Economics

This is going to be a strange post. I’ve been battling a flu, so my mind is a little less rule-bound, a little more fluid (no pun intended). I stumbled upon this article at ECONLOG: Robert Murphy on the Minimum Wage. From a liberal perspective, the minimum wage guarantees a bare minimum income so you […]

There’s a lot of speculation on Fed moves. Some think the Fed will raise interest rates soon, that inflation is just around the corner. Others fear the economy still isn’t strong enough for tighter monetary policy. With inflation still weak, why not wait before raising rates? For investors, this could have major implications on stock […]

I read a good book review in the Economist about Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism. This one sentence captures the problems faced by central banks around the world. In essence, history has seen a battle between money’s role as a store of value (which requires a restricted supply) and its role […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about inflation, banks and China. After reading “France, Gold and the Great Depression”, I was wondering how the western world’s “secular stagnation” could be related to China’s rise. Before the Great Depression, France and the rest of the developed world had opposite problems. France had just gone through a strong […]

My wife and I are looking at houses, and I’m struck by the amount of activity happening around us (southwest of Portland, OR). Especially in new developments, every office we walk into has multiple couples signing contracts. Talking to a mortgage broker, I was surprised to learn that the income-to-debt ratio they accept is 45% […]

Markets seem confused as to whether demand is now solid and deflation fears a thing of the past, or if it is just about to come back with a vengeance. We’ve had solid job growth (inflation!), tanking oil prices (deflation!), Swiss National Bank refusal to follow Euro devaluation (deflation!), ECB quantitative easing (inflation in Europe? […]

I’ve been on a reading / re-reading spree. The below books (+Bitcoin) each have a unique perspective on money. They also show how our attitudes around money are changing. Some will be held up by the right (Hayek) as masterstrokes against an overbearing state. Others will be promulgated by the left (Keynes) as why intervention […]

We’re hearing more about inequality, even from perennial Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney. Liberal economists like Thomas Piketty and Paul Krugman bemoan inequality in America. Some studies have even suggested that the liberation of women has contributed to the problem (educated working women marry educated working men, giving them a larger share of national […]

In early medieval times, the Plantagenet kings of England were deemed successful based on their marshal valor, their aggressiveness, their ability to rule their nobility. Weak kings who paved the way for future progress (like John who signed the Magna Carta) were deemed failures. Strong kings like Richard the Lionheart, Edward I (longshanks) or Edward […]

I’m going to take a step back from writing about specific economic policies or investment ideas and ask the general question, what is money? I’ll try not to talk about it being a medium of account or a store of value for simplicity. It is those things, but on a more basic level, money is […]