Dave Barry is the author of approximately eleventy billion books and the recipient of exactly one Pulitzer Prize. For four decades he wrote a weekly column, syndicated from his home base at the Miami Herald, and he is the author of an annual, despairing, hilarious “Year in Review.”
Barry’s books formed the basis for a short-lived show about his life, Dave’s World, and his novel Big Trouble was made into a film of the same name. It’s the story of a group of miscreants who wind up inadvertently stealing a nuclear suitcase and hijacking a plane due to their own incompetence. The film was set to be released—inauspiciously—on September 12, 2001.
In June, Reason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Barry to talk about his new book, Lessons from Lucy, America’s strategic helium reserve (which Barry last discussed with Reason in 1994), jokes he can’t tell anymore, and his perennial vaguely libertarian campaign for the presidency.
“The liberal idea has become obsolete. … (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades.”
Such was the confident claim of Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times on the eve of a G-20 gathering that appeared to validate his thesis.
Consider who commanded all the attention at the Osaka summit.
The main event was Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping and their agreement to renew trade talks. Xi runs an archipelago of detention camps where China’s Uighur Muslims and its Kazakh minority have their minds coercively “corrected.”
A major media focus at the summit was Trump’s meeting with Putin where he playfully admonished the Russian president not to meddle again in our 2020 election. The two joked about how both are afflicted with a media that generates constant fake news.
At the G-20 class picture, Trump was seen smiling and shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence says ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump called the prince “a friend” who has done a “spectacular job.”
Trump then left for Seoul, traveled to the DMZ, and crossed into North Korea to shake hands with Kim Jong Un, who runs a police state unrivaled for its repression.
Negotiations on Kim’s nuclear weapons may be back on track.
Among other G-20 leaders present were Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi of India and President Recep Erdogan of Turkey, who has imprisoned tens of thousands following a coup attempt in July 2016.
In his interview with the FT’s Lionel Barber, Putin appeared as much an analyst of, as an advocate for, the nationalism and populism that seems to be succeeding the 20th-century liberalism of the West.
Why is liberalism failing? Several causes, said Putin. Among them, its failure to deal with the crisis of the age: mass and unchecked illegal migration. Putin praised Trump’s efforts to secure the U.S. border:
“This liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population…
This liberal idea presupposes that… migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected.”
Putin deplored Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to bring into Germany a million refugees from Syria’s civil war.
His comments came as 10 Democratic candidates in the second presidential primary debate were raising their hands in support of the proposition that breaking into the USA should cease to be a crime and those who succeed in breaking in should be given free health care.
Putin also sees the social excesses of multiculturalism and secularism in the West as representing a failure of liberalism.
In a week where huge crowds celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall “uprising” in Greenwich Village, as it is now called, with parties and parades, Putin declared:
“Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values? … I am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish.”
He added, “But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.”
Elton John pronounced himself “deeply upset.”
Putin did not back off:
“Let everyone be happy … But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”
Putin took power, two decades ago, as this 21st century began. In recent years, he has advanced himself not only as a foe of liberalism but a champion of populism, traditionalism and nationalism.
Nor is he hesitant to declare his views regarding U.S. politics.
Of Trump, Putin says, “He is a talented person (who) knows very well what his voters expect of him. … Trump looked into his opponent’s attitude toward him and saw changes in American society.”
Recalling his own controversial comment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, Putin said the tragedy was not the death of Communism but the shattering of the Russian Federation into 15 separate nations.
The tragedy was the “dispersal of ethnic Russians” across the newly independent successor states of the Soviet Union: “25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living outside the Russian Federation. … Is this not a tragedy? A huge one! And family relations? Jobs? Travel? It was nothing but a disaster.”
What may be said of Putin?
He is no Stalin, no Communist ideologue, but rather a Russian nationalist who seeks the return of her lost peoples to the Motherland, and, seeing his country as a great power, wants NATO out of his front yard.
