Learn the Economics of Market

Market

Find yourself as the head of state of some country during an impending economic crash share markets are down businesses are closing, unemployment is rising and everybody is looking to you to provide economic guidance on how to weather this turmoil, there is so much to consider every economic downturn is similar but always very different at the same time what worked last time may not work this time. It’s hard to know where to start monetary policy fiscal policy mass toilet paper subsidies well lucky for you Mr. hypothetical president you have come to the right place to find a symbol to follow guide and how-to on your economy but there, unfortunately, isn’t a magic bullet.

 Economic Downturn.

You are still going to have to ask some serious questions about trade-offs that you will need to make amidst the chaos of these tumultuous times the first big decision is what to do with those interest rates. An important point to know about interest rates or cash rates is that they are set by central banks and then passed along to average consumers by regular banks the government of a nation and even the head of state doesn’t actually get a say in the decision making the process of the central bank because they are technically an independent entity in a strange sort of way ignoring that most central banks try to work with their local governments to achieve two main themes stable inflation and economic growth. In that order economic downturns are bad and it normally leads to people spending less money when people save more of their income because they are hypothetically let’s say stuck at home or they are a little bit more uncertain about their future or even potentially because they have been made redundant that means that there is less money exchanging hands out there in the economy this does a few things, of course, it means that businesses will make less money which means that they won’t be able to employ as many people which means that more people get made unemployed which means those unemployed people won’t be able to go out and spend money and so the vicious cycle continues and this is really bad.

Also Read: Bitcoin Revolution Review

How to Combat the Problem of Deflation.

To combat this, businesses will normally react to this lack of demand with large price drops. They will put their stock on a sale or offer discounted airfares, lower the price of their services, but regardless, the net result will be that the general price level of things is lower. The price of goods falling is called Deflation and Deflation is horrifying to a central bank remember they care about stable inflation far more than they actually care about economic growth because central banks are there to look after the well-being of their currency, not necessarily the whole economy, so they need to do something to fix this. The go-to reaction is to lower interest rates, mean that people can access credit more easily and banks are more willing to lend more money. It also gets more money out into the system as people are able to borrow money at cheaper rates to buy things like cars or phones or houses. In recent years, we have seen the rise of zero interest installment style lines that let consumers break their purchase down into Four easy payments of a 150 dollars over four months rather than paying 600 dollars upfront these sorts of services have been made possible by cheap interest rate and the other thing is, this type of borrowing does create demand for goods so suddenly maybe your local hardware store can hold off those flash sales and solve the problem of Deflation.

A happy little side effect of inflation is that it means sure people’s money is worthless and every year that actually encourages them to go out and actually use it to invest or consume and hence it’s also good for the economy overall. so it sounds like a pretty easy decision if you see a big scary economic downturn coming to drop those interest rates or at least ask your central bank very nicely to drop those interest rates and hope they do and then hope the consumer banks of the market also drop their rates and then hope the consumers of the market actually see the difference in their interest rate payments and therein lies the problem of monetary policy it can be really slow to take effect and oftentimes by the time that it has it’s already too late if only there was something that you as the head of state of made up land controlled directly

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy is basically the policy of the government around how much it will tax who and what it will spend, where in general

Contractionary Fiscal Policy

Contractionary fiscal policy is when a government decides to tax its citizens and its businesses more than it will spend in its budget. This is normally a good idea during a period of strong economic prosperity in the same way that it’s normally a good idea for you to not spend every penny you make and set aside some money to build up a savings account or even invest into a portfolio the same general rule is true for entire nation but the good times are over and so it is time to turn everything around and enact expansionary fiscal policy now this is the good stuff

Expansionary Fiscal Policy

An expansionary fiscal policy basically means that you tax less than what you spend but that is a very basic way of looking at it what really makes fiscal policy fantastic is that it is very precise and fast-acting there are often hundreds of types of different taxes in most modern nations from general stuff like income tax business tax land tax sales tax to really specific things like liquor taxes. If you are a government playing around with fiscal policy you get to pick and choose what taxes to lower, you might say businesses are doing it tough right now so maybe we will just lower their business taxes for this year or whatever works for that specific scenario. The other thing is it is really fast-acting if you were to lower income taxes effective immediately people will feel that from their very next pay-check and trust me if people feel, even just a little bit richer, you better believe that they are going to go out and spend that little bit of extra cash hitting their account on a Friday night.

