This is utterly brilliant: Twitter / izakaminska: Why equity is a type of privately issued currency Steve Randy Waldman has been here before, with the idea that currency issued by government (ultimately through deficit spending) is “equity” in government, or in America. But this reverses it beautifully, with the notion that private equity issuance is […]
Revisiting a previous post, “Saving” ≠ “Saving Resources”*, wherein I question Scott Sumner’s notion that people who spend and consume more (save less) take resources “out of society.” Try this: John works for Debbie, and Debbie works for John. They each start out with $100 in dollar bills, $200 total. They pay each other in […]
As if there were not already abundant proof of the failure of austerity in the eurozone, the BBC reported yesterday that both Spain and France have hit new unemployment milestones. In Spain, unemployment has jumped from February’s 26.3% to a first-quarter rate of 27.2% (implying an even higher figure for March). In March 2012, it […]
The latest estimates of the cost of bailing out Fannie Mae are dramatically lower than previously reported estimates. Because of accounting rules, Fannie and Freddie would be forced to recognize the increase in value as profit — and turn it over to taxpayers. Fannie has suggested that might occur this spring — and said it […]
I’m going to try to make this post brief and comprehensible. It contains no information not in an earlier post but I delete a whole lot of distracting data. The question is does the Reinhart Rogoff (hence R-R) data set on public debt and real GDP in 20 rich countries post WWII contain evidence that a […]
Or to be more precise, all currency is consensus currency. Units of exchange (dollar bills, great big rocks at the bottom of the ocean) can have value merely because everyone in a community agrees that they have value. That value need not be declared, defined, or enforced by by some “fiat” authority with powers of (ultimately […]
I have long advocated that the United States should follow Germany’s example of aggressive pursuit of tax evasion, in particular its practice of paying informants for account information from secrecy destinations like Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The German Parliament’s upper house (Bundesrat) rejected a deal in November that Prime Minister Angela Merkel was willing to sign […]
I had my hair cut last week. It’s a big event as it happens about twice per year. While there I always get into political conversations with the lady cutting my hair. This time, as often it was the economy. Her position still is that the individual citizens collecting welfare are effecting her income. We’ve […]
When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night, the celebration was instantly overtaken by an ideologically charged debate. Liberals argued that the government must respect Tsarnaev’s constitutional rights, by which they meant that he should be treated the same as any ordinary criminal suspect—informed of his Miranda rights, supplied with a lawyer, presented to court as […]