Neither a Borrower or a Lender Be
“Neither a borrower or a lender be.” This economic counsel comes from the Bard - known primarily as a dramatist - but also as a pretty shred businessman. Jim Wright, ex Speaker of the House, agrees. “Don’t borrow, don’t lend”, he says.
And all you borrowers can heave a big sigh of relief. The former Speaker has joined your team, your debt is his debt, in a manner of speaking (pun intended). Jim Wright has noticed that among the long list of human frailties, using tomorrow’s money for today’s pleasures is way up on the list, ranking somewhere close to lust and Vodka martinis before late afternoon.
And since the ex Congressman, to his credit, realizes that not even the U.S. Congress can heal the human heart - well, why not punish the devilish institutions that encourage and profit from this sinister situation. We’re talking abut banks and their credit cards. Because of them, some of us are up to our eyeballs in a sea of debt, says the Speaker. (Wonder what HE carries in his wallet?)
No credit cards - no debt, says the slayer of plastic dragons. We need some new laws. Little Joey Public, had a tummy ache last night ‘cause he had three slices of pie while his distracted mom was doing dishes. The Wright way is is to treat us like children and strike us with legislation. Politically it is unwise to ban apple pie. People love apple pie and will destroy electorally any apple pie-hating politician who keeps it out of their mouth. But you can tame the greed of the apple pie industry by legislating ingredients, size of slices, price, location of pie stores (not within 300 yards of a school). And paramount, legally speaking; NO PIES SOLD ON CREDIT! That oughta reduce tummy aches. Of course, the Apple Pie Industry would take a hit and lovers of pie, who don’t get tummy aches, will suffer. But you can’t enjoy dessert without chopping up apples! Result: a diminution of our free space; but probably no diminution of tummy aches because zealous overeaters and kindred lawbreakers always find a way to skirt the Province of Legislation.
In the case of credit cards, Wright laments the typical borrower who is ground under “the iron heel of credit card rules”. Sounds like KingKong KreditKorp oppressing the peasants. And if you didn’t know better, you’d gather from Wrights remarks that there’s probably a law that every American of 21 or over MUST borrow at least 10K annually under penalty of death. Freedom of choice? What’s that?
The ex-Speaker, in his syndicated column, goes on to decry our personal debt; a million and a half Americans “were forced last year into filing for personal bankruptcy”. He goes on to call variable interest loans “a trap, a snare for the unwary”. And get this; we’re paying bond interest to the Chinese government! That’s bad? The Chinese surveying the international marketplace, unlike the ex congressman, think that U.S. Treasuries (all that debt!!) are the place to be. (Which incidentally, negatively impacts that deceptive and phony statistic called trade balance.)
All I can gather from Wright’s rant is that we need laws disrupting the fragile, but still free, market in borrowing and lending of money. I bet the Chinese government, our lenders, sitting on the lid of a free market explosion - that will sooner or later blow them to political oblivion - readily agree
Comments (24)
Humbug.
After a dalliance with credit-card serfdom, some lifestyle changes, and a recapture of common sense, I paid off all my debts except my mortgage (and refinanced that to a low, low rate), and I am now living a credit-card-free lifestyle, no thanks to ex-speaker Wright.
I carry only a standard AMEX card (that must be settled up at the end of every month) and a Visa check card. I still technically have a couple of other cards, but I haven't opened a piece of mail from their issuers in years, and never intend to again.
Anyone can do what I did, without political intervention, and their lives will be much richer for it, in every sense of the word. I would be glad to share my experience with anyone who wants to hear it.
Published: October 18, 2006 1:08 PM
Don,
“It's an age old question, What separates humans from the rest of humanity [animals]? Speech? Culture? A brain? Consciouness? Self-awareness? No.”
This question has been answered already: humans act, reason, argue and justify. These are the characteristics that separate humans from the rest of the animal world.
“Money, the pecuniary animal we are.”
Money is an artifact of human reason. It occurs as a logical result of human action and more specifically of market activities and optimized human cooperation.
“It also is good evidence that human beings are likely the dumbest of animals too, at least as we observe the use and misuse of that now humanly indispensible crutch that has its own little lively multiplying factor.”
