by fuel prices (caused by Putin’s war on Ukraine) and as a side effect of the “medicine” used to prevent the economy from crashing during COVID-19. Intentionally raising interest rates is not the solution. We need to first use less of the specific things that cost more and then maybe see if markets can’t actually work like conservatives say they should.

4. 20 days ago on Jen Sorensen

   I thought the term originated in Germany describing what was going on in the 19th Century.

5. 20 days ago on Peanuts Begins

   For some people, the term “dog whistle” has become sort of a dog whistle.

6. 24 days ago on Bloom County

   And you really don’t need to be a weather man to know which way the wind is blowing.

7. 25 days ago on M2Bulls

   I don’t think many Hawaiians want independence and to give up statehood. And that is really not what the cartoon is about… though many of those posting here seem to have forgotten that.

8. 25 days ago on Peanuts Begins

   Now that you say that, yes… it was a long time ago.

9. 25 days ago on Peanuts Begins

   That is an interesting article. Put still… They use “pieces of eight” sometimes interchangeably with “real de a ocho” without explaining why. Direct translation would be “real eight” also called a “hard peso”. Then they say there were two coins. The real de a ocho had a value of eight “reales”.

   This leaves me thinking that “pieces of eight” refers to the cut eights of Real Eights, (like my “Money and Banking” Professor said, back in 1975).

   They also wrote:

   In the Thirteen Colonies, Spanish currency circulated normally and was known first as “Spanish thaler”, later becoming “Spanish daller”, and later “Spanish dollar”. The reales de a ocho were known as “taleros” because of their resemblance to the sturdy Austrian currency “thaler”.

   Since Beethoven lived much of his life in Austria, this might be the answer to the original question.

10. 25 days ago on Peanuts Begins

    “Germany” as we know it, didn’t exist when Beethoven was alive. It was in transition. When he was born there were a couple thousand more or less independent political units. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars the number was much reduced but still over a hundred with maybe a dozen large states. There were many currencies but in fact, the Spanish dollar was used in much of Europe.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar

    By the way, the part about “pieces of eight” isn’t quite right. It refers to the common practice of cutting the coins into eight equal pieces (also called “bits”) for smaller transactions. "Two bits, four bits, eight bits, a dollar…)

    And yes, the US dollar was based on the Spanish dollar because they had been more readily available in the Colonies than British Pounds, due to “monetary restrictions” used by Parliament to try to keep the Colonies in line.