While we have issues with him on arms control, Iran and Venezuela, we have a common interest in avoiding a war with this nuclear-armed nation as we did with the far more menacing Soviet Empire of the Cold War.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RNsgqe Tyler Durden
In a bipartisan win for criminal justice reform, Pennsylvania is sealing more than 30 million criminal records.
Dubbed the Clean Slate Act, the legislation is the first of its kind and will reopen channels to housing and employment that might otherwise be closed to individuals with certain criminal histories. The state will now automatically seal records of those who were found not guilty, those whose charges were dropped, and those who committed low-level offenses—such as prostitution and shoplifting—if they have remained crime-free for 10 years.
“As the automatic sealing of criminal records goes into effect today, I am reminded that Clean Slate is just one part of our larger push for criminal justice reform, and already we’re seeing signs of success,” Gov. Tom Wolf (D) said in a statement. “Our prison population is declining while our crime rates are at the lowest in a generation and that’s good for everyone. There’s still more we can do to help ensure a fair, just society, even for law offenders and I’m optimistic we can continue to work in a bipartisan way to identify and tackle issues in our criminal justice system.”
Previously, Pennsylvania allowed those with criminal records to petition for expungement by requesting a hearing. But as Sharon Dietrich, the litigation director for Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, toldThe Washington Post, her group represented anywhere from hundreds to thousands of such cases per year, brought by low-income residents who had to wait for extended periods of time just to get in front of a judge. Even with such a heavy caseload, Dietrich told the Post, her group did not even start “to touch the need for that service.”
Now, thanks to the Clean Slate Act, criminal records that qualify will be sealed without request, cutting a substantial amount of red tape, as well as removing the financial burdens associated with the previously lengthy judicial proceedings.
This legislation is likely to produce positive real-world benefits. For example, researchers at the University of Michigan found that those with criminal histories received 60 percent fewer callbacks from employers after submitting job applications. Now many such job applicants in Pennsylvania will no longer need to worry about prospective employers viewing their past records. In regards to housing, a research paper in the Journal of Race and Lawreported that 80 percent of landlords perform criminal background checks prior to renting. Now many such would-be renters in Pennsylvania will no longer need to worry about prospective landlords viewing their past records.
Society also has something to gain. The formerly incarcerated boast an unemployment rate of over 27 percent—more than the U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression, the Prison Policy Initiative notes—which shares an unfortunate reciprocal relationship with higher criminal reoffense rates. If you’re unable to land a job, it follows that you might fall back on crime.
The law was spearheaded by a bipartisan coalition led by Rep. Sheryl Delozier (R–88th District) and Rep. Jordan Harris (D–186th District).
“Today represents the culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work and collaboration between Representative Sheryl Delozier, me and countless other legislators and advocates who are looking to help those who have paid their debt to society truly get their second chance,” Harris said in a statement. The Clean Slate Act “shows that we’re serious about the benefits criminal justice reform has for all taxpayers.”
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With former Vice President Joe Biden’s appeal fading fast amid campaign gaffes and a royal ass-kicking by Kamala Harris during last week’s debate (which was planned months in advance), there is a growing consensus that the 2020 election will come down to Harris vs. Trump.
Not only have Harris’s poll numbers been sharply accelerating while both Biden and Bernie Sanders have suffered recent hits, she’s the clear primary winner right now according to PredictIt, which allows people to bet on the outcome.
Via PredictIt
Want to know what else puts Harris at the top of the pack? According to the Washington Examiner‘s Jerry Dunleavy, her top campaign attorney, Marc Elias, is the same guy who hired Fusion GPS for the Clinton Campaign.
Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group, became general counsel for California Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential bid this year. Elias, who held the same position in Clinton’s campaign, is named in two pending Federal Election Commission complaints and in a recent federal lawsuit alleging that the Clinton campaign broke campaign finance laws when it used Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS. –Washington Examiner
Fusion GPS, in turn, hired former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to cook up a dossier full of fabrications about then-candidate Trump and his 2016 campaign, which was then shopped to media outlets and passed along to US intelligence, where it was later used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Dunleavy notes that in 2017, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook admitted that he authorized Elias to hire Fusion GPS, saying ““I asked our lawyer and I gave him a budget allocation to investigate this, particularly the international aspect.” Mook said he received information directly from Fusion GPS or Steele about the Trump-Russia project.
“We were getting briefings that were put together by the law firm with information,” said Mook, adding “I’m proud that we were able to assemble some of the research that has brought this to light.”
Watchdog groups allege that Hillary for America purposely concealed the hiring of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele by reporting all the payments that it made to Perkins Coie as “legal services” without mentioning opposition research. Perkins Coie was paid over $12 million between 2016 and 2017 for its work representing Clinton and the DNC. According to its co-founder Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS was in turn paid $50,000 per month from Perkins Coie, and Christopher Steele was paid roughly $168,000 by Fusion GPS for his work.
Perkins Coie admitted in an October 2017 letter that it had hired Fusion GPS, claiming that “Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie” in March 2016 with the knowledge that Perkins Coie was representing Clinton and the DNC, and that Perkins Coie then “engaged” Fusion GPS from April of that year until just prior to the November election “to perform a variety of research services during the 2016 election cycle.” –Washington Examiner
According to an October 2017 report in the Washington Post, Elias personally “retained Fusion GPS … to conduct the research” which was “on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.”
Meanwhile, don’t discount Elias just because the Fusion/Steele/Russia gambit didn’t pay off since Trump actually won the election, the guy is a stone-cold Democratic sharp-shooter.
“Marc is known as one of the most skilled professionals in Democratic politics, in addition to being the party’s top election lawyer,” said former national press secretary for the Clinton campaign, Brian Fallon in 2017, adding “I am damn glad he pursued this on behalf of our campaign and only regret more of this material was not verified in time for the voters to learn it before the election.”
Which begs the question, what will Elias be doing for the Harris campaign?
Um… the former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign lawyer who hired the controversial Fusion GPS firm is now working for the Kamala Harris campaign
In a bipartisan win for criminal justice reform, Pennsylvania is sealing more than 30 million criminal records.
Dubbed the Clean Slate Act, the legislation is the first of its kind and will reopen channels to housing and employment that might otherwise be closed to individuals with certain criminal histories. The state will now automatically seal records of those who were found not guilty, those whose charges were dropped, and those who committed low-level offenses—such as prostitution and shoplifting—if they have remained crime-free for 10 years.
“As the automatic sealing of criminal records goes into effect today, I am reminded that Clean Slate is just one part of our larger push for criminal justice reform, and already we’re seeing signs of success,” Gov. Tom Wolf (D) said in a statement. “Our prison population is declining while our crime rates are at the lowest in a generation and that’s good for everyone. There’s still more we can do to help ensure a fair, just society, even for law offenders and I’m optimistic we can continue to work in a bipartisan way to identify and tackle issues in our criminal justice system.”
Previously, Pennsylvania allowed those with criminal records to petition for expungement by requesting a hearing. But as Sharon Dietrich, the litigation director for Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, toldThe Washington Post, her group represented anywhere from hundreds to thousands of such cases per year, brought by low-income residents who had to wait for extended periods of time just to get in front of a judge. Even with such a heavy caseload, Dietrich told the Post, her group did not even start “to touch the need for that service.”
Now, thanks to the Clean Slate Act, criminal records that qualify will be sealed without request, cutting a substantial amount of red tape, as well as removing the financial burdens associated with the previously lengthy judicial proceedings.
This legislation is likely to produce positive real-world benefits. For example, researchers at the University of Michigan found that those with criminal histories received 60 percent fewer callbacks from employers after submitting job applications. Now many such job applicants in Pennsylvania will no longer need to worry about prospective employers viewing their past records. In regards to housing, a research paper in the Journal of Race and Lawreported that 80 percent of landlords perform criminal background checks prior to renting. Now many such would-be renters in Pennsylvania will no longer need to worry about prospective landlords viewing their past records.
