Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the recently completed 2018 fiscal year. Unfortunately, despite an incredibly positive economic backdrop the Federal government’s debt and spending levels remain a grave concern.
Monetary policy is simply not as exciting as it used to be. That said, last week Fed Chairman Jerome Powell made a passing comment that caused the markets to sit up and take notice.
As my friend Chris said during our recent time away, “I want to be able to look back on my life and know that I did the absolute best I could with the time and resources I was given.” There’s probably no other area of my life where this resonates more than fatherhood.
One of the most popular rules of thumb that is commonly used is to judge the quality of a decision based solely on the outcome it produces. This is known as a resulting bias where we use the benefit of hindsight to judge the merits of a decision that was made under uncertainty about the future, but this quickly leads to less than optimal decisions.
I recently listened to podcast with Annie Duke about her new book entitled Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. Of the many excellent takeaways from the interview, the overarching theme was how we as humans tend to be sub-optimal in our decision making process and what we can do to get better.
Jim Rogers is no stranger to the headlines. Known for his natural charisma, easygoing southern charm and trademark bowtie, he has long been an industry favorite for interviews and guest speaker slots. But what he is most known for is his willingness to go on record with bombastic, headline-worthy predictions.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of consumer, investor and business confidence to the health of the overall economy. All of this, in large part, is an aggregate reflection of how people feel. And judging by economic numbers as a whole, people have been feeling pretty good over the past few years.
The fear of machines taking jobs away from human beings is not a new one. This fear has proven to be misplaced as technology and machines have created more jobs than they have taken away. But could all that be changing going forward and if so, why is this time any different?
Many economists have criticized President Trump's stance on tariffs. But in the words of Thomas Jefferson, when it comes to matters of the economy, “no one axiom can be laid down as wise and expedient for all times and circumstances.”
One of the most frequent expressions we’ve heard in support of cryptocurrencies over the years is, “It’s all about the blockchain.” Indeed, as highlighted earlier in this series, the blockchain technology introduced to the world by Bitcoin truly is one of its special characteristics.
In the same way that an escalating price does not validate cryptocurrency as legitimate, a collapsing price does not necessarily reveal it to be a fraud. Its long-term staying power will be determined by a whole host of other aspects in addition to investor sentiment and price behavior.
Is cryptocurrency money? The short answer to this question is clearly yes since we’ve already established that pretty much anything can be money, and cryptos meet most of the general criteria for something to be considered as such. The more relevant question is whether or not they are a good form of money.
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