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The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former congressman from Nebraska, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. In the address, Bryan supported bimetallism or "free silver", which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. He decried the gold standard, concluding the speech, "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold". Bryan's address helped catapult him to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination; it is considered one of the greatest political speeches in American history. For twenty years, Americans had been bitterly divided over the nation's monetary standard. Many Americans believed bimetallism (making both gold and silver legal tender) was necessary to the nation's economic health. Bryan's speech, delivered at the close of the debate on the party platform, electrified the convention and is generally credited with getting him the nomination for president. However, he lost the general election to William McKinley and the United States formally adopted the gold standard in 1900.

The skyline of Milan, home to the Italian Stock Exchange, the country's industrial heart, and a world's fashion capital

Italy has a highly developed social market economy. It is the third-largest national economy in the European Union, the 8th-largest economy in the world by nominal GDP, and the 12th-largest by PPP-adjusted GDP. The country has the second-largest manufacturing industry in Europe and the 7th-largest in the world. Italy has a diversified economy which is dominated by the tertiary service sector. The country is a great power, and is a founding member of the European Union, the eurozone, the Schengen Area, the OECD, the G7 and the G20; it is the eighth-largest exporter in the world, with $611 billion exported in 2021. Its primary trade partners are the other countries of the European Union, with whom it conducts about 59% of its total trade. Its largest trading partners are Germany (12.5%) and France (10.3%), followed by the United States (9%), Spain (5.2%), the United Kingdom (5.2%) and Switzerland (4.6%).

In the post-World War II period, Italy saw a transformation from an agricultural-based economy which had been severely affected by the consequences of the World Wars, into one of the world's most advanced nations, and a leading country in world trade and exports. According to the Human Development Index, the country enjoys a very high standard of living. According to The Economist, Italy has the world's 8th highest quality of life. Italy owns the world's third-largest gold reserve, and is the third-largest net contributor to the budget of the European Union. Furthermore, the advanced country private wealth is one of the largest in the world. In terms of private wealth, Italy ranks second, after Hong Kong, in private wealth to GDP ratio. Among OECD members, Italy has a highly efficient and strong social security system, which comprises roughly 24.4% of GDP. (Full article...)

"In all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this employment, to metals above every other commodity. Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce any thing being less perishable than they are, but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be reunited again; a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess, and which more than any other quality renders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and circulation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep, at a time. He could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for."

—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

• ... that Mike Soutar went viral on TikTok for his forensic investigations of business plans?
• ... that Billy Gallagher's Times Square cabaret was open from sundown to dawn, with a mix of "reputable people" and those "who had practical reasons for circulating after dark"?
• ... that archaeologist Arne Furumark intended to follow a career in business until he visited the British Museum as a teenager?
• ... that "gig" in "gig economy" comes from the slang term for individual appearances by performing artists?
• ... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
• ... that the Chicago Community Bond Fund sought to put itself out of business by eliminating cash bail?

February 15:

• 1884 - Alfred Carlton Gilbert, an American pole vaulter and businessman, founder of the A. C. Gilbert Company, was born on this day.

• ...that former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers served as the World Bank Chief Economist from 1991 to 1993?

• ...that André Meyer quit school at age 16 to work as a messenger boy, and was later described as "the most creative financial genius of our time in the investment banking world" by David Rockefeller?

• ...that Valrhona, a company based in the small town of Tain l'Hermitage in the Rhône Valley in France, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-quality chocolate?

• ...that it is estimated that more than 85 percent of all business information exists as unstructured data, commonly appearing in e-mails, memos, reports, letters, presentations and Web pages?

• ... that the Automotive Electronics Council is an organisation based in the USA that sets qualification standards for the supply of components in the automotive electronics industry.

• ... that Hollywood accounting is the practice of distributing the profit earned by a large project to corporate entities which, though distinct from the one responsible for the project itself, are typically owned by the same people, with the net result of reducing the project's profit by a substantial margin, sometimes even eliminating it altogether.

• ... the Consumables model is another name for the Razor and blades business model?

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour