FFT March 18 2013: The Procrustean Haircut

Food for Thought March 18 2013: The Procrustean Haircut

Social Democracy for the 21st Century: The Classical Gold Standard Era was a Myth

The gold standard is ultimately just a promise to exchange paper liabilities for gold at some distant point in the future. While that "point" is being pushed further and further away through financial layering, it turns into more and more of an empty formality that is peripheral rather than central to the system as a whole. The evolution from gold standard to paper standard is a gradual one. Even during this "clasical gold standard era" the creep towards a transformation of the system was well underway.

Barry Ritholtz: WTF Were They Thinking?

Ritholz questions whether a locality as small and insignificant as Cyprus can set off a crisis on a Eurozone-wide scale. My thoughts coincide with those of commenter GMS777:

Barry, you ask if economic malfunctions in a country with a GDP of $23 billion pose a risk to the global economy.

Could the assassination of an obscure Austrian archduke touch off a World War?

 Ritholtz' reaction doesn't do much to temper my "fears"; there's plenty of ominous context to this development to go around.