Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

I see people bellyaching about Mexicans working in the US and sending cash home. When a person performs work or sells a product, they get money for it. The money is a claim on future services or goods. If that money/claim is saved, then the value of the remaining money in the US ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

I was told “the check is in the mail” a couple of months ago, and it hasn’t arrived from Central Florida yet.  Two weeks ago, the same folks told me that they will actually have funds to pay at the end of June. Same result. They seem to be still in business, but I learned that ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

A friend just got pre-approved for a home loan. The bank then reversed itself saying that they looked more closely and her credit wasn’t as good. So she dug deeper and found the following:

• DATC, a tech school which she never attended, claimed that she owes them money and is ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

Just an idle thought: from 1900 to 1933, US dollar was worth roughly a pennyweight (1/20 troy ounce or 1.556 gram) of gold. As of today, gold trades for just under $43/gram. A dollar today buys about 67 times less gold than it did in 1925. Do we earn 67 times more? A more ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

In my previous post, I cited the rise of ammunition and restaurant meal prices as examples of inflation. That wasn’t the whole story. Inflation is what happens when the amount of money in circulation increases faster than the supply of goods and services. The price increases we ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

We talk often about the technical aspects of gun control. Arbitrary specifications, capricious enforcement, massive mis-allocation of resouces… What are the financial effects of gun control as proposed by Feinstein and others of her kind?

The most immediate effect is the ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

Producers are under two pressures: to raise prices to account for the loss of purchasing power of each dollar, and to lower prices to attract customers with declining incomes. They most obvious way to accomplish both is to keep the nominal prices the same or slightly lower while ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

My best estimate for inflation on my own consumer goods basket this year is 21% rather than the official 3%. Product and service quality have dropped noticeably to maintain a price point. Personal incomes have dropped largely because government spending is crowding out private ( Read more... )

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

Would a US government default on its obligations necessarily or even likely mean that private companies would have a harder time borrowing money?

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

In Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall (now available freely on-line!), a historian visiting Rome gets shunted from 1939 to 536AD. Besides half-way decent knowledge of Latin, he has what was in his pockets at the time of the transfer:

He strolled up an alley to be out of sight ( Read more... )