Tag Archives: Commodity

Last week, we joked that we don’t challenge beliefs. Here’s one that we want to challenge today: the dollar doesn’t work as a currency, because it’s losing value. Even the dollar’s proponents, admit it loses value. The Fed itself states that its mandate is price stability—which it admits means relentless two percent annual debasement (Orwell would be proud). So there is no question that the dollar loses value. The only...

Time is the soul of money, the long-view – its immortality. Hard assets are forever, even when destroyed by the cataclysms of history. It is the outlook that perpetuated the most competent and powerful aristocracies in continental Europe, well up through World War I and, in certain prominent cases, beyond; it is the mindset that has sustained the most fiscally serious democratic republic in the Western world, that of...

Paul Krugman argues that the bilateral trade position is irrelevant. And he summarizes potential explanations: … one theory of imbalances is macroeconomic: countries that save more than they invest will run surpluses, countries that invest more than they save will run deficits. … But … [t]he bilateral imbalance is a lot bigger … The other story … is about “triangular trade.” Here’s my version: think of a world containing three countries, Spendthriftia, Austeria, and Petrostan. The first...