The law was spearheaded by a bipartisan coalition led by Rep. Sheryl Delozier (R–88th District) and Rep. Jordan Harris (D–186th District).
“Today represents the culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work and collaboration between Representative Sheryl Delozier, me and countless other legislators and advocates who are looking to help those who have paid their debt to society truly get their second chance,” Harris said in a statement. The Clean Slate Act “shows that we’re serious about the benefits criminal justice reform has for all taxpayers.”
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After asking his lawyers to delay the census after the Supreme Court put on hold his plan to include a citizenship question in the survey next year, Fox News reports, without citing anyone, that the census will be printed without including controversial U.S. citizenship question.
As The New York Times proudly writes, the decision is a victory for critics who said the question was part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans.
Critics of the question have pointed to studies that indicate asking about citizenship will cause immigrants and non-citizens to skip the question or the census altogether, leading to an inaccurate count of the population, and an undercount of minority groups in particular.
This is not a total surprise, as the Trump administration had said repeatedly that the issue must be resolved by July 1 to allow enough time to send out the questionnaire by April 2020, the date set by Congress for the census to go out.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRy55f Tyler Durden
What if what you have been told over and over again is not really the truth?
For weeks, the mainstream media has been telling us that Iran is getting dangerously close to having nuclear weapons. And now that the Iranians have publicly admitted that their uranium stockpile has exceeded the limit set by the nuclear deal, there is a lot of buzz that either the United States or Israel may soon strike Iran in order to prevent their nuclear program from proceeding even further. But of course once the missiles start flying, it is going to be just about impossible to stop a major war from erupting in the Middle East.
Before we get involved in such a war, we better make absolutely certain that Iran does not already have nuclear weapons, because a war with a nuclear-armed Iran could be absolutely cataclysmic. If the Iranians felt that the survival of their regime was on the line, they would not hesitate to throw everything that they have at Israel and at U.S. forces in the region. Unfortunately, very few people are talking about the well known evidence that Iran has had their hands on nukes for a long time.
In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a mad scramble for the nuclear weapons that were being held by Kazakhstan and Ukraine. According to former CIA spy Reza Kahlili, during that time period Iran received at least two nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan…
Kazakhstan, which had a significant portion of the Soviet arsenal and is predominately Muslim, was courted by Muslim Iran with offers of hundreds of millions of dollars for the bomb. Reports soon surfaced that three nuclear warheads were missing. This was corroborated by Russian Gen. Victor Samoilov, who handled the disarmament issues for the general staff. He admitted that the three were missing from Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, Paul Muenstermann, then vice president of the German Federal Intelligence Service, said Iran had received two of the three nuclear warheads and medium-range nuclear delivery systems from Kazakhstan.
If Iran did get two nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan, that is definitely very troubling, but not enough to cause Armageddon.
However, the bad news doesn’t stop there. According to Kahlili, when Ukraine finally transferred their nuclear weapons back to Russia, there “was a discrepancy of 250 nuclear weapons”…
To make matters worse, several years later, Russian officials stated that when comparing documents in transferring nuclear weapons from Ukraine to Russia, there was a discrepancy of 250 nuclear weapons.
Last week, Mathew Nasuti, a former U.S. Air Force captain who was at one point hired by the State Department as an adviser to one of its provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, said that in March 2008, during a briefing on Iran at the State Department, the department’s Middle East expert told the group that it was “common knowledge” that Iran had acquired tactical nuclear weapons from one or more of the former Soviet republics.
This discrepancy was also reported by the media in Russia, and one Russian journal even suggested that those 250 nuclear warheads could have been sold to Iran…
On April 3 the Russian journal Novaia Gazeta reported that 250 nuclear warheads with a total yield of 20 megatons were not returned by Ukraine to Russia.
