Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists Examine the Root of All Evil: February 28-March 2, 2014
What could be more appropriate than thinking about money in the economy group?
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
But usually not before they have pierced a whole lot of other people, first. The previous line is even more telling:
Other useful biblical sayings:
Psalm 62:10
Do not trust in extortion or put vain hope in stolen goods; though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them.
Proverbs 15:27
The greedy bring ruin to their households, but the one who hates bribes will live.
Ecclesiastes 2:19
And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.
Matthew 6:19
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
It is a constant irony to me, at least, that the religions so obsessed with the evil of money should have followers legendary in their quest for wealth, earned or not. Perhaps the one follows the other?
It is a greater irony that when history is revised, most often it is the bankers who start the wars, not the average king or peasant.
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)The two branches of Millennium Bank, N.A. will reopen as branches of WashingtonFirst Bank during their normal business hours...As of December 31, 2013, Millennium Bank, N.A. had approximately $130.3 million in total assets and $121.7 million in total deposits. WashingtonFirst Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.00 percent to assume all of the deposits of Millennium Bank, N.A. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the Millennium Bank, N.A., WashingtonFirst Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank's assets...
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $7.7 million. Compared to other alternatives, WashingtonFirst Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Millennium Bank, N.A. is the 4th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Virginia. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Bank of the Commonwealth, Norfolk, on September 23, 2011.
Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania, was closed today by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with First Choice Bank, Mercerville, New Jersey, to assume all of the deposits of Vantage Point Bank.
The sole branch of Vantage Point Bank will reopen as a branch of First Choice Bank during their normal business hours...As of December 31, 2013, Vantage Point Bank had approximately $63.5 million in total assets and $62.5 million in total deposits. First Choice Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.5 percent to assume all of the deposits of Vantage Point Bank. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the Vantage Point Bank, First Choice Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank's assets...
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $8.5 million. Compared to other alternatives, First Choice Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Vantage Point Bank is the 5th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Pennsylvania. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was NOVA Bank, Berwyn, on October 26, 2012.
# # #
Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933 to restore public confidence in the nation's banking system. The FDIC insures deposits at the nation's banks and savings associations, 6,812 as of December 31, 2013. It promotes the safety and soundness of these institutions by identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to which they are exposed. The FDIC receives no federal tax dollars — insured financial institutions fund its operations.
FDIC press releases and other information are available on the Internet at www.fdic.gov, by subscription electronically (go to www.fdic.gov/about/subscriptions/index.html) and may also be obtained through the FDIC's Public Information Center (877-275-3342 or 703-562-2200). PR-17-2014
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)Though I am quite fond of Geneva. I once saw Grace Mugabe buying shoes there.
Calvin expressed himself on usury in a 1545 letter to a friend, Claude de Sachin, in which he criticized the use of certain passages of scripture invoked by people opposed to the charging of interest. He reinterpreted some of these passages, and suggested that others of them had been rendered irrelevant by changed conditions. He also dismissed the argument (based upon the writings of Aristotle) that it is wrong to charge interest for money because money itself is barren. He said that the walls and the roof of a house are barren, too, but it is permissible to charge someone for allowing him to use them. In the same way, money can be made fruitful.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
The truth, as always, is a bit more complicated: He also doted on our duties to the poor and needy and he was a 5-percenter as far as usury was concerned. But open the floodgates he did.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)He's the first Ronald Reagan...the prototype.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)In 1820 Salomon Mayer von Rothschild (1774-1855) established a first bank in Vienna, then the capital of the Austrian Empire. In the course of the beginning industrialisation, the Rothschild bank financed large development projects, like the building of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway to the Moravian mining regions. Rothschild also acted as generous lender of Austrian state chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich and granted copious credits to the Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy.
Former Creditanstalt headquarters, Vienna
The Creditanstalt itself was founded in 1855 by Salomon Mayer's son Anselm von Rothschild as K. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (approximately translated as: Imperial royal privileged Austrian Credit-Institute for Commerce and Industry). Being very successful, it soon became the largest bank of Austria-Hungary.
Anselm's son Albert Salomon von Rothschild assumed the direction of the Credit-Anstalt in 1872, succeeded by Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild in 1911. In 1912 the new headquarters in Vienna's Innere Stadt central district opened in a lavishly decorated Neoclassical building, which is still preserved up to today.
First Republic
The business situation dramatically changed with the lost World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the late 1920s, a principal debtor, the Steyr-Werke AG faced financial difficulties, with bad loans leading to a drain on finances. In October 1929 the Austrian Schober government compelled the allegedly well-financed Credit-Anstalt to assume liabilities, which together with the simultaneous Wall Street Crash entailed the imbalance of the then largest Austrian credit institution.
Creditanstalt had to declare bankruptcy on May 11, 1931. This event resulted in a global financial crisis and ultimately the bank failures of the Great Depression. Too big to fail, Chancellor Otto Ender had the CA ultimately rescued, distributing the enormous share of costs between the Republic, the National Bank of Austria and the Rothschild family. Plans of a nationalisation schemed by the Social Democrats were rejected. However, the institute was de facto state-owned after Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß in 1934 ordered the merger of the institute with the Wiener Bankverein, thus changing its name to Creditanstalt-Bankverein.
Following the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938, Creditanstalt-Bankverein was targeted for both financial and racial reasons. Louis Nathaniel Rothschild was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the losses suffered by the Austrian state when the bank collapsed. Aggrieved and disseized, he emigrated to the US in 1939 after more than one year in custody.
Creditanstalt-Bankverein was later taken over by Deutsche Bank, patronised by Hermann Josef Abs. Though CEO Josef Joham made contact with the US Office of Strategic Services, Creditanstalt also settled the financial issues of several Nazi concentration camps as well as the "Aryanization" of Jewish-owned businesses, like the re-establishment of Sascha-Film as Wien-Film Limited.
Second Republic
After World War II, the bank was finally nationalised by Allied-occupied Austria in 1946 and became mainly a commercial bank and highly involved in Austria's economy, holding stakes in important Austrian companies such as Wienerberger, Steyr-Daimler-Puch, Lenzing AG and Semperit. From 1956 onwards, CA was again partly privatised by issuing 40% shares, though only 10% common stock.
In 1981 the former Social Democratic Minister of Finance Hannes Androsch assumed the office of a general manager, after he had left the Kreisky cabinet. Industrial interests were reduced, while the government share fell to 51%. In the 1980s, CA opened branches in London, New York and Hong Kong, the international orientation towards East-Central Europe was boosted by the fall of the Iron Curtain upon the Revolutions of 1989. Nevertheless, after several difficult lending operations, Creditanstalt became an acquisition candidate.
In 1997, the state-owned shares were sold to Bank Austria (BA), resulting in a crisis in the ruling coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the conservative Austrian People's Party, since Creditanstalt had to be considered part of the conservative sphere of influence, whereas BA with its roots as Red Vienna's Central Savings Bank (Zentralsparkasse) was considered standing politically left. The merger was not finished until 2002, with the creation of Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA), which became part of the German HypoVereinsbank (HVB) group. In 2005 HVB was taken over by the Italian UniCredit holding company. After 153 years, the bank name Creditanstalt was finally erased in 2008, but survived in the CA Immo subsidiary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creditanstalt
It was this collapse of Austrian banking that impoverished the von Trapp family, sending them into the life of the Trapp Family Singers. The Anschluss was just the frosting on the cake that forced the family into exile in America.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...The rate-setting ritual dates back to 1919. Dealers in the early years met in a wood-paneled room in Rothschild’s office in the City of London and raised little Union Jacks to indicate interest. Now the fix is calculated twice a day on telephone conferences at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. London time. The calls usually last 10 minutes, though they can run more than an hour.
