Money

 Pothole Economics: The Disastrous Saboteurs of Our Future

US national debt tops $35T for first time; current spending projections have total debt passing $56T by 2034 (More) 

Time - One of the first checks ever recorded was written in the 11th century, in a marketplace in Basra, in present-day Iraq. There, a merchant issued a sakk: written instructions to his bank to make a payment from his account. A thousand years later, this form of payment is finally disappearing. Target said it would stop accepting checks as of July 15; other retailers, including Whole Foods and Old Navy, have already stopped accepting them. It’s just the latest sign that the form of payment is nearing obsolescence: The average American writes just one check a year, down from 3 in 2016, according to a Federal Reserve survey. 

“I absolutely think that we are moving to a world of ‘check zero,’” says Scott Anchin, vice president at the Independent Community Bankers of America. “As we see new payment methods come to the fore, we see new opportunities for consumers and businesses to move away from check usage.” 

From a security perspective, this is a positive. Checks are not particularly safe ways to send money. They have your account and routing numbers on them, sensitive information that criminals could use. They can be stolen in the mail and changed to be made out to different people or for different amounts. For instance, in April 2023, a U.S. Postal Service employee stole $24 million in checks from the mail and sold them through Telegram, a popular messaging app, according to a federal indictment in the Western District of North Carolina. 

Flawed as checks are, though, they haven’t gone away entirely because many people still depend on them, especially to pay rent and utility bills. But experts say a new kind of payment may finally change that.The newest type of payment— the first to be introduced in the U.S. since the ACH network in the 1970s—is called instant payments, in which money moves from your account to another account immediately. You may think you already use instant payments with services like Venmo, but you don’t—behind the scenes, the money can take some time to move, and it’s not coming directly from your bank account but from a Venmo account, for instance.

 MSNBC - LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has a request for Vice President Kamala Harris, should she become president: replace Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission. Khan is “waging war on American business,” he told CNN last week. Hoffman, to be clear, is not just another man with an opinion. The billionaire and political megadonor donated $10 million to the Biden-Harris campaign, pushed his peers to do the same and is planning on a major fundraising push in Silicon Valley for Harris. And his public demand to oust Khan is the latest sign America’s billionaires need to be reminded that government policy shouldn’t be dictated by those with the largest checkbook.