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Financial

Ethan McGowan

Schools must plan for digital money resilience as payments go cashless Keep layered rails—fast digital by default, cash and offline modes for outages Pilot CBDC/stablecoin use with strict safeguards, contracts, and treasury diversification

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David O'Neill

Families insure children’s income shocks—cash for short hits, saving for long ones In ageing, low-growth countries, this scales nationally: Japan’s seniors work longer to steady households Policy fix: public “reinsurance” via income-linked tuition, midlife upskilling, and flexible senior roles in education

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Ethan McGowan

Stablecoin yields mimic Ponzi dynamics and amplify run risk Ban interest on payment tokens; regulate platforms that bolt on returns Educators and institutions should teach risks and keep payments separate from investments

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Ethan McGowan

Europe shouldn’t ban multi-issuer stablecoins; it should backstop them Require joint redemption, a prefunded mutual buffer, and fast resolution to contain failures This builds euro-scale alternatives to dollar coins while reducing systemic risk

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Ethan McGowan

Mortgage rates move fast; deposit rate elasticity stays weak Most households ignore higher yields; wealthy react more but leave money Clear benchmarks, auto-sweeps, and education can raise responsiveness safely A single fi

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David O'Neill

Small rate tweaks rarely change investment Firms follow pecking order financing—cash first, then debt, equity last Targeted credit tools and skills policy move capex more than blanket cuts Euro-area firms sent a clear me

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David O'Neill

Debt stigma slows borrowing and drags on money velocity Purpose-framed, safeguarded credit boosts productive investment in education and firms Use macroprudential guardrails to lift growth without fueling bubbles Debt stigma isn

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Ethan McGowan

Firms use complexity to hide true costs UK evidence shows obfuscation raises prices even with competition Standard total-price labels, algorithm-aware enforcement, and price literacy can protect consumers In the United Kingdom,

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David O'Neill

A weak dollar is a systemic risk for non-key currency economies Losses hit reserves, balance sheets, and trade through dollar pricing Diversify reserves, match contract and debt currencies, and build hedging One fact stands out

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Keith Lee

Export controls can accelerate innovation by forcing substitution China’s AI stack shows rapid adaptation under GPU limits Education must train for constraints, secure compute, and resilient supply chains The fastest st

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Keith Lee

Digital money has arrived at scale Public rails should anchor trust while markets build services Schools and regulators must prepare for multi-rail payments with privacy, openness, and interoperability A single numb

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Keith Lee

EU firms keep investing despite weaker growth and falling U.S.

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Ethan McGowan

Through 2023, trade decoupling welfare held up as flows re-routed rather than collapsed New tariffs and export controls in 2024–2025 risk delayed cost spikes and shortages by 2026 Protect education: keep open lanes, diversify sourcing, and lean on services

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David O'Neill

Specialized banks help firms but amplify shocks in their niche Concentration risk—now visible in CRE—can turn local downturns into credit crunches Policy should “specialise, but insure” with sectoral buffers, syndication, and clean risk transfer

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David O'Neill

East and West govern schools differently These institutional differences shaped learning losses and recovery Western systems need directed autonomy; Asian systems need lighter admin with teacher discretion One crucial figu

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Ethan McGowan

The EU can’t act like a federation with a 1–1.5% GNI budget A modest EU federal tax with conditional budgeting would fund shared projects and defuse North–South distributional fights Pair ETS/CBAM/CORE revenues with strict caps and transparency to build consent and repay common debt

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Ethan McGowan

CBDC success depends on token network effects, not cash-back incentives Merchant acceptance and interoperability tip usage Design rails and transparency—not subsidies—win The most critical fact in payments today i

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Keith Lee

Adjusted deflators reveal hidden gains in US manufacturing productivity The bottleneck is skills, not machines Scale capital-intensive training, stackable credentials, and adult apprenticeships The standard view sugges

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David O'Neill

Services trade is increasingly borderless and digital Tariffs miss; data rules, licensing, and standards decide access Train for exportable skills and build trust-based regimes to unlock growth In 2024, the world exporte

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