Unregulated Process
Firms declare how many bars of gold they want to buy or sell at the current spot price, based on orders from clients and themselves. The price is increased or reduced until the buy and sell amounts are within 50 bars, or about 620 kilograms, of each other, at which point the fix is set.
Traders relay shifts in supply and demand to clients during the call and take fresh orders to buy or sell as the price changes, according to the website of London Gold Market Fixing, where the results are published. At 3 p.m. yesterday, the price was $1,332.25 an ounce. The process is unregulated and the five banks can trade gold and its derivatives throughout the call.
Bloomberg News reported in November concerns among traders and economists that the fixing banks and their clients had an unfair advantage because information gleaned from the calls provided an insight into the future direction of prices and banks can bet on spot and derivatives markets during the call....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...Back before FDR, “free-marketism” and “liberalism” (now called “classic liberalism”) were the same thing — “liberation” of markets from government interference. That’s hard to imagine, but it’s true. For more than a century prior to FDR, “liberalism” and “free market ideology” were identical. This goes way back, deep into the 1700s. (I wrote about that here: http://americablog.com/2013/12/progressive-liberalism-doesnt-carry-critique-capitalism-progressivism.html )
FDR re-introduced a needed role for government regulation of markets in order to stave off what could have been popular revolt during the Depression. That semi-anathema offshoot of classic liberalism came to be called simply “liberalism” in the U.S., but in fact it was “social liberalism,” a variant, a side path (now called “socialism” in Europe). Because pre-FDR liberalism had as its gospel, zero interference from government in markets, the Democrats’ pro-government heresy had the effect of moving most of the free-marketeers into the Republican party, and at the same time, taking away their former name (“liberal”). Things stayed this way until the 1970s.
Fast forward to the beginning of the effort to kill the FDR revolution, the Carter years and after. Troglodyte (knuckle-dragging, John Birch Society) free-market billionaires stayed in the Republican Party, their natural cultural home. But because of the increased interest in “deregulation” by Carter and the Democrats, the more open-minded of the moneyed class (those who hated gays less, for example, or believed in some civil rights) returned to the Democratic Party as “neo-liberals” — which actually means its opposite. They were “new liberals” only from an FDR point of view. They were actually “old liberals,” classic free-market liberals from pre-Depression days. Al From and Bill Clinton fronted for them politically when they built the DLC, but it was a billionaire op all the way. (For a great exposé of this by Rick Perlstein, click and read here. The birth of the DLC and the rise of the neoliberal Democrats is a fascinating story.)
So now the free-market strain of billionaires, which is actually a “we want to control markets for our benefit” strain, is rampant in both parties. It’s a deep strain in the billionaire class, on all sides of the social spectrum, and as I say, it goes back before Jeremy Bentham...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Remember that Chavez managed to repatriate all the Venezuelan gold bedfore he died...Merkel can't even get 30% until 7 years after she demanded it all....
http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/
As protests have been taking place in Venezuela for the last couple of weeks, it is good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Empire’s “stealth” destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in Venezuela?
Before going into details, it is important to note what the NED is and is not. First of all, it has nothing to do with the democracy we are taught in civics classes, concerning one person one vote, everyone affected having a say in the decision, etc. (which is commonly known as “popular” or grassroots democracy). The NED opposes this kind of democracy.
The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people — always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Only after the elites have made their decision are the people presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And the NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”
The other thing to note about the NED is that it is not independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government.
Its Board of Directors is drawn from among the elites in the US Government’s foreign policy-making realm. Past Board members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Today’s board can be found atwww.ned.org/about/board; most notable is Elliot Abrams of Reagan Administration fame.
In reality, the NED is part of the US Empire’s tools, and “independent” only in the sense that no elected presidential administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it wanted to. It’s initial project director, Professor Allen Weinstein of Georgetown University, admitted in theWashington Post of September 22, 1991, that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
MORE BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY AT LINK...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)PAST-TIME, IF YOU ASK ME...BUT NOBODY DOES.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22103-is-it-time-for-a-new-church-committee
Earlier this month, Glenn Greenwald revealed details of how GCHQ (the British equivalent of the NSA) had a special "dirty tricks" intelligence gathering group known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group.
This week - Greenwald released more details on the group over at The Intercept, his new media venture.
The newly released details include a top-secret GCHQ presentation that sheds light on how the group, cooperating with the NSA, would go after, infiltrate, and in some cases ruin the reputations of, specific groups or individuals online.
And we're not just talking about terrorist masterminds here.
According to Greenwald, "Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable."
Greenwald goes on to say that, "To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: "false flag operations" (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting "negative information" on various forums."
According to the top-secret presentation, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, would leak confidential information to companies and the press, post negative information on "appropriate forums," and actively try to stop business deals and ruin relationships.
And if JTRIG was going after a specific person it would do things like set up honey traps, using sex to lure people into compromising situations.
JTRIG would also write emails and texts to friends, family, and colleagues of the individual, and would also write blogs and messages pretending to be that person.
While this all sounds extremely disturbing and very creepy, it should also sound pretty familiar, because we've seen these kinds of covert government interference and manipulation efforts before.
These kinds of reputation-destroying smear campaigns and intentional sabotage missions were key parts of the Richard Nixon presidency....
If the NSA and GCHQ are actively using the Internet to destroy people's lives, manipulate political discourse and quash civic activism, as Glenn Greenwald puts it, they're "compromising the integrity of the internet itself."
But more importantly, they're attacking our very freedoms and way of life.
We can't continue to let them run amok, and trample all over our lives.
President Ford once referred to the Nixon era in America as this nation's "long national nightmare."
The out-of-control nature of our national security agencies today is our new "national nightmare."
And the only way to wake up from that nightmare is to create a new Church Commission, which will investigate the intelligence community, and put in place the reforms that are needed to protect our freedoms and way of life.
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I think the main reason Bitcoin gets any press is that the Banksters and the Neoliberals see a way to skim large profits off the public, should the public start to abandon the established ways for Banksters and Neoliberals to skim off public wealth: fiat currency issued by national entities.
So, here's what's happening in the world of Digital:
................................................................................................................
http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/feb/25/bitcoin-mt-gox-scandal-reputation-crime?CMP=ema_565
It may take a giant scandal to make Bitcoin respectable.
Bitcoins, the esoteric digital currency that enthusiasts believe will one day take over the world, may one day be used everywhere from supermarkets to 401k retirement plans, but right now it is in a temporary shambles. Bitcoins are traded by digitally savvy geeks on several exchanges, the same way that Wall Street traders use exchanges to make bets on the US dollar and the Japanese yen. Today, Bitcoin’s biggest and most important exchange, known as Mt Gox, suddenly just disappeared. The scandal is this: 774,000 bitcoins – worth $409m and a decent outstanding percentage of all bitcoins in existence – are missing. There are no clues as to where they might be. Bankruptcy looms. Bitcoin advocates are turning their backs on the currency as it falls into disgrace. Investigations cannot be far off.
