How Central Banks Control the Supply of Money

The quantity of money circulating in an economy affects both micro and macroeconomic trends. At the micro level, a large supply of free and easy money means more personal spending. Individuals also have an easier time getting loans such as personal loans, car loans, or home mortgages. 

At the macroeconomic level, the amount of money circulating in an economy affects things like gross domestic product, overall growth, interest rates, and unemployment rates. The central banks tend to control the quantity of money in circulation to achieve economic objectives and affect monetary policy. Through this article, we take a look at some of the common ways that central banks control the quantity of money in circulation.

By Prableen Bajpai, CFA (ICFAI) | Updated May 8, 2017 — 12:58 PM EDT

Read more: How Central Banks Control the Supply of Money | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/053115/how-central-banks-control-supply-money.asp#ixzz586TOX7ik
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How Bitcoin Works?

Bitcoin is a network that runs on a protocol known as the blockchain. A 2008 paper by a person or people calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto first described both the blockchain and bitcoin, and for a while the two terms were all but synonymous. The blockchain​ has since been conceptually divorced from its first application, and thousands of blockchains have been created using similar cryptographic techniques. This history can make the nomenclature confusing. "Blockchain" sometimes refers to the original, bitcoin blockchain; other times it refers to blockchain technology in general, or to any other specific blockchain, such as the one that powers Ethereum​.

The basics of blockchain technology are mercifully straightforward. Any given blockchain consists of a single chain of discrete blocks of information, arranged chronologically. In principle this information can be any string of 1s and 0s – emails, contracts, land titles, marriage certificates, bond trades – and this versatility has caught the eye of governments and private corporations. In bitcoin's case, though, the information is mostly transactions. 

Bitcoin is really just a list. Person A sent X bitcoin to person B, who sent Y bitcoin to person C, etc. By tallying these transactions up, everyone knows where individual users stand. Another name for a blockchain is a "distributed ledger," which emphasizes the key difference between this technology and a well-kept Word doc. Bitcoin's blockchain is public. Anyone can download it in its entirety or head to any number of sites that parse it. You can see, for example, that 15N3yGu3UFHeyUNdzQ5sS3aRFRzu5Ae7EZ sent 0.01718427 bitcoin to 1JHG2qjdk5Khiq7X5xQrr1wfigepJEK3t on August 14, 2017, between 11:10 and 11:20 a.m. If you were law enforcement or otherwise very sophisticated, you could probably figure out who controlled these addresses (the long strings of numbers and letters). Bitcoin's network is not totally anonymous, in other words, though taking certain precautions can make it very hard to link individuals to transactions.

By David Floyd | Updated February 14, 2018 — 6:00 AM EST

Read more: How Bitcoin Works | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-bitcoin-works/#ixzz586JJ5q33
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9 Common Effects of Inflation...

1. Erodes Purchasing Power

2. Encourages Spending and Investing

3. Causes More Inflation

4. Raises the Cost of Borrowing

5. Lowers the Cost of Borrowing

6. Reduces Unemployment

7. Increases Growth

8. Reduces Employment and Growth

9. Weakens (or Strengthens) the Currency

By David Floyd | Updated February 14, 2018 — 12:35 PM EST

https://www.investopedia.com/news/

Daimler in $2 Bln China Investment With BAIC...

By Reuters | February 25, 2018 — 7:09 AM EST

Daimler and its Chinese partner BAIC plan to invest almost $2 billion in a state-of-the-art factory in China, underlining their relationship as rival Geely makes a surprise swoop on the German carmaker.

The two will invest more than 11.9 billion yuan ($1.88 billion) in modernising a plant to build premium Mercedes-Benz cars including electric vehicles, BAIC said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange dated Friday and confirmed by Daimler on Sunday.

The chairman of Chinese carmaker Geely said late on Friday he had bought an almost 10 percent stake in Daimler, in a $9 billion bet to access the Mercedes-Benz owner's technology.

The move poses a challenge to Daimler, which as well as its Chinese partnership with BAIC Motor Corporation has an industrial alliance to develop cars and trucks with Renault-Nissan, which owns a 3.1 percent stake in Daimler.

Read more: Daimler in $2 Bln China Investment With BAIC as Geely Swoops | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/partner/reuters/berlin-sees-no-need-act-geelys-purchase-daimler-stake/#ixzz586K9OYIG
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What is the 'Intrinsic Value'

The intrinsic value is the actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value. Additionally, intrinsic value is primarily used in options pricing to indicate the amount an option is in the money.

Read more: Intrinsic Value https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp#ixzz586Irm4De
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Black Panther

Black Panther' blows past $500 million at the global box office after one week in US theaters...

How Do You Build a Team Culture in a Global Company?

The success or failure of a global organization can come down to how well small groups of people work together. “Teams are core to everything that we do,” said Rajeev Dubey ’82, president of human resources for Mahindra & Mahindra, in an interview with Yale Insights. “We have great respect for individuals, but we believe that ultimately, it is the team that delivers. So we put huge emphasis on being able to work in teams, ability to lead teams, and not so much emphasis on individual brilliance.”

