July 15, 2004  I am writing this on Bastille Day, so a bit of
French History, if you please. History does repeat itself, with
variations. For several hundred years, the French used the livre
as a currency. It may, or may not have been backed by gold, but
since all of France was owned by the Catholic Church and the
nobility, it didn't really matter. The serfs and groveling
peasants got a bit sick of this rule, and by means of
protesting, withholding of services, and other means available
to everyone back then, as now, gradually a class called the
"bourgeoisie" was formed. This became the shopkeeps, factory
owners, tradesmen, and what we now call the "middle class." More
and more land was transferred into private hands because of
strikes, and uprisings. For a hundred years, the government had
been running deficits. The bankers would loan livres to
government, to pay its bills. Did they create the livres out of
thin air, as does the Federal Reserve? Maybe. Government
proliferated, and more and more bureaucrats w