iftttwall

Submitted by The World Complex

One more time–the distinction between human- and algo-trading

The markets do not act like they once did. The trading in certain stocks is operating on time-scales so small that they cannot be in response to human thought. Not only are certain individuals able to access key information before others and so respond to news releases faster than the speed of light, but certain entities have free range to post and cancel orders on a microsecond basis, and queue-jump by shaving off (or adding on) tiny fractions of a penny from their orders.

Stocks traded by humans tend to make significant moves on a timescale of minutes to days. Even when there is a news event that radically changes the apparent value of a company, if there are only humans in the market, the move takes time to occur. Below are a couple of charts for Detour Gold (I currently have no position in this stock)

Normally, when looked at on a ms timescale, the graph is not really distinguishable from a straight line.

The little squares occur because all the price-changes I saw in the course of the day were a penny. On this scale it scarcely matters which axis is the current price and which is the lagged-price.

Once the algos get involved, the millisecond phase space plots get a lot more interesting. Some of them are works of art! Below, some plots for Century Casinos (I have no position in this one, either). Data here.

 

 

Nice to look at, but maybe not so nice to trade against.

Remember the adage about playing poker: If you don’t know who the sucker is . . .

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/M-Zbb3TG3UE/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The rollout of Obamacare to date has been, as many predicted, the case study of everything that is wrong with a mandatory government-conceived, supervised and enforced program. Ignoring for a minute the daily embarrassment the Obama administration has to face with the well-documented failings of the HealthCare.gov website which on second glance should win Obama the Nobel Price for coding in Fortran (or  Cobol), and which seems set for a full-blown overhaul that would force a delay of the mandate whether Obama wants it or not, the several million “glitchy” lines of code have become the greatest gift the GOP could have asked for. A gift, which as the saying goes, keeps on giving. Because one of Obama’s suggested loopholes has been to advise people who can’t or won’t sign up online, to do so using old-fashioned means: by paper, pen or phone. Unfortunately, that’s where the rabbit hole just goes deeper, because as Politico reports, the glitches that started on line have rapidly shifted to the world of phone and mail, as virtually every pathway of enrolling into the enforced healthcare program is now hopelessly bottlenecked, if not entirely shut.

From Politico:

With the supposedly state-of-the-art $600 million HealthCare.gov portal malfunctioning, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to go ahead and try to get health coverage by mailing in a paper application, calling the helpline or seeking help from one of the trained “assisters.”

 

But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.

True. But at least Obamacare’s failure means way more government jobs as the demand for people with the absolutely most basic set of rudimentary skills – being able to concurrently listen and/or read and type has soared. Which in an insolvent welfare state – with or without a ministry of happiness – is all one can ask for: more stimulus for everyone… especially if due to the same state’s gross incompetence in doing one thing right.

As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:

“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

 

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

 

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.

This is where it gets really funny:

Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

 

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

 

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

 

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.

Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.

And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:

Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

 

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

 

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.

Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

 

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

 

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

 

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

Sounds like a hint for the US Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness to enforce the directive that swimming in paper equates to at least 8 out of 10 hedons on the happiness scale. Otherwise, some subversive, terrorist tea-party elements may float the wild suggestion that epic government failure may not equate to joy.

Finally, and it goes without saying, at this point there is no way Obamacare’s initial enrollment target of 7 million Americans over the next 5 months ca realistically be achieved.

Health industry experts have serious doubts about whether these quaint tools could get the Obama administration a good way toward its first-year enrollment target of 7 million Americans in the exchanges by the end of March.

 

“There’s no way a call center can handle 7 million enrollees between now and March,” said Dan Schuyler, director of exchange technology for Leavitt Partners.

 

The National Council of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters, more of whom are getting certified every day to help people sign up. They’re getting the clear message from the administration — only use paper applications if nothing else works.

 

“We’ve been strongly urged to enroll people online and the paper application is the last resort,” said Michele Cullen, manager of the navigator program for the Genesis Health System in Illinois and Iowa.

…

 

The approaching Dec.15 deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1, combined with the paper and call center challenges, have left advocates trying to enroll people any way they can while keeping their fingers crossed that HealthCare.gov will improve.

 

“At this point, we’re three weeks into enrollment,” Ng’andu said. “We’re not going to wait. … From our perspective, we need to get individuals informed. We need to get them shopping.”

