Free Republic

The future of money might be a digital version of the cash that’s already in people’s wallets—potentially upending the currency system that the world has known for many decades. Such a future, of course, might be a disappointment to many libertarians and tech-savvy investors who are pinning their hopes (and in some cases their money) on private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Instead, central bankers and governments—the entities that cryptocurrencies’ backers hoped to render obsolete—are increasingly warming to the idea of “digitizing” their own national currencies. That is, they would issue money that would exist only virtually, without a paper or...

In a shocking move likely to crush the US economy overnight, China is refusing to make its new gold-backed Yuan, convertible from or to US Dollars. The new Yuan will be introduced next Tuesday, April 19. When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to add the Yuan to the basket of world currencies used for Global Reserves and International Trade, they wanted China to make the Yuan more reliable as a currency. Since then, China has almost un-pegged its Yuan from the Dollar, allowing its value to fluctuate on world markets. But for years, China has been amassing huge amounts...

NEW YORK –  With $600 stuffed in one pocket and a smartphone tucked in the other, Patricio Fink recently struck the kind of deal that's feeding the rise of a new kind of money -- a virtual currency whose oscillations have pulled geeks and speculators alike through stomach-churning highs and lows. The Argentine software developer was dealing in bitcoins -- getting an injection of the cybercurrency in exchange for a wad of real greenbacks he handed to a pair of Australian tourists in a Buenos Aires Starbucks. The visitors wanted spending money at black market rates without the risk of...

The yen plunged to its lowest level in nearly four years and showed no signs of slowing its weakening trend in response to the Bank of Japan's latest push to ease monetary policy. Investors have been aggressively selling the Japanese currency since policy makers at the BOJ announced last week they will print trillions of yen to pump money into Japan's sluggish economy in a bid to keep interest rates low and spark faster growth. "Both Japanese and non-Japanese investors appear to be selling Japanese government bonds equally aggressively," said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at Bank of New York...

After more than twenty years of economic troubles, Japan now appears to be entering a terminal phase. They are running out of options as they approach a total economic melt-down. Since their recession began with the 1990 collapse of the Nikkei stock market, the Japanese government has tried to stimulate their economy with more government spending. Unfortunately, all they have to show for it is massive sovereign debt. The promised economic recovery never happened. They have become Exhibit A in the case against socialism, proving what free market economists have said all along, government spending cannot drive economic growth. That...

A currency war in the simplest form is basically when there is too much debt and not enough growth. - James Rickards, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis Currency wars are real wars. But they are waged with currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives, commodities, rather than guns and other kinetic weapons. In a currency war, countries try to manipulate their own currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. There is a currency war when one country tries to devalue its currency relative to others in order to promote exports and create jobs. Let's take an example. Some...

The picture below shows $15 trillion dollars worth of $100 bills on $10 million dollar pallets stacked on top of each other over an area that is one third larger than a regulation football field. An electronics van is parked between the stack and the Statue of Liberty. A single $100 million dollar pallet rests in front of the truck’s cab. See it?Recently, I reported that the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) secretly gave ten trillion dollars of interest-free loans to over a dozen European banks to shore up the Euro and keep them financially solvent. I later found out that...

BRASILIA/SEOUL (Reuters) - Policymakers from the world's new economic powerhouses in Latin America and Asia on Thursday criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve's move to inject billions of dollars into the U.S. economy to boost growth. Emerging market economies said the Fed's move made any substantive deal on cutting global economic imbalances less likely at next week's Group of 20 meeting in Seoul. Developing countries also threatened fresh steps to curb capital inflows which are pushing up their currencies against the U.S. dollar. "Everybody wants the U.S. economy to recover, but it does no good at all to just throw dollars...