August 15, 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the day President Richard Nixon “closed the gold window,” ending the postwar Bretton Woods international monetary system. It is an appropriate moment to reconsider the internal inconsistencies of the Bretton Woods system. As its contemporary critics understood, Bretton Woods…
As we continue here at the CMFA to span the globe to cover the ever increasing growth of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)-related financial regulatory issues, I’m reminded of my favorite part of watching live sports: being part of a crowd. The energy inside the stadium is…
Everyone is talking about inflation, but what is it? Why does it matter? What causes it? And what can the Federal Reserve do about it? This primer will address those questions with the goal of improving the public’s understanding of inflation and the role of the central…
The comparison has by now been made so often that it may qualify as a platitude. I mean that between stablecoin issuers and "wildcat" banks, the fly-by-night scams that supposedly flooded the antebellum United States with notes nominally worth some stated amount of gold or silver, but…
A “stablecoin” is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a fiat currency, gold, or another continuously traded asset. USD Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), the two stablecoins with the largest values in circulation, are each managed to maintain a price centered on and close to…