Shopping… with a gun to their head. But stepping back from the glitchy trees and looking at the forest of errors, one wonders how long before Obama instructs the GOP to shut down the government once more with the same demand as last time: delay Obamacare.

One wonders if Obama’s agreeing to all GOP demands would be measured in hours or in minutes this time around. Then again, one doesn’t – after all it’s nothing but more political theater.

As for the ordinary American man or woman, well they too have a recourse. Just dial: 1-800-F U-CKYO

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hw-ELo7WuW4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The rollout of Obamacare to date has been, as many predicted, the case study of everything that is wrong with a mandatory government-conceived, supervised and enforced program. Ignoring for a minute the daily embarrassment the Obama administration has to face with the well-documented failings of the HealthCare.gov website which on second glance should win Obama the Nobel Price for coding in Fortran (or  Cobol), and which seems set for a full-blown overhaul that would force a delay of the mandate whether Obama wants it or not, the several million “glitchy” lines of code have become the greatest gift the GOP could have asked for. A gift, which as the saying goes, keeps on giving. Because one of Obama’s suggested loopholes has been to advise people who can’t or won’t sign up online, to do so using old-fashioned means: by paper, pen or phone. Unfortunately, that’s where the rabbit hole just goes deeper, because as Politico reports, the glitches that started on line have rapidly shifted to the world of phone and mail, as virtually every pathway of enrolling into the enforced healthcare program is now hopelessly bottlenecked, if not entirely shut.

From Politico:

With the supposedly state-of-the-art $600 million HealthCare.gov portal malfunctioning, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to go ahead and try to get health coverage by mailing in a paper application, calling the helpline or seeking help from one of the trained “assisters.”

 

But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.

True. But at least Obamacare’s failure means way more government jobs as the demand for people with the absolutely most basic set of rudimentary skills – being able to concurrently listen and/or read and type has soared. Which in an insolvent welfare state – with or without a ministry of happiness – is all one can ask for: more stimulus for everyone… especially if due to the same state’s gross incompetence in doing one thing right.

As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:

“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

 

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

 

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.

This is where it gets really funny:

Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

 

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

 

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

 

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.

Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.

And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:

Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

 

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

 

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.

Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

 

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

 

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

 

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

Sounds like a hint for the US Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness to enforce the directive that swimming in paper equates to at least 8 out of 10 hedons on the happiness scale. Otherwise, some subversive, terrorist tea-party elements may float the wild suggestion that epic government failure may not equate to joy.

Finally, and it goes without saying, at this point there is no way Obamacare’s initial enrollment target of 7 million Americans over the next 5 months ca realistically be achieved.

Health industry experts have serious doubts about whether these quaint tools could get the Obama administration a good way towar
d its first-year enrollment target of 7 million Americans in the exchanges by the end of March.

 

“There’s no way a call center can handle 7 million enrollees between now and March,” said Dan Schuyler, director of exchange technology for Leavitt Partners.

 

The National Council of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters, more of whom are getting certified every day to help people sign up. They’re getting the clear message from the administration — only use paper applications if nothing else works.

 

“We’ve been strongly urged to enroll people online and the paper application is the last resort,” said Michele Cullen, manager of the navigator program for the Genesis Health System in Illinois and Iowa.

…

 

The approaching Dec.15 deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1, combined with the paper and call center challenges, have left advocates trying to enroll people any way they can while keeping their fingers crossed that HealthCare.gov will improve.

 

“At this point, we’re three weeks into enrollment,” Ng’andu said. “We’re not going to wait. … From our perspective, we need to get individuals informed. We need to get them shopping.”

Shopping… with a gun to their head. But stepping back from the glitchy trees and looking at the forest of errors, one wonders how long before Obama instructs the GOP to shut down the government once more with the same demand as last time: delay Obamacare.

One wonders if Obama’s agreeing to all GOP demands would be measured in hours or in minutes this time around. Then again, one doesn’t – after all it’s nothing but more political theater.

As for the ordinary American man or woman, well they too have a recourse. Just dial: 1-800-F U-CKYO

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hw-ELo7WuW4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

If one (such as everyone at the Federal Reserve) thought that the world’s greatest artificial “wealth effect” would also generate the world’s happiest people, one would be dead wrong.

