"Once people (colonialists) have power, they think universal truth is on their side. They will resort to any unscrupulous means to achieve their goal. If I have travelled on the sea, I will then understand that war, trade and piracy are fundamentally like the Trinity, which is inseperable and indivisible.'
("FAUST", Part 2, Act 5, Goethe)
Quoted in The Opium War, "Series of the 1st Imperialist War of Aggression Against China in English and Chinese Commemorating the Handover of Hong Kong to China and Seeing the Issue in the Right Perspective!"
LP: So the devil is the printing of money?
ReplyDeleteAT: It’s called the devil because, interestingly, three years ago, Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank, gave a speech in which he came pretty close to suggesting that Mario Draghi was growing horns when first suggesting quantitative easing in Europe. Jens referred to a famous part in Goethe’s Faust, Part Two, in which Mephistopheles, the devil, tempts the emperor and says, you don’t need to be constrained in your expenditure by your tax revenues or how much people are willing to lend you, you can print money! Jens argued that this illustrates what a dangerous thing it is.
http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/blog/want-to-grow-the-economy-might-be-time-to-unleash-the-devil