“Anyone trying to understand the financial crisis eventually needs to understand central banking, and that route yields such complicated phrases as ‘money supply,’ ’systemic risk’ and ‘credit crunch.’ There is a way to understand central banking that immediately exposes its central themes and sheds light on its many myths, but you have to imagine a world where you no longer choose who you sleep with. Imagine a world where there are so many venereal diseases spread as men and women pair up, the government instituted a Central Sperm Bank. The idea was simple: Men deposit their sperm, able to take it back whenever they want, and women apply to borrow some, to be repaid from the sperm of the male children they eventually produced.” (for publication 01/08/09)