The human weaknesses, to which you are vaguely alluding and ascribing to the use of money, is in fact, human corruptibility, aggression, greediness, enviousness, dishonesty and laziness. It has nothing to do with the fact that the market identified money as a necessary device to allow humanity to climb out of the dark ages of poverty and barter and into economic and cultural improvements and advancements in technology and civilization that economic calculation, specialization and division of labor allows.
“In our short lifetimes, it multiplies our envy making most miserable souls, and the rest hoarding fools.”
If we are envious and foolish, we are so before we are able to demonstrate it. Money allows men more freedom to act and to therefore reflect their values more than they could otherwise. Such a demonstration of frailty would not be possible if he were kept down in poverty, where his entire living day were spent hand to mouth as is the case for the simple animals. But then the loftier traits of men such as a desire to philosophize also could not be demonstrated.
Therefore, your philosophy refutes itself. If it were correct, it would dispute the validity of the existence of philosophers, who can only have time to think and philosophize due to the benefits of money, which is much needed to allow modern day industrialized economies to exist. That you have time to think, rather than spend your days grubbing around for food and sticks for fire demonstrates that you should recognize the value of money and the modern economy requiring money, and shows that your philosophy itself is invalidated.
Published: October 18, 2006 4:41 PM
I'm wondering if Don Robertson himself understands the meaning of his diatribe.
My personal bullshitometer certainly climbed to "gasbag alert".
I would challenge him to show his intellectual integrity by refusing to deal with anything brought to us by, well, empiricism, and go back to living in a cave. That'd be beneficial to the civilization, too, as the esteemed philosopher would be very likely to increase the average IQ of the human race by failing to survive the coming winter.
Alas, this is not going to happen.
Published: October 18, 2006 6:35 PM
Don,
“[that] climbing ..out of the Dark Ages [has been beneficial] … is a judgment call that cannot be either supported or substantiated by the chronicles of our historic past”
It does not require support or substantiation to you because you already clearly demonstrate that you value what money and a monetary market provides us. Your debating and philosophizing, which would be impossible in a poverty stricken life in a non-industrialized barter market would allow for us nothing more than to either scrape by, or die of malnutrition or disease, as many people in many societies still do even today in third world and highly socialistic parts of the planet – an empirical demonstration of my point. Does your philosophy advocate this human suffering over health, prosperity and spare time to think about things? If it does, it does not leave room for people such as you to have time to philosophize. And yet, you claim to be a philosopher, no less of a philosophy that refutes the very things that make it possible.
Your position is a contradiction, and a self-refutation.
Published: October 18, 2006 7:23 PM
Couldn't agree more, averros!
Published: October 18, 2006 8:12 PM
Don,
“Well, again you've read into my words more than intended because perhaps you are not amenable to accepting things as they are written? My intent is (and my accomplishment has been) to refute the empirical methodologies that require us by their acceptance to continue upon a species-suicidal path. Is there something contradictory to that?”
My mistake. I thought you were attributing our problems to the use of money. I thought that you were unaware that money is a key element to the solution to most of man’s economic problems rather than being a source of any of them. If I was wrong, it is my mistake.
“Now, as for your declaration that under primitive societies human beings had no choice but "to either scrape by, or die of malnutrition or disease, as many people in many societies still do even today in third world and highly socialistic parts of the planet." you are simply wrong about the existence of people in the past,”
I doubt this.
“and I would further point out that more people die today, even a greater pecentage of people, die today of these maladies than ever did in the past.”
Too many people do indeed die today than is necessary; but not due to the existence of a free market and sound market originated money. Where there is socialism and a disregard for property rights, including a right to keep one’s own money, there is the most pain, suffering, poverty, and death due to disease and malnutrition.
“And, still despite your assertion, this is not what I am advocating.”
My mistake. I thought you were suggesting that markets and money represented an affliction upon the human race.
“What you don't seem to understand is that things change over time, and without analysing how they change over time, you cannot reliably consider yourself educated about anything, not philosophy, and certainly not economics.”
Things change, but principles do not. The economic principles that apply now and in the past to make a society wealthy, healthy and in possession of spare time to discuss philosophy, are also the principles, that if ignored result in mass poverty and starvation. One cannot disparage money, if one values prosperity. And we all, who would study philosophy, value prosperity over poverty.
“Throughout history as things have changed the mean has not been getting better, and it has never been getting better in the mean, except as it is believed to be through a fantasy made wholly of a nationalist-centric view as is yours.”
