My son has a football (soccer) shirt that has Standard Chartered emblazoned on it. Standard Chartered was one of the most stable British-listed banks during the financial crisis. They also seemed to be paragons of corporate virtue in the messy world of British banks. Not any longer! Yesterday, US regulators claimed that Standard Chartered have for a decade or more run a 'rogue' unit that schemed with Iran's government to hide £160bn in illegal transactions (click here for BBC coverage). Its shares at one stage today were down 25%. Michael White has an interesting piece over at the Guardian on this story.
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.