Given the still-subdued economic growth many experts are of the view that the presence of cash has constrained central banks from setting negative rates to stimulate the subdued economic activity. In a future economic or financial crisis, current low rates would restrict the effectiveness of monetary policy, so it is held.
Columbus Day this year brought with it the usual acrimony, and this Salon article hit the usual talking points by declaring European settlement of the Americas to be “the most massive act of genocide” in world history.
The 2016 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded today to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström, two of the most eminent economists specializing in the analysis of contracting and organizational structure.
Once upon a time, contact lens manufacturer Johnson & Johnson was on top of the world in terms of its market dominance. Today, it still produces nearly 40 percent of the world’s contact lenses, but this is nothing compared to the company’s heyday, when it enjoyed numerous government-granted monopoly powers over the contact-lens market.
Last night’s presidential debate was the latest episode in what appears to be a prolonged infomercial for Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed. One of the rare libertarian highlights of the 2016 campaign, however, came when Donald Trump called for a special prosecutor in the case of Hillary Clinton’s unprecedented recklessness with her private e-mail server.
The FOMC has consistently overestimated future Fed Funds Rate (FFR) hikes. For a body that prides itself on super-scientific research methods and has teams of economists (self-described) and statisticians, it’s interesting that they can’t even predict their own behavior.
The graph is comical.
It turns out that the Japanese people do not have the Apoplithorismosphobia that their government officials have.
According to the New York Times, instead of hoarding cash in the face of deflation (as predicted by mainstream economists and central bankers), the Japanese consumer is enjoying the new found purchasing power of the Japanese Yen:
A video by David Wolfe about the town of Auroville, India is being shared around social media again and the town is presented as a self-sustaining, utopian paradise void of such unseemly hindrances as money, religion, and politics.