You may be correct. However, if this is true, it is not because of the market and not because of the money which arises from the market. But you are not saying this, which is good. And I’m not certain from where you derive that I have a “nationalist-centric view”. I have a free market view.
“From the lofty height of your perch in post-colonialist-now-imperialist America, you look down upon more than nine-tenths of the population of the world as backward,”
I do not advocate imperialism, only free markets. But if you think cultures that live in abject poverty, with people starving to death and dieing of causes that have cures in western countries are not backward, maybe we just differ on what constitutes backward.
“ and probably even a significant percentage of our own population, just as if you believe were they all to accept and be endowed with your mental aparatus as it has been educated here in this country, that all these problems would cease to be problems, as if the world can glide into some Jetson's or Star Trek future.”
Do you think you have a solution to the economic problems of the world? Let’s hear them. For me, my solution is free and voluntary markets, unhampered by the legislation of the criminal state.
“Such a view again is bordering on animism, a belief that through an empirically derived amoral acceptance of modernity, life will somehow be made humanely better throughout the world. There is simply no evidence to even suspect this from any chapter in history yet written. Such an obvious pattern in history should scream, This cannot be true! but apparently it needs further clarification for you.”
I don’t get your presumption that there is anything empirically derived about what I am saying at all. Are you familiar with Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian school, and praxeology? I think rather than you clarifying things and educating me, it is you who needs the education. Read Mises’s “Human Action” first, to gain an understanding of the basis on which I make my arguments. They are based on the aprioristic axiomatic-deductive approach of praxeology - human action. You appear to have remained ignorant of this area, one of the more important fields of study of human endeavors, and this severely hamstrings your ability to discuss the topic.
“Let me explain further for you.”
Perhaps when you are better equipped.
“Again, in the short duration of this continent's history, the North American continent upon which you (and I) live so well has been trashed, as it once had wealth that existed beyond description, and that wealth has been literally scrapped for tenths of pennies on the dollar to support so extravagantly our short existences, and the doctrine of manifest destiny that gobbled up this continent was then transformed into an imperialist capitalism that has sapped the rest of the world's wealth at every opportunity.”
As long as you’re not blaming this on free markets and the existence of money, I’ll not dispute you. The state has been responsible for many bad things, the least of which is the wasting of resources and the destruction of the environment.
“That's the economic history with which you must make your prediction of some Utopian ideal mesh.”
I don’t recall predicting anything. I just observed that the honest and knowledgeable philosopher will recognize that his philosophy must support a free market, which includes money. Perhaps you do, and it was my misunderstanding. I am now unsure of where you stand on the matter.
“Paul, until sometime after the Civil War (less than 150 years ago) half the country believed that the successful economic system was the slave plantation economy.”
I think your figures are grossly exaggerated. Only a relative few actually believed this. The rest either didn’t care one way or the other, or just felt there was some benefit in slavery. A few libertarians at that time recognized slavery was unjust and unacceptable. However, there have been no major breakthroughs in our understanding of the justice of slavery between then and now; only the state’s decree has changed. When the state gives legitimacy to a crime, people tend to accept it. When the state suggests something is a crime, only then do most people believe it may indeed be a crime. It’s what I was referring to when I say people can be lazy and corrupted. They let others think for and declare for them, what they should reason out for themselves.
“That also is part of the history of economics.”
It is not the history of Austrian economics. You should familiarize yourself with it.
“Make that fit with your supposed miraculous transition to a spontaneously arising humanely benevolent modernity of American leading to world capitalism.”
Huh? And you’re concerned about me reading things into what you have said?
“(Just to prevent you from reading into that that I am a socialist or a communist, let me head you off at the pass before then. Try and read what I write, Paul.)”
I have no idea what you advocate, Don. I wonder if you even do. I gather it is not the unhampered free market; you probably think that if a wise enough philosopher were at the helm of a great world-wide state, legislating morality, that things would be much better. Perhaps I mis-read you. In any event, you look around and see problems in the world. I see them too. The difference is, I recognize their cause, but I remain doubtful that you do.
“So Paul. What of those who will follow us? How does your economic view treat them?
“Let me guess. Pot luck?”
What?