Fiscal stimulus

On the other side of the fiscal policy equation, you also get to splash some cash during the 2008 financial crisis. The Government of Australia gave $900 to every taxpaying resident of the country this is called fiscal stimulus. The hope of this policy is again that it will get people to go out and spend some money on a new TV or a new couch or whatever this spending means more people have jobs and those people with jobs can go out and spend a salary. They might not have otherwise had and so the cycle repeats itself this. The overall impact of money being spent leading to more money being spent is called the multiplier effect and it works both ways.

Understanding the multiplying effect

The multiplier effect is different for every type of spending, for example, the easiest to understand the multiplying effect of giving money directly to an average citizen is pretty high because let’s be honest with ourselves, most people spend a good majority of the money that hits their bank account pretty much straightaway potentially a more reasonable type of fiscal stimulus is infrastructure spending this is using government money to build a new bridge or a highway or an airport or whatever this still gets money into people’s pockets to be spent because it normally takes a big workforce. To make these sorts of projects happen and you get the added benefit on top of this but actually having a piece of infrastructure after all that spending is done the drawbacks of this is that the multiplying effects are not quite that strong, sure there will be labourers and tradespeople and engineers to construct these projects but a good portion of that money will also go into construction companies that tend to hold their profits, a little bit more tightly during these trying times.

The other thing with infrastructure spending stimulus is that it is slow by the time a new highway is planned and zoned and engineered, the economic downturn might have already been and gone with the damage done that being said infrastructure spending is still worth considering because it potentially does two things, First, it helps your economy now by employing people and two it helps your economy in the future by providing something of value. So all of these solutions are great tax policy can be used target people or institutions that could catch a break and fiscal spending can get people that much needed cash injection to boost their spending during these more trying time but there is one problem with all of these measures everything we have explored so far has been about getting people out there spending money during an economic downturn.

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Economic crisis on the supply side

But what if your economic crisis is on the supply side, what if hypothetically something has caused factories to shutdown airplanes to stop flying and ships to stop shipping this is something that doesn’t necessarily cause problems on the demand side of the equation but rather it means even if people did want to go out and shop for things they may not have anything to shop for this is a much harder problem to deal with as a government. If supplies dry up it increases the price of goods which is OK in moderation but too much causes runaway inflation as people desperately outbid each other for that last roll of toilet paper or whatever this all but makes monetary policy useless because if there is already inflation you are not going to solve any problems by causing more inflation which means the attention turns exclusively to how governments keep business alive which causes problems in and of itself major corporations are one of the largest influences on modern economies today they often employ tens of thousands of people and provide services that are all but crucial to our modern way of life and the thing is, they know it.

Mega Corporation CEO Role.

CEOs of these mega corporations really have one primary goal, maximize the return for shareholders of the company and more specifically maximize the return of shareholders in the short term. The ways corporate CEO bonuses are normally structured so let’s say that such a CEO is presented with a choice, they have a record year of profits complemented by a very generous reduction in corporate taxes so they find themselves with a lot of cash. Now they can save this money into a corporate equivalent of an emergency fund, they could reinvest it in growing the firm or they could use this wealth to issue share buybacks and massively inflate the value of the company shares on the public market. Share buybacks actually achieve the goal of a corporate CEO to increase the returns of shareholders so it’s really the only logical choice they may also reinvest, of course in the hope that be sorry investment into the company pays off in even bigger profits than next year but the last thing that they are going to do is invest that into an emergency fund and here’s why money sitting around is money not working, to increase the returns of shareholders and that means no big bonuses from Mr. CEO

Emergency Fund OR Bail Out Package

The other thing is that these days they don’t need an emergency fund because they can count on the government bailing them out. In 2008 the big banks were for the most part bailed out by governments around the world and today airline companies, with little to no contingency plans are likely to be bailed out again by governments around the world. If you are a huge corporation that provides an essential service to our nation, it just makes sense to over leveraged yourself during the good times to deliver huge returns, make huge bonuses and then wait for Uncle Sam to bail you out during the bad times. In fact even companies that try to be more responsible and save cash may actually fall into the trap of being uncompetitive compared to their more reckless rival and so they kind of forced and the same pattern of bad behaviour

