From the category archives:

economics

Mule Stable demo video

25 February 2010

A demonstration video showing how to get started on the Mule Stable discussion forum. Anyone familiar with Twitter will feel at home straight-away, for everyone else, this video should ease your way into posting in the Stable.

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Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

23 February 2010
Thumbnail image for Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

Clusterstock’s “Chart of the Day” has a chart showing business lending “falling like a knife”. But closer examination of the chart reveals that it is in fact quite misleading.

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Blame Greece’s Debt Crisis on the Euro

Thumbnail image for Blame Greece’s Debt Crisis on the Euro 18 February 2010

Ever since they joined the European monetary union and adopted the Euro as their currency, they lost the power to create their own money. The Euro is the real reason Greece finds itself facing a debt crisis.

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The Mule on Mortgages

13 February 2010

So you’ve saved up a deposit for your first house, you want to take advantage of the government’s first home owner grant while you still can, and the bank is actually prepared to lend you money. But how much should you borrow?

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Banks, Central Banks and Money

18 December 2009

One misconception about the mechanics of money that I mentioned in my last post is the idea that banks can hoard their reserves at the central bank* rather than lending them out.
Here I will explain why this idea simply does not make sense, but no more casinos and gaming chips. No more senior croupiers and [...]

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How Money Works

11 December 2009

Over the last couple of years as the global financial crisis unfolded, a subject I have spent a lot of time thinking about is the nature of money. I have been planning a blog post on the topic and the time has finally come.
The catalyst for finally writing this post was attending last week’s 16th [...]

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Which countries work the hardest?

1 December 2009

Last week over dinner with friends, a debate arose as to whether Australians worked harder than Americans or not. Since we had more wine than data, the argument did not last very long and we instead moved on to the question of whether China now more closely resembles a fascist regime than a communist one. Reflecting later on the first discussion, I decided to dig up some data on hours worked and attempt to determine a winner for the debate.

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Petrol Price Update

21 October 2009

Oil prices have been heading up, but so has the Australian dollar. So, petrol prices in Sydney for October will have fallen since September.

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Does Switzerland have the world’s best universities?

13 October 2009

Today @jgzebra drew my attention to the Times Higher Education league table of the top 200 univerities in the world. A quick glance at the list shows two US universities in the top three and six in the top 10. And indeed the United States dominates the results, claiming 54 spots out of the 200. [...]

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Curb Bonuses: They Don’t Work Anyway

28 September 2009

As the G20 starts to get serious about curbing executive bonuses, we can expect banking lobbyists to get more strident in their attempts to resist these incursions into their cosy remuneration practices. This has, in fact, already begun. In a recent example, Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann was resorting to cliché, claiming that “the [...]

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