Will BRICS Effectively Tokenize Rare Earth Elements to Back a New Currency?
Rose Mason in Medium makes a compelling plea for the tokenization of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) currently in high demand around the world. From another angle, Cyrus Janssen presents an intriguing but ultimately flawed argument that the BRICS+ countries will use REEs to back a new currency to challenge the US dollar.[1] This post examines […]
USD Centrality and Network Effects in the Global Economy
When we say the USD/eurodollar is a cell at the center of the global spreadsheet, we mean every balance sheet in the world, whether in New York, London, Shanghai, or São Paulo, has at least one column denominated in USD. A loan in yen, a bond in euros, or a derivative in pesos ultimately references the USD cell through conversions, swaps, or collateral rules.
LSEG Workspace as the Central Spreadsheet Grid for Eurodollars
LSEG Workspace is a giant live spreadsheet that organizes the eurodollar system into cells and formulas. Treasuries and Fed rates are the anchor cells. Repo, FX swaps, and offshore deposits are formula-driven references.
Reprogramming Spreadsheet Capitalism for Climate Resilience
In the framework of spreadsheet capitalism, capital no longer exists solely as a tangible asset, productive relation, or factor of industrial production—it is reconstituted as a symbolic, programmable logic embedded in and animated by digital spreadsheets. Drawing on a semiotic-computational framework, this transformation reveals how capital is not simply represented in spreadsheets but reborn through symbolic substitution, abstract modeling, and procedural calculation.
Stablecoins, Blockchains, and the Semiotic-Telecom-Computational Stack of Spreadsheet Capitalism
This post continues the spreadsheet capitalism framework, focusing on crypto stablecoins as a further manifestation of the semiotic-symbolic gridmatic technologies that synthesize writing-as-substitution with computation-as-symbolic-action. Yet, unlike Excel and other spreadsheets, crypto blockchains add irreversibility, temporal structure, and global accessibility. It is a semiotic-computational system with historical memory and real-time synchronization, providing the international grid […]
Spreadsheet Formulas and the Temporal Imperatives of the Leveraged Buyout Economy
The IBM PC and its compatibles (Compaq, Dell, DEC Rainbow 100), powered by Intel’s microprocessors, provided the hardware platform for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet to thrive in the 1980s. The spreadsheet’s features, combined with Intel’s 8088’s processing power, made it a versatile tool for financial professionals. This post analyzes the digital spreadsheet’s capability to use […]
Lotus 1-2-3, Temporal Finance, and the Rise of Spreadsheet Capitalism
One of the books I read during my PhD years was Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco (1989), about the $25 billion leveraged buyout (LBO) of the iconic conglomerate (tobacco/snacks/) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). An LBO is the purchase of a company using large amounts of short-term debt and […]
Weak Domestic Dollar, Strong Global Dollar
Currently the dollar is weak domestically and strong globally. In this post, I examine the dynamics of the US dollar and why it operates differently within the domestic US and globally.
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About Me
Professor (full) at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Research Professor for Stony Brook University. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, digital economics, and global political economy
You can reach me at:
anthony.pennings@gmail.com
apennings70@gmail.com
anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
About me
Writings by Category
- artificial intelligence
- automatrix
- blockchain
- books and films
- characteristics of digital media
- creative cities
- creative industries
- crisis communications
- cryptocurrencies
- cultural Industries
- data analytics and meaning
- democratic political economies
- digital coordination
- digital destruction
- digital geography
- digital media economics
- digital media management
- digital monetarism
- digital spreadsheets
- disaster risk management
- disruption
- dystopian economies
- educational innovations
- electric money
- enabling frameworks
- enterprise systems
- financial news
- financial technology
- food policy and security
- futurists
- geopolitical risk
- global communications
- global e-commerce
- health IT
- how IT came to rule the world
- intellectual property
- journalism
- meaning makers
- meaningful play
- media strategies
- mobile technologies
- multimedia
- political economies in sf
- political economy of media
- public administration
- science and technology studies
- sensing technologies
- smart new deal
- social media
- space systems
- spreadsheet logic
- strategic communications
- sustainable development
- technologies of meaning
- technology management
- telecom policy and net neutrality
- telegraphic political economy
- telelearn/telework
- the cold war
- the smith effect
- uncategorized
- visual literacy and rhetoric
