Category Archives: Currencies

Ilargi: Square Holes and Currency Pegs

The difficultly of maintaining currency pegs, most important the renminbi and riyal versus the dollar, will put even more stress on financial markets.

US Oil Futures Plunge by Nearly 7%, to $26.55 a Barrel; Stocks Swoon

Oil has ratcheted down again and stocks are getting hammered.

How the Labor Cost Competitiveness Myth is Making the Eurozone Crisis Worse

A new article makes a devastating attack on a fundamental belief driving Eurozone policy, that the member economies need to be made more “competitive,” meaning labor needs to be squeezed, for the currency union to achieve more growth.

China’s Contradictory Aims, Greater International Role Versus Domestic Economic Control, HIt Breaking Point

China appears to be in denial that it can’t have more open financial markets and maintain the same degree of control over the economy that it once enjoyed.

Identifying Vectors Influencing China’s (and International) Markets

A list of some of the factors driving the recent market upheaval in China. Readers will hopefully add to and refine this compilation.

Dollar Dominance: Deconstructing the Myths and Untangling the Web

It is not dollar hegemony that rules the world, but the global financial system which gives the dollar its place of privilege.

Louis Proyect: Greece as Rashomon

Like Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”, the story of Syriza is also one about a rape told from different, self-serving and contradictory perspectives.

Randy Wray: Debt-Free Money and Banana Republics

Objections to the notion of debt-free money.

The Fed’s New “Operation Twist”: Twisted Logic for Bank Profits at the Expense of the Real Economy

How did Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve justify their rate increase now, despite strong signs that there is little economic basis for doing so?

Call this an exercise in twisted logic, plain and simple.

Why We Brits Should Vote for Brexit

Why England would be better served by leaving the European Union.

Wolf Richter: US Exports & Manufacturing Debacle Covered up by Oil

What the regional manufacturing indices have been saying loud and clear for months have gotten further confirmation….

Greece and Creditors at Loggerheads Again; Troika Wants More Foreclosures

uropean creditors want to extract more blood from a stone, in this case Greece.

Don Quijones: “First They Came for the Pennies…” in the War on Cash

Governments and central banks must do away with the last remaining thing that gives people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom.

Liquidity Traps as Black Holes

Beware! Liquidity traps are even nastier than you thought.

China’s Raging Bond Bubble Exposed

Yet another China risk warning.