Richard Cantillon (1680s – May 1734) was an Irish-French economist and author of Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General), a book considered by William Stanley Jevons to be the "cradle of political economy". Although little information exists on Cantillon's life, it is known that he became a successful banker and merchant at an early age. His success was largely derived from the political and business connections he made through his family and through an early employer, James Brydges. During the late 1710s and early 1720s, Cantillon speculated in, and later helped fund, John Law's Mississippi Company, from which he acquired great wealth. However, his success came at a cost to his debtors, who pursued him with lawsuits, criminal charges, and even murder plots until his death in 1734.

"It is not labor, not capital, not land, that has created modern wealth or is creating it today. It is ideas that create wealth, and what is wanted is more ideas more uncovering of natural reservoirs, and less labor and capital and land per unit of production. Gold has very little intrinsic value, diamonds have none except to cut glass and stone. It is a thought, a sentiment, that gives value to gold and diamonds ; it was the invention of the incandescent lamp that doubled the value of platinum. Columbus with his idea of land to the west, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, with their ideas of liberty, Jefferson with his idea of territorial expansion, Fulton with his idea of the steamboat, Stephenson with his creation of the locomotive and track; it was Howe, Morse, Edison, Westinghouse, Bell and Gray, Marconi; it was Lincoln, it was Rockefeller, Carnegie, J. J. Hill and Harriman with their ideas, it was Roosevelt with the Panama Canal, that have made the United States what it is. All these men used labor and capital to uncover and develop the hitherto unutilized resources of the universe.

The Dutch and the Huguenots settled in South Africa about the same time North America above the gulf was colonized. The United States grew on account of ideas; South Africa remained undeveloped because of paucity of ideas, paucity of energy. The blacks had to do the work. There was no use for steam engines.

Muscular effort can be stimulated by the lash intelligent supervision, intellectual production, never! One single idea may have greater value than all the labor of all the men, animals, and engines for a century. The age of muscular human effort and of the lash is passing away, and the old morality with it; the age of supervision, of co-operative stimulus, is in full advance; and with it comes a new morality, under which the Golden Rule can be extended from the relations between individuals to those between classes, nationalities, and races. The highest official cannot dictate to the youngest apprenticed worker. Both are creatures of the machine, but both in turn must serve it, for unless its every law and need is lived up to, it will refuse to work efficiently, often reuse to work at all. With these new duties and privileges of men toward each other old truths become fallacies and paradoxes become the basic truths of tomorrow.

To forward the new morality, to extend the dominion of man over uncarnate energy and its use, to substitute highly paid thinkers and supervisors for devitalized toilers, to help each individual, each corporation, each government to meet its part of the obligation, above all to inspire those executives on whose skill all progress and all wise performance depends, is the justification of these essays."

—Harrington Emerson, The twelve principles of efficiency, 1924

• ... that Chicony, known primarily as a keyboard manufacturer, entered the computer-manufacturing business with the Rabbit 286 in 1988?
• ... that only months after going out of business, Milkrun relaunched?
• ... that Gerald Willis, after working as a bus driver at age 15, started a business that earned $2 million per year and built a replica of the Hermitage after watching The President's Lady?
• ... that New Zealand politician Hamish Campbell is a cancer researcher and runs a flower-delivery business?
• ... that the day employees of Boston television station WLVI received new business cards, they learned the station would be sold and they would lose their jobs?
• ... that Ruffian Games co-developed Kinect games to stay in business after the release of Crackdown 2?

May 1:

• 1885 - The original Chicago Board of Trade Building opens for business.

• ...that in the United States of America the largest reserve requirement for commercial banks is 10% of liabilities?

• ...that the United States Federal Reserve System uses six monetary aggregates as components of the money supply?

• ...that an open market operation is an activity by a central bank to buy or sell government bonds on the open market?

• ...that, although nominal USA national debt has been steadily increasing since 1940, Debt-to-GDP ratio was actually higher during WWII than it is now?

• ... that the United States debt ceiling has been steadily raised since 1981?

• ... the Federal Reserve owns the largest share of the USA national debt?

• ...the term petrodollars was coined by Ibrahim Oweiss to describe dollars that did not circulate inside the United States, and therefore were not part of the normal money supply, and instead were received by petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) in exchange for oil?