Tag Archives: Featured

If there is a better, more fitting way to head into the Christmas holiday in the United States than by digging into the finances and monetary flows of the People’s Bank of China, then I just don’t want to know what it is. Contrary to maybe anyone’s rational first impression that this is somehow insane, there’s much we can tell about the state of the world, the whole world and its “dollars”, right from this one key data source. And the timing is equally as festive;...

With the eurodollar futures curve slightly inverted, the implications of it are somewhat specific to the features of that particular market. And there’s more than enough reason to reasonably suspect this development is more specifically deflationary money than more general economic concerns. What I mean is, those latter have come later (“growth scare”) only long after the world’s real money truly began to dry up. Money then economy. How do we know? For one, sequence...

When the economics profession turns its attention to financial panics and crashes, the first episode mentioned is tulipmania. In fact, tulipmania has become a metaphor in the economics field. Should one look up tulipmania in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, a discussion of the seventeenth century Dutch speculative mania will not be found. Guillermo Calvo (1987, p. 707), in his contribution to the Palgrave instead defines tulipmania as: “situations in...

Central banks have come to the fore in recent years by printing money to keep economies afloat. Keystone / Lm Otero Every other month, the world’s most influential central bank governors gather in Basel to swap notes, reinforce personal ties and untangle the technical details of keeping money flowing around the world. Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, central banks have emerged from dull obscurity to print trillions in multiple currencies. The pandemic has...

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the hacking and insider trading scheme made a total of $82 million from 2018 through 2020. Keystone / Anonymous The Russian businessman extradited from Switzerland to the United States and four other Russians have been charged with carrying out a $82-million (CHF75 million) insider trading scheme using data stolen during hacks of US computer networks. US federal prosecutors in Boston announcedExternal link on...

My immediate reaction to the National Archives’ very limited release of a few of the CIA’s JFK-assassination records is this: I’m not interested in seeing what they’re releasing. I’m interested in seeing what they’re still hiding.  However, there was at least one document that they recently released that is incriminating. It’s a document that the CIA published on the Sunday morning after the assassination. It is entitled “SUMMARY of Relevant Information on Lee...

Seems like ancient history given all that’s happened since, but on October 13 Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced a planned deluge of cash management bills in the wake of the debt ceiling resolution (the first one). The next day, China’s currency, CNY, broke free from its previous and suspiciously narrow range. Speculating a connection a few days thereafter, I wrote: …it had been on the 13th when Treasury announced its intention to unleash a CMB (cash...

In the third quarter of 2021, the current account surplus amounted to CHF 24 billion, CHF 10 billion more than in the same quarter of 2020. The increase was mainly attributable to the significantly higher receipts surplus in goods trade. This surplus was due to traditional goods trade (foreign trade total 1), non-monetary gold trading, as well as to merchanting. Primary income counteracted the rise in the current account balance. While a receipts surplus was...

Have oil producers shot themselves in the foot, while at the same time stabbing the global economy in the back? It’d be quite a feat if it turns out to be the case, one of those historical oddities that when anyone might honestly look back on it from the future still hung in disbelief. Let’s start by reviewing just the facts. First up, yesterday the Federal Reserve published the November 2021 estimates for Industrial Production in the United States. As has been the...

Elektra gehört zu den größten Supermarktketten Mexikos. Auf Twitter gab der Besitzer dieser Kette nun bekannt, dass man in den Filialen für alle Produkte mit Bitcoin bezahlen könne, wodurch Elektra zur ersten Kette seiner Art in Mexiko wird. Bitcoin News: Mexikanische Supermarktkette akzeptiert Bitcoin als Zahlungsmittel Elektra ist nicht nur eine Supermarkt-, sondern auch eine Bankenkette. Elektras Besitzer gehört zu den reichsten Menschen des Landes und hat nach...