Take Venezuela – Hugo Chavez’ socialist paradise, which was recently inherited by Nicolas Maduro in which he proceeded to not only completely devalue the local currency but to engineer, through such exquisite central-planning that even the Politburo at the Marriner Eccles building is green with envy, the highest returning stock market on earth in 2013. Alas, either the locals are not quite as impressed with the Caracas’ “stock market” YTD return of over 300% (which doesn’t quite cover the loss in purchasing power for what things one can actually purchase in Venezuela), or the chronic toilet paper shortages remind them that the phrase socialist utopia is the world’s greatest oxymoron.

As a result, president Maduro has decided to boldly go where no socialist has gone before and has unveiled a new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, whose primary purposes will be to enforce “happiness.” In other words,  something along the lines of the beatings will continue until happiness returns…

From AP:

Americans may have the constitutional right to pursue happiness, but Venezuela now has a formal government agency in charge of enforcing it. President Nicolas Maduro says the new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness will coordinate all the “mission” programs created by the late President Hugo Chavez to alleviate poverty.

 

Wags had a field day Friday, waxing sarcastic on Twitter about how happy they felt less than 24 hours after the announcement.

 

Oil-rich Venezuela is chronically short of basic goods and medical supplies. Annual inflation is running officially at near 50 percent and the U.S. dollar now fetches more than seven times the official rate on the black market.

Shockingly, to some average Caracans, happiness does not mean buying AMZN at a PE of N/M and selling it a PE of !Ref#. Instead, it means getting hammered.

In downtown Caracas, fruit vendor Victor Rey said he’s now waiting for Maduro to create a vice ministry of beer. “That would make me, and all the drunks, happy,” he said.

Meanwhile, others point out the blindingly obvious:

A TV journalist whose show was recently forced off the air after he refused to censor political opponents of the ruling socialists, Leopoldo Castillo, called Maduro’s announcement an international embarrassment.

Obviously Leopoldo has never heard of ObamaCare… or the NSA.

Housewife Liliana Alfonzo, 31, said that instead of a Supreme Happiness agency she’d prefer being able to get milk and toilet paper, which disappear off store shelves minutes after arriving at stores.

Ultimately, Venezuela’s current predicament may be largely blamed on one thing: reckless entitlement and welfare spending (with lots of corruption thrown in for good measure).

 

Chavez spent billions on social programs, from benefits for single mothers to handouts of apartments and major appliances.

At least he never spent hundreds of millions rolling out a untested website, whose end purpose was to prove to everyone that if one needs something broken beyond any hope of repair, just put the government in charge.

As for the US, already elbow deep in its own unsustainable socialist agenda, we can hardly wait for the latest diversionary campaign: one which sweeps the epic debacle that is Obamacare under the rug following the roll out of, what else, ObamaJoy.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Eqe3XtQ3EN8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When three weeks ago, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht – the creator of the now shutdown Bitcoin-only “alternative” marketplace Silk Road also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, some were surprised that the Feds only confiscated about $3.6 million worth in Bitcoins from Ulbrecht. Proving all doubters wrong, and that creating the first “libertarian” marketplace not subject to any rules and regulations, not to mention fiat monetary constraints, actually does pay quite well, moments ago it was revealed that Federal prosecutors had found an additional $29 million, or 144,336 BitCoins, belonging to the Dread Pirate. According to Reuters, the booty was discovered on “computer hardware” belonging to Ulbricht. The repossessed electronic money, whose encryption technologies seem to leave a bit to be desired, has now been impounded and will likely remain on the FBI’s hard disks indefinitely.

More:

Authorities said the haul represented the largest ever Bitcoin seizure.

 

Ulbricht’s lawyer could not be contacted on Friday evening (local time), but had previously told reporters his client denied the charges.

 

The currency, which has been in existence since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.

 

The US Attorney’s Office said with nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents have now collected more than $US33 million in bitcoins based on current value.

 

Ulbricht is due to appear in court within weeks to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

It remains to be seen if the Dread Pirate will be able to transact in prison using BitCoins. It also remains to be seen if leading hedge fund/PE firms such as Fortress, which recently voiced its support for BitCoin, will step in to fill the void left by Ulbricht’s arrest realizing the great monetary potential – in either USD or BTC terms – to be reaped by providing the masses with what is a truly anonymous marketplace.

