Why is the black market called the “black” market? This type of market has existed for as long as there has been trade, but the name “black market” appears to have become common after World War 2 and it is probably only called black because it is a shadow, or hidden market. A black market […]
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Why do prices always go up? They go up because the value of our money decreases. If you go online, you can find inflation calculators for most currencies. For some countries, those currencies no longer exist. If you look at any country that has a currency with a history, even if that is only a
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What is a limited company and a shell company? A limited company is one where the risk is limited to the money the company has. A shell company is a company without any business operations or assets. I’m going to use the word company here, but there are some differences between company and corporation. The
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What is Bitcoin? It is the original, and the most famous, digital currency. Let’s look at what Bitcoin is, why it was created, and how it works. Bitcoin was introduced to the world in 2009 by someone who said their name was Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is or even if it is
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What caused the Great Depression? There are many causes. Some of them are the investment bubble, the Wall Street Crash, the credit boom, the collapse of world trade due to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, bank failures, and the gold standard. Let’s look at these. First, what exactly was the Great Depression? In begin in 1929, the
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Is palm oil bad? It depends. It is bad in terms of health and environmental costs, but it is good because it has more oil than other crops and provides an income for people who would otherwise be living in poverty. What is palm oil? It is made from the fruit of the African oil
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What is the sunk cost fallacy? It is where people are reluctant to abandon a course of action because they have invested a lot of time or money in it, despite abandoning it being the most logical choice. In economics, a sunk cost is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be returned.
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What is your risk of dying every year? It depends on your gender, age, race, where you live, and so many other factors, but it is possible to make a rough estimate of your chances of dying at every age. A person’s statistical risk of dying at every age is useful knowledge for governments, the
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What is a spinning jenny? It is a machine that can spin cotton into multiple reels of thread at the same time. It revolutionized the textile industry and is one of the key machines of the Industrial Revolution. There is a story that the inventor, James Hargreaves, named the spinning jenny after his wife Jenny,
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What is a subprime mortgage? It is a mortgage given to someone with a low credit rating who is thought to be a risk of non-repayment. They have more risk for banks, so they have much higher interest rates. As an interesting aside, the word “mortgage” comes from the old French “mort”, which meant “death”
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