So Swaziland is in a whole heap of economic and political trouble; South Africa’s loan isn’t going to change any of that in the long run. The way the global economy looks at the moment, there’s no particular reason to think that the SA economy is going to be anything better than stagnant over the…
@RichardWooding sent me a link to a Wired story about a new Bitcoin wallet app for Android. I think Richard has figured I’d enjoy taking a few pot shots at this based on my past posts on bitcoins. The article is fairly balanced, indicating the recent (and trust me on this, ongoing) problems with BitCoins.…
I can’t confirm or deny that Paul Krugman gets his ideas from my blog, but it seems he now also agrees with my post from yesterday regarding the BIS’s inexplicable views on inflation and where we are in the cycle.
The BIS thinks that economic growth must slow or inflation will get out of control. They think there was little or no slack left for rapid non-inflationary expansion. They obviously haven’t seen the very low inflation rates in the US, particularly when you consider core inflation, the best measure of future inflationary pressures unemployment at…
Most of the comments on this Slashdot article about fraud and crashes with Bitcoin are insightful. Some are funny too. Most telling for me is that one of the primary Bitcoin exchanges Mt Gox started life as “Magic The Gathering Online Exchange” – an exchange to trade collectable cards for a fantasy game. Should I…
Greece’s credit rating is now the worst in the world. Any non-Euro country borrowing in its domestic currency would have been able to deal, in part, with their financial crisis through depreciation / devaluation of the currency. The burden of debt would be reduced (although many investors might see this as implicit default) and the…
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…
