Cycles of Change

When a big bank or a major financial institution gets into serious trouble because it made bad loans, most people assume the government simply steps in and fixes the problem. That picture is incomplete. The central bank does stop an immediate collapse, but the cost of that rescue does not [...]

Walk into any grocery store today and you will feel the sharp pain of prices rising at the checkout counter. A dozen eggs costs more paper money now than it did five years ago. Ground beef costs more. Bread costs more. The receipt at the bottom of the bag carries a number that climbs higher every [...]

Significant transformations in the global financial landscape have altered the methods by which people preserve their earnings. For thousands of years, precious metals such as gold and silver served as the primary measures of stored value. These assets provided a tangible link between physical [...]

The growing move toward trade pacts outside the dollar network is reshaping the rules of world trade finance. When nations trade crude oil, grains, and factory tools in regional monies, trade gaps demand settling in hard assets. Neither trade partner wants to hold deep piles of foreign paper money [...]

Human trade depends on sound money to store value and settle accounts across generations. Throughout history, towns flourished when trading on honest money that kings could not make out of thin air. When rulers debased their coinage by mixing cheap tin with silver, food prices soared and public [...]

World money systems undergo deep shifts whenever public debt outpaces real economic output. For eight decades following the Bretton Woods pacts, world commerce ran mostly on dollar balances, western clearing houses, and American banking networks. That money order gave trading nations decades of [...]