Moral Hazard

This assumption by large and essential institutions that they are pretty much immune from bankruptcy is called moral hazard and it is one of the most difficult things to workaround if you are the leader of a country during a time of crisis on one hand it may feel really good to be very vindictive and give them a big fat welcome to the free market that they lobbied so hard to maintain but if you do that you may find your nation without a working airline or operating grocery stores or functioning banks so then the alternative is just to give in and be there to prop them, backup again all over but this is risky too. If you show corporations that you will be there to support them through thick and thin they are gonna go right back to taking crazy risks which are going to get you back to where you started a decade or so.

What is the Solution?

Later the real secret is, you have to find a way to maintain the services that these institutions provide while also punishing the shareholders and executives that facilitated this type of reckless behaviour but you also have to do that without sounding like some crazy commie out, better seize the means of production so you know best of luck with that economic downturns can be scary times for all members of society. People can lose jobs and homes and livelihoods and governments can lose power there are tools in place to steer an economy but at the end of the day, no market can be controlled completely, only managed. All you can do, if you ever find yourself as the head of state of a nation in the midst of a crisis is to understand the tools at your disposal and how they work trying to use the wrong thing in the right way, maybe just as devastating as doing nothing at all.

Conclusion

Monetary policy, discretionary spending, taxation they all do different things to achieve the same result, a good economy that works productively to provide for the well-being of the participants within that economy, of course it wouldn’t be economics explained article if I didn’t mention stability and confidence but it’s just such an important thing during these times at the end of the day if you have a nice stable economy with confident participants you are going to be just fine. Your job is to maintain that and don’t let those pesky corporations work too hard to undo all that stability you just made.

What influences Bitcoin Price

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency which was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto and launched in 2009, that works very differently from conventional monies or fiat. A blockchain can be used to document all of the transactions, reveal the trade history of each unit and also to establish ownership. Unlike conventional monies, trading of Bitcoin is somewhat different. The money is decentralized and can be maintained by a community of both privileged miners. The cryptocurrency has proven that an overall upside tendency with little downfalls between in its own evaluation because of its debut. However, the question arises what decides Bitcoin’s cost?’. Bitcoin’s worth is determined by multiple variables, including:

There’s a fixed number of 21 million components of Bitcoin which will be generated. With each passing year, fresh Bitcoins are being published at a lesser pace.

The complex process of cryptographic mathematics

Each Bitcoin that’s mined entails a complex process of cryptographic mathematics issues that miners all compete to fix. Once more miners join from the contest of solving the issue first, the issue gets harder and thus more costly. This general raises the hash speed of this blockchain that resultantly needs high hash electricity for quicker computing that overall increases the odds of including a block whilst raising the mining price. This price of mining a Bitcoin also affects the value of Bitcoin from the marketplace.

The invention of cryptocurrency has resulted in a lot of cryptocurrencies being traded on the industry. The widespread contest has split the shareholders and helps to keep down the prices. Bitcoin has had an advantage over its rivals as a result of high visibility. Following a quick growth in the prevalence of cryptocurrencies, there’s confusion over which ruler will set the principles for cryptocurrencies which have generated doubt. Bringing at law impacts prices in two manners. It raises demand as it gives a guarantee of safety to retail investors that are insecure about bitcoin. Secondly, it can decrease price volatility by enabling institutional investors that consider bitcoin stocks are either overvalued or undervalued, to utilize their large resources to make bets which bitcoin’s price will move in the opposite direction.

The press influence has a specific effect on Bitcoin’s worth too. Promotion of this Bitcoin can draw more investors consequently increasing the purchase price of it. To the contrary, negative marketing on social media can dissuade investors from diminishing the value of their Bitcoin.

Overall, unlike fiat and conventional stocks, bitcoin works on another airplane that’s influenced by the accumulation of unique facets. Even though these factors have made bitcoin volatile for a very long period now, it’s called the core principles of bitcoin i.e. adoption tends to kick volatility from the marketplace and present stability in the last.

How Ruja Ignatova Scripted Onecoin Scam?

