I have just spent a week in Ellmau, a picturesque village in the Austrian Tirol. I love visiting Austria. However, it had been five years since I was last in Austria, and the changes in the make-up of my fellow holidaymakers was remarkable. On my visits before 2007, there had been many Irish, English, Scottish, French and Italian tourists. In 2012, 95% of the tourists in our resort were German. What does this tell us about the respective health of these European economies? In addition, I was taken aback by the levels of freight traffic out of Austria and into Germany. Germany (using my extremely unscientific methods) appears to be booming.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.