Category Archives: Curiousities

The 1677 Statute of Frauds: History We Neglect at Our Peril

Have you ever signed a document disposing of something valuable, like a house or your estate? Did you find you needed to get it witnessed, and that the witnesses couldn’t be family members, and had to put their addresses on the document too? Then it may surprise you to learn that you are following legal precepts established by a long dead Welshman; this one, in fact:

[caption id="attachment_14376" align="alignnone" width="631" caption="Sir Leoline Jenkins (hat tip Wikipedia)"](h/t Wikipedia)[/caption]

whose tomb is at Jesus College, Oxford; oddly, no more than ten minutes’ amble from where I am sitting, carving out this post. I like the way his “Llewellyn” has been semi-Englished to “Leoline”. Right now, he is probably spinning, at a fair clip, for he is the originator of the Statute of Frauds.

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Guess about Mish

Various commenters have noticed that Mish’s blog has vanished. My guess – a spurious “terms of service violation”. Google’s robot spam monitors sometimes screw up by giving false positives – something like this happened to Yves (see para 3) back when NC was on Blogger. I can’t imagine they’ll shut up Mish for long and […]

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QE2: Bernanke Cuts Geithner Off at the Knees

The Fed’s announcement of $600 billion of intermediate and long Treasury purchase, informally dubbed QE2, teed off a peppy rally in stocks, and led to further weakening of the dollar. These trends were already well in motion thanks to the central bank’s winks and nods that it was going to embark on another round of […]

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In Case You Had Any Doubts As To Who Is Really In Charge

From an alert reader: The United States of America in one short scene, from Politico: MILITARY OFFICERS TOUR JPMORGAN — JPMorgan Chase yesterday hosted about 30 active duty military officers (across all branches and agencies) from the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. The officers met with senior executives, toured the trading floor and […]

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We are Number One on Technorati!

Well, at least we are number one as of yesterday, when Richard Smith noticed our rating, and today among business blogs. Don’t know how long this will last. But look how we beat blogs with a lot more people as dedicated contributors! And if you look at the Technorati ratings for business blogs + news […]

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Song of the Robber Baron

The latest Versus econoparody: And since this is a Friday night, let me give you a couple of personal faves. This one from O Lucky Man! is similar philosophically but very different stylistically. This Lindsay Anderson film (with Malcolm McDowell) has the interesting device of treating the band as a Greek chorus. During the picture, […]

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Meet GMAC’s Robo Signer Jeffrey Stephan

See this video ofthe deposition of GMAC’s famed robo signer, Jeffrey Stephan, who estimates that he signs 10,000 documents a month. If nothing else, you need to watch from 5:00 to the end of the first segment. Hat tip reader Barbara W, from 4closureFraud.org. I wish the sound quality were better; you can also read […]

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