Quote of the Week

"America's first modern central bank was established in 1913, in the teeth of strong populist suspicion of bankers. The men who conceived it were worried about the perception that they were forming a cabal, and so did what you naturally do when you're worried about that: they travelled by private train, under pseudonyms, to a top-secret meeting at a private island off the coast of Georgia."
- John Lanchester, "Heroes and Zeroes," a review of Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance, on p.71 of the 2/2/09 New Yorker