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.
(SACT)AI Monetary Coordination: Bancor vs. SDRs
In the age of SACT-AI, the world now possesses the technological tools, symbolic computing, real-time telecom synchronization, and multi-agent governance, to implement a true bancor-style architecture that resolves the structural flaws embedded since Bretton Woods.
Equilibrium and the Turn from Political Economy to Economics
This post looks at a historical turn from political economy to “economics” when the concept of partial equilibrium analysis transformed economics from logical reasoning, historical analysis, and philosophical arguments into a neutral science that could be represented in graphs, equations, and supply-demand modeling with mathematical connections. This shift marked the decline of classical political economy (which focused on broad social and political factors) and the rise of modern economics, centered on mathematical modeling and marginal analysis.
How Schindler Used the List
Innovators in bureaucracy and population technology, the Germans were leaders in the use of telegraph and teletype communications to control their national administrators and armies. By the turn of the century, the Germans had transformed British “political arithmetic” into “statistics” (state-istics), numerical techniques in the service of State and population administration. They used the tabulating machines and punch cards designed for the US census to identify and control the population. These techniques were taken up by the SS in their management of the Final Solution.
Smith Effect III: Adam Smith, the Census Machine, and the Beginnings of IBM
This post further develops the thesis that Adam Smith’s new conception of the wealth set the foundation for modern information practices and calculating technologies.
World Statistics Day
“On this first World Statistics Day I encourage the international community to work with the United Nations to enable all countries to meet their statistical needs.” – BAN KI-MOON Secretary-General of the United Nations Message on World Statistics Day, 20-10-20 Our book Computerization and Development in Southeast Asia, while not specifically about statistics, pointed to […]
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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
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