The whole debacle is one of the biggest scandals to happen in the bitcoin world, which knows scandal could create a “disastrous spiral of disbelief”, in the words of Henry Farrell. This could mark the end of bitcoins as we know it – which is great news, because bitcoins as we know it were doomed...Bitcoin was born in disgrace, in the internet’s back rooms, invented as the favored currency of people who didn’t trust the government and often wanted to make transactions that the law would prohibit. Bitcoin was exceedingly popular with online drug dealers, who favored a now-defunct black market known as Silk Road, which was in turn run by a shadowy young hacker who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. It’s the stuff of thrillers, and it will probably be a great movie one day, but all that back-alley hacker drama was keeping Bitcoin mostly as a punchline instead of a serious currency. Mt Gox, for instance, started as a trading venue for enthusiastic nerds who loved fantasy games; its name, Mt Gox, stands for Magic the Gathering Online Exchange, where users traded cards for the game, giving bitcoins a place in the fringe-culture Venn diagram between Dungeons & Dragons and Renaissance faires. Fun stuff, but not really the stuff of mainstream legitimacy. The entrance of the bionic Winklevoss brothers – Mark Zuckerberg’s arrogant nemeses – as they accumulated 1% of all the bitcoins in existence only added to the circuslike atmsophere. Then the government cracked down on Mt Gox, seizing $5m from its coffers.
All of this added up to one thing: Bitcoin, for all the hype about its future as the next big digital currency, was operating in an amateur-hour ecosystem of wannabes. It was as relevant to society as the old, forgotten Harlem Shake meme of last year. And Bitcoin’s perceived appeal to criminals kept it from going further. In hearings in Washington in November, regulators couldn’t think of many things they hated about Bitcoin except its past connections to the unethical: druggies, dictators and money launderers. Then the first cord was cut between Bitcoin and its past: Silk Road collapsed. Look what happened afterward: bitcoins have been winning more and more influence. After Silk Road, bitcoins’ price may have suffered briefly, but its reputation soared. Bitcoin has slowly become more accepted as a currency, from dating site OK Cupid to car company Tesla. If you’re a consumer, you’ve probably seen jokey invitations to use bitcoins instead of money scattered all around the web. California and New York even have bitcoin ATMs.
Big-name supporters popped up. From the beehive of Silicon Valley wunderkinder, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took to tweeting pro-bitcoin pronouncements with the tireless persusasive conviction of Cicero addressing the Roman senate. Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, even came out this week as a supporter of bitcoins, particularly to spur some activity from the underachieving financial system we have in place. This is why Mt Gox’s collapse is a boon for bitcoins. It clears out another attic full of ethical cobwebs from Bitcoin’s past. There are plenty of other bitcoin exchanges – who declined to bail out Mt Gox, according to Tim Fernholz at Quartz. The powerful Second Market, a regulated exchange, is now ready to create a standalone bitcoin business. Second Market’s move is a major one; the company has hurdled financial regulators in the past and acts as a bridge to the Silicon Valley community, with which it already has strong relationships.
To function as a currency, bitcoins need one thing: legitimacy. The further it gets away from its shady, fantasy-currency roots, the closer it will get to practical reality. Bitcoin has been a lively theoretical playground for wonks and nerds. Once it becomes powerful, it will become interesting to consumers. And that’s the real test of a currency.
Bitcoin Foundation vice chair arrested for money laundering FROM END OF JANUARY
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/27/bitcoin-foundation-vice-chair-arrested-money-laundering
A senior figure in the Bitcoin Foundation, which lobbies on behalf of the digital currency has been arrested for conspiracy to commit money laundering and “knowingly contributing” to anonymous drug sales.
Prosecutors announced on Monday that Charlie Shrem, the organisation's vice chairman, was arrested at John F Kennedy airport in New York on New York Sunday.
The news comes as a major blow for the digital currency lobby group and its supporters including Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The twins, famous for the early involvement with Facebook, have become big backers of the digital currency. They said in a statement on Monday that they were “deeply concerned” by the news....
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/26/us-attorney-mtgox-bitcoin-investigation-cyber-legality?CMP=ema_565
Manhattan US attorney Preet Bharara’s office is seeking information from businesses dealing in bitcoin on how some of them handled cyber-attacks that hamstrung several exchanges in recent weeks, a source familiar with the probe told Reuters on Wednesday. Subpoenas have been sent to numerous businesses, including MtGox, once the largest bitcoin exchange, as well as other firms that did business with the Tokyo-based company, the source said. Prosecutors want to know more about the nature of the cyber-attacks on MtGox and other exchanges and how those exchanges dealt with them. MtGox halted customer withdrawals on 7 February in response to what it termed unusual activity, and on Tuesday the exchange went dark, leaving customers unable to recover their funds.
Mark Williams, a risk management expert who teaches finance at Boston University, said the investigation is a positive step in regulating virtual currency. “If bitcoin is going to be a currency then it needs to actually play by the rules,” Williams said. “At this point, there’s been no regulation in this sector.” Regulators have faced some hurdles in regulating bitcoin, which has not been designated as a currency or asset in the US economy. Williams expects that the rumored investigation and resulting decisions by the US government will have a global impact on the virtual currency industry. He also expects a short future for MtGox because they’ve broken trust with their customers. “They’re done, they’re toast, they’re Enron – they can’t resurrect themselves,” Williams said.
MtGox’s apparent closure or hiatus also follows the leak of what is alleged to be a “crisis strategy document” from the company, which says that almost 750,000 bitcoins (currently worth more than £200m) are “missing” due to theft which went unnoticed for several years.
A second man, Robert Faiella, has also been arrested and charged for the same crimes relating to his operation of a small bitcoin exchange under the name BTCKing...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Whenever I read a story about bitcoin, the virtual currency that has been so much in the news these days, I think about a man named Dee Hock. In the early 1970s, Hock created the credit card system that we now know as Visa. Hock was a man who liked to think grandiose thoughts. When it came to Visa, and credit cards in general, Hock used to describe them not just as a way to get a short-term loan but as a new kind of payment system, an exchange of value that was on par with, and that competed with, cash. As it turns out — and the bitcoin experience is helping to illustrate this — Hock’s description of credit cards was more than a little hyperbolic. Yes, you could now use a small plastic card instead of cash to buy something, but that card had value because it connected both the buyer and the seller to a fiat currency. People trusted it because they believed in their country’s currency and financial institutions. The exchange of value was never the credit card itself; it was still the dollar, the pound, the yen.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is truly a new form of payment system, unconnected to any currency or any government. Its libertarian proponents in Silicon Valley love that about it; they talk about it as a potential disrupter of traditional financial institutions. It has value not because a government has decreed and backed its value — the classic definition of a fiat currency — but because a community of users has decided to give it value. Its current travails, however, suggest that may also be its inherent flaw: that however much we say we mistrust governments and banks, when it comes to our money, we trust them a lot more than we trust some clever lines of computer code.
The Internet, I should note, could really use a digital currency. For starters, it would make transactions on the web much easier while cutting down on the rampant credit card fraud and identity theft that exists online. It is also true that there have been many unsuccessful attempts to create a digital currency. Bitcoin is by far the most ingenious attempt, and it solves numerous problems. It allows for anonymity, just like cash, while also rendering transactions public, which ensures against double spending (that is, using the same bitcoins for multiple transactions). It is virtually impossible to counterfeit. And, as Felix Salmon pointed out last year, “to all intents and purposes, bitcoins are invisible to law enforcement and the taxman.” But so far bitcoins have less resembled a currency than a commodity. Up until now, they have mostly been used for pure speculation. Indeed, because there are only a limited number of bitcoins in circulation, the speculative ride has been pretty wild. In February, the bitcoin dropped in value from around $880 to the mid-$5oos.Bitcoin’s gyrations hardly engender trust among potential users. And the recent bitcoin-related news isn’t exactly reassuring either. First, a well-known bitcoin entrepreneur was arrested for allegedly laundering criminals’ money on an underground website called Silk Road, which traffics in, among other things, illegal drugs. Then, Mt. Gox, the leading bitcoin exchange, went out of business — and nobody knows what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins it was holding for customers.
