Cycles of Change

When grocery receipts climb at suburban checkout counters, shoppers naturally assume that farmers are pocketing handsome profits. A dozen eggs or a loaf of sourdough bread costs significantly more than it did four years ago. Yet out on county roads across Iowa and Kansas, family growers sit at [...]

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 [...]

The United States owes more than 36 trillion dollars. This debt grows by about one trillion dollars every hundred days. The government pays over 900 billion dollars each year just on interest. That is more than the country spends on defense. This affects every family. But most people do not know [...]

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 [...]

Modern market economies operate along recurrent waves of debt boom followed by sharp bust. During the boom phase, central banks lower interest rates and commercial banks extend easy loans to eager borrowers. Businesses expand operations, consumers finance real estate purchases, and stock prices [...]