Today’s post is from Adrian Blundell-Wignall and builds on his OECD working paper The Bitcoin Question: Currency versus Trust-less Transfer Technology. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of its member countries.
The working paper argues that some of the technologies associated with crypto-currencies are very interesting and may one day become a serious disruptive technology for financial intermediaries—but that these technologies should be thought about separately from the crypto-currencies like Bitcoin that have some very dubious uses. These coins, the paper argues, can never replace legal tender like dollars. However, some Bitcoin proponents seem to be very confused about the place crypto-currencies occupy versus legal tender. More...

Today’s article is by Andy Martin, Lecturer in the Department of French at Cambridge University. His latest book is The Boxer and The Goal Keeper: Sartre versus Camus
I was once having a chat with a Great Writer. I was an ardent admirer of his work, so I was probably a little awe-struck (now I would probably tone down the awe, but I was in a phase of youthful enthusiasm). Naturally, I raved on about one of his earlier works. He was not just modest (in fact he wasn’t really a modest guy at all), he had genuine doubts about everything he had done. He wasn’t really sure that all those novels deserved the accolades. More...

By Jon Marcus. Two years. That’s how long it takes William Lankin’s fast-growing electrical contracting company to teach new hires with four-year university degrees the tricks of the trade.
These college grads “have learned the book stuff, but they don’t have real-world experience,” said Lankin, vice president of Industrial Electric. “They don’t know how to work with other people, or subcontractors — how to actually do business.”
Bringing them up to speed while paying them a salary is time-consuming and expensive, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll be good enough to keep. More...