The country’s most prominent bitcoin backer, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose firm is funding bitcoin-related start-ups, raced to CNBC to claim that the Mt. Gox failure was just part of the growing pains for bitcoins. And maybe it is. But who in his right mind, whether merchant or customer, is going to engage in commerce with a currency so seemingly unstable, or one that can so quickly disappear? The great irony of bitcoin is that its anonymous creator (or creators), who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, believed that people would want his new currency because they had learned to mistrust financial institutions. As Salmon notes, when Nakamoto introduced bitcoin, in February 2009, he wrote:
“ ‘The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.’ ”
All of which is true. But however angry we might be at bank compensation or at the role of financial institutions in the financial crisis, we still trust banks to safeguard our money, and we still trust government to back our currency. For bitcoin to succeed, it will have to embrace the one thing it was most intended to avoid: government.
THAT'S ONE MAN'S OPINION....I EXPECT, IF WE ALL TRADED WITH GOLD, THERE WOULD BE NO GOVERNMENT NEEDED. OR FOOD. OR ALCOHOL. OR OIL. OR MARIJUANA. IN OTHER WORDS, COMMODITY-BASED TRADING WOULDN'T NEED A GOVT. EXCEPT TO DEAL WITH CONTRACT VIOLATIONS CAUSED BY NON-DELIVERY AND FRAUD (SELLING SHIT AS SHINOLA, FOR EXAMPLE, OR ADULTERATED PRODUCT).
GOVERNMENT ISSUES AND ENFORCES FIAT CURRENCY. IF IT REGULATED BITCOIN, THEN BITCOIN WOULD BECOME FIAT CURRENCY.
THE SOLUTION HAS NOT BECOME OBVIOUS, YET.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's a regular occurrence, so we are due...Until the Fed stops printing electronic money to support paper assets, we will continue to have bubbles, and they will continue to pop, until the time of runaway inflation in fiat currency ends the paper, digital dollar as a useful artifact.
(Sorry to disappoint you, Dr. Krugman; just because it hasn't happened YET doesn't mean it can't or won't happen LATER. History decrees it will happen, eventually, when all the wiggle room disappears. Hence the interest in Bitcoin by crooks of all persuasions, even Capitalists and politicals.)
It will happen, if no useful correction is applied (see FDR), we just don't know when nor how bad it will get. We can guess, but there's never been anything like QE4ever before...
........................................................................................................................
http://www.alternet.org/economy/about-burst-next-big-economic-bubble?akid=11544.227380.Ya9tLU&rd=1&src=newsletter962911&t=18
...In March 2013, the Standard & Poor 500 stock market index reached the highest ever level, surpassing the 2007 peak (which was higher than the peak during the dotcom boom), despite the fact that the country's per capita income had not yet recovered to its 2007 level. Since then, the index has risen about 20 percent, although the U.S. per capita income has not increased even by two percent during the same period. This is definitely the biggest stock market bubble in modern history. Even more extraordinary than the inflated prices is that, unlike in the two previous share price booms, no one is offering a plausible narrative explaining why the evidently unsustainable levels of share prices are actually justified...During the dotcom bubble, the predominant view was that the new information technology was about to completely revolutionise our economies for good. Given this, it was argued, stock markets would keep rising (possibly forever) and reach unprecedented levels. The title of the book, Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, published in the autumn of 1999 when the Dow Jones index was not even 10,000, very well sums up the spirit of the time.
Similarly, in the runup to the 2008 crisis, inflated asset prices were justified in terms of the supposed progresses in financial innovation and in the techniques of economic policy. It was argued that financial innovation — manifested in the alphabet soup of derivatives and structured financial assets, such as MBS, CDO, and CDS — had vastly improved the ability of financial markets to "price" risk correctly, eliminating the possibility of irrational bubbles. On this belief, at the height of the U.S. housing market bubble in 2005, both Alan Greenspan (the then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) and Ben Bernanke (the then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President and later Greenspan's successor) publicly denied the existence of a housing market bubble — perhaps except for some "froth" in a few localities, according to Greenspan. At the same time, better economic theory — and thus better techniques of economic policy — was argued to have allowed policymakers to iron out those few wrinkles that markets themselves cannot eliminate. Robert Lucas, the leading free-market economist and winner of the 1995 Nobel prize in economics, proudly declared in 2003 that "the problem of depression prevention has been solved." In 2004, Ben Bernanke (yes, it's him again) argued that, probably thanks to better theory of monetary policy, the world had entered the era of "great moderation", in which the volatility of prices and outputs is minimised.
This time around, no one is offering a new narrative justifying the new bubbles because, well, there isn't any plausible story. Those stories that are generated to encourage the share price to climb to the next level have been decidedly unambitious in scale and ephemeral in nature: higher-than-expected growth rates or number of new jobs created; brighter-than-expected outlook in Japan, China, or wherever; the arrival of the "super-dove" Janet Yellen as the new chair of the Fed; or, indeed, anything else that may suggest the world is not going to end tomorrow....Few stock market investors really believe in these stories. Most investors know that current levels of share prices are unsustainable; it is said that George Soros has already started betting against the U.S. stock market. They are aware that share prices are high mainly because of the huge amount of money sloshing around thanks to quantitative easing (QE), not because of the strength of the underlying real economy. This is why they react so nervously to any slight sign that QE may be wound down on a significant scale. However, stock market investors pretend to believe — or even have to pretend to believe — in those feeble and ephemeral stories because they need those stories to justify (to themselves and their clients) staying in the stock market, given the low returns everywhere else.
The result, unfortunately, is that stock market bubbles of historic proportion are developing in the U.S. and the U.K., the two most important stock markets in the world, threatening to create yet another financial crash. One obvious way of dealing with these bubbles is to take the excessive liquidity that is inflating them out of the system through a combination of tighter monetary policy and better financial regulation against stock market speculation (such as a ban on shorting or restrictions on high-frequency trading). Of course, the danger here is that these policies may prick the bubble and create a mess. In the longer run, however, the best way to deal with these bubbles is to revive the real economy; after all, "bubble" is a relative concept and even a very high price can be justified if it is based on a strong economy. This will require a more sustainable increase in consumption based on rising wages rather than debts, greater productive investments that will expand the economy's ability to produce, and the introduction of financial regulation that will make banks lend more to productive enterprises than to consumers. Unfortunately, these are exactly the things that the current policymakers in the U.S. and the U.K. don't want to do.
We are heading for trouble.
Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at Cambridge University. He is the author of "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism."
Demeter
(85,373 posts)....Remember the testimony then-FBI Director Robert Mueller gave before a House subcommittee in 2012? When asked point-blank if the president could order the killing of an American in the United States, he replied “Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not... I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice.” Mueller, of course, had the option of saying flat-out, “No, no, of course the president can’t order a hit on an American here in the U.S. where the full judicial system, Constitution, and due process protections exist! Are you mad?”
The truth emerged only in 2013 when Senator Rand Paul asked point-blank whether the president could authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against an American citizen in the United States. Attorney General Eric Holder fired back that while the question was "hypothetical," the real-world answer was yes. Holder said he could imagine "an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States."
It’s easy enough, in fact, to imagine the sort of scenarios that might lend themselves to such an act: a ticking time bomb, a killer believed to have anthrax and on the loose, a suspected dirty-bomb maker in a desolate location, terrorists with a bus full of children on a mountain top. Imagine a slippery slope and... presto! You’re there.
