We don't have a banker -- we do it online. We don't have a stock broker. On the rare occasions that we want to do stock transactions, we do them online. We don't have any kind of merchandise broker, since we're not in any business with inventory.
But we do have a currency broker. Frightening, really. It all dates back to when we were buying the house, converting USD to CAD. Getting a good rate actually made a difference for once. And once we'd made one decent-sized transaction, we got into a rolodex for "people who sometimes want to exchange small amounts of money". Small by currency trader standards, of course; pretty large piles of cash by my standards.
Anyway, Michael just called us up to let us know that the CAD-USD exchange rate is really good just now, making it a good time to buy USD.
Yeah, we know. We bill in USD. (grumble).
At the party on Saturday night, we were on the subject of Cuba. I think I was mentioning how weird it is to see posters advertising vacations in Cuba plastered all over the subway here. Cuba is a popular vacation spot for Canadians; Canada of course does not have an embargo on Cuba, as the U.S. does.
Somebody piped up "100% literacy rate, though... impressive."
I responded, "Doesn't help you much if you can't read what you want."
And the subject was changed.
Today, reading through back issues of The Corner, I found this:
QUOTES [Jonah Goldberg]Lots of readers sending me their favorite Jonah-quotes. Modesty precludes me from posting them here. However, one reader sent me this one from the Derb which I like a great deal:
"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."
Exactly.