Friday Crypto's virtue is that they have a degree of anonymity and can be used to shift funds to less unfriendly jurisdictions. A lot of 'money' was got out of China and into Australian real estate using cryptos. Apparently anonymity is no longer certain, though I don’t know that personally. My quibble with the Bitcoin aficionados is the claim that Bitcoin’s … [Read more...]
China’s Great Leap Forward 2.0
Friday Socialism is the dominant ideology of our times. Even in the US, the home of freedom, looney-Bernie Sanders got a fair swag of votes. The problem, and it’s a big one, is that over the whole span of recorded history, socialism has never worked. Socialism relies on pre-existing accumulations of capital to finance its schemes. Once that is depleted, then the … [Read more...]
Bubbles
Sunday I have just read an article repeating the claim that bubbles are a part of the human condition. They are not. They have a very specific and easily avoidable cause. Bubbles are created by the lack of Gold in circulation. Lacking Gold, there is no access to a store of stable value. Without that, people look for other ways to maintain the value of their wealth. … [Read more...]
Government Defaults Begin
Wednesday Governments push out credit by means of buying bonds. They pay for the bonds by printing debt notes. On their ledger go the bonds as assets and the debt notes as liabilities. What we know as paper ‘money’ are actually IOUs – the opposite of money. When central banks buy bonds, it drives their price up and makes them less available to other market … [Read more...]
The Ultimate Destination
Sunday To measure is to assess the size, amount or degree of something. Gold allows both buyers and sellers to measure their perception of the amount of value of a good or goods. All buying and selling revolves around this process. Most confusion around money stems from the notion that its only role is in these marketplace exchanges. The reality is that this is money’s … [Read more...]