A propos China and monetary inflation, please see two very useful and enlightening articles by The Contrarian Investor - this explaining why the money supply is growing there, and this detailing the steps by which money from the US goes on a round trip to China and back.

The G20 finance ministers' are meeting this weekend and Nick Dearden on the Guardian has written an interesting article on ditching the dollar for buying oil. There has been growing talk of a Global Bank for some time now, but America had dominated the banking world, now however China does. There is a very interesting graph on the FT, that shows the influence that China will have on these talks. A...

That would be Jerry Reed's "You make it, They take it" Income tax man’s a-knockin’ at my door And yellin’ money, money (money-money-money) Income tax man’s a-yellin’ for some more Money, money (money-money-money) [Chorus] ‘Cause when you make it they take it (money-money-money) You make it they take it (money-money-money) You make it they ta-a-a-ke it, they...

Aristotle was right: you can’t make money out of money Amazing really: entirely missing the point that we all did start making money around 1750 when we did realise that as money has a time value you can indeed make money out of money. Next week, Ritchie’s GP wife lectures us on why Galen is

Well, given the week just past, what we want is a rundown of current strike activity in China, starting with this excellent overview from Labor Notes: China faced its second wave of strikes in two years, as thousands of workers...

The UK is now in a great rush to reduce GDP in order to reduce the financial deficit. But before we frame economic policy, we need to revisit  economic theory, in particular the theory of money and macroeconomic demand theory. On the theory of money Money is an artefact, not a real physical commodity. It

Not about the coalition - not yet anyway. No what worries me is that the wheels may be about to come of the the European experiment and the worlds faith in quantum money. What do I mean about quantum money ? Well I'm playing on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as we can't really be sure where a lot of money really is. I place £100 in the bank, the bank lends say £80 out t...

From the BBC: An estimated 95,000 people have been overpaid a total of £126m over 30 years as a result of errors in public sector pensions, the Cabinet Office has said. Retired civil servants, health service workers, teachers, judicial workers and armed services personnel were given too much money. The government said the money need not be repaid, as this would not be cost-effective, but many fac...

Danny Finkelstein thinks Fred Goodwin is “showing a poor appreciation of his own real interest (because he is valuing money too much and social standing too little).” He has, says Danny, “overestimated the marginal value of money.”The substance behind Danny’s...

Interesting graph from Eric Janszen - he ignores the velocity of money (which can change quickly) and concentrates on money supply. He sees our situation as akin to that in 1981; I'm still thinking we're in the mid-70s, because round about 1982 was when we started to see real (post-inflation) returns on investments.