They've thought about it. They've set up the legal manipulations necessary to justify it. The broad, open-ended criteria the president laid out for killing suspected terrorists exposes the post-Constitutional stance our government has already prepared for. All that's left to do is pull the trigger.
MORE NAUSEA AT LINK
WHEN YOU THINK OF THE CRIMINALITY ALLOWED FREE REIN IN THIS COUNTRY...BY ITS "PUBLIC SERVANTS"....IT'S A WONDER YOU CAN THINK AT ALL.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...The government officials who, along with their courtiers in the press, castigate Snowden insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, freedom of the press and the right to express dissent remain inviolate. They use the old words and the old phrases, old laws and old constitutional guarantees to give our corporate totalitarianism a democratic veneer. They insist that the system works. They tell us we are still protected by the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Yet the promise of that sentence in the Bill of Rights is pitted against the fact that every telephone call we make, every email or text we send or receive, every website we visit and many of our travels are tracked, recorded and stored in government computers. The Fourth Amendment was written in 1789 in direct response to the arbitrary and unchecked search powers that the British had exercised through general warrants called writs of assistance, which played a significant part in fomenting the American Revolution. A technical system of surveillance designed to monitor those considered to be a danger to the state has, in the words of Binney, been “turned against you.”
We live in what the German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.” Totalitarian states are always dual states. In the dual state civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security. The political sphere becomes a vacuum “as far as the law is concerned,” Fraenkel wrote. There is no legal check on power. Official bodies operate with impunity outside the law. In the dual state the government can convict citizens on secret evidence in secret courts. It can strip citizens of due process and detain, torture or assassinate them, serving as judge, jury and executioner. It rules according to its own arbitrary whims and prerogatives. The outward forms of democratic participation—voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation—are hollow, political stagecraft. Fraenkel called those who wield this unchecked power over the citizenry “the prerogative state.” The masses in a totalitarian structure live in what Fraenkel termed “the normative state.” The normative state, he said, is defenseless against the abuses of the prerogative state. Citizens are subjected to draconian laws and regulations, as well as arbitrary searches and arrests. The police and internal security are omnipotent. The internal workings of power are secret. Free expression and opposition political activity are pushed to the fringes of society or shut down. Those who challenge the abuses of power by the prerogative state, those who, like Snowden, expose the crimes carried out by government, are made into criminals. Totalitarian states always invert the moral order. It is the wicked who rule. It is the just who are damned.
Snowden, we are told, could have reformed from the inside. He could have gone to his superiors or Congress or the courts. But Snowden had numerous examples—including the persecution of the whistle-blower Thomas Drake, who originally tried to go through so-called proper channels—to remind him that working within the system is fatal. He had watched as senior officials including Barack Obama lied to the public about internal surveillance. He knew that the president was dishonest when he assured Americans that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret and hears only from the government, is “transparent.” He knew that the president’s statement that Congress was “overseeing the entire program” was false. He knew that everything Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the press, the Congress and the public about the surveillance of Americans was a lie. And he knew that if this information was to be made available to the public he would have to do so through a few journalists whose integrity he could trust.
.................................................
I (CHRIS HEDGES) was a plaintiff before the Supreme Court in Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This act authorizes surveillance without a showing, or probable cause, that a targeted person is an agent of a foreign power. The court dismissed our lawsuit because, it said, the idea that we were targets of surveillance was “based too much on speculation.” That Supreme Court ruling was then used by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to deny the credibility, or standing, of the other plaintiffs and me when it heard the Obama administration’s appeal of our successful challenge to Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a provision that permits the U.S. military to detain citizens in military facilities, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely. The government, in both court cases, did not attempt to defend the surveillance and detention programs as constitutional. It said that I and the other plaintiffs had no right to bring the cases to court. And the courts agreed. This deadly impasse, the tightening of the corporate totalitarian noose, would have continued if Snowden had not jolted the nation awake by disclosing the crimes of the prerogative state. Snowden’s revelations triggered, for the first time, a genuine public debate about mass surveillance. Since the disclosures, three judges have ruled on the NSA’s surveillance program, one defending it as legal and two accusing the NSA of violating the Constitution. A presidential panel has criticized the agency’s blanket surveillance and called for reform. Some members of Congress—although that body authorized the Patriot Act and its Section 215, which ostensibly permitted this wholesale surveillance of the public—have expressed dismay at the extent of the NSA’s activities and the weakness of its promised reforms. Maybe they are lying. Maybe they are not. Maybe reforms will produce improvements or maybe they will be merely cosmetic. But before Snowden we had nothing. Snowden’s revelations made us conscious. And as George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel “1984”: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ...”
“Now, we’re all familiar with Congress’ most dramatic oversight failure,” said Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and a legal adviser to Snowden, in a recent debate over Snowden with R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “And this was in the notorious exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Wyden had asked, did the NSA collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper’s answer was, ‘No, sir.’ Now, this brazen falsehood is most often described as Clapper’s lie to Congress, but that’s not what it was. Wyden knew that Clapper was lying. Only we didn’t know. And Congress lacked the courage to correct the record—allowed us to be deceived by the director of national intelligence.”
Societies that once had democratic traditions, or periods when openness was possible, are often seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old systems. This was true when the Emperor Augustus dismantled the Roman Republic. It was true when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the autonomous soviets and ruthlessly centralized power. It was true following the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi fascism. Thomas Paine described despotic government as a fungus growing out of a corrupt civil society. And this is what has happened to us.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Yahoo webcam users are the latest victims of agency eavesdropping – and whether it’s done by human or algorithm, it’s still eavesdropping...Increasingly, we are watched not by people but by algorithms. Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream, and suggest other books and movies based on our habits. Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say, and show us advertisements based on our behavior. Google even modifies our web search results based on our previous behavior. Smartphone navigation apps watch us as we drive, and update suggested route information based on traffic congestion. And the National Security Agency, of course, monitors our phone calls, emails and locations, then uses that information to try to identify terrorists.
Documents provided by Edwards Snowden and revealed by the Guardian today show that the UK spy agency GHCQ, with help from the NSA, has been collecting millions of webcam images from innocent Yahoo users. And that speaks to a key distinction in the age of algorithmic surveillance: is it really okay for a computer to monitor you online, and for that data collection and analysis only to count as a potential privacy invasion when a person sees it? I say it’s not, and the latest Snowden leaks only make more clear how important this distinction is. The robots-vs-spies divide is especially important as we decide what to do about NSA and GCHQ surveillance. The spy community and the Justice Department have reported back early on President Obama’s request for changing how the NSA “collects” your data, but the potential reforms - FBI monitoring, holding on to your phone records and more - still largely depend on what the meaning of “collects” is.
Indeed, ever since Snowden provided reporters with a trove of top secret documents, we’ve been subjected to all sorts of NSA word games. And the word “collect” has a very special definition, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). A 1982 procedures manual (pdf; page 15) says: “information shall be considered as ‘collected’ only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties.” And “data acquired by electronic means is ‘collected’ only when it has been processed into intelligible form”.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper likened the NSA’s accumulation of data to a library. All those books are stored on the shelves, but very few are actually read. “So the task for us in the interest of preserving security and preserving civil liberties and privacy,” says Clapper, “is to be as precise as we possibly can be when we go in that library and look for the books that we need to open up and actually read.” Only when an individual book is read does it count as “collection”, in government parlance. So, think of that friend of yours who has thousands of books in his house. According to the NSA, he’s not actually “collecting” books. He’s doing something else with them, and the only books he can claim to have “collected” are the ones he’s actually read. This is why Clapper claims – to this day – that he didn’t lie in a Senate hearing when he replied “no” to this question: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
MORE MINCING OF THE LANGUAGE BY THE GOVT. AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I DON'T NEED TEN REASONS: IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO. THAT COVERS IT
http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-reasons-call-more-1010-minimum-wage?page=0%2C1&akid=11518.227380.WrKy1d&rd=1&src=newsletter959732&t=20&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
Demeter
(85,373 posts)WELL, THAT'S BEFORE MY TIME...
http://www.alternet.org/economy/hiding-poor-govts-formula-measuring-poverty-dates-when-loaf-bread-cost-22-cents?akid=11544.227380.Ya9tLU&rd=1&src=newsletter962911&t=6
Why is Congress still measuring poverty based on a 1963 trip to the grocery store?
