Nouriel Roubini of the Stern School of Business at NYU, and Brad Setser at University College, Oxford, have co-authored a paper on the possible unraveling of the Bretton Woods 2 system, and the consequent hard landing scenario for US currency. A PDF copy of the report is online, and makes interesting reading, if you think currency issues are interesting. Both… Read more →
23 search results for "currency"
US Currency Part N+1
Continuing the trend of looking at the weakening US dollar, we’ve got a couple of new articles. First, an analysis post from Kitco, a gold bullion dealer, looks at the potential effects of Japan and China cutting back on, or dropping their support for the US dollar. For a while now the US has been pressuring China to let its… Read more →
US Currency, Iraq, etc.
So, as we covered earlier, the US dollar is hitting record lows against both the Canadian dollar and the Euro. There are lots of predictions out there that these are the early signs of a continuing decline, driven by the crazy deficits of the current administration. However, what if it’s not just deficits? Traditionally the US dollar has been strong… Read more →
Observational Items
I believe that it is not hyperbole to say that the existence, even in conceptual form, of the Chompr is the final clear sign that Western society has slipped completely into decadence. First of all, if you can’t hold a sandwich in your hand, you shouldn’t be trying to eat it. Second of all, you should be able to engineer… Read more →
A Punishing Beverage
You know those people who only read one book at a time? I’m not one of them. At the moment I have two novels (one noir detective, one hard SF) on the go in my reading room, a collection of short stories (“M. R. James by way of Lovecraft”) in the bedroom, two books of poetry and political tract in… Read more →
Uncommon Madness and the Altoids Of Soap
Have I talked about Dr. Bronner’s here before? My searches say not, but I remember expounding upon it recently–although it might have been at my poker game. If you don’t know Dr. Bronner’s, I’m not even sure where to start trying to explain it. The short version is this: my shower contains a bottle of liquid peppermint soapIt’s easy to… Read more →
Their great chicken-bone and moonshine empire will rise again
I know you’re already seen this, but it’s just too good to let go by. My favourite bit references the hobo signs stuff we were looking at earlier this month: And they devised a secret language of signs and scrawls used to alert their passing brethren to danger or opportunity. A crucifix chalked on the side of a house meant… Read more →
Early Saturday Morning Gallimaufry
And, time to close a few more tabs… It’s lovely that the Internet can bring me an interactive beer and food matching guide. Sadly, it uses a different algorithm than I do–resulting in far more matches with “see through” beer than my scheme would generate. Speaking of beer, I love the idea of beer haiku. My favourite so far: You… Read more →
On cross-border shopping and smuggling
So, during a particularly boring meeting today, I ran the numbers on the recent smuggling effort. I ordered 32 items from Amazon.com and had them shipped to a friend in Boston. Of those, one item is one that for some reason isn’t available from Amazon.ca (and indeed, can’t be ordered from Amazon.com to a Canadian address!), so we’re going to… Read more →
A small discussion on US$ and Canadian$
While I was in Boston last week I took advantage of the relative strength of the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar to purchase a pretty large set of stuff. I made a 32 item order from Amazon, which I had delivered to a friend’s house, and I suspect the savings of doing this were vast: I got the benefit… Read more →
Amazon.ca, British Books, What The Hell?
Ever since Amazon.ca opened, I’ve been in a kind of book-buyer’s bliss. The Canadian variant of Amazon has a broader selection than native Chapters, and typically has lower prices–all good stuff. Even better, though, Amazon.ca put me in a position to leverage my special status as a Canadian lover of books: we can get both American and British editions from… Read more →
Fellow pedants rejoice!
Here’s the thing: precision of language allows for both more elegant and more useful communication. I love that English has this dizzying variety of words, many of which are similar in meaning, but with a difference of connotation that allows us to increase our precision. However, I am also a pedant, so the flip side of my love of precise… Read more →
You’re in the movie now
Naomi Wolf, she of The Beauty Myth, etc, has written a piece, “The Porn Myth“, for New York that sets out her position that the rise of pornography has essentially resulted in a devaluation of sexual experience. For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of… Read more →
Some follow-ups…
After the jump, four pointers to things following up on previous posts on praising idleness, smart SF authors, currency wonkery, and unhappy grammar nazis. Read more →
Culture of Debt?
It’s been a while since I’ve gone on about U.S. economic policy and currency issues (although I’ve certainly talked about the currency thing enough over the years). Partly this is because the story isn’t changing: the value of U.S. currency keeps dropping–even against ours, which is so tightly integrated with it. Here’s the long term chart: (I’d like to take… Read more →