Cryptocurrency prices were changing rapidly, investments were growing 2X,3X in almost every six months. This kind of return which Bitcoin was delivering attracted many people attention and people became fascinated by this currency. You might have also seen some of your friends or relatives had also started investing in these cryptocurrencies after being exited.

Period Currency Price (USD)
December(2015) 1Bitcoin 500
December(2016) 1Bitcoin 780
June(2017) 1Bitcoin 3270
December(2017) 1Bitcoin 19784

But most of the people came to know about Bitcoin when the price had rocketed high. Very few people had invested in the early days of Bitcoin as it was not so known but people who had invested in those days were rewarded with good returns. But those who joined the party late were not so lucky, there was not much left for them and few of them even suffered losses.

As this Bitcoin Boom was going on Scamsters entered the market and tried to take advantage of this ongoing boom. One such person was Amit Bhardwaj, he told people to submit One Bitcoin in his company named Gain Bitcoin and promised in return, 1.8 Bitcoin after some time. He also claimed to have his Mining Company in China, People trusted him and submitted Bitcoins in his company, but he fled away with coins but was arrested later on. Many such Scams erupted in this Boom period of Crypto.

During this period Dr Ruja Ignatova thought of a very Big Scam and how to take advantage of this ongoing Bitcoin Boom. Let’s understand how she planned the scam

Who is Dr Ruja Ignatova?

Dr Ruja Ignatova is a Bulgarian national, she Incorporated a firm in the United Kingdom and started telling people and investor that she has developed a rival of OneCoin which will have more value than Bitcoin in future.

Ruja completed her PhD from Oxford University and was formally employed by Mckinsey. She was fluent in English & several other languages. Her Impressive profile and her clear vision made people believe her words and people started investing in Onecoin. She told that One coin is a safe currency based on Blockchain technology & they also do KYC to make sure that this is not used in any illegal activity. In her words “the first cryptocurrency with a monthly audit of its blockchain.”

Promotion of Onecoin:  To promote Onecoin Ruja started organising Events and conferences and different places. She started telling people that Onecoin will be bigger than Bitcoin and in future, it will be the biggest in the World and next two years no one will talk about Bitcoin and the only crypto which will be in peoples mind will be Onecoin. People can use Onecoin for payments. she asked investors to join the revolution and invest.

In her words “In two years, nobody will speak about Bitcoin any more!” “OneCoin is easy to use, OneCoin is for everyone […] since we mined our first coin in January 2015, our growth exploded,”

What made People Believe her

Ruja Focused on four important things:-  

Hype: She created hype around Cryptocurrency and Onecoin and told people how popular Onecoin would be in future and the only crypto which people will use. People have witnessed bitcoin revolution so they believed her Hype.

Fear of Missing out: Most of the people heard about Bitcoin when the prices were too high so the people who entered late were not able to get good returns. Ruja told investors to join early to gain maximum

Saftey: Ruja Told People that Onecoin is very safe and it uses Blockchain Technology, which is very safe so no has to worry about the safety According to Ruja this was “platform for innovation that will change the financial system.”

Fortune: She kept telling people how much money they can make in a short period.

She grandly organised her Events and conferences to create an impact on the investors also she used Forbes Magazine edited paid ad showing that she was featured by the magazine to influence the investors. People were influenced and they started investing heavily in Onecoin as they didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

What is OneCoin?

In reality, Onecoin was not a cryptocurrency. OneCoins weren’t actually mined using computer resources It was all fake, no mining was going on and no blockchain was being used. They were using SQL servers which do not support cryptocurrency. The price change was manipulated and programmed. Everything was fake. They allocated fake coins and took Money. People in their greed for quick returns never asked anything. Ruja knew this can’t go forever, so to make more money quickly she decided to market her product differently. She wanted to reach more people in less time, for this she started webinar and organized the events in different locations around the world like Dubai, London. Her events were very grand to attract investors. People were influenced and invertors from around the globe started investing in Onecoin. She had investors from countries like China, the UK, South Africa. Chinese investors invested around half a Billion Dollars around(Jan-Jun)2016.

