1.) One of the most overlooked aspects in economics, it seems to me, is the role of capital in the economy. Most think that capital is just another word for money. It is not; capital is simply goods of higher order, meaning production goods. 2.) A lemon is capital to the bakery making lemon pies, or to the kid who sells lemonade. A lemon is not capital if it is grown or bought for direct consumption. The definition of capital is strict, but what goods are capital at any given time varies constantly.

1. The Great Misery (also known by some as The Great Reset) will have at least three economic aggregate components. These are not the economic aggregates the central planers fetishize about and tinker with to maximize on paper. 2. The first aggregate is the amount of man hours wasted on unprofitable green projects financed with unnaturally cheap credit. These investments will like parasites siphon workers and capital from sound projects that would have been financed by the free market.

1.) The fourth chapter of 'Money Dethroned - A Journey through Ashes', deals with the British Restriction of 1797 - a much more interesting episode than its boring name would have you think. The Napoleonic Wars prompted the suspension of free conversion of paper money into gold. 2.) It was promised, of course, to be of temporary character, with an initial time frame of a month and a half. It lasted a full generation. The episode was investigated by William Graham Sumner in late 19th c, simply due to American inflationists praising it as a success story.

1.) Have you heard of gold backwardation? It seems a fairly under researched subject, to put it mildly, despite it being relevant in today's financial markets. It is also relevant for #Bitcoin . I will try to break it down in this thread. 2.) Futures contracts can be in contango or backwardation. Contango is pretty normal for commodities in need of expensive storage, and means that for example the spot price is lower than the futures price. Backwardation on the other hand means the spot is higher than the futures.

1.) The third chapter of 'Money Dethroned - A Journey through Ashes', details the rise and fall of the Assignat paper currency in Revolutionary France. Dickson White's sources prove that two or three generations were enough to forget the threat of hyperinflation. 2.) Burdened by debt, plans were drafted by the revolutionaries to confiscate Church property and issue currency "backed" by income from this land. Hard money conservatives published pamphlets warning of the upcoming monetary degeneracy long before it descended on France.

1.) The second chapter in 'Money Dethroned - A Journey through Ashes' details the monetary system introduced by John Law to France. I've tweeted about it before, since it's highly relevant both when it comes to our failing fiat currencies and to #Bitcoin . It's about tinkerlust. 2.) France had been through harsh wars, and so had amassed large debts and deficits. Under such conditions, a monetary system is ripe for capture and tinkering by economically illiterate vultures, as seen in the US with Kelton and her MMT disciples. John Law was such a vulture.

1.) I propose a clear relationship between strict authoritarianism and the emergence of paper money. Chinese kings and emperors often treated their subjects like nameless serfs living to produce for others. Full state control over money must have seemed a natural right. 2.) Actually, nameless might be the wrong choice of word. In medieval times, everyone seems to have been forced to write all names of the household, outside the door. For their own good, of course.

1.) The introduction of coinage to the world was not as straight forward as one might think, and researchers are still arguing over much of the details. One of them called the very first coinage "an imposture, a large-scale swindle". What was so wrong in enhancing fungibility? 2.) Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold. In Lydia (western Anatolia), it was found in rivers, and contained around 10-30% silver. Yet, the first Lydian coins, consisting of electrum, contained around 50% silver. Surely some debasement devilry was involved?

1.) The best example of Gresham's Law is described by historian Ishwari Prasad. A thread about The City of a Thousand Mints.

For travelers entering Delhi in the 1330's, signs of administrative mismanagement were palpable. Once a huge metropolis, the city was now eerily empty. 2.) Fearing nomad raids from the north, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq had recently moved his capital to the middle of India and forced the inhabitants of Delhi to join him and his court. As with many of such centralized ventures, many people died on the way.

1.) 'Money in circulation' is used as a Keynesian go-to phrase that, perhaps unintentionally, leads to confusion and bad policies. No money in a society remains unowned by someone. It does not 'circulate', but simply changes hands in mutually beneficial exchanges. 2.) You will often hear that if we encourage more money into circulation, surely the economy will thrive; a mental picture of a bustling marketplace; smiling merchants accepting money for goods, as opposed to gloomy hoarders, counting the money in their coffers at home.

1.) Short thread on the unseen costs of evading resource costs of money; many are the educated economists that in their naive attempts to design and implement clever schemes to evade resource costs of money, find themselves unwitting creators of much worse monsters. 2.) John Law saw the high costs of gold- and silver mining as a curse for that money. And at a glance, the argument seem to make sense. Is it not true that annual precious metal mining costs must be deducted from the general economic growth in a world under such standards?

1.) The issue of the evolution of money is worth droning on about. To further try to dispel some confusion regarding the role of active group convergence or coordination or agreement or imagination, let's look at a simple, hypothetical example. 2.) Imagine a primitive society where barter is encouraged and unregulated. But the word 'money' and all of its variants are completely unknown to people and always will be. Without the knowledge of such concept, how can anything other than crude barter evolve?

1.) Published: “Tales of Soft Money - The Sugar of Barbados”

The article is mostly based on work by Stuart B. Schwartz; ‘Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680’.

bdratings.org/l/tales-of-sof… 2.) Sugar was introduced to Europe first by conquering Muslims and later by returning Crusaders. Fetching a high market price, the crop interested merchants and nobles alike. But growing it was hard; a dry climate in the western Mediterranean meant rivers had to be diverted.