Remember tether? That’s a cryptocurrency that calls itself a “stable coin.” A stable coin says that its value remains constant against some other type of currency. In theory, this offers the benefits of cryptocurrency usage (anonymity, easy transfer abroad, etc.) without the volatility that comes from speculation and panics (bitcoin fell 80% in a matter
You’ve probably heard enough about Brexit by now. The famous U.K. referendum on whether to remain in the EU or leave (“Brexit”) took place on June 23, 2016, with a victory for the “leave” position. But the Brexit debate began even earlier when then-Prime Minister David Cameron announced the referendum as part of his election
If Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) were a quarterback down on the ground, someone would call a penalty for piling on. Ever since MMT started to get traction among the front-runners in the Democratic 2020 presidential race, mainstream economists and wealth managers have been lining up to call it “garbage” and explain why it won’t work.
Everyone is familiar with the traditional “run on the bank,” which has happened many times in real life and was memorably portrayed in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life. It begins with a nervous depositor loudly demanding that all his savings be converted to cash and withdrawn from the bank. Other customers hear the demand
The list of policy and predictive failures by mainstream economists is longer than the typical 9-year-old’s Christmas list. They failed to foresee the 2007 mortgage bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. They cheered “green shoots” in 2009 when that was a complete illusion. They welcomed the “recovery summer” in 2010, which was nothing but
I try to avoid partisan politics in my analysis. And I never try to tell people how to vote or what they should think. I trust my readers to make their own judgments. But sometimes I can’t avoid partisan politics because they can have a major impact on markets and the economy. Leading Democratic presidential
When I wrote my first book, Currency Wars, in 2011, I was met with a wave of rejection and ridicule from central bankers. They uniformly denied that monetary policy was used to manipulate exchange rates. They insisted that monetary policy was exclusively used to achieve domestic policy goals related to price stability and unemployment. The idea that
Huawei is China’s “national champion” in the field of digital technology and telecommunications. It is the largest cellphone maker in China and a leader in the next-generation 5G technology that will revolutionize mobile devices with much faster speeds for streaming and apps. A global struggle for dominance in 5G is underway between Huawei and various
We’ve written many times about the move toward a cashless society, in which physical cash would become either obsolete or illegal (probably both) and all payments would be made in digital form with credit cards, debit cards, smartphones and other forms of electronic money. The motivation for this is to lock consumers into easily traceable
The leading Democratic candidates for president and numerous members of Congress have come out in favor of Medicare for All, free child care, fee tuition, a guaranteed basic income even for those unwilling to work and a Green New Deal that will require all Americans to give up their cars, stop flying in planes and