The next weapon which Ruja used to promote her scam was MLM. She knew if she has to go fast and reach more people then MLM is the best thing. She organised the meeting with the top leaders of MLM also known as influencers and convinced them to work for her by offering them a heavy commission. These influencers then reached to their network of salespeople to promote Onecoin. This step made Onecoin more popular, everyone was talking of Onecoin and the investors in Onecoin increased to manifolds. MLM influencers also invested part of their commission in Onecoin for quick returns not knowing that they were investing in the fake product. Ruja, on the other hand, was making Billions from this scam. She had promised investors to Open an Exchange where coins can be exchanged for Cash but this Exchange opening kept on delaying which made investors suspicious. Investors were raising questions about the authenticity of Onecoin. In October 2017 Ruja announced the Event date to solve the concerns of investors and also exchange opening date. People came to the event and waited for Ruja and kept waiting but she didn’t turn up. Later it was known that she had done scam and fled, No one knows where she had gone. Investors had lost all their investments. Scam Size was around $5 Billion. Ruja had invested the money from the scam in Properties in Bulgaria, She also owned a yacht and other luxuries. While she was on a run, her brother Konstantin Ignatov was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in March. He pleaded guilty to money laundering and fraud charges and is now facing a maximum of 90 years behind bars.FBI is also looking for Ruja Ignatova for Money Laundering, cheating and other charges.

How was she able to do such Fraud?

Cryptocurrency is a new area, People are not much aware of this field no regulator is looking after, this makes easier for scamsters like Ruja to do the fraud. Another reason is the Ponzi Scheme. People want quick money These people promise quick money in less time, so people get influenced, and in greed, they get trapped losing their hard-earned money.

 

Bitcoin Single Biggest Day Dip

Bitcoin has just taken the single biggest day dip that it’s had in years

Bitcoin has just taken the single biggest day dip that it’s had in years technically this happened over two days I guess but 51 percent to the bottom over 50 percent in 24 hours 63 percent if you’re measuring from the local top that we had about three weeks ago 63 percent you know what this looks like to me about four years ago back in August of 2016 I’m gonna make a comparison to four years ago it’s not exactly the same I get that you know the dip back here not as severe I get that but there are some similarities for instance the market structure looks similar besides that just like today in 2020 back here in 2016 this was about a year after the market had been going up for a little over a year a lot of people were suspicious back in 2016 of the this first rally right here see this first rally in 2016 was caused because a lot of people bought into a Ponzi scheme so people weren’t sure if it was leave of, if it was legitimate so this second rally the one I’m comparing it to people felt a little bit better about this one because you know they just put a little bit more of their trust and boom shakeout just like we have today yet after this Bitcoin never went that low again.

I was disheartened to see a 50% shakeout in Bitcoin of course I was disheartened did I ever think of selling did I ever think of capitulating no I honestly didn’t the fundamentals for Bitcoin are still there, you know that the better question is if Bitcoin is supposed to be this uncorrelated asset Hey bitcoins supposed to be this hedge what the hell is going on hedges are not supposed to do this and the global markets are tanking all across the world if Bitcoin was ever gonna be a hedge wouldn’t now let’s see.

Comparing 2008 global financial crisis

I want to bring you back now to twelve years ago this was before Bitcoin even existed so we need to go to traditional markets I’m talking of course about a special time in financial history and that was the 2008 global financial crisis many people consider the 2008 global financial crisis to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression now that’s of course before 2020 but everything in 2008 tanked including the hedge gold did you know that gold also suffered a massive dip in 2008 despite the fact that it truly is an uncorrelated hedge why did that happen gold is supposed to be the hedge well I mean Gold probably dipped for you know a multitude of reasons it’s probably most likely you know there’s fear and negativity in the air in 2008 maybe some people needed cash maybe hedge funds were managing their money overall I think it was just because there was a lot of fear and negativity in the world at this time but guess what gold is a hedge a few months passed and gold went right back up and you know the year passed and it went right back up and pretty soon gold was rallying higher than ever so the point is even hedges are susceptible to massive sell off so hopefully just like gold in 2008 hopefully we see Bitcoin rallying backup as well it’s not just me who thinks that by the way Ari Paul is the chief investment officer for an investment firm and he thinks something similar he says he says I’ve had a really simple mental model for Bitcoin in a severe equity sell-off that’s been unchanged since literally 2006 look at gold heading into during and coming out of the 2008 financial crisis I think that’s Bitcoin this time around and that’s what I think.

