The intrinsic unimportance of Dubai World and the important wider message it conveys
Dubai is not systemically signficant.  If its troubles open our eyes to the imminence of the likely last leg of the journey from household default through bank default to sovereign default, it may do some systemic good, by alerting fiscal policy makers to the vulnerability of their nations’ fiscal-financial positions, and by educating citizens and [...]

Polite sugggestion to the Dubai sovereign that creditors of Dubai World not be bailed out
The markets today were in a bit of a tizzy because the Dubai World Group, a holding company owned 100 percent by Dubai’s government, and Nakheel, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai World, imposed a debt restructuring and debt service standstill - failed to perform on their debt or, in ordinary if not legal language, [...]

Auditing the central bank: a jolly good thing!
What is so important about H.R. 1207: the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 aka the ‘Audit the Fed’ bill? This bill “To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United [...]

Yapping away at gold: lessons from the last days of the Rai
Mr Eliot Whitehead sent me the following e-mail message in response to my blog post ‘Gold - a six thousand year old bubble’: “Regarding your FT article, Gold - a six thousand year old bubble, it would interest you to learn that Rai, somewhat since the end of WWII in the Pacific, no longer has value [...]

Gold - a six thousand year-old bubble
Gold is unlike any other commodity.  It is costly to extract from the earth and to refine to a reasonable degree of purity.  It is costly to store.  It has no remaining uses as a producer good - equivalent or superior alternatives exist for all its industrial uses.  It may have some value as a [...]