Friday, November 18, 2011

Interesting piece

Here is an interesting piece from Foreign Policy on how people are getting by in the middle of the financial meltdown.

One of the more interesting parts

In many countries -- particularly in the developing world -- System D is growing faster than any other part of the economy, and it is an increasing force in world trade. But even in developed countries, after the financial crisis of 2008-09, System D was revealed to be an important financial coping mechanism. A 2009 study by Deutsche Bank, the huge German commercial lender, suggested that people in the European countries with the largest portions of their economies that were unlicensed and unregulated -- in other words, citizens of the countries with the most robust System D -- fared better in the economic meltdown of 2008 than folks living in centrally planned and tightly regulated nations. Studies of countries throughout Latin America have shown that desperate people turned to System D to survive during the most recent financial crisis.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Interview with Currency Trader

Interesting interview with Bernard Lietaer - a noted currency trader and monetary reform activist.

Link here.