Deciding – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

China is beating the U.S. when it comes to innovation in online money, posing challenges to the U.S. dollar’s status as the de facto monetary reserve. Nearly 80 countries — including China and the U.S. — are in the process of developing a CBDC, or Central Bank Digital Currency. It’s a form of money that’s regulated but exists entirely online. China has already launched its digital yuan to more than a million Chinese citizens, while the U.S. is still largely focused on research.

The two groups tasked with this research in the U.S., MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, are parsing out what a digital currency might look like for Americans. Privacy is a major concern, so researchers and analysts are observing China’s digital yuan rollout.

“I think that if there is a digital dollar, privacy is going to be a very, very important part of that,” said Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. “The United States is pretty different than China.”

Another concern is access. According to the Pew Research Center, 7% of Americans say they don’t use the internet. For Black Americans, that rises to 9%, and for Americans over the age of 65, that rises to 25%. Americans with a disability are about three times as likely as those without a disability to say they never go online. That is part of what MIT is researching.

“Most of the work that we’re doing assumes that CBDC will coexist with physical cash and that users will still be able to use physical cash if they want to,” Narula said.

The idea of a CBDC in the U.S. is aimed, in part, at making sure the dollar stays the monetary leader in the world economy.

“The United States should not rest on its current leadership in this area. It should push ahead and develop a clear strategy for how to remain very strong and take advantage of the strength of the dollar,” said Darrell Duffie, professor of finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Others see the digital yuan as insidious.

“The digital yuan is the largest threat to the West that we’ve faced in the last 30, 40 years. It allows China to get their claws into everyone in the West and allows them to export their digital authoritarianism,” said Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management.

Watch CNBC’s deep dive video into CDBCs to learn more.

But Warren is no fool. All of this genesis bears witness to some of the station’s older listeners “who grew up with WMMR”. He says the last 200 songs will represent a consensus between these ballots and that “No. 1 is by far number 1. “I wouldn’t let it spoil, what a consensus, but I wonder. Would that be what my friends, who are tired too, predict? “Ladder to Heaven”? “Born to Run”? Would Aretha Franklin perform her usual canonical role of bringing both Black America and women to the top of the pile? Didn’t anyone put the words “Sinead” and “O’Connor” on their ballot?

One compelling aspect of this countdown business is philosophical. With more than 2,000 songs, a certain percentage would likely always match the taste of XPN. Local acts like the Hooters, Amos Lee and Low Cut Connie are very present here. And believe it or not, “local” extends to Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, who had nearly 30 entries between them by Monday noon. But how would a countdown of the 2,020 greatest songs run, for example at WDAS, where the format is now old-school R&B and “The Steve Harvey Morning Show” anchors the Am-Block? Power 99 used to have a nightly countdown show in which one song – Shirley Murdock’s “As We Lay” or Keith Sweat’s “Make It Last Forever” or Prince’s “Adore” – dominated for weeks. What would a more epoch-making company look like? Would WMMR find a way to move forward there too?

And what would the same countdown at a similar station in Anchorage or Montgomery or Chicago or the Bay Area reveal? Does it matter that some company sizes flattened the pop palette? Can a diagram still quantify local tastes? Would an accurate answer prove as annoying as accurate polling data, since we now partially live on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube? Is this whole process just too random and subjective to continue?

I agree no; it is not. I appreciate the folly, the surprises, the mind-boggling idea that a ranking process could put the number 1,995 next to something as heavenly as Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” and play another song after Ella Fitzgerald made “Mack the Knife” In Exciting Mass murder. I think “Brilliant Disguise” is a better Springsteen song than certain finalist “Born to Run” but no chart will ever reflect that because it’s a blasphemous position. But I like the drama of blasphemy and the certainty of what a diagram tells you: modernization is hard work. XPN is still a kaleidoscope.

It is true that you can create your own massive, perfectly tailored playlist. But you will miss the astonishment that Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” starts the 767-to-764 block and A Tribe Called Quest’s “scenario” tears it to pieces. It wouldn’t be a shock to hear Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne Regrette Rien” (1.093) follow Notorious BIG’s “Juicy” (1.094), which Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Band on the Run” had followed ”(1.095 ). There’s nothing wrong with Dan Fogelberg’s 40-year-old Same Auld Lang Syne, and he swears it’s the lonely ghost lurking on Taylor Swift’s two quarantine albums. Same thing – if you get up late enough – to hear XPN’s newbie Rahman Wortman go a little crazy and exclaim that Outkast’s “BO B (Bombs Over Baghdad)” actually made the cut.

And Olivia Newton-John’s “Xanadu” and the Richard Harris travesty known as “MacArthur Park” certainly couldn’t be frightened. I suspect the people who voted for these two knew they were trolls. But it doesn’t matter. Even songs that are as confusing (well, so terrible) as they culminated in days and days from something we have become increasingly estranged from: word of mouth.