So, finally, the world’s most open conspiracy came to full fruition and Magic Mario actually got to do a little of ‘whatever it takes’ after 2 1/2 long years of bluster. Sweeping aside the objections of what appears to have been most of Northern Europe, the triumph of the Latins was near complete. For all his stubborn resistance, Jens Weidmann proved no Arminius and the airy council rooms of the ECB building in Frankfurt no Teutoburger Wald whose mazy forest tracks and swampy margins proved so deadly to the legions of that earlier Roman legate, Publius Quinctilius Varus.
Category Archives: Money
The Sinews of Circulation
Regular readers of these pages (whether here or in the author’s previous professional incarnations) will recognise that the analysis is informed by a core belief that while money should never be confused with wealth – and that therefore the latter cannot be conjured up by the central bank like a rabbit from a magician’s hat, however much people might wish it were so – the former is anything but neutral in its effect upon the creation, the distribution, and even the destruction of said wealth.
A secondary, but still highly important distinction to which we insist it is necessary to hold fast is that money – the supreme present good, the demand liability instantly and universally redeemable today at par, the generally dominant (if not absolutely exclusive) medium responsible for the smooth and efficient exchange of goods and services, the great enabling mechanism which obviates the need not just for barter, but for interpersonal trust among a transaction’s counterparties – is different from credit – which latter is actually a claim on money (and hence on the potential to acquire all other goods) only realisable in the future.
China: New Normal & Old Troubles
Somewhat lost in the excitement over the ongoing plunge in the oil price, the tepid endorsement given at the low turn-out election to Shinzo Abe’s sacrifice of the pensioner to the property speculator, and the susurration of rumours that Draghi will soon admit that he has suffered the heaviest defeat suffered by a Roman at the hands of his northern tormentors since Varus lost three whole legions in the Teutoburger Wald, before scuttling back to take up his dream job in the Quirinale, the Chinese have been holding their agenda-setting Central Economic Work Conference.