Great news! Slovakia to Start Meeting Maastricht Inflation Criterion Next Month

The Governor of the National Bank of Slovakia, Ivan Sramko, stated on Tuesday that Slovakia is to start meeting the Maastricht inflation criterion in September 2007.

Initial estimates that the country could meet this criterion as soon as August will thus not be confirmed. The reason for this, however, is not worse inflation development in Slovakia but a change to the calculation base for the reference value.

“Development of the inflation rate still allows us to assume we would meet the nominal part of this criterion this year as well as in March 2008 and further in 2008, which we consider key issues for evaluation of the Maastricht criterion itself,” the Governor concluded.

Admiring the rich & famous

"The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the
powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean
condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our
moral sentiments."

Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759):

also...

Theodore Roosevelt ("New Nationalism" speech, 1910): "I believe in a
graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more
easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big
fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly with
the size of the estate."