To determine who is officially poor in America, the federal government compares a family’s annual cash income to a figure produced by an arcane formula that's based on the price of food in 1963, when a loaf of bread was 22 cents and a burger less than a quarter. Starting under President Lyndon Johnson, the government's official way of defining who is poor comes from calculating a minimum food budget for a family of four, tripling that figure to cover other living costs, and then indexing it annually for inflation. The result is the federal poverty level. For 2014, that threshold was $23,850 for a family of four. Smaller families can subtract $4,060 per person. Individuals making $11,670 or less in 2014 were officially poor. Many government programs, from School Lunch to the Earned Income Tax Credit to Obamacare's subsidies, decide eligibility by comparing one’s annual cash income to the official poverty level—or to a multiple of it, say 150 percent.
Cities, states, advocates and academics have known for years that this measure of who is poor undercounts millions of Americans. They know that the 1960s-based formula ignores modern living costs, such as today's cheaper food but higher housing and other expenses. And they have developed alternative ways to track living costs that confirm poverty and economic insecurity of households just above the poverty line is far more widespread than Congress wants to admit. But the 1960s poverty formula persists, and not without other pernicious effects. This heads-in-the-sand approach works against Congress spending more on current programs because lawmakers aren't using numbers that honestly depict the extent of economic insecurities. And an outdated methodology pre-empts a contemporary discussion of what a basic, dignified living standard costs, based on variables such as family size, one’s age and stage in life, and location.
“In the 1960s, the poverty measure was a focal point for the nation’s growing concern about poverty,” an April 2013 report by New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity said, recounting this history and shortcomings. “Over the decades, society evolved and policies have shifted, but the official poverty measure remains frozen in time. As a result it has lost its credibility and usefulness.”
“In 2011, our poverty line for the two-adult, two-child family comes to $30,945,” the NYC agency said, after using a more sophisticated modern formula. “The 2011 official [federal] poverty threshold for the corresponding family was $22,811.”
...Social scientists have known for decades that the 1963-based poverty line didn’t include necessities such as shelter, utilities, healthcare, childcare, clothes, commuting and other out-of-pocket costs. In 1995, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to create a formula including those factors. It did, but for years that sat on the shelf. It was used for academic research but not to recalibrate government policy and actions....
SEE LINK FOR THE DISCUSSION ON SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'm hoping hamerfan will come to my rescue once again...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Because this is such a depressing time...and the snow is only slowly melting...and it's still not getting up to freezing...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If you promise not to slit your throat, I'll promise not to slit mine...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The prospect of a full-scale Russian military intervention in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula mounted on Saturday, as the region's new prime minister asked for Vladimir Putin's assistance and a Kremlin source said it would "not leave unnoticed" the request.
The pro-Russian prime minister of the region asked for Moscow's assistance in keeping the peace and claimed he had control of all military, police and other security services.
The call by Sergei Aksenov came after armed men described as Russian troops took control of key airports and a communications centre in Crimea on Friday, and Ukraine accused Russia of a "military invasion and occupation".
In the reply the Russian foreign ministry said it was "extremely concerned" about the recent developments in Crimea, which it said confirmed the desire of Kiev's politicians to destabilise the situation on the peninsula.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-intervention-threat-mounting-in-ukraine-2014-3#ixzz2uiZbwlLa
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)3/1/14
Simferopol, Ukraine (CNN) -- [Breaking News Update, 10:02 a.m. ET]
(CNN) -- Russia's upper house of parliament voted Saturday to approve the use of military force in Ukraine. The vote was unanimous.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/europe/ukraine-politics/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Demeter
(85,373 posts)PANIC ENSUES...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)***SNIP
The Mac Observer's Bryan Chaffin reports that the representative asked just two questions. The first, whether Apple's investments in green energy was only worth it because of government subsidies, was passed over by Cook.
The second, in which the representative asked Cook to commit on the spot to only making moves that were profitable for the company, drew the most intense comeback we've heard from the executive. Chaffin writes:
"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.
As evidenced by the use of "bloody" in his response—the closest thing to public profanity I've ever seen from Mr. Cook–it was clear that he was quite angry. His body English changed, his face contracted, and he spoke in rapid fire sentences compared to the usual metered and controlled way he speaks.
He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."
That didn't go over too well at the NCPPR. In a press release titled "Tim Cook to Apple Investors: Drop Dead," the organization quotes Justin Danhof, director of the think tank's Free Enterprise Project, claiming that Apple is under the control of an "Al gore [sic] contingency":
Danhof went on to ask if Cook was willing to amend Apple's corporate documents to indicate that the company would not pursue environmental initiatives that have some sort of reasonable return on investment — similar to the concession the National Center recently received from General Electric. This question was greeted by boos and hisses from the Al gore contingency in the room.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-versus-a-conservative-think-tank-2014-2#ixzz2uiaQ1Y9M
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
xchrom
(108,903 posts)BAGHDAD (AP) — A senior Iraqi official says daily oil exports have shot up in February to 2.8 million barrels from nearly 2.3 million barrels in the previous month, thanks to a small group of international oil companies developing oil fields and export infrastructure.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister for energy, Hussain al-Shahristani, also said Saturday in the southern oil-rich city of Basra that average production, including the exports, exceeded 3.5 million barrels per day last month. Al-Shahristani described the figures as "unprecedented."
Iraq's daily oil production and exports have climbed steadily since 2011, nearly two years after Iraq awarded rights to develop its major oil fields to international oil companies. It holds the world's fourth largest oil reserves, some 143.1 billion barrels, and oil revenues make up nearly 95 percent of its budget.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/iraqi-oil-production-surges-2014-3#ixzz2uib2KGg7
xchrom
(108,903 posts)A little history lesson about Ukraine and Crimea may help put recent developments into better perspective. What emerges is a very clear understanding of why both Russia and Ukraine feel that they each have historical precedent to support their positions: Russia believes Ukraine is part of Russia, while Ukraine (or at least parts of Ukraine) believes it to be independent with a brighter future in Europe. Both can lay claim to Crimea. Given such a long and convoluted history, one should not expect a quick and easy solution to tensions in that region.
The Crimean peninsula has been the center of many past conflicts, repeatedly colonized and occupied over the centuries. The Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783, after numerous wars with the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean War of 1853-56 (which some historians regard as the first truly world war) saw France, Britain, and the Ottomans pitted against Russia. While most of the fighting was on the peninsula, the Crimean War was an attempt to push back against perceived Russian hegemony in Europe. Crimea was devastated, but remained part of Russia.
After the 1917 Russian revolution, Crimea became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the largest in the USSR. In 1944, Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population to Siberia and Central Asia as punishment for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. In 1954, a controversial move by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (himself an ethnic Ukrainian) transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, carving it out of the larger Russian territory.