“Send your greatest professor to do battle here, if you want to learn something. You simply show no sign of learning anything from seeing your views undercut and discredited. Perhaps seeing the Professor grovel will impress you enough so that you might yet learn something.”
LOL. Okay.
Published: October 19, 2006 12:29 PM
Don Robertson,
Unless human beings find a way off of the planet, then we are doomed as a species whether or not we employ the benefits of empiricism. Should humans return to being hunters and gatherers, eventually we would be wiped out by a comet or a meteor.
So the question is not what should be done to save the human species, but, rather, which path can lead to the longest survival. I suspect Blorg the Caveman faced a similar dilemma when he was trying to decide if he should try to run up and spear the mammoth one late November afternoon.
Published: October 19, 2006 1:16 PM
I honestly don't understand 90% of what Don Robertson has written, but that may be due to my own ignorance. He's beginning to make me doubt that I understand English at all.
Still, I'll make a stab at responding to something he wrote: "Here is the only standard that counts: Derived entirely from the cogito if have philosophically posited that the moral imperative, incontravertable in any sense, is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives others might live as they pass into this world after our exit."
Where in the world did you get that? And what makes you think it's "incontravertable"? It sounds more like the sustainable development nonsense that the left is peddling. I would argue that instead of living a "life that detracts not at all from the lives others might live", we should leave a better world. Thanks to capitalism, we have been able to do that for about three centuries.
Published: October 19, 2006 1:52 PM
RogerM,
Well, you beat me. I honestly don't understand 95% of it. I almost feel like he is playing a practical joke on us.
Published: October 19, 2006 2:59 PM
Paul, et al-
I'll not respond in total here within this post as I must go read Professor Mises' "Human Action" first.
To the second two posters who hold the belief on one hand, that things are indeed better, and in one instance likely to get irretrievably worse without some futuristic manifest destiny in the stars to avoid asteroid collisions or perhaps a supervolcano, you've been duped by modern popular science into thinking these things are somehow within the realm of a reality with which humans could cope, al la Hollywood and/or PBS.
Before I go look for Professor Mises suggested (Utilitarian?) tome, and settle in to read it, so I can continue on with this conversation better informed. This is what I believe...
Scientific solutions are not solutions at all, but rather the cause of the problems that have brought the world so close to its demise. In that sense, I'm anti-empirical. The invention of money was a net negative, but it's a mistake we now have to live with.
The invention of money was a net negative because it allowed a greater economic utility without providing for the population excesses that greater economic utility imposed upon a finite system. Hence money caused greater suffering and not as empirical science would teach us, that it provided for less human suffering. Coinage pre-dates modern empiricism thousands of years.
What we think of as "money" however, is not static, and few would doubt here, that credit cards are money of a different sort.
My suggestions about money are equally applicable to credit cards. The greater utility did not in the mean alleviate any human suffering compared to the human suffering it has caused.
The common empirical response here is that these debt ridden fools deserved their suffering because of their ignorance. The most adequate response to this, is that we are all fools at one time or another, something few humans are willing to admit until they find themselves pinned down with their own foolishness. That is the greater part of my work's pages, explaining how it is we are all empirical fools.
As empiricism has so enshrouded modern thought with its mystical beliefs and Star Trek animisms, it's difficult for anyone to consider any problem without being convinced of empirial solutions. But, I have premissed in my works, we also know through experience and history, empirical solutions are not thought out well enough to avoid even more on the downside.
This is the main problem with the left wing ecological groups and there disparate solutions. We can't simply let all the domesticated animals out of their cages and return back to a state of nature, but, we can deny that empiricism is a solution to the problems empiricism has visited upon us.
As I read "Human Action", I want you to consider, if it's not too mentally costly a project, that the great upsurge in empiricially derived political philosophy since the Enlightenment, it too has caused tremendous problems for humanity.
Human rights, the rights of man, sovereignty, all these are abstract empirical ideas that have given us war upon war with little to show for any of them. The problem is not what political philosophy engages us to think about as justice, it is human nature, that which sinks every empirical knowledge solution.
Don't lose the link. I'll be back. And Paul, I was wrong. You show some spectacular promise.
It'll be well worth my time to come back less condescending. Thanks for your thoughts and the book reference.
Don Robertson
Published: October 19, 2006 4:41 PM
Don,
At last, after several tries, you wrote something that was actually decipherable. At least, now, I know where you are coming from, but I am still forced to disagree.
