2020-07-25

In representative democracies, voters ostensibly control the state through the politicians they vote for. However, most representative democracies fall far short of this goal. Three of the reasons for the trouble are the problems of scale, bundling, and omission.

2020-07-26

In The Communist Manifesto (1848) Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) predicted that capitalism would lead to the impoverishment of the laboring class. Why? Well, to raise profit on capital invested, Marx and Engels argued, entrepreneurs (the capitalists) would exploit the workers.

2020-07-31

The Venezuelan government recently announced that its Administrative Service for Identification, Migration and Foreigners (SAIME) is now accepting bitcoin as a payment method for passports. The problem with that is that bitcoin is not anonymous but pseudonymous.

2020-08-10

Judy Shelton, a Trump nominee to the Fed Board of Governors, may not have coined the excellent term "Fed Bug," but she used it to delicious effect in this 2019 Financial Times interview:
“People call me a goldbug, and I think, well, what does that make them? A Fed bug,” she says.

2020-08-14

Negative interest rates have long since become a reality. But we are not talking about negative real interest rates. This is the case when the return on an investment is lower than the officially stated inflation rate. In today’s context, negative interest rates are rather negative nominal interest rates; that is, the nominal interest rate is below 0 percent.

2020-08-20

Measured in dollars, the current bull market for gold started in December 2015, since which its price in dollars has almost doubled. Other than the odd headline when gold exceeded its previous September 2011 high of $1,920, only gold bugs seem to be excited.

2021-01-18

Update January 18, 2021: SNB buying euros at high prices. Sight Deposits have risen by +1.4 bn CHF, this means that the SNB is intervening and buying Euros and Dollars: The change is +1.4 bn. compared to last week.