Ukraine has had a long and prosperous history of its own. Kiev was at one time (in the Middle Ages) the largest city-state in Europe, situated on several important trade routes. Much of what is now Ukraine came under the control of Poland and Lithuania, but then became part of the Russian empire after the partition of Poland in 1793. Ukraine declared independence in 1918 after the Russian revolution. In 1921, however, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established after the nation was conquered by the Russian Red Army. Ukraine was subject to many reprisals and hardships under Stalin.
Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarcToMarket/~3/Ql3F297bUFs/a-short-history-of-ukraine-and-crimea.html#ixzz2uidUUp3G
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Chinese official PMI fell to 50.2 in February, to an eight-month low.
The reading was down from 50.5 the previous month, but was modestly better than expectations for 50.1.
A reading below 50 indicates contraction.
On March 2, we get HSBC PMI which is already in a contractionary phase. The flash reading out earlier this month, came in at 48.3.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/february-official-china-pmi-2014-2#ixzz2uietgYge
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, esp. on a Saturday...Stay warm, dry and sane, if not calm, everybody. If we panic, the TBTF win.
OK, I'm clueless on that one.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)TBTF
Too big to fail.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)While Mercury is no longer retrograde, Mars is. Out of the frying pan...into the fire.
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Money by The Beatles:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Money by Pink Floyd:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Smoking!
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)You Never Give Me Your Money by The Beatles:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Money For Nothing by Dire Straits:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Thanks, hamerfan! You always come through for us.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)Definitely not a pretty picture...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024567447
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I hope you have contingency plans? If we can help, just make the call...
Quiet mourning for Ukraine...
MattSh
(3,714 posts)There's English subtitles, so no need to know Hungarian. This is what Ukraine has to look forward too (though I've seen a lot of this already).
Especially like the end. There's no solution but revolution!
Probably should credit Paul Craig Roberts, who bought this to my attention.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Got it here in Ann Arbor (although it's much worse elsewhere in Michigan) and no way to cope...
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Here
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/25/crisis-ukraine-paul-craig-roberts/
P.S. Post updates as you can, Stay safe.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)Yes, they are still there and will likely be there for a few more months.
Will be putting up photos when I can, likely in GD.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)or any other of our armchair warriors.
Drone Boy is gonna find himself the blackest spot in history...nobody could pin WWI on Wilson, nor WWII on FDR (and believe me, they tried). But Obama, man, he's gonna hit the Trifecta and show that W where to go....
Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, the classic American tale:
Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations is an American translation of a Lancashire proverb, “there’s nobbut three generations atween a clog and clog.”
Some say that Andrew Carnegie, the famed 1800s industrialist from Scotland, brought the proverb’s message to the New World. Further investigation proves that the adage is not unique to any one country or culture. In Italian it is “dalle stalle alle stelle alle stalle” (“from stalls to stars to stalls”). The Spanish say, “quien no lo tiene, lo hance; y quien lo tiene, lo deshance” (“who doesn’t have it, does it, and who has it, misuses it”). Even non-western cultures, including the Chinese, have a similar proverb.
A proverb is a short popular saying, usually of unknown and ancient origin, that expresses effectively some commonplace truth or useful thought. Is “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves…” still a commonplace truth or useful thought? I think not, but it had its place.
Decades and centuries ago, when families were much more connected and wealth was more of a family asset rather than the individual achievement it is today, the proverb made more common sense. Today, silver spoons are very difficult to come by. Families get spread over countries and continents. And while it is true that three generational family businesses are rare, it would be false to say that the third generation is in the poor house (another old concept) as “shirt sleeves…” suggests.
As parents we always hope that our children’s lives will be better than ours…fuller, happier, longer. Or in the famous words of John Adams, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” By the way, the Adams family was considered by many to be a family business – a family farm and the business of politics.
The world is open to our children in a way it never has been before. Our offspring are encouraged to find themselves and to uncover their life’s passion. It only makes sense that many more of them whose families own businesses would choose a career outside of the enterprise. What becomes of the family business when the family is no longer interested in management or ownership? Obviously, the family can retain ownership and hire outside management. However, few families choose this option. More often, they will choose to sell when the last member of the family is no longer interested in perpetuating the family owned business. Often the sale brings riches far beyond expectations to be shared with the family through the estate plan. Other times there is no real market for the business and liquidation becomes the end. Even so, the third generation is likely to be well heeled and onto a career of their choosing. Should we call this failure?
Families are a microcosm of society. In this fast-paced world we live in, where things change overnight and our children are told to expect to have four careers in their working life, it just makes sense that family businesses might only last 50 to 60 years on average. Maybe that is success – John Adams probably thought so.
Richard Segal is the chair of the Family Business Council, a membership organization of family owned businesses. He can be reached at RMSegal@aol.com.
Yeah, well, that was true maybe a generation ago...now, generational wealth is reserved for the 1%, who have eaten or despoiled all the small fry, sawed off the rungs on the ladder to success, and sucked the capital out of community.
Another Version:
The theory of the proverb is that the first generation starts off in a rice paddy, meaning two people with an affinity for one another come together and create a financial fortune. They usually do it without making significant changes to their values, customs or lifestyle. The second generation moves to the city, puts on beautiful clothes, joins the opera board, runs big organizations, and the fortune plateaus. The third generation, with no experience of work, consumes the financial fortune, and the fourth generation goes back in the rice paddy. This is the classic formulation of the shirtsleeves proverb, which is as true today as it has been throughout evolved human history.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080114145024AAd1iHd
MattSh
(3,714 posts)including NJ and Kaliningrad. That's part of Russia and my wife has relatives there.
But in times like this, there's no such thing as too many contingency plans I guess.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)And now the Ukrainian debacle...while Venezuela and Haiti hang fire...just how many little wars were Obama and his Drones thinking of fighting simultaneously? And with whose army?
Plus the stirring up of trouble in the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, etc) and Africa (the Chinese will love that).
It's insane, it's out of control, and it's not what the American People want.
I'm not sure even impeachment would cover this...war crime.
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Lawyers Guns and Money by Warren Zevon (a personal favorite):
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)We'll have a battle of the youtube between you two!
I'll just throw this one in for surreality:
antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's OUR thread...no rules but basic civility and some kind of interest to the readers...this is a group effort, the size of the group may vary, but anybody can play.
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)Last edited Sun Mar 2, 2014, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)Poor girl. 
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear an appeal to Detroit’s eligibility for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The court today agreed to accept a direct appeal, which means the case will bypass the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan. The move could mark the case’s first step on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Several major creditors — including the city’s largest union, AFSCME Council 25, and the city’s two pension funds — filed appeals challenging Judge Steven Rhodes’ December order allowing the case to proceed. Detroit’s bankruptcy will proceed while the appeal is being heard, which will not take place on an expedited basis.
One of the most contentious issues in the case is whether the city should have promised not to cut pensions as a condition of filing for bankruptcy. The state’s Constitution bars public pension cuts, but Rhodes ruled that pensions are contracts that can be severed under federal bankruptcy law. To be eligible for bankruptcy, Detroit must prove it’s insolvent, obtain the state’s authority and show it has negotiated in good faith with creditors or that it’s not longer possible to do so.
The Sixth Circuit’s decision comes as the city today is expected to file its proposed bankruptcy restructuring plan, which is likely to included proposed cuts for pensioners.
2/21/2014
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/detroit-files-historic-bankruptcy-blueprint-n35511
Detroit revealed its historic plan to emerge from under $18 billion in debt Friday, laying the groundwork for what’s expected to be a long, bitter battle with creditors, retirees and bondholders over the biggest municipal bankruptcy ever.