Novaia Gazeta suggested the warheads could have been sold to a third country, possibly Iran.
The 200-kiloton warheads were due to be returned to Russia in 1992 after Ukraine declared itself a nuclear-free zone following a payment by Moscow to Kiev of approximately $500 million. The missing warheads were inventoried on papers Ukraine submitted to Moscow that were officially accepted by Russia.
If Iran is sitting on 250 nuclear warheads, it would be absolutely suicidal to get into a full-blown war with Iran.
Of course the mainstream media in the U.S. has been repeating the “fact” that Iran doesn’t have nukes for so long that most of us no longer question it.
Sometime a slip of the tongue is so incredible that no amount of doctoring can explain it. And sometimes a slip of the tongue is as intentional as could be. Take an appearance by Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky. He gave a briefing on Friday in Moscow during the Bush-Putin summit and was asked about whether Iran actually fired the Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile in a successful test earlier this month. The second question was whether Iran can threaten Israel, Russia or the United States with its nuclear and missile programs.
Then the Russian general takes a surprise turn: ‘Now, as to whether or not Iran has tested something like that. Iran does have nuclear weapons,’ Baluyevsky said. ‘Of course, these are non-strategic nuclear weapons. I mean these are not ICBMs with a range of more than 5,500 kilometers and more.”
And all the way back in 1998, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives publicly stated that the intelligence that they had been shown indicated that the Iranians already had nukes…
Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chariman of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told the Jerusalem Post ‘I believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons and that our policy should reflect that.’ Representative Bill McCollum (R-FL), also a member of the task force, said that evidence collected by the group ‘indicates Iran possesses nuclear capability.’ He added that ‘for years, we have received reliable information that Iran has been obtaining nuclear weapons’s parts and supplies from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Not only have we not dismissed these reports, but over these six years there has been a growing volume of supporting evidence.’
In addition to potentially obtaining nukes from elsewhere, the Iranians also aggressively developed their own nuclear weapons program for many years prior to agreeing to Obama’s nuclear deal. Just a couple of years ago, a former director of the CIA and several other former U.S. officials made it very clear that they believe that Iran has probably already developed their own nuclear weapons…
We assess, from U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency reports and other sources, that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. Over 13 years ago, prior to 2003, Iran was manufacturing nuclear-weapon components, like bridge-wire detonators and neutron initiators, performing non-fissile explosive experiments of an implosion nuclear device, and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile.
Thirteen years ago Iran was already a threshold nuclear-missile state. It is implausible that Iran suspended its program for over a decade for a nuclear deal with President Obama.
You can dismiss all of this and continue to push for war with Iran if you would like.
But what are you going to do when Iran uses their nukes and millions of people end up dead?
Iran is run by a bunch of apocalyptic nutjobs that hate us with a passion that is absolutely overwhelming. If World War 3 breaks out in the Middle East, they would use nuclear weapons against us without even thinking twice about it.
Thankfully they do not have missiles that can reach North America, but they do have missiles that can hit U.S. targets all over the Middle East, and all of Israel is in their range.
Maybe it is already too late to stop a war with Iran from happening. I certainly hope that isn’t true, because the death and destruction would be off the charts even if Iran doesn’t have nukes.
The next several months are going to be absolutely critical, and we will see what happens. Let us pray for peace to prevail, because the alternative will be more horrible than most of us can even imagine.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRxxfH Tyler Durden
Tesla released its Q2 delivery and production numbers after the bell on Tuesday, posting record production of 87,048 vehicles and record deliveries of approximately 95,200 vehicles.
In its release, the company also says it “made significant progress streamlining [its] global logistics and delivery operations at higher volumes, enabling cost efficiencies and improvements to [its] working capital position.”
In addition, the company also offered positive guidance for its Q3, claiming that its backlog had increased:
Orders generated during the quarter exceeded our deliveries, thus we are entering Q3 with an increase in our order backlog. We believe we are well positioned to continue growing total production and deliveries in Q3.
