Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

The “director’s cut” of Covid coverage

This column studies the rise and fall of paper money in 13-14th century China over three stages: full silver convertibility, nominal silver convertibility, and fiat standard.

Matt Taibbii took a good look at Google’s AI censorship of this site and deemed it “an early, scary test case for mechanized suppression.”

The second of a two-part discussion on whither China’s economy, emphasizing where the Western press and pundits are off base.

Liability for the use of AI that in turn is meaningfully based on copyrighted material could throw a spanner in the AI bandwagon.

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Pandemics, politics, whistleblower Barnett’s assassination gradually memory-holed, fasting, “we have the tools” ~

The Financial Times debunks private equity flim-flammery even as CalPERS and others sign up for more.

“As economists, we commend (Honduran) President Castro and the people of Honduras, and hope that countries across the world follow their lead toward a fairer, more democratic trade system.”

Texas is counter-sanctioning Big Finance firms over Net Zero initiatives designed to choke money flows to fossil fuel businesses.

Rajiv Sethi joins the pushback against censorship, using Google’s bogus attack on one of his posts on this site as a point of departure.

Google tries to censor this site based on a systematically flawed AI review. How many others will be victims of bad algos?

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Politics, pandemics, Boeing assassination, beekeeping, cash ~