Title: Just been to a lecture presented by BBC Economics Editor, Robert Peston. Post by: protokol on April 03, 2014, 09:57:27 PM The talk was entitled "Have we fixed the mess – are the rich economies of the West mended?" and was very interesting, I thought the guy was a great public speaker.
Some main points he covered:
plus a lot of other points I can't remember off the top of my head... His opinion is basically that the UK, although showing signs of recovery, has a long way to go... I was lucky enough to exchange a few words with him about Bitcoin, or more specifically the technology behind it and whether he thought it would gain adoption in the future. He basically said he thought the whole idea was very interesting, and that this sort of "ultra free market" would probably be the future of financial systems, whether it takes 10/20/30 years. He seemed to think it was an elegant technology, "free from the unwieldy infrastructure of the current banking system". I would have liked to ask him a few more things, like what he thought specifically of the deflationary/fixed money supply aspect, the idea of a distributed public ledger, the frictionless transfers, and whether he saw the current Bitcoin network as more of a payment system/a store of value/neither. But he was being asked loads of stuff by other people and looked pretty tired! Anyway, seemed like a nice guy, and took time to really answer peoples questions thoughtfully (he didn't just reel off lines like a lot of politicians would). I would recommend seeing him speak if you ever get the chance :) Title: Re: Just been to a lecture presented by BBC Economics Editor, Robert Peston. Post by: Ibian on April 03, 2014, 10:45:38 PM http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Check that site once in a while and consider the relationship between the exponential function and interest. The role of professionals these days is to obfuscate reality. Title: Re: Just been to a lecture presented by BBC Economics Editor, Robert Peston. Post by: protokol on April 03, 2014, 11:30:40 PM http://www.usdebtclock.org/ Check that site once in a while and consider the relationship between the exponential function and interest. The role of professionals these days is to obfuscate reality. Yes, I visit that site every now and again just to see how deep the mess is. His opinion was that both the US and the UK were still in a lot of trouble, but that the UK was in a deeper mess as it is primarily a consuming country, whereas the US produces more and is being helped by it's recent move to more self-sufficient energy. Basically, both economies are still struggling, but the UK will struggle more to repay its debts unless it changes its tactics of too much mortgage lending and not enough business lending. |