We extend your Money Senses
When you travel through the Gulf States, you quickly realize that not every part of the world has succumbed to the sub-prime crisis. The building booms in Dubai and Doha are truly remarkable. High-rise developments are sprouting up all over the place. Never before have I seen so many cranes crammed into such tiny spaces. […]
By NAOMI ROVNICK and SAM GREENHILL
The bosses of Britain’s largest companies are being paid more than 100 times as much as the average worker, it was revealed yesterday.
While ordinary wage-earners typically earned £30,000 last year, chief executives’ pay has doubled over the past five years to a staggering £3.2million.
It means top executives now […]
The Pudong Financial District in Shanghai as seen from the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center.
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG, Oct. 25 — China said Thursday that its economy expanded at a powerful 11.5 percent annual pace in the third quarter, a slight slowing from the second quarter that might help Beijing officials control inflation.
But […]
Economic Growth Offsets
Efforts to Curb Demand;
Ambivalence on Ethanol
By PATRICK BARTA
October 23, 2007
Asia’s fast-growing economies have made some progress in addressing their seemingly insatiable demand for oil, but they continue to fall far short of the cuts needed to significantly reduce pressure on global supplies.
Galloping growth in Asia, led by China, was one of the key […]
Currency affairs: the history of cash
Sterling
The first mention of sterling is in 1078 as “sterilensis”, and by the 13th century the term was in common usage. England had a uniform national currency 600 years before France, and 900 years before either Germany or Italy.
The pound was established in 1560 by Elizabeth I and its […]
E-money: the future of cash
We may not be that far away from a world where cash follows the chequebook into oblivion and few transactions are conducted face to face. There are in excess of 20 billion payments of less than £10 made every year; they could all go cashless.
E-money comes in three forms, two […]
Credit cards, debit cards and cheques
Not so long ago, it was relatively difficult to open an account with one of the clearing banks, and the Mainwarings and Wilsons who ran the institutions long catered principally to the professional classes, discussing their affairs over a glass of Amontillado in the manager’s office.
Though bounders could […]
The Gold Standard
Entrusting the issue of banknotes to one central authority effectively removed the danger of bankruptcy, but it did raise the spectre of inflation. This would happen if a central bank printed too much money. (To understand this, imagine you were an egg seller and everyone suddenly had twice as much cash; you […]
Primitive Banks
At this stage there were no coins. Instead, the value of metal was judged by its weight. The legacy of this can be seen in words such as the English “spend”, which is derived from the Latin verb expendere, meaning “to weigh”.
Before coins (and later, bank-notes) could come into existence, the institution […]
Money, money, money: The history of cash
Some say that it makes the world go round, others call it the root of all evil. But what exactly is money? Why do we need it? And where did it come from? As economists herald the advent of a cashless society, Johnny Acton tells the story of man’s […]