The 120-page 'plan of adjustment' could change radically as negotiations with more than 100,000 creditors move forward. It must still be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes. According to The Associated Press, an early draft of the plan called for city pensioners to receive $4.3 billion in payments and bondholders about $1.1 billion during the next 40 years.
"The Plan of Adjustment that the City of Detroit filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on February 21, 2014 represents a critical step toward the City’s rehabilitation and recovery from a decades-long downward spiral," the office of the city's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, said in a statement.
A summary of the plan said it would devote $1.5 billion over 10 years to capital improvements, with up to a third of that aimed at blight removal. It also said it proposes paying general obligation creditors about 20 percent of what they are owed through the issuance of new bonds. If police and fire department retirees agree to the plan, they would receive about 90 percent of their pensions, after cutting cost of living allowances. General retirees would get about 70 percent....
xchrom
(108,903 posts)For the first time since the Soviet Union's collapse more than two decades ago, Russian military forces have moved into an Eastern European country and occupied its territory. Over 15,000 Russian soldiers are now stationed in Ukraine's autonomous republic of Crimea, according to Ukrainian officials (it's not clear how many of them were already in the region before this crisis), in a deployment ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin to protect "Russian citizens and compatriots on Ukrainian territory." No shots have been fired, but Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, has placed his country's military on its highest alert level to deter "potential aggression," as the United States condemned Russia's "invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory" in violation of international law.
Fifteen independent countries, including Russia, emerged from the Soviet Union's disintegration. Six of them—Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are in Europe, and all of them have a complicated relationship with modern Russia. Seven other countries once belonged to the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union's military alliance in Eastern Europe. With the Cold War's end, none of them had faced the threat of military intervention by the communist superpower's successor state—until now. (In discussing Europe here, I'm not including Eurasian countries like Georgia, which fought a war with Russia in 2008, or the military support Russia offered Moldova's breakaway Transnistria region in the early 1990s.)
In response to the standoff in Crimea, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves announced that he would convene the National Defense Council on March 2 to discuss the crisis and called upon the Baltic states to increase their defense spending. "The events in Ukraine show that this struggle is taking place within Europe as well," he said in a speech to the Baltic Defense College last week. "This sends a clear signal to Estonia and the [other] Baltic states: we must invest more in our national defense." Estonia, along with Latvia and Lithuania, joined NATO in 2004.
"The Baltic states have been among the most vocal EU states during this crisis, urging Russia to abandon its military intervention in Ukraine and respect Ukrainian territorial integrity," Erik Brattberg, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told me. "They will watch the events in Ukraine closely to see if the U.S. and NATO will stand up against Russian aggression."
xchrom
(108,903 posts)David Heinemeier Hansson is a book author, a public speaker, a photographer, a father, a race car driver, and the founder and CTO of the productivity management tool Basecamp. He is probably best known, however, as the creator of Ruby on Rails, the open-source web development framework that is popular with coders for its efficiency and ease of use.
Hansson is, in a certain sector, a celebrity.
It was funny, then, when Hansson received the following email:
Hi David,
I came across your profile online and wanted to reach out about Development Opportunities here at Groupon. The company is growing, and we're always looking for folks with solid skills that can make positive contribution to our continued success. Any chance you'd be open to a quick conversation about opportunities, or for any possible networking potential? If so, let me know when you're free and we can set up a time to chat. Also, if you are interested, it would be great if you could forward a current resume over that I can take a look at. I look forward to hearing back from you! Please let me know if you have any questions.
This was the rough equivalent of asking Toni Morrison to write for your high school newspaper, or of gauging Mario Batali’s interest in becoming your line cook. Hansson was being asked, perkily and politely, for a resume that would prove his skills as a junior developer on the framework he had created.
“That’s just one of a very long list of incidents that are quite similar in nature,” Hannson told me. “And they all stem from the basic fact that very few recruiters today actually do recruiting.”
It’s a common complaint. Talk to many people in tech about tech recruiters—people whose job is ostensibly to get them better ones—and they will often groan. And sigh. And use the word “spam.” Repeatedly.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Following up on the previous post, if you do want to fret about Ukraine, I have just the thing for you. I'm going to tell you how this will all unfold:
Vladimir Putin will do something belligerent. (Already done.)
Republicans will demand that we show strength in the face of Putin's provocation. Whatever it is that we're doing, we should do more.
President Obama will denounce whatever it is that Putin does. But regardless of how unequivocal his condemnation is, Bill Kristol will insist that he's failing to support the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people.
Journalists will write a variety of thumbsuckers pointing out that our options are extremely limited, what with Ukraine being 5,000 miles away and all.
John McCain will appear on a bunch of Sunday chat shows to bemoan the fact that Obama is weak and no one fears America anymore.
Having written all the "options are limited" thumbsuckers, journalists and columnists will follow McCain's lead and start declaring that the crisis in Ukraine is the greatest foreign policy test of Obama's presidency. It will thus supplant Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, and North Korea for this honor.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Goldman Sachs made a ploy for the Crimea, and lost. Big time. The Euro-trash technocrats thought they could sucker the western Ukrainians with empty promises into their Procrustean bed. And maybe they still can. But the banksters won't get the only asset worth pillaging out of Ukraine: Russia's warm-water port. I wonder what the feeble GS plan was: charge Russia exorbitant rent at an annually increasing rate?
And no matter how the Golden Sacks jump up and down in fury, nobody's going to a shooting war to pull their con-game gambit out of the fire. I wonder if they will actually lose money over this, or just credibility? That's assuming, after Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, etc., they have any credibility. Far more likely, those besieged populations will stop laying down and yielding all, and start fighting back, as they should have done from the start.
antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Citigroup reduced its 2013 earnings by $235 million on Friday, saying it was a victim of fraud committed by a Mexican oil services company to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in short-term loans.
The U.S. bank is seeking to recover the missing funds with the help of Mexican authorities.
The bank said that the oil services company - Oceanografia S.A. de C.V., or OSA - overstated by $400 million the business it was doing with Mexico's state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. OSA used falsified invoices as collateral for $585 million in loans from Citigroup's Mexican unit, Banamex, Citigroup said. But after an investigation, Citigroup could only verify $185 million of invoices.
Citi said that it believes the case is isolated, and it is moving to recover the money and identify anyone involved in the fraud.
***oh the irony.
antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)
antigop
(12,778 posts)Ah, Kristin Chenoweth!
antigop
(12,778 posts)DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)and articles too
antigop
(12,778 posts)Response to antigop (Reply #86)
antigop This message was self-deleted by its author.
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Blue Money by Van Morrison:
antigop
(12,778 posts)OK, I personally think "Sweet Charity" is one of THE WORST musicals ever.
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)"Who stinketh the most?"
antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)How do you think all those GS alumni in Europe feel, now that they've poked the Russian Bear out of hibernation?
They're going to find out exactly what a REAL hostile takeover is like.
Betcha they were wanting the Crimean for themselves and their New World Order (corporate fascism).
Too bad that Russia isn't impressed with them and their thieving con game ways.
antigop
(12,778 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)But Russia? They paid off the last of their war bonds, and they ain't EVER doing business with a Bankster again!
antigop
(12,778 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)History repeats itself.
antigop
(12,778 posts)
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)Something to consider if you take multiple medications and also use a lot of fluoride products for your teeth.
http://www.dearpharmacist.com/2014/01/11/is-your-medication-making-you-sick/
(Original in Newsday early 2013.)