At least for now, it turns out that Tesla’s “leaked” emails touting the good news well in advance were both true, and not yet priced in by the market. Shares are up by more than 8% in the aftermarket session on the news.
Possibly as important as what the release included may be what it excluded, as Mark Spiegel noted on Twitter.
The following sentence was in the $TSLA Q1 deliveries report. It’s missing from today’s Q2 report:
“We reaffirm our prior guidance of 360,000 to 400,000 vehicle deliveries in 2019.”
The company appears to have staved off its critics for now – but no sooner are these numbers released than the market will be eagerly awaiting the accompanying Q2 financials.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XHbH4I Tyler Durden
Oil suffered its worst reaction to an OPEC meeting since 2014 today, plunging almost 5% prompting OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo to tell reporters in Vienna that, “the drop in crude prices on Tuesday was an ‘anomaly’.” Not everyone agreed.
“There are concerns that demand might slow to where it overpowers supply,” Bart Melek, head of commodity strategy at Toronto’s TD Securities, said in an interview.
The “gloomy” data, especially from China, “is very much part and parcel of what we’re seeing.”
API
Crude -5mm (-3mm exp)
Cushing +882k (-1.26mm exp)
Gasoline -387k (-2.2mm exp)
Distillates -1.7mm (=1.0mm exp)
After last week’s huge crude draw, expectations were for another decent-sized draw and API reported a bigger than expected crude draw…
WTI rolled over at a key trendline level…
But was unable to hold a modest rebound after the API print…
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LyuY1A Tyler Durden
Our monetary system is broken. It’s given us low growth, a shrinking job force, inequality beyond what a healthy economy would produce, inefficiency, and the unnatural growth of finance as a portion of the economy.
Our aging Federal Reserve System starves both small businesses and Silicon Valley of the capital needed to grow jobs and wages.
Fed policy translates into zero-interest-rate loans for the government and its cronies, and little or nothing for savers or small businesses. And it has transformed Wall Street from an engine of innovation into a servant of government power.
But I believe America can be set on the right path towards a robust and broadly shared capitalism again with just three steps.
Step 1: Abolish Capital Gains Tax on Currencies
This country already allows gold currency. The Treasury mints millions of one-ounce silver eagle dollars that are worth more than twenty dollars apiece and one-ounce gold eagle fifty-dollar pieces that are worth $1,150 apiece.
Virtually all of these are hoarded.
Though it has been legal since 1987 to use them at their metallic value, that route leads to a capital gains tax on their appreciation.
Since the appreciation of a gold or silver piece is by reasonable definition all inflation, the tax is simple confiscation (like all capital gains taxes on spurious inflationary profits).
The move of gold and silver coins into circulation would offer a corrective of constitutional money for any dollar debauchery by the Fed.
Step 2: Remove Obstacles to Alternative Forms of Money
Despite imprudent governmental interference, the internet remains a bastion of American power, with U.S. companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, eBay, Cisco, Qualcomm, and scores of others capturing the bulk of all internet revenues.
The internet plays a central role in the American economy. But there is a profound flaw in its architecture, as I have explained before. It was designed for communications, not transactions.
Around the globe, transactions are shifting toward the internet. Although online purchases remain between 6-7% of all commerce, internet trade is expanding rapidly.
But to buy something on the Internet, you often have to give the supplier sufficient information — credit card number, expiration date, address, security code, mother’s maiden name, and so on — to defraud you or even to steal your identity.
This information therefore has to be protected at high cost in firewalled central repositories and private networks, which are irresistible targets for hackers.
With transactional overhead dominated by offline financial infrastructure, micropayments are uneconomic, and the internet fills with fake offers, bogus contracts, and pop-up hustles. Some 36% of web pages are bogus, emitted by bots to snare information from unwary surfers.