Finally, for those who missed it the first time, here is some additional information on the identity and motivation of the Ulbricht:

Who is the Dread Pirate Roberts?

The court documents described Mr Ulbricht, 29, as a former physics student at the University of Texas, who had gone on to study at the University of Pennsylvania between 2006 and 2010.

 

It was here, according to Mr Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile, as quoted by court documents, that his “‘goals’ subsequently ‘shifted'”.

 

He wrote on the social network that he had wanted to “give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force” by “institutions and governments”.

 

Authorities said he took to online forums to publicise Silk Road as a potential marketplace for drugs back in January 2011.

 

In one such message, a user believed to be Mr Ulbricht allegedly said: “Has anyone seen Silk Road yet? It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”

 

Investigators said he used the same channels months later to recruit help – starting with a search for an “IT pro in the Bitcoin community”.

 

The FBI said Mr Ulbricht would appear in San Francisco federal court later on Wednesday.

And more from NYMag:

The dark Internet’s favorite massive drug marketplace, Silk Road, was shut down by the FBI last night and its alleged mastermind arrested on an array of colorful charges after a nearly two-year undercover operation.

 

Twenty-nine-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was picked up in San Francisco and accused of running the underground e-warehouse while allegedly laundering money, trafficking narcotics, and even hiring a hit man to kill one of the site’s users. Fittingly for a computer nerd, not a Heisenberg, he left a rich personal trail online.

 

According to the federal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, “Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” enabling “several thousand drug dealers” to move “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs.” The site’s sales totaled about $1.2 billion in the form of 9.5 million Bitcoins (naturally). About $3.6 million in the Internet currency has been seized.

 

Ulbricht, though, wasn’t exactly great at covering his tracks, attaching his name, photo, and personal e-mail address to Silk Road business, eventually resulting in his arrest.

…

Last year on his Google+ account, Ulbricht, who’s now charged with facilitating the sale of drugs through the mail, asked, “Anybody know someone that works for UPS, FedEX, or DHL?”

…

On YouTube, Ulbricht (“ohyeaross”) liked videos by Ron Paul, along with clips called “The Market for Security” and “How to Get Away With Stealing.” (Of Paul, Ulbricht once told his Penn State Univeristy paper, “There’s a lot to learn from him and his message of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what it means to be a free individual.”) Most recently, he followed the Vice channel.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/mcmbH3QsQm0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When three weeks ago, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht – the creator of the now shutdown Bitcoin-only “alternative” marketplace Silk Road also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, some were surprised that the Feds only confiscated about $3.6 million worth in Bitcoins from Ulbrecht. Proving all doubters wrong, and that creating the first “libertarian” marketplace not subject to any rules and regulations, not to mention fiat monetary constraints, actually does pay quite well, moments ago it was revealed that Federal prosecutors had found an additional $29 million, or 144,336 BitCoins, belonging to the Dread Pirate. According to Reuters, the booty was discovered on “computer hardware” belonging to Ulbricht. The repossessed electronic money, whose encryption technologies seem to leave a bit to be desired, has now been impounded and will likely remain on the FBI’s hard disks indefinitely.

More:

Authorities said the haul represented the largest ever Bitcoin seizure.

 

Ulbricht’s lawyer could not be contacted on Friday evening (local time), but had previously told reporters his client denied the charges.

 

The currency, which has been in existence since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.

 

The US Attorney’s Office said with nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents have now collected more than $US33 million in bitcoins based on current value.

 

Ulbricht is due to appear in court within weeks to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

It remains to be seen if the Dread Pirate will be able to transact in prison using BitCoins. It also remains to be seen if leading hedge fund/PE firms such as Fortress, which recently voiced its support for BitCoin, will step in to fill the void left by Ulbricht’s arrest realizing the great monetary potential – in either USD or BTC terms – to be reaped by providing the masses with what is a truly anonymous marketplace.

Finally, for those who missed it the first time, here is some additional information on the identity and motivation of the Ulbricht:

Who is the Dread Pirate Roberts?

The court documents described Mr Ulbricht, 29, as a former physics student at the University of Texas, who had gone on to study at the University of Pennsylvania between 2006 and 2010.

