Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Fiat

  • ECONOMICS

    Review: The Shortest History of Economics

    • David James
    • 22 March 2024

    Economics may be useless for forecasting, and its assertions can be overly simplistic. But it is a language that should be understood, and here is a good place to start. In simple and clear prose, Leigh spans the history of human economic activity, beginning in prehistoric times and ending with the modern day.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The rise and fall of the Crypto King

    • Max Jeganathan
    • 21 November 2023
    1 Comment

    The spectacular rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried is a story that began with unfettered brilliance and financial wizardry, but quickly unraveled into an all-too familiar cautionary tale of swindlers, conmen, and morally vacuous ambition. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    What happened to the great reset?

    • David James
    • 10 October 2023
    1 Comment

    As Western economies grapple with soaring inflation rates, the once steady financial landscape is shifting, revealing looming challenges beneath mounting global debt. Amid 'Great Reset' calls, many face an uncertain future where the true cost of living is set to be redefined.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    The debt crisis we all saw coming

    • David James
    • 03 April 2023

    As the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse poses a renewed threat to the global financial system, the question arises: how can we manage out-of-control debt? With global debt exceeding 230 per cent of GDP, could nationalising banks be the solution to the ongoing crisis, or will the debt merry-go-round continue to spin out of control?

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Ballooning risks of finance fictions

    • David James
    • 14 March 2023

    Was Russia's removal from the SWIFT system the moment when the global financial system detached itself from reality? The financial system is at risk from unpayable debt and the delusion that money can be created out of money itself, and wider trust underpinning finance is steadily evaporating.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    In finance, story matters most

    • David James
    • 16 November 2022
    1 Comment

    Financial markets are made up of human beings and human beings have always been storytellers — long before science, or modern finance, or accounting even existed. Accordingly, the main skill of successful analysts, advisers, financial gurus and commentators is the construction of compelling narratives. They are, if not exactly creators of fairy stories, not too far removed from it. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Real world problems can’t be solved by finance fictions

    • David James
    • 18 October 2022
    3 Comments

    The world is facing cross-currents: a collapsing financial system that is balanced by the benefits of massive, long term improvements in production efficiencies, mainly because of technological advances. It is a bad news/good news story that can only be seen accurately if the intractable errors of contemporary economics are jettisoned. We are in a battle between finance fictions and reality. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Why we need new rules for money

    • David James
    • 23 August 2022
    4 Comments

    Now that it is becoming hard to avoid just how much trouble the global financial system is in, it is interesting to speculate about what should be done about it. The first thing to understand about the global financial system is that the assumptions that were used to shape it are demonstrably false.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Rising interest rates point to a larger problem

    • David James
    • 28 June 2022
    3 Comments

    The question that should be posed is how effective has the Reserve Bank been at ‘managing’ the economy and financial system? ‘Not very’, has to be the answer. Not that the RBA is alone. The same pattern has been seen across the developed world. Central banks have one weapon at their disposal, the cost of money (the interest rate), and there is not much evidence they have used this tool to make their systems sustainable. Mostly, they have made matters worse. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Can financial fictions survive reality?

    • David James
    • 31 May 2022
    2 Comments

    As commodity prices and inflation soar in the ‘real’ world we may be witnessing a prelude to another 2008-style crisis triggered by the foreign exchange markets. The risks certainly look similar and can be described with a simple question. Can the fictions produced by out-of-control financial actors survive reality? 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    A strange financial circus

    • David James
    • 12 October 2021
    4 Comments

    Over the last two years, money printing has created the illusion of strength in savings. But when reality resurfaces, and actual returns are required from actual economic and business activity, the global financial system will come under extreme stress. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    The battle for the future of money

    • David James
    • 07 September 2021
    4 Comments

    There is a three-way battle looming over the future of money and the stakes could scarcely be higher. Conventional money, mainly debt created by banks — the ‘folding stuff’ is only a tiny proportion of the total — is in trouble. Total global debt is now so large relative to the world economy it cannot be serviced, which is why monetary authorities have resorted to dropping interest rates. When they almost hit zero, the next step was quantitative easing (QE): printing money by getting the central bank to buy back government and corporate bonds and putting them on its ‘balance sheet’. 

    READ MORE