or something.
DJIA closed down 0.61 at 12,019.42 (0.01%), S&P down 0.30 at 1244.28 (0.02%), Naz up 0.03%.
Dude, where's my volatility?
From The Hill:
Conservatives say they will try to block the International Monetary Fund from bailing out Italy and Spain, which they say could leave U.S. taxpayers with a huge bill.I'm with the Congressmen on this one.
Republicans on both sides of the Capitol complain that the Obama administration has refused to share details of what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is discussing with European leaders amid reports the IMF could intervene.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) says he is planning legislation directing the U.S. government to veto an expanded role for the fund.
Senate Republican Steering Committee Chairman Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), a member of the House Republican leadership, also have legislation to curb the proposed intervention.
“I’m adamantly against the IMF being involved in this,” Coburn said.
“We’re throwing good money after bad down a hole that I think is not a solvable problem,” he said.
“Europe is going to default eventually, so why would you socialize their profligate spending,” he added....MORE
The "not one cent for tribute" line is often mistakenlythought to have originated in reference to the Barbary Pirates, here's the 411:
*The XYZ Affair
...In the wake of the French Revolution, relations between the new French Republic and the United States become ever more strained. Three French agents, publicly referred to as X, Y, and Z[2] demanded major concessions from the United States as a condition for continuing bilateral diplomatic relations. The concessions demanded by the French included 50,000 pounds sterling, a $12 million loan from the United States, a $250,000 personal bribe to French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, and a formal apology for comments made by President of the United States John Adams.[3]This attribution is incorrect but I went with it to set the stage. Here's Respectfully Quoted via Bartleby:
The demand came during a meeting in Paris, France between the French agents and a three-member American commission consisting of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry. Several weeks prior to the meeting with X, Y, and Z, the American commission had met with French foreign minister Talleyrand to discuss French retaliation to the Jay Treaty, which they perceived as evidence of an Anglo-American alliance. French privateers seized nearly 300 American ships bound for British ports in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean seas.[4]
Adams decided on sending Pinckney as part of the commission as Franco-U.S. relations had recently worsened by Talleyrand's rejection of Pinckney as America's minister to France. The French continued to seize American ships, and the Federalist Party, incited by Alexander Hamilton, advocated going to war. Congress authorized the build-up of an army.[5]
The American delegates found these demands unacceptable, and answered, "Not a sixpence", but in the inflated rhetoric of the day, the response became the infinitely more memorable: "Millions for defense, sir, but not one cent for tribute!"[6].... MORE
-Wikipedia
ATTRIBUTION:CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY, American minister to France, letter to Timothy Pickering, October 27, 1797, relating the American response to a French request for a tribute or bribe.—State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States, 3d ed., vol. 3, p. 492 (1819). The French had seized several American ships.
The wording of this quotation usually reads: “… not a penny.” For further discussion of the wording used by Pinckney and of the quotation frequently but mistakenly attributed to Pinckney—“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,” actually said by Robert Goodloe Harper—see The Home Book of Quotations, ed. Burton Stevenson, 10th ed., p. 63 (1967) and “Notes and Queries,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 100–103, 178–79 (1901).
AC Dwyer has the story.
