This is a slightly amended version of a keynote speech I gave on 14th April 2023 at the University of Ghent, for the Workshop on Fintech 2023.  The crisis that has engulfed crypto in the last year is a crisis of fractional reserve banking. Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank NY were fractional reserve banks. So too were Celsius Network, Voyager, BlockFi, Babel Finance and FTX. And still standing are the crypto fractional reserve banks Coinbase, Gemini, Binance, Nexo, MakerDAO, Tether,...

Real manufacturing and trade sales probably rose to a new record high in February; may have declined in March  – by New Deal democrat Real manufacturing and trade sales is one of the 4 monthly coincident indicators most monitored by the NBER to determine whether the economy is in expansion or recession. Because the reporting of this series lags badly (by 2 months), I have developed several placeholders to estimate it on a more timely basis....

Positive revisions make for a good March industrial production report  – by New Deal democrat If retail sales for March were bad, industrial production (blue in the graph below) was at very least mixed to the upside. Total production increased +0.4%, and on top of that February was revised higher by +0.2%, and January was revised higher by +0.5%. The not so good news is that while manufacturing (red) was also revised higher by +0.5% for...

Cision PRThe Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) Launches an International Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)  ["at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings 2023, the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) announced their official launch of an international central bank digital currency (CBDC) that strengthens the monetary sovereignty of participating central banks and complies with the recent crypto assets policy recommendations proposed by the IMF"]News release...

​RADHIKA DESAI: Hi everyone, welcome to the seventh Geopolitical Economy Hour, a program about the political and geopolitical economy of the fast-changing world of today.Video and transcriptGeopolitical EconomyRussia leaves neoliberal West to join World Majority – Economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson explainRadhika Desai, Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, and Michael Hudson |...

#duh⚠️BREAKING:*JPMORGAN CHASE SHARES EXTEND GAINS PREMARKET AFTER Q1 RESULTS, LAST UP 6.5%*WELLS FARGO STOCK UP 2.5% AFTER Q1 EARNINGS BEAThttps://t.co/PVjilxCOOw$JPM $WFC pic.twitter.com/ZRkfTTkSNF— Investing.com (@Investingcom) April 14, 2023 Ok let’s look at this from system perspective … total S&P 500 market cap is reported $34T and trailing earnings yield is reported 4.17%.     $34T x 0.0417= $1.4T S&P500 total earnings…Let’s just look now at what the Fed is paying banks in...

The Enlightened EconomistRawls, reloaded [Review of Daniel Chandler's Free and Equal: What Would A Fair Society Look Like]Diane Coyle | Professor of Public Policy at the University of CambridgeProject SyndicateThe Pitfalls of Dollar Hegemony [Review of Perry Mehling's Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System (2022)]Jonathan Ira Levy, professor in the Department of History and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and author of Ages of American...

Modelling by the construction of analogue economies is a widespread technique in economic theory nowadays … As Lucas urges, the important point about analogue economies is that everything is known about them … and within them the propositions we are interested in ‘can be formulated rigorously and shown to be valid’ … For these constructed economies, our views about what will happen are ‘statements of verifiable fact.’ The method of verification is deduction … We are, however,...

Yes I am complaining about filing a tax return (I wonder how many people are blogging such complaints today). I am trying to e-file a return for [un-named relative X] who is a full time student with zero income and IRS anxiety. OK so we are silly as X is not required to file a return. So the IRS has an apparently covenient web based e-file system https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/home/continuereturn.php (warning do not click this link if you...

Revised up this week…. Art degree monetarist morons no gonna likee…. Will want to accelerate rate increases…US @AtlantaFed GDPNow Q1: 2.5% (prev 2.2%)https://t.co/GIJHH2ZMsR pic.twitter.com/FRwbrEmK82— LiveSquawk (@LiveSquawk) April 14, 2023