by John E. Charalambakis | Mar 29, 2015 | Commentaries, Uncategorized
Could the markets suddenly unravel? Of course they could. The fiat monetary system is like a mirage, it can tumble because of underestimated circumstances. Imagine for example Greece abruptly leaving the Eurozone, defaulting on its EFSF loans of €240 billion, its...
by John E. Charalambakis | Mar 11, 2015 | Commentaries, Uncategorized
Since 1873 the world has suffered two periods of great deflationary pressures: the first one from 1873-1893, and the second during the Great Depression in the 1930s. We may be facing a third one (at least according to several analysts), which has been forcing the...
by John E. Charalambakis | Mar 3, 2015 | Commentaries, Uncategorized
Lorenzo the Magnificent (the scion of the Medici banking family), whose lending institution dominated not only Florence but much of Europe, was also a poet influenced by Horace and Catullus. The Latin phrase above reflects the first two lines of one of his sonnets....
by John E. Charalambakis | Feb 16, 2015 | Commentaries, Uncategorized
About a year ago in a meeting we had in Warsaw, Poland I contrasted Jamaica and Singapore. The contrast was based on a simple observation/fact, which stated that those two countries started at almost identical positions in the early 1960s, but Singapore excelled since...
by John E. Charalambakis | Feb 5, 2015 | Commentaries, Uncategorized
Close to twenty years ago, the Eurocrats decided to defy the laws of gravity in economics, and they started designing a common currency without a fiscal union. Their thinking was straight-forward: “If we suspend the law of gravity, the Euro will be sustained (like if...