Latest News on Crypto Bitcoin

Bitcoin is still up around 10% this year the S&P 500 it’s down 13.5 percent so far this year

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is still up around 10% this year the S&P 500 it’s down 13.5 percent so far this year the Dow Jones Industrial Average down over14% and yet if you’re probably asked a lot of professional financial advisor out there they’re probably telling people to buy more stocks in that Bitcoin well that’s so scary Bitcoin stuff trust yourself remember to see the big picture we are an extraordinary times right now for global markets but remember that Bitcoin fundamentals are the same as they’ve always been in fact are getting better all the time the Bitcoin tends to rally exponentially after 1/2event don’t get shaken out okay moving According to Raul Powell the CEO of real vision he tweeted out that hedge funds may have liquidated some of their bitcoin long positions to reduce portfolio risks silly guys obviously this makes sense though to the hedge fund manager but i think that this has actually been something that is an underappreciated factor in the current bitcoin price drop.

We spent a lot of time back in 2019 talking about hedge funds and high net-worth individuals and other big-money players actually getting into Bitcoin it’s unsurprising that these big-money tourists would be some of the first ones to run for the exits at the first sign of any real trouble in the markets, the clever ones of course will stay because bitcoins up 10% this year whatever thing else is down massively but many of these traditional players they are adding sell pressure at the same time that we see the plus tokens scam cashing out and big crypto whales splashing around trying manipulate the markets even more so obviously it’s no surprise the Bitcoin has taken a big tumble with all these massive forces acting on the price.

Coin project Bitminutes

 

Cons first DAP has been announced for a coin project, it’s called bitminutes is a platform that tokenized is mobile airtime a coin will be able to be swapped for tokenized airtime or the BMT tokens which can then be traded for real airtime to either top up a mobile or as a way to easily swap value a Summa by trading those tokenized minutes this is all part of the overall vision to bring a stable and trusted digital currency to Africa.

Overinflated fiat currencies and a really fractured continental approach towards interoperability of finance this has been a big hindrance to economic activity across the continent has been a barrier for regular people all over Africa to be able to access financial services a conman 11 a conscript regime it’s finally becoming real with enough willpower anything can happen.

Cardano announced their layer to scaling solution called  Hydra

Big news from Cardano, they have just announced their layer to scaling solution called Hydra now at a technical level Hydra will use state channels as a second layer scaling solution for the Cardano blockchain thus the state channels will in essence shard Cardano without actually sharding Cardano ledger itself hydra will be built on top of the stake pools in Cardano and each pool operator will thus be able to operate their own state channel or hydra head if you will now at this time simulations are showing that each Hydra head can handle around 1,000 transactions per second so if for example we have a thousand stake pool search handling around a thousand transactions per second then Cardano could theoretically achieve a throughput as high as 1 million transactions per second no you read that correct 1 million transactions per second. Hydra has been in the works for five years and will serve as a key piece of the card ah no proof of stake protocol this is definitely small some stuff, we will really start seeing some of the awesome things that Cardano is actually capable of and I think it’s gonna surprise a lot of people.

India’s central bank plans to fight the Supreme Court crypto ruling

India’s central bank plans to fight the Supreme Court crypto ruling which as we all know overturned their ban on banks being able to provide services to crypto exchanges and for regular people being able to deposit Fiat to be able to buy Bitcoin in the first place central bank’s man can’t trust them as far as you can throw them and they’re pretty heavy what a great example of just how governments are just anti human organizations only focused on their own sociopathic mechanisms of Dominion and monopoly governments man anyway so the stated reason for why the RBI will lodge a review petition over the court ruling is that the bringing back of crypto trading could pose a risk to the banking system and this was cited as the primary reason behind the central bank’s response to what the Supreme Court said and you know yeah they’re kind of right crypto indeed erode their authority it erodes their monopoly on power and this is a good thing for people it does pose a risk to the banking system.Indians like everyone everywhere want freedom of Finance let us hope that the court upholds its decision and actually lets the free access to crypto currency continue in India we do not need more limbo for the crypto markets in one of the world’s biggest markets.