Money Talks

If every era has its quintessential collectible, something that speaks to the historical moment and becomes a seeming route to riches, ours is clearly the “non-fungible token” (or NFT). Over the past year, NFTs — which include, among other things pieces of digital art, digital cards featuring NBA highlights, and limited-series music albums, all recorded on the blockchain — have become objects of obsession and financial speculation, fueling hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions, the biggest of which happened just a couple of weeks ago, when a 10-second video clip created by digital artist Beeple sold for $6.7 million…

Money Talks

With the stocks of GameStop, AMC, Nokia and others tumbling back to reality — down some 65% from their recent highs — it probably won’t be long before the Great Meme Stock War is over. But regardless, we already know who the big winner was: struggling theater chain AMC, which six weeks ago looked like it might be headed out of business and now has a realistic chance of making it until the pandemic ends. By contrast, GameStop — the true darling of meme stock investors — seems to be in little better shape than it was at the start…

Money Talks

On May 22, 2010, a Bitcoin developer named Laszlo Hanyecz bought what may have been the most expensive meal in human history when he paid someone 10,000 Bitcoins to pick up and deliver him two pizzas from Papa John’s. Given that one Bitcoin is now worth more than $30,000, those pizzas cost, in retrospect, somewhere north of $300 million.

Nowadays, of course, no one would think of shelling out Bitcoin for something as mundane as a pizza without thinking first about how much money they might be giving up in the future. In the years since Hanyecz’s splurge, Bitcoin has…

Money Talks

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.

Crises have a way of reshaping behavior in ways that endure long after the trouble has passed. The stock market crash of 1929 scared ordinary Americans out of the stock market for decades. The Great Depression that followed famously instilled habits of thriftiness and caution in an entire generation. 9/11 remade our expectations of what you had to do to get on an airplane or even walk into an office building.

Ever since the coronavirus hit in March, businesses and pundits and social scientists…

Money Talks

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.

In 1720, the English economy was gripped by a speculative mania known as the South Sea Bubble. The hysteria began with a steep rise in the stock price of a government-connected firm called the South Sea Company, but soon investors were happily bidding up stock prices across the board. In response, a host of new companies offering a wide array of unlikely products and services quickly incorporated and sold shares to hungry investors. One company described its business as trading in hair. …

Money Talks

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.

If there’s been one cliché that has defined the stock market over the past eight months, it’s that “the market is disconnected from the real economy.” With stocks hitting all-time highs in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic — even though the U.S. economy was in recession and unemployment had risen sharply — it was easy to argue that stock prices had lost connection to economic reality. …

Money Talks

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.

On April 13, 1957, America was rocked by a national crisis: The mail did not come. It was a Saturday, and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, facing a budget crisis, decided to cut off Saturday deliveries. The decision was sensible, economically speaking. But it was politically disastrous, provoking a huge outcry from Americans who found it intolerable to wait two days for a letter. …

Money Talks

Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.

On July 11, the American economy hit a key milestone in its recovery from the coronavirus: the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World reopened. The world’s most popular theme park had been shuttered since March 16, and the expectation was that Disney lovers from across the U.S., frustrated after months indoors, would flock to Orlando. And in the weeks leading up to the reopening, Disney had more than enough reservations to fill the park to its new, limited capacity. But as reopening day approached…