 

It was here, according to Mr Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile, as quoted by court documents, that his “‘goals’ subsequently ‘shifted'”.

 

He wrote on the social network that he had wanted to “give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force” by “institutions and governments”.

 

Authorities said he took to online forums to publicise Silk Road as a potential marketplace for drugs back in January 2011.

 

In one such message, a user believed to be Mr Ulbricht allegedly said: “Has anyone seen Silk Road yet? It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”

 

Investigators said he used the same channels months later to recruit help – starting with a search for an “IT pro in the Bitcoin community”.

 

The FBI said Mr Ulbricht would appear in San Francisco federal court later on Wednesday.

And more from NYMag:

The dark Internet’s favorite massive drug marketplace, Silk Road, was shut down by the FBI last night and its alleged mastermind arrested on an array of colorful charges after a nearly two-year undercover operation.

 

Twenty-nine-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was picked up in San Francisco and accused of running the underground e-warehouse while allegedly laundering money, trafficking narcotics, and even hiring a hit man to kill one of the site’s users. Fittingly for a computer nerd, not a Heisenberg, he left a rich personal trail online.

 

According to the federal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, “Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” enabling “several thousand drug dealers” to move “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs.” The site’s sales totaled about $1.2 billion in the form of 9.5 million Bitcoins (naturally). About $3.6 million in the Internet currency has been seized.

 

Ulbricht, though, wasn’t exactly great at covering his tracks, attaching his name, photo, and personal e-mail address to Silk Road business, eventually resulting in his arrest.

…

Last year on his Google+ account, Ulbricht, who’s now charged with facilitating the sale of drugs through the mail, asked, “Anybody know someone that works for UPS, FedEX, or DHL?”

…

On YouTube, Ulbricht (“ohyeaross”) liked videos by Ron Paul, along with clips called “The Market for Security” and “How to Get Away With Stealing.” (Of Paul, Ulbricht once told his Penn State Univeristy paper, “There’s a lot to learn from him and his message of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what it means to be a free individual.”) Most recently, he followed the Vice channel.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/mcmbH3QsQm0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning platform

The New Normal?

Our government and financial “leaders” tell us that things are back to normal and we are well on our way to economic recovery. They report rising GDP, declining unemployment, and record corporate profits. The legacy media propaganda machines, controlled by corporations dependent upon the government and Wall Street to funnel them advertising dollars in return for reporting falsehoods and mistruths, have been informing the masses that all is well. Just go back to staring at your iGadgets and tweeting your every thought to your followers, because the best and brightest in D.C. and Wall Street have it all figured out. The new normal is here to stay.

I guess my interpretation of normal deviates slightly from our glorious leaders’ definition. During the long-term bond bull market, from 1982 until 2007 the 10 Year Treasury steadily declined from 16% to 5%. This was normal because inflation declined at the same rate. Inflation declined from 13% to 3% over this same time frame according to the BLS. In reality, measuring inflation as it was measured in the 80?s and early 90?s would have yielded an inflation rate closer to 6% in 2007. During the decade prior to 2007, which consisted of supposedly strong economic growth, the 10 Year Treasury ranged between 4% and 7%. Even during the 2001 recession, it never dropped below 3.5%.

In a normal world an investor in a 10 Year Treasury bond would require a yield 2% to 3% above the rate of inflation. If the yield was below the rate of inflation they would be guaranteed to lose money. Only a fool, Federal Reserve chairman, or a CNBC bubble headed bimbo would buy a bond yielding less than the inflation rate. The BLS reported inflation rate has been between 2.1% and 3.2% over the last two years. Over this time frame, the 10 Year Treasury  yielded 2% or below until the threat of tapering reared its ugly head this past summer. Would this happen in a normal free market? If things are back to normal, why aren’t supposedly free markets acting normal? The Chinese and Japanese reacted normally. They stopped buying Treasuries with a real negative yield.

The only fool willing to buy negative yielding Treasuries is none other than Ben Bernanke. He thinks they are the investment of a lifetime. He is so sure they are a can’t miss investment, he buys $2.5 billion of them per day, which just so happens to be the government deficit per day. Ben now has $3.8 trillion of bonds on his books, versus $900 billion in 2008. His balance sheet is leveraged 60 to 1, versus the 30 to 1 of Lehman and Bear Stearns prior to their implosions. When even the hint of reducing bond purchases from $85 billion per month to $75 billion per month caused 10 Year rates to jump from 1.5% to 3% in a matter of weeks, you realize how “normal” our economy and financial system is functioning.

