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Showing posts with the label Interest Rates

The Beginning of the End of Financial Totalitarianism?

The king of Qatar recently resigned from his post. According to the people with knowledge of the politics of the region, his health was in a very weak state, rendering the effectiveness of his actions meager. He declined in favor of his 33 year old son, who according to people in touch with the politics of the region has a very pro-western stance. Much like the abdication of the Qatari royal, the markets recently witnessed the initial steps leading up to the abdication of our monetary dictator. His actions were increasingly perceived as ineffective . Each decree carried less and less weight. After our MIT-trained monetary autocrat came out with the latest decree --that the Fed will very likely begin to withdraw the cash injections into the economy-- the markets reacted , although not exactly in the way our beloved leader wished . The old status quo , whereby the movements in the financial world were a direct consequence of the latest ruling of the monetary dictator, was shattered...

Home sweet home

"Work hard and you will get the reward". That is a tenet any good parent would like to teach their children. The idea rests on the basic principle (assumed to be true) that whatever reward you get will not be snatched from you by someone else. The principle in question: Property Rights . Property rights are a keystone of human civilization. When we discovered farming, the primitive farmer had to make sure whatever he was growing was not going to be stolen by any passing nomad tribe that "didn't get the memo" that a farmer was growing something for his own consumption or benefit and that it could not just be taken. Imagine how difficult it was to go from communal to private property. Enforcement of property rights became one of the primal functions of proto-States and other central authority entities created in the beginnings of civilization. The difficulty of enforcement of property rights even shapes human culture. The "culture of honor" displayed i...