The USD value of bitcoins decreased by 30% in one day on Friday. This isn’t the only problem with bitcoins, but it is a natural result of not having a central bank / government behind the currency saying “we are committing to this currency and requiring it to be accepted as legal tender”. There are…
Prediction: Â Bitcoins will be irrelevant by 2013 and will never emerge from a very small niche market. In fact, they are already irrelevant today. This is what happens when open source supporters, crypto experts and privacy nuts think an understanding of C++ and maths equates to knowledge of economics and monetary systems. Oh, and add…
Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi are targeting 2012 for adopting a common currency. What they gain is a more stable currency arising out of a larger trade bloc, with better liquidity in currency transactions (and thus lower cost for transactions). They might even had a slightly improved allocation of capital across the countries now…
So BRICS have agreed to use local currencies rather than the US Dollar for issuing credits or grants to one another. This is a step towards trying to limit the use of the USD (and probably Sterling, Yen as lesser reserve currencies over time) for international transactions. I wonder whether those involved are aware of…
I’ve had a couple of readers and one ex-student challenge my thinking that deflation was more of a risk than hyper-inflation over the last couple of years and that loose monetary policy and “printing money” (more on that later) is not likely going to lead to massive inflation of everything and the debasement of hard…
The economist magazine compares Big Mac inflation to officially reported country inflation over the last ten years. The aim of their article is to suggest that perhaps China and Argentina have been fudging their inflation figures. However, my attention was drawn to South Africa right near the top of the chart. This suggests that our…
I hope Make A Million’s systems are playing up. Â Otherwise some players are losing more money than I ever expected.
Don’t believe everything you read, everything you feel. Forget all the mad talk about moving to a new gold standard. It isn’t going to happen. It won’t happen even if the president of the World Bank suggests it might. Why not? Because it won’t work. It doesn’t solve our problems and creates innumerable other problems.…
