Click here for a post by J. Bradford DeLong, where he argues that too much finance can be bad for economic growth. Although I might have a vested interest in making a counter argument, I actually believe that Brad DeLong might be correct. For sure, financial deepening has been an important driver of economic growth over the past two centuries (see here and here), but maybe the relationship between financial development and economic growth is an inverted U shaped and we are now on a downwards slope!
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.