The evolution of financial markets will impact on everyone's life, as all areas of our activities are somehow related with finance and economy. The precise prediction of following events in the coming few months is hardly possible, so our attention has to be on the watch of news flow from the world's financial sectors and our actions has to be as possible timely. What is going on?

Though the attention of world's media during the summer period was primarily devoted to the Greece, potentially the most globally important financial and economic processes originate in China and outspread very far away. China already in 2008 reacting on the global financial crises was one of the first countries, which implemented very wide 586 billion US dollars programme of financial stimulation for the development of the country's infrastructure. Though from the outside view Chines have succeeded to overcome global crises and the growth of GDP was the most rapid in the world, the whole mechanism of financial stimulation experienced serious imperfections exaggerating investment projects with insufficient economic reasoning, overvalued development of housing and building new economic disproportions inside the country. The general estimation of the stimulation program indicates that this contributed to the growth of China after 2008 exceeds up to the 90 percent of whole GDP growth (see article by Bill Powel on Time). Nevertheless, several giant projects have really failed.

Though Paul Krugman is among the most prominent critics of the Euro idea [1], there are many other professional economists and journalists criticizing the macroeconomic policy of Euro zone. The problem of Greece has become one of the most disputable because there is permanent pressure of opinions ranging from a flat denial of Euro project to the uncompromising critics of all steps in the process of its implementation. "Realize," the main problem of the European development arises from the bad idea and implementation of common currency and the whole EU project gets stuck on this idea.

We invite you to listen to insights about the economic "machine" provided by an American businessman Ray Dalio.

In XVIIIth century Great Britain had rather large debts, thus some people decided to consolidate it as well as improve its administration. The South Sea Company was born. As its name implies the company was expected to trade with South America and use the profit to repay the debt as well as interest. But the problem was that South America was rules by Spain and Great Britain was at war with it. Still due to ingenious manipulations South Sea Company stock price grew to unbelievable heights. Despite the fact that it never made any profits from trading.

We invite you to see videos by Extra Credits, which tell the story with more details, but in attractive and approachable manner. You can find the playlist on YouTube by following this URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5Aq7g4bil7bnGi0A8gTsawu&index=17. Below you should the embed of the first video.

Central bank is economical institution, which is seen as essential part of the contemporary economics. One of its many functions includes implementation of the monetary policy - namely regulating amount of money circulating in the market (i.e., printing of money). Most commonly it is said that first contemporary central banks emerged by the end of XVII century (starting from England), though there were attempts at creating something similar during the middle ages.

Before the central banks value of money were based on the value raw products (e.g., gold) used to produce a coin. Namely everything was based on a belief that a coin might be melted down and traded for a similar value. This principle is behind the money in Westeros, but the author of the forbes.com article considers the possibilities to create central bank in Westeros. The article is an interesting read to both fans of the show (or books) as well as to the people interested in how central banks emerge and what do they do.

Read more on forbes.com »