Global Economy

The 'good' news this holiday season comes from the IMF, as the Fund decided yesterday to include the yuan in the basket of currencies which underpins its Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

The continuing power of the US dollar was called into question this week as the International Monetary Fund added the Chinese yuan as a part of the IMF's "currency" known as Special Drawing Rights. What does this mean for the US and China?

There were many state and local elections in the US this week, but few of them will result in anything that will combat widely held and popular errors about central banking, drug prohibition, and the global environment.

Farmers have been using monkeys to harvest coconuts in Thailand for hundreds of years. But now, animal rights activists have decided that these farmers should have their livelihoods destroyed in order to save the monkeys from "slavery".

Without freedom in ideas and the profit motive, entrepreneurs will be unable and unwilling to spread the benefits of science across the globe, and countless advances will be doomed to obscurity, when they could be used to improve human life.

Historically, reserve currencies have arisen without the help of the IMF, but we’re now witnessing a situation in which the IMF may declare the Chinese yuan a “reserve currency” as part of a larger game by global elites to manipulate global exchange rates.

The Fed's Federal Open Market Committee renewed its commitment to easy money this week. The Fed will pretend to be committed to raising rates while doing nothing, and its ongoing war against deflation will continue to make us poorer.

Thanks to enterprising Peruvians who ignore the regulatory state, Peru continues to see growth in the standards of living of its citizens. Unfortunately, the global elites behind the World Bank are determined to regulate and "modernize" Peru until this entrepreneurial spirit is destroyed.

No amount of fantasizing can make fundamental economic realities go away, no matter how much we put our faith in central banks, government regulation, or technologies of the future.

It wasn't long ago that the pundits were talking about Venezuela's "economic miracle" which had proved all the anti-socialist naysayers wrong. But with soaring unemployment, inflation, and deficits, the Venezuelan people are unfortunately having to pay for years of ignoring economic reality.