Recent research has shown that teams have a form of collective intelligence, meaning that some perform considerably better than others across a range of tasks. So for a company with thousands of employees combined into innumerable teams, getting improved performance out of those teams can make a huge difference. 

RAJEEV DUBEY 

 MAY 09, 2016

https://insights.som.yale.edu/

What’s the Price of Love?

 “From an economic perspective, searching for a partner is just cost-benefit analysis,” Oyer said. “You keep searching until the point where the expected benefits of finding someone better outweigh the costs of looking for that person.”
“A potential partner with too little mate value is an unacceptable long-term partner choice, whereas one with too much mate value might not be attainable or retainable as a long-term mate,” they write. “The image of the ‘ideal’ and ‘attainable’ partner should therefore correspond closely.” In other words, a 7 may look like a perfect 10 to another 7.
To an economist like Oyer, potential mates—as well as jobs—are “differentiated goods.” “No two jobs and no two life partners are the same,” he said. That makes websites that aggregate prospective choices, such as monster.com and match.com in their respective realms, especially useful. By allowing users to narrow their searches before investing time in investigating a position or mate, they save their customers valuable time.
It’s not the language of poets and minstrels, but as Oyer put it: “Why are you single? Loneliness is just romantic unemployment.”

PAUL OYER   

 MAY 20, 2015

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/whats-price-love

How Do You Plan for Uncertainty?

In a changing global environment, leaders must be able to make decisions about future risks and opportunities despite uncertainty. Kristel Van der Elst ‘02 describes the process of strategic foresight and its value in preparing organizations to be robust whatever the future holds. 

In my view, the future is built out of three pieces. It’s what comes from the past—existing trends and established commitments. It’s what comes from the future—new business models, new technologies, or new value systems. And it’s the decisions we make today.

Whether it’s a country, a business, or an individual looking at family and career, foresight is a means to be adaptable and robust in the face of scenarios that might knock you off a path to success. And it’s a means to identify new models that might be opportunities to deliver new value.

KRISTEL VAN DER ELST  

 MARCH 18, 2016

Can the Graduation Approach Help to End Extreme Poverty?

An intensive development intervention focused on helping the destitute “graduate” into sustainable livelihoods has shown remarkable promise. Yale’s Tony Sheldon discusses the methodology’s development, extensive evaluation, and future potential.
One effort to tackle the distinct and complex barriers to economic development faced by the “ultra-poor” comes from the Bangladesh-based NGO BRAC, which in 2002 launched an intensive program aimed at addressing extreme poverty. BRAC’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction—Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) initiative used a carefully sequenced series of interventions to give destitute household the tools and opportunity to make sustainable change. After the program was carried out in hundreds of thousands of households within Bangladesh, rigorous evaluations showed clear and sustained positive impacts on participants’ ability to “graduate” out of extreme poverty into sustainable livelihoods.

TONY SHELDON   

 FEBRUARY 07, 2017
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-the-graduation-approach-help-to-end-extreme-poverty

The Peacekeeping Economy

The idea that military strength is virtually synonymous with security is deeply entrenched and widely held. But while the threat or use of military force may sometimes be necessary, it cannot keep us as safe as we would be by building relationships that replace hostility with a sense of mutual purpose and mutual gain. Economic relationships, says Lloyd J. Dumas, can offer a far more effective, and far less costly, means of maintaining security. After defining the right kind of economic relationship—one that is balanced and nonexploitative, emphasizes development, and minimizes environmental damage—Dumas then addresses some practical concerns in establishing and maintaining these relationships. He also considers the practical problems of the transition from military-based security arrangements to "economic peacekeeping," and the effects of demilitarized security on economic development and prosperity.

Lloyd J. Dumas is Professor of Political Economy, Economics and Public Policy at the University of Texas, Dallas. He lives in Carrollton, TX.

yalebooks.yale.edu

Network Power The Social Dynamics of Globalization

David Singh Grewal’s remarkable and ambitious book draws on several centuries of political and social thought to show how globalization is best understood in terms of a power inherent in social relations, which he calls network power. Using this framework, he demonstrates how our standards of social coordination both gain in value the more they are used and undermine the viability of alternative forms of cooperation. A wide range of examples are discussed, from the spread of English and the gold standard to the success of Microsoft and the operation of the World Trade Organization, to illustrate how global standards arise and falter. The idea of network power supplies a coherent set of terms and concepts—applicable to individuals, businesses, and countries alike—through which we can describe the processes of globalization as both free and forced.  The result is a sophisticated and novel account of how globalization, and politics, work.

David Singh Grewal is a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows and an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

yalebooks.yale.edu

The cadaver industry in Britain and the United States, its processes and profits

This book is a history of the nameless corpses from which cadaver stuff is extracted and the entities involved in removing, processing, and distributing it. Pfeffer goes behind the mortuary door to reveal the technical, imaginative, and sometimes underhanded practices that have facilitated the global industry of transforming human fragments into branded convenience products. The dead have no need of cash, but money changes hands at every link of the supply chain. This book refocuses attention away from individual altruism and onto professional and corporate ethics.

