In Japan, a Test of Inflation Targets by Floyd Norris

“Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and, hence, positive inflation.”

-- Ben Bernanke 2002 

...
It is, however, very doable, as Switzerland has shown. When the euro zone debt crisis was at its worst, Switzerland became a safe haven for European investors worried that the euro might blow up. That drove up the value of the Swiss franc versus the euro and damaged 

Switzerland’s ability to compete. The Swiss government responded by announcing that the euro would not be allowed to fall below 1.2 Swiss francs. If necessary, the government would simply sell francs to meet any demand. 

That has been necessary, and the Swiss have accumulated a huge portfolio of foreign currency. So, too, could the Japanese if they chose to announce that the dollar would henceforth be worth at least 100 yen, a level not seen since 2009. 

Doing so would instantly restore at least some competitiveness to Japanese industry, which has experienced something that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago: Japan has a trade deficit.

Bank of Japan Will Talk About Inflation Target

Marijuana, Not Yet Legal for Californians, Might as Well Be

Thrill-Seeking Beats Take the Scenic Route by Stephen Holden

The sex and drugs Kerouac described with a sense of thrilled discovery in the novel come across in the movie as the same old sex and drugs that lost their mystery in the mass hippie freakout of the 1960s. I would much rather imagine it than see all the banal mechanics. The movie doesn’t bother to evoke the conflict between the lives of these bohemian wild men and the square America of the 1940s and ’50s.

Has Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams and Kirsten Dunst. The square America of the 1940s and 50s also had the PTS war veterans and alcoholics like Joaquin Phoenix's character in "The Master." No doubt it was a much more authoritarian place, where father was always right and mom's place was in the kitchen. Jews and Blacks weren't allowed at the golf club. Gays were seen as deviant. A milieu where Robert Bork would have felt more comfortable.