The internet today desperately needs a new trusted and secure payment method that conforms to the shape and reach of global networking and commerce.
It should eliminate the constant exchanges of floating currencies, more volatile than the global economy that they supposedly measure. It should be capable of transactions of all sizes. And it should partake of the same monetary sources of stable value that characterize gold.
The new system should be distributed as far as internet devices are distributed: a dispersed organization based on peer-to-peer links between users, rather than a centralized hierarchy based on national financial institutions.
Fortunately such a payment system has already been invented. It is set to become a new facet of internet infrastructure.
It is called the bitcoin blockchain.
The bitcoin blockchain is already in place. It functions peer-to-peer without the need for outside trusted third parties. And it follows theorist Nick Szabo’s precursor, bitgold. Its value, like gold’s, is ultimately based on the scarcity of time.
Even if bitcoin proves flawed, scores of companies are developing alternatives based on the essential blockchain innovation that can serve as a successful transactions medium for digital commerce. The existence of such a system would enable sellers on the internet, such as content producers, to name their own prices and collect their funds directly.
And the very process that validates the transaction would prohibit spam. There would be no hassle of bartering content for advertising revenues at some aggregator such as Google. Aggregators with advertising clout would merely add inefficiency to an automated system that minimize transaction costs.
The internet would have a money system of its own.
With a low market price for goods and services — Google and other players could charge millicents for their services and still make a mint — the internet economy would transcend its current den of thieves and hustlers.
It could attain its promise as a frictionless facilitator of human creativity rather than as a channel of chicanery. Its markets would impel the world toward new realms of knowledge and wealth.
But the success of a new global standard of value on the internet entails a ban on taxation of internet currencies. If only government currencies escape taxation, alternative currencies such as bitcoin will always be relegated to niches.
Step 3: Fix the Dollar
That brings us to the third step: fixing the U.S. dollar.
How do we do this?
Monetary scholar Judy Shelton already devised a play. The chief instrument would be the creation of Treasury Trust Bonds — five-year Treasuries redeemable in either dollars or gold. They could be enacted either through legislation or as a Treasury initiative.
Legislation would specifically authorize the issuance of five-year Treasury securities that pay no interest, but provide for payment of principal at maturity in either ounces of gold or the face value of the security, at the option of the holder.
The instrument would be an obligation of the U.S. government to redeem the nominal value (“face value”) in terms of a precise weight of gold stipulated in advance or the dollar amount established as the monetary equivalent. The rate of convertibility (in gold grams) is permanent throughout the life of the bond; it defines the gold value of the dollar.
As Alan Greenspan declared in the Wall Street Journal during the previous era of monetary turmoil, in 1981:
“In years past a desire to return to a monetary system based on gold was perceived as nostalgia for an era when times were simpler, problems less complex and the world not threatened with nuclear annihilation. But after a decade of destabilizing inflation and economic stagnation, the restoration of a gold standard has become an issue that is clearly rising on the economic policy agenda.”
In fact, Greenspan suggested that “Shelton bonds” would pave the path to the future…
“The degree of success of restoring long-term fiscal confidence will show up clearly in the yield spreads between gold and fiat dollar obligations of the same maturities. Full convertibility would require that the yield spread for all maturities virtually disappear.”
Of course, as Fed chairman, Greenspan went on to become a major maestro of monopoly money at the Fed. And in his subsequent books he expressed many regrets and misgivings about the nature and role of central banks.
But in an era of new monetary turmoil, Shelton bonds still have traction. In addition, as bitcoin blockchain innovations spread through the internet, borrowers could also issue bonds with a bitcoin payoff. So new systems based on gold and blockchain innovations can evolve into a new world monetary infrastructure.
These are the three steps that can restore integrity to the monetary system.
As I explained previously, this is how we can save Main Street from the menace of monopoly money, transcend the dismal science of stagnation and decline, and restore the American mission and dream.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Nt9Z32 Tyler Durden
