Top Financial Stories 2013

I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news.

Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and italicize the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story.

Further, I cannot help the fact that in the list as below currency issues keep coming up. That is a fact about the year, not I think about my biases.

All that said, here is this year's list.

January 2013: The tablet/smartphone wars. Announcement of the BlackBerry 10 from Canadian concern RiM. Concurrently, RiM changes its name to BlackBerry. This will be their big final bid to remain a player on the level of Apple and the Android group. It will fail.

February 2013: Currency as policy. A G-20 finance ministers' meeting in Moscow, Russia, focuses attention on competitive devaluations. Japan escapes explicit censure at the meeting, though the yen is on all minds. Meanwhile, in a related development, Russia was aggressively buying gold. In August an expert on world currency issues told me that Russia had acquired 1/8th of the gold of the U.S. Russia has 1/8th the economy of the U.S., too, so in terms of the gold-to-GDP ratio they have attained parity.

March 2013: Ever-morphing Eurozone crisis. The first form of the proposal for Cyprus's bank bail-in, with a charge against even insured depositors, sets off latest round of recriminations between southern and northern European countries.

April 2013: Currency alternatives. Sudden bitcoin volatility raises the profile of the algorithmic cybercurrency, which is also splitting hard-money folks by confusing gold bugs. EconomicPolicyJournal.com, the often-excellent policy journal for Austrian types run by Robert Wenzel, has distinguished itself by its anti-bitcoin stance.

May 2013: Currency speculations. Australian dollar falls sharply against the US dollar amidst rumors of George Soros' involvement. In some mind, this rouses memories of how Soros became famous, back in '92.

June 2013: Intellectual property. U.S. Supreme Court limits gene patents. IP hawks and IP doves have a lot to argue about. But one point on which they are agreed of late is that SCOTUS is getting more dovish by the year.

July 2013: Deterioration of US municipalities' finances. Biggest US municipal bankruptcy filing ever. Detroit. 'Nuff said.

August 2013: Electronic infrastructure. Nasdaq software malfunction lasts for three hours!

September 2013: Currency as policy. U.S. Federal Reserve decides not to announce any "tapering" after all, delights Wall Street. [It will finally do a little tapering in the final days of the year.]

October 2013: Policy deadlocks. U.S. govt shutdown and close approach to the debt ceiling harm U.S. credit.

November 2013: Ever-morphing Eurozone crisis. The European Commission warns Spain and Italy that their 2014 budgets are out of line.

December 2013: Eurozone as model. Unrest in Kiev, Ukraine, over the government's refusal to enter into closer trade ties with the EU. The protest gets a major boost on December 11, when police make a show of force but are successfully rebuffed by protestors occupying the city's Independence Square.

If you find the juxtaposition of this story with the two "Eurozone as crisis" stories on this list rather jarring: I can't help that. With all its troubles, the zone has its admirers. "Soft power" and all that. when was the last time a crowd risked police truncheons upside their heads in support of more trade between the country of its participants and the U.S.?

Happy new year.

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