Naomi Pfeffer is author of The Stork and the Syringe: A Political History of Reproductive Medicine and an associate of University College London. She lives in London.

yalebooks.yale.edu

Chinese Self-Driving Car NIO Spotted In Silicon Valley

Chinese self-driving car company NIO showed up in Silicon Valley for its first test drives. NIO is not new to San Francisco, but this is the first public sightings of their Tesla Model X competitor, the ES8, outside of China (article in Chinese). Someone saw the autonomous car on the Montague Expressway in Santa Clara, California.
Bay McLaughlin , CONTRIBUTOR

https://www.forbes.com/sites/baymclaughlin/2018/02/21/

Baidu Battling AI News And 5G Is Coming To China A Year Early

5G is a complex technology and is the most sought after by governments, telecommunications companies and many tech giants. But why? The simple answer is that it will be 20Xs faster and more robust than 4Gand that means more subscribers, end users and ultimately higher revenues.

China has made bold statements about their desire to be the first country with 5G coast-to-coast (it was supposed to be South Korea or Japan). This time last year, China Mobile, one of the country's largest telecommunications operators, announced that they would be ready for commercial 5G in 2020.

Bay McLaughlin , CONTRIBUTOR

https://www.forbes.com/sites/baymclaughlin/2018/02/21/

How Leadership And Collaboration Will Help Manufacturing Thrive In The Digital Age

While automation offers the sector an opportunity to lower costs and boost quality, manufacturing leaders need to steer their organizations carefully and responsibly. To allay the risk of humans losing jobs to robots, they need to ensure staff are equipped with the digital skills they, and their companies, need to prosper.

At the same time, the pressure to meet ever more diverse customer needs requires leaders to forge strong partnerships, both within the supply chain and with other complementary businesses - including competitors. Companies can no longer expect to provide ‘end-to-end’ solutions alone.

Putting this vision into practice will be essential for successful digital-age manufacturing.

Leading responsibly and working in partnership are not only key themes in the manufacturing sector – they are also guiding principles for world leaders.

Responsible and responsive leadership was the main theme at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in 2017, while the need for working in partnership is the main topic at Davos in 2018.

Mitsubishi Heavy IndustriesVoice

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2018/02/21/

Vertical Cities Are The Future Of Urban Living. But How Do You Make Them Withstand Forces Of Nature?

In the early 1950s, Shenzhen in south-eastern China was a fishing village with only a few thousand inhabitants. Last year, its residents numbered around 11 million. While this may be a particularly extreme example of urban growth, the UN predicts that by 2030, two-thirds of the global population will live in cities. In many urban centers there is already a shortage of space and expanding outwards isn’t always an option.

As a result, like never before, cities are going vertical.

The concept of the ‘vertical city’ received wide attention with the construction of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The tallest building in the world, it was one of the first to be conceived as a mixed-use skyscraper with hotel accommodation, residential apartments and offices.

Not surprisingly, China has taken a page out of Dubai’s book as part of its rapid urban growth which saw almost 500 million people move from rural areas into cities in the last 35 years. Five of the ten tallest buildings in the world can be found in ‘megalopolises’ such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Centre is a case in point. Measuring 600 meters, it is the fourth tallest building in the world and the second tallest in China. Located in the CBD financial district of Shenzhen, it encompasses 118 floors and an area of 600,000 square meters. In addition to office space and a five-star boutique hotel, it also sports a 360-degree sightseeing floor.

Mitsubishi Heavy IndustriesVoice

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2018/01/24

Singapore's Restaurants Take A Stand Against Shark Fin Consumption

In 2017, Singapore was identified as the world's second-largest trader of shark fins after Hong Kong. Between 2012 and 2013, Singapore exported $40 million worth of shark fins, closely following Hong Kong’s $45 million, and imported $51.4 million worth of fins, compared to Hong Kong’s $170 million.
Christine Amour-Levar , CONTRIBUTOR
www.forbes.com/sites/christineamourlevar/2018/02/21/

Billionaire Jeweler Accused Of India's Biggest Ever Banking Scam -- Who Is Nirav Modi?

Over the last week, billionaire diamond jeweler Nirav Modi has dominated the news in India, accused of orchestrating the biggest banking scam the country has ever witnessed. Once the preferred jeweler of celebrities including Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts, he is now the target of a global manhunt issued by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation after one of the country’s largest banks, the state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB), alleged that Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi, and other family members and their related companies perpetrated fraudulent transactions worth almost $2 billion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leezamangaldas/2018/02/22/

"Mahogany The Costs of Luxury in Early America" by Jennifer L. Anderson

In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation.

Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled “huntsmen” who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the nation’s past.

Jennifer L. Anderson offers a dynamic portrait of the many players, locales, and motivations that drove the voracious quest for mahogany to adorn American parlors and dining rooms. This complex story reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental costs of America’s growing self-confidence and prosperity, and how desire shaped not just people’s lives but the natural world.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/