But that may just be my foolishness pinning me down again- it happens a lot and I am quite willing to admit it.
Published: October 19, 2006 5:01 PM
Don,
You are welcome. I am certain you find Human Action a very worth while read. (It is also here on mises.org in e form).
Published: October 19, 2006 5:27 PM
Paul,
I got the impression that he wasn't really going to read Mises, but was just making a sarcastic remark. However, I hope that I am wrong.
Published: October 20, 2006 8:41 AM
My impression was that Don was sincere. But Human Action is a large and challenging piece of work, so time will tell. It's been said that the "spirit is willing, but...". And i'm no one to talk when it comes to setting and achieving ambitious goals, unless I get a real kick out of the actual journey towards them, such as reading some good Austrian literature.
Published: October 20, 2006 9:59 AM
Don:"The greater utility did not in the mean alleviate any human suffering compared to the human suffering it has caused."
Please explain your definition of suffering. I'm too ignorant to see how people suffer more today than in the past.
Also: "Scientific solutions are not solutions at all, but rather the cause of the problems that have brought the world so close to its demise."
In what way is the world close to demise? I can't see it.
What do you mean by empiricism? (You don't seem to be using the generally accepted definitions of words.) If empiricism is so evil, what is your solution?
I would guess that Don is one of those guys who believes that technical progress has destroyed the the pristine environment, which he finds more valuable than human comfort. Otherwise, why would he have written that the wealth of North American was far greater before Europeans came over and that we've destroyed it?
He also seems to believe that we are running out of natural resources and we should use less so that future generations will have some.
Published: October 20, 2006 10:13 AM
Roger M said;
"I would guess that Don is one of those guys who believes that technical progress has destroyed the the pristine environment, which he finds more valuable than human comfort. Otherwise, why would he have written that the wealth of North American was far greater before Europeans came over and that we've destroyed it?
He also seems to believe that we are running out of natural resources and we should use less so that future generations will have some."
If Don actually believes that, I will refer him to the famous wager between the enviro-pessimist Paul Ehrlich and the late Julian Simon, which Simon won, repeatedly;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrlich-Simon_bet
Simon's explanation was that human ingenuity was the ultimate resource, and that it, rather than the available quantity of a resource, was the real wealth of society.
Published: October 20, 2006 11:25 AM
If our philosopher is, say, twice as smart as I am, we can look forward to hearing from him again on these subjects--after an elapse of about five years or so.
Published: October 20, 2006 2:53 PM
Vince:
My story's a tad different but still involves 5 credit cards with 20%+ rates. I used 'em to buy stuff and then sell it for a few years and still use 'em, except that now I pay no interest charges ('cause they're all current). More than one way to skin a cat and "get 'er done!"
Published: October 20, 2006 3:04 PM
Great story, Gene.
Don't get me wrong - I think far from simply penalizing customers to incentivize them to keep their payments current, I think they actually, evilly jack up rates and pile on fees, especially when payments start to get small / spotty, to virtually enslave / bankrupt their customers. I refuse to do business with companies that abuse their customers that way.
Published: October 20, 2006 3:46 PM
Don Robertson, The American Crackpot. What is it about this site that attracts all the crazies?
Published: October 21, 2006 7:19 PM
Don,
From your post at http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/mises.html
“Some philosophies advise…”
Do you see an inconsistency about to happen here? Do you recognize that a philosophy is not a thing that hangs in the air or sits on a sofa and espouses and expounds upon itself. But rather men must advocate a philosophy in the form of argumentation and proposition making. In this act of so doing, they themselves must act. No one can put forth such a philosophy without the purposeful use of means to achieve an end, that is, without acting. And in so doing, they fall into a dialectical contradiction in putting forth such a futile philosophy. They refute themselves as they make their inconsistent arguments. Therefore, no one can deny the value of action, for in the very denial, they demonstrate their own preference for action: their denial of action being their own action for which they demonstrate a preference for.
“ men to seek as the ultimate end of conduct the complete renunciation of any action. They look upon life as an absolute evil full of pain, suffering, and anguish, and apodictically deny that any purposeful human effort can render it tolerable.”
