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To: Les H who wrote (8865)	10/10/2003 1:13:04 PM
From: Tommaso	Respond to of 29594

That's one link I might quarrel with a little. Things are bad enough that there is no need to rewrite history to make a point. The article begins: "As a rule, the power of all great empires diminishes over time as governments willingly debase their currency to meet soaring expenditures. Rome and England are prime examples, each abandoning sound monetary policy as the cost of empire spiraled out of control" Actually England, much encouraged by Winston Churchill, did a lot of damage to itself and others by trying reinstate the value of the pound at a higher level in the late 1920s, thereby producing severe deflation. And it lost its empire mainly as a result of World War II and the nationalistic movements that flourished in the 1940s and 1950s. I don't think you can blame the post-WWII devaluation of the pound for the loss of empire. Sound money does not necessarily guarantee political dominance either; has Switzerland ever had an empire? England had all it could do to end up on the winning side in the war and was not prepared to wage an unending series of small wars (or a big one in India) to hang onto its previous posessions. France was not as wise, embroiling itself first in Indochina and then in Algeria before it learned to bow out of forcibly administered foreign holdings.