If our financial system was functioning normally and free market capitalism was allowed to operate according to true supply and demand, the 10 Year Treasury would be yielding 4% to 5% and 30 year mortgage rates would be 6% to 7%. Think about that for a minute. This scenario was normal from 2002 through 2007. That is what normal looks like. Now open your eyes and observe what your owners are telling you is normal. The slight increase in mortgage rates from 3.5% to 4.5% has brought the Wall Street buy and rent housing recovery scheme to it knees. Imagine if mortgage rates were allowed to rise to their true market rate. Housing would collapse in a heap.

Allowing Treasury rates to adjust to a true market rate, based on true inflation, would double or triple the annual interest expense on the $17 trillion national debt and blow a gigantic hole in Obama’s already disastrous $1 trillion annual deficits. Does this sound like “normal” to a rational thinking human being with the ability to understand simple math? Luckily, there are very few rational thinking Americans left and even fewer with the ability to understand simple math. We have been programmed to believe rather than think. As long as the stock market continue to rise, then everything is normal.

Do you think Ben Bernanke and his cohorts at the Federal Reserve worry about the average person who doesn’t own stocks, has to fill up their gas tank, feed their kids, make the mortgage, auto, and credit card payments, and figure out Obamacare, while working two part time jobs? Quantitative Easing (MONEY PRINTING) has one purpose and one purpose only – to further enrich the owners of the Federal Reserve – Wall Street banks. The .1% own most of the stocks in this country and their greed and avarice can never be satisfied.

This artificial prosperity plan for Wall Street has the added benefit of allowing the captured politicians in Washington D.C. to continue their $1 trillion per year deficit spending with no consequences for their squandering of future generations’ wealth. Bernanke and Yellen will never taper, because they can’t. The Fed balance sheet will continue to grow by at least $1 trillion per year until they crash the financial system again. Except this time, there will be no money printing solution. We are all trapped like rats in this monetary experiment being conducted by evil mad scientists. No one will get out alive. Welcome to the new normal. Now eat your cheese.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/pJ_wewmpB3s/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity,

The basic predicament we are in is that the current crop of leaders in the halls of monetary and political power do not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation.

The mind-boggling part about all this is that it's not really all that hard to grasp.

Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever.

Sooner or later everything must cease growing or it will exhaust its environs and thereby destroy itself.  The Fed is busy doing everything in its considerable power to get credit (that is, debt) growing again so that we can get back to what they consider to be "normal."

But the problem is — or the predicament I should more accurately say — is that the recent past was not normal.  You've probably all seen this next chart.  It shows total debt in the U.S. as a percent of GDP:

(source)

Somewhere right around 1980, things really changed and debt began climbing far faster than GDP. And that, right there, is the long and the short of why any attempt to continue the behavior that got us to this point is certain to fail.

It is simply not possible to grow your debts faster than your income forever. However, that's been the practice since 1980; and every current politician and Federal Reserve official developed their opinions about 'how the world works' during the 33 year period between 1980 and 2013.

Put bluntly, they want to get us back on that same track and as soon as possible. The reason?  Because every major power center, be that in DC or Wall Street, tuned their thinking, systems and sense of entitlement during that period. And, frankly, a huge number of financial firms and political careers will melt away if/when that credit expansion finally stops.

And stop it will; that's just a mathematical certainty. It's now extremely doubtful that the Fed or DC will willingly cease the current Herculean efforts towards reviving this flawed practice of borrowing too much, too fast. So we have to expect that it will be some form of financial accident that finally breaks the stranglehold of failed thinking that infects current leadership.

The Math

As a thought experiment, let's explore the math a little bit to see where it leads us. After all, I did just say that a poor end to all this is a "mathematical certainty", so let's test that theory a bit. I think you'll find this both interesting and useful.

To begin, Total Credit Market Debt (TCMD) is a measure of all the various forms of debt in the U.S. That includes corporate, state, federal, and household borrowing.  So student loans are in there, as are auto loans, mortgages, municipal and federal debt. It's pretty much everything debt-related.

