In Iraq and Afghanistan, US military officers routinely handed bundles of cash to local residents to buy influence and undermine resistance to the American occupation. Such payments came in especially handy after US troops inadvertently killed innocent civilians or sheep. Billions of dollars were shoveled out with little or no oversight as part of the Pentagon’s “Money as a Weapon System” program.
The precarious and hostile coexistence between central banks and cash just ended. Earlier today the European Central Bank’s Governing Council voted to withdraw the 500-euro note (worth $558) from circulation. The note is the second highest currency denomination issued in Europe after the 1000 Swiss franc note (worth $1013).
And how does this relate to crony capitalism?
Commentators have called the last Republican debate “thermonuclear” and similar adjectives, but not ill-mannered, which it was. Is this because good manners no longer matter? Or do good manners actually count against you?
I have lived in Auburn, Alabama, for more than three decades and have never seen a super-sized construction crane here. Last week two were erected in the middle of town.
One is being used to build a seven story building for retail, apartments, and parking. The other is on the Auburn University campus and is being used to build something in front of the University library.
The current frenzy over the vacancy on the Supreme Court in the wake of Scalia’s death should be enough to make it clear to even the most naïve observer that the Supreme Court is a partisan and political institution, and nothing like the group of disinterested non-political sages that we are supposed to believe the court to be. As I wrote in “The Mythology of the Supreme Court,” the idea of the court as a group of jurisprudential deep thinkers is a tale for little school children:
Is innovation slowing? Will it stop? A new paper by one Jonathan Huebner in the awesomely-named journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change argues that innovation is slowing, indeed it’s halved in the past hundred years.
Banking today is not the same as it was 100, 50, or even 20 years ago. The next 20 years will see even more changes to the banking system, perhaps a complete upheaval. At the turn of the 20th century, banknotes could still be redeemed for gold, and silver coins circulated in everyday commerce. Fifty years ago, silver had just disappeared from everyday use and credit cards were entering the mainstream. Twenty years ago the restrictions on interstate branch banking were being done away with, leading to a wave of bank mergers that created the large megabanks we know and love today.
With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the various 2016 presidential campaigns have been thrown a serious curve ball. Should candidates cater to voters directly, by suggesting potential nominees for the Court? Should they insist that a lame-duck president-- albeit one with nearly a full year in office remaining-- refrain from nominating anyone? Should they demand that Obama push a nominee forward, and force Senate Republicans into a political fight if they refuse to hold nomination hearings?
Most of Senator Cruz’s policy proposals are clear. This is in contrast to the evasions of other people currently running for president, most notably Donald Trump, whose health policy proposals in particular are incoherent, and may in fact most closely resemble Bernie Sanders’s.
