December 2009

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 […]

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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 […]

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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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