19 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
    1. 以及对应的逆全球化下terminal rate would naturally rise from the hypothetical 2% to say 4%. 如果终端利率干到了4%,基本上所有的asset class就彻底需要重新定价了。

      查一下 terminal rate

  2. Sep 2022
    1. Debt describes our best, most evidence-supported historical understand­ing of the origin of money in the needs of the empires of the Axial Age (800 BCE to 600 CE). As imperial armies went a-conquering, they needed some way to provision the soldiers garrisoned in their far-flung territories. The solution was elegant – and terrible. Soldiers were paid in coin, minted and controlled by the state, which punished counterfeiters with the most terrible torments. Conquered farmers were taxed in coin, on penalty of violence and expropriation. Thus: the soldiers had coin and the farmers needed it. This meant that farmers would be willing to trade their produce for coin, which meant that soldiers would be provisioned. Tax-bills were nondiscretionary liabilities: failure to pay your tax would lead to violence and ruin. The value of money, then, came from taxation – from the fact that farmers needed coins. This need rippled out through society: Even if you didn’t farm, you would accept coins in exchange for your own labor and goods, because the farmers would accept coins in exchange for food (which everyone needs), because farmers needed coin to settle their tax-debts. Coins became money because there was a nondiscretionary, terrible obligation that you could only fulfill with coins.

      Doctorow summarizes the origin of money as imperial debt

      Cory Doctorow is summarizing the research of David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years. A government needed to pay its soldiers, so they were paid in coins. Conquered farmers needed to pay taxes in coins, so they would exchange with the soldiers for food. Others in the village saw that coins were valuable (in exchange for food), so they exchanged their labor for coins too.

      There is also a story about the British Empire imposing a "hut tax" in Africa.

  3. Jul 2022
    1. So the last two recessions this doesn't apply to, but just set them aside for a minute. The rest and almost all the other recessions in Second World War have been caused by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to bring down inflation or because of other financial concerns.

      Federal Reserve raising interest rates causes recessions

  4. Sep 2021
  5. Jun 2021
  6. May 2021
  7. Oct 2020
  8. Aug 2020
    1. yuan free-float

      How did this system work in 2011? What has changed in the years since? Are things still pegged? And if so, at what relative to 2011?

  9. Jul 2020
    1. A new paper by Atif Mian of Princeton University, Ludwig Straub of Harvard University and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago expands on the idea that inequality saps demand from the economy. Just as inequality creates a need for stimulus, they argue, stimulus eventually creates more inequality. This is because it leaves economies more indebted, either because low interest rates encourage households or firms to borrow, or because the government has run deficits. Both public and private indebtedness transfer income to rich investors who own the debt, thereby depressing demand and interest rates still further.
  10. Jun 2020
  11. Apr 2018
    1. sovereign governments create currency through keystrokes

      I'll have to read the other article, but I'll note that a great deal of money creation--even before the advent of cryptocurrencies--has long been in private, not public, hands. Extending credit or making loans creates money. This is basic macroeconomics.