THIS BLOG HAS BEEN A BIT DORMANT LATELY, NO EXCUSES, BUT WE WANTED TO START A SECTION PROVIDING FOOD FOR THOUGHT– ORIGINAL, STRIKING QUOTES FROM PROGRESSIVE TYPES FROM AROUND THE WORLD FOR THE LAST FEW CENTURIES.

We’ll start with is one from C.S. Lewis (1863-1929), the Anglo-Irish folklorist, Oxford scholar, and fantasy novelist famous for THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS and much else. Attribution goes to the Inspiring Quote” from the website The Thoughtful Mind, March 30, 2014. To them goes all of the credit

for this gem, but to us comes the opportunity to deconstruct it for future discussion– so very relevant to our times

And we have added below Lewis, same source, April 3, 2014, a gem from Friedrich N., who needs no introduction. Is there a connection?

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT on Janet Yellen

This Feb. 2014 edition of one of our leading progressive journals features an in-depth profile of Fed. Bank chief Janet Yellen, one smart cookie—wonder how she got installed without Republican flack. The appointment is notable because Yellen is a true progressive, or at least relatively so compared with her predecessors. One of the gutsiest Obama selections to date. A fine intellect who does not easily ruffle feathers. As FED chief for at least 4 years, she will have plenty of opportunity to do just that.

As you may read for a while in the link here, http://prospect.org/magazine or google AMERICAN PROSPECT , Yellen is in principle free of some of the TARP and Bernanke-Summers-Geithner baggage Other Obama mop-up operators of the past four years (the latter two of these having departed the administration. There is potential in Yellen’s shaking up some of the paradigm of the Bank. As a labor economist and recently deputy head of the bank she is known to focus on unemployment as much as money supply and probably will be as potentially formidable antagonist or at least skeptic of Wall Street activities as any individual at the top level of the government, including the president. She of course will be freer than he is, it seems, to influence those features of “The Street” that rankle many on the left AND, ironically, in the Tea Party movement at the same time. More on her as event develop. This blog must move on  to other business and is not equipped to discuss her as eloquently as the Robert Kuttner article which begins on page 40 of “The Prospect.”