While the ruling elites and the Federal Reserve try to sell digital money as “modern” and “convenient,” it poses threats to financial privacy and civil liberties. Original Article: "The Dangers of a ""Cashless"" Economy [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »Four Economic Activities and the Wealth of Nations
Trading, forecasting, aggregating, and innovating—referred to from here on out as the Four—are activities that people have engaged in since the beginning of humanity. They are part of the human fabric because they stem from mankind’s peculiarities—heterogeneity, inclination to forecast, sociality, and inventiveness. The Four are key social interactions in human life at both the individual and aggregate levels. In 2022, the value of worldwide global exports amounted...
Read More »Who Changed: Powell or the Market?
Overview: A poor reception to the 30-year Treasury sale and Federal Reserve Powell pledged to raise rates again, if necessary, not exactly a new ground, but it spooked the doves--driving rates sharply higher and fueling a strong dollar recovery. There was a large five basis point tail on the bond sale. The eight-day rally in the S&P 500 and nine-day advance in the NASDAQ was snapped like dry kindling. The S&P 500 comes into today down on the week. The...
Read More »The Fed Has No Plan, and Is Just Hoping for the Best
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) last week left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed's arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. I say "believe," but perhaps the more appropriate word here is "hope." That is: the...
Read More »The Invisible Court’s Verdict: You Are Hereby Exiled to Digital Siberia
As in the Gulag it replicates, the innocent are swept up with the guilty in a disconcertingly unjust ratio. The human mind is not particularly well-adapted to polycrisis: we struggle to adapt to the drought, then the earthquake knocks down the village walls, then the tsunami pounds what was left, followed by the epic flooding, then the hurricane batters the survivors, who witness the volcano erupting and wonder what they did to anger the gods and goddesses so...
Read More »If the Fed Goes, The State Will Soon Follow
The leviathan US state would not be possible without the Fed underwriting its growth. But the Fed is not all-powerful, nor can it continue to exist by only creating chaos. Original Article: If the Fed Goes, The State Will Soon Follow [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »False Virtue: The Life and Death of “American Exceptionalism”
The impending decline of the dollar is apparently imposing a real Halloween scare on the American foreign policy establishment. An August 22, 2023, article on the Council on Foreign Relations website entitled “The Future of Dollar Hegemony” explained that the dollar’s global hegemony gives the U.S. government power to impose crippling sanctions and wage other forms of financial welfare against adversaries. . . . In 2022, more than twelve thousand entities were under...
Read More »Dollar Hegemony Fuels America’s Foreign Crusades
Mises Institute president Thomas DiLorenzo joins Ryan and Tho to discuss the moralistic claims behind American foreign policy. These claims intensified with the American Civil War and became a creed of American nationalists by the twentieth century. With the rise of the global dollar and dollar hegemony, America's foreign crusades became ever larger and more frequent. "False Virtue: The Life and Death of 'American Exceptionalism'" by Thomas J....
Read More »2023-11-09 – Thomas Moser: Implementing monetary policy with positive interest rates and a large balance sheet: First experiences
In September 2022, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) raised its policy rate back into positive territory. At the same time, it adopted a new approach to implementing monetary policy in the money market. This approach employs two levers: the tiered remuneration of reserves, also referred to as reserve tiering, and reserve absorption. The speech explains why, with a large central bank balance sheet, remunerating the reserve holdings of commercial banks is the only...
Read More »2023-11-09 – Martin Schlegel: A pillar of financial stability – The SNB’s role as lender of last resort
As part of its contribution to the stability of the financial system, the Swiss National Bank acts as lender of last resort. In this role, it makes emergency liquidity assistance available to banks when, in crisis situations, they need substantial liquid funds which they are no longer able to obtain on the market. The SNB provides this liquidity assistance in the form of secured loans. It accepts a broad range of collateral for this – in particular also illiquid...
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