Again, their own actions refute their claims. “Men seek”, “they look” and they “deny”. Yes they act and act and act, inconsistently claiming to refute the value of action, all the while blissfully persisting in demonstrating their own preference for acting. If they were to be consistent, they would cease to seek, and to look and to deny, yet they do not. Why is this? Because they are human and cannot avoid demonstrating even their own preference for acting, even while they attempt to cast aspersions against it.
“Happiness can be attained only by complete extinction of consciousness, volition, and life. The only way toward bliss and salvation is to become perfectly passive, indifferent, and inert like the plants. The sovereign good is the abandonment of thinking and acting.”
Perhaps if this philosophy were actually true, those espousing it would have believed it enough to have acted accordingly. Instead they chose to maintain consciousness, volition and life, to be non-passive, non-indifferent, and non-inert. They refused to abandon thinking and acting in favor of the exact reverse. And for what purpose? Why to argue in favor of the philosophy in which they themselves demonstrate by their own very actions that they reject. Such contradictions from “philosophers” puts their credibility in question. To put it mildly.
“Such is the essence of the teachings of various Indian philosophies, especially of Buddhism, and of Schopenhauer. Praxeology does not comment upon them.”
Ah but praxeology does comment on them. It shows them for what they are: fraudulent and incoherent, fraught with self-defeating inconsistency.
“It is neutral with regard to all judgments of value and the choice of ultimate ends. Its task is not to approve or to disapprove, but to describe what is.”
Praxeology demonstrates those things which cannot be denied and also those things which cannot be justified. Not just that humans can and must act, and that this is itself undeniable, but also that certain other things are undeniable due to the very nature of the human action of argumentation. That to deny certain ethical propositions is itself a very denial of the necessary presuppositions of argumentation. Mises did not expound on this revelation. But he blazed the trail of the study of Praxeology which made these insights possible. Certain philosophies are shown simply unjustifiable based on the logic and reason that refutes them during the act of argumentation.
Published: October 22, 2006 3:56 AM
Don,
I’ll only touch on a few points as well.
“He is simply wrong here. Logic is not constant, or uniform in any way. Logic is wholly personal phenomena. All we can pass between each other is the enthusiasm for the enchantment we have for our own mastery, a mastery that others must ad hoc reinvent for themselves at every passage of the flame. (I know what I'm talking about here. I took calculus with a slide rule.)”
Such an argument cuts the very branch of the tree upon which one rests. If we suppose for a moment that such an argument were true, then it would itself in fact, rest on logic that is not constant, and undependable. The whole statement rests on its own very reality being subject to personal preference and zeal for it. It claims that even the idea it represents is simply and ad hoc invention which is in a complete state of flux, true for one person, perhaps untrue for another. It is true while the individual is “enchanted” by it, and becomes false as the individual changes his mind and looses his enthusiasm for it. If this is the case, the argument has no meaning at all, for it is false for me and many others and only true for you while you find pleasure in believing it.
…
“As I see praxeology thus far, is that its reliance upon empirical logic, without understanding the severe limitations of that logic as it applies to human truth, is likely a fatal fault.”
I don’t know why you call Mises’s logic empirical. It is aprioristic, axiomatic and deductive, based on necessary truths that cannot be disputed. His economics uses this logic, combined with a handful of empirical facts about our environment that we as acting humans can ascertain. I would also point out that we are all presupposing the same kind of logic when putting forth our propositions. We are all attempting to achieve the goal of persuasion through expression of ideas that others are, in principle, able to comprehend with reason, and agree or to disagree with; in either event, we are able to be influenced by the expression of these ideas.
Finally, I don’t know what precisely you mean by the moral imperative. To me, it could be possibly two diametrically opposed ideas: 1: the libertarian non-aggression axiom based on justice, law and voluntary cooperative human interaction, or 2: the need for a world-wide state founded in aggression which monopolizes the use of violence and ultimate decision making. I wonder if you are talking about 1 or 2.
If you are talking about 1, then we are just having a massive communication problem. If you are advocating 2, or anything other than 1, in fact, then your philosophy requires serious revision and praxeology can be used to demonstrate that this cannot be denied.
Published: October 22, 2006 7:58 PM
Paul:
You're smacking a tar-baby.
Published: October 23, 2006 6:29 AM
Like I said, a crackpot. Ignore him; hopefully he'll go away.
Published: October 24, 2006 12:44 AM