What it does not include, though, are any unfunded obligations, entitlements, or other types of liabilities. So the Social Security shortfalls are not in there, nor are the underfunded pensions at the state or corporate levels. TCMD is just debt, plain and simple.

As you can see in this next chart, since 1970 TCMD has been growing exponentially and almost perfectly, too (the R^2 is over 0.99 for you science types):

I've pointed out the tiny little wiggle that happened in 2008 – 2009 which apparently nearly brought down the entire global financial system.  That little deviation was practically too much all on its own. 

Now debts are climbing again, at a quite nice pace. That's mainly due to the Fed monetizing US federal debt just to keep things patched together.

As an aside, based on this chart, we'd expect the Fed not to end their QE efforts until and unless households and corporations once more engage in robust borrowing. The system apparently 'needs' this chart to keep growing exponentially or it risks collapse.

Okay, one could ask: Why can't credit just keep growing? 

Here's where things get a little wonky. But if you'll bear with me, you'll see why I'm nearly 100% certain that the future will not resemble the past.

Let's start in 1980 when credit growth really took off. This period also happens to be the happy time that the Fed is trying to (desperately) recreate.

Between 1980 and 2013 total credit grew by an astonishing 8% per year, compounded.  I say 'astonishing' because anything growing by 8% per year will fully double every 9 years.

So let's run the math experiment as ask what will happen if the Fed is successful and total credit grows for the next 30 years at exactly the same rate it did over the prior 30.  That's all. Nothing fancy, simply the same rate of growth that everybody got accustomed to while they were figuring out 'how the world works.'

What happens to the current $57 trillion in TCMD as it advance it by 8% per year for 30 years?  It mushrooms into a silly number: $573 trillion.  That is, an 8% growth paradigm gives us a tenfold increase in total credit in just thirty years:  

For perspective, the GDP of the entire globe was just $85 trillion in 2012.   Even if we advance global GDP by some hefty number, like 4% per year for the next 30 years, under an 8% growth regime U.S. credit would be twice as large as global GDP in 2043(!)

If that comparison didn't do it for you, then just ask yourself: What exactly would US corporation, households and government borrow more than $500 trillion for over the next 30 years? The total mortgage market is currently $10 trillion, so might the plan include developing an additional 50 more US residential real estate markets?

More seriously, can you think of anything that could support borrowing that much money? I can't.

So perhaps the situation moderates a bit and instead of growing at 8%, credit market debt grows at just half that rate. So what happens if credit just grows by 4% per year? 

That gets us to $185 trillion, or another $128 trillion higher than today — a more than 3x increase:

Again, What might we borrow (only) $128 trillion for over the next 30 years? 

When I run these numbers I am entirely confident that the rate of growth in debt between 1980 and 2013 will not be recreated between 2013 and 2043. With just one caveat: I've been assuming dollars remain valuable. If dollars were to lose 90% or more of their value (say, perhaps due to our central bank creating too many of them?), then it's entirely possible to achieve any sorts of fantastical numbers one wishes to see.

Think it could never happen?

Conclusion (to Part I)

This is the critical takeaway from all the math above: for the Fed to achieve anything even close to the historical rate of credit growth, the dollar will have to lose a lot of value.  I truly believe this is the Fed's grand plan, if we may call it that, and it has nothing to do with what's best for the p
eople of this land. Instead, it's entirely about keeping the financial system primed with sufficient new credit to prevent it from imploding.

That is, the Fed is beholden to a broken system; not anything noble.

In Part II: The Near Future May See One of The Biggest Wealth Transfers In Human History, we dive fully into the logic why GDP growth is very unlikely to support the rate of credit expansion the Federal Reserve wants (more accurately: needs). And what will happen if it indeed doesn't? A lot of painful, awful things — but central among them, a currency crisis.

Amidst the ensuing unpleasantness will be an awakening within today's hyper-financialized markets to the huge imbalance now existing between paper claims and ownership of real things. A massive wealth transfer from those with 'paper wealth' (stocks, bonds, dollars) to those owning tangible assets (the productive value of which can't easily be inflated away) will occur — and quickly, too.

Suggesting the key objective for today's investor is answering: How do I make sure I'm on the right side of that wealth transfer?

Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KWWghjMKRhA/story01.htm Tyler Durden