The Global Spreadsheet Goes Distributed: Blockchain, USD Liquidity, and Time-Space Power
Blockchain creates a new form of time-space power that is globally distributed, computationally recursive, continuously synchronized, and increasingly programmable.
The Hangman’s Rope: How the USSR Created the Eurodollar Market that Later Strangled It
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, May 17) The Hangman’s Rope: How the USSR Created the Eurodollar Market that Later Strangled It. apennings.com https://apennings.com/dystopian-economies/the-hangmans-rope-how-the-ussr-created-the-eurodollar-market-that-later-strangled-it/ “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” – Attributed to Vladimir Lenin Introduction The “Third World Debt Crisis” of the 1980s was a decisive […]
Petrodollars, Shock Therapy, and the Emergence of Global Spreadsheet Logic
The 1980s debt crisis was therefore not simply the failure of development economics. It was the birth of global spreadsheet capitalism, a system whose logic continues to structure the world economy today, and whose next phase may culminate in AI-mediated planetary monetary coordination.
When the Fed Speaks, Global Spreadsheets Reformulate the Future
The modern world economy operates as a synchronized symbolic computation system. A rate cut, therefore, triggers not a single reaction but billions of linked recalculations occurring simultaneously across financial terminals such as the Bloomberg Terminal, BlackRock’s Aladdin, LSEG’s Workspace, and the Wind Information Terminal. The moment the announcement appears, spreadsheet logic activates globally.
Stablecoins, SACT-AI, and the Future of Global Liquidity for Sustainable Development
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Apr 28) Stablecoins, SACT-AI, and the Future of Global Liquidity for Sustainable Development. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/stablecoins-sact-ai-and-the-future-of-global-liquidity-for-sustainable-development/ Introduction The impending implementation of Treasury-backed stablecoins suggests a the onset of a profound shift in the architecture of global finance. What appears, at first glance, to be a technical innovation in digital […]
When Treasuries Went Digital and Built the Global USD System
The transformation of US Treasuries from paper to electronic form enabled scaling global liquidity, coordinating financial markets, and sustaining the vast network of dollar-based transactions that define today’s world economy.
From Gold to Grid and the “Information Standard” to the SACT-AI Engine
The blog post explores the transition of the global monetary order from the physical gold standard of Bretton Woods to Walter Wriston’s “Information Standard,” and finally to the proposed SACT-AI (Substitution, Abstraction, Computing, and Telecommunications) framework. It argues that money has transitioned into “Spreadsheet Capitalism,” where national economies are managed and disciplined by digital grids.
Neutralizing the Milkshake Effect in SACT-AI Bancor/ICU Monetary Coordination
SACT-AI transforms the milkshake effect from an extractive force into a managed, symmetric flow. USD shortages are neutralized because liquidity is generated within the Bancor ledger rather than being pulled from peripheral markets.
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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
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