Tag: news

“Conventional economic theory says ‘crisis don’t happen’ unless they are hit by an [outside] shock” exclaims Steve Keen, adding that numerous Nobel Prize winning economists have suggested that “capitalism is stable…” and “the problem of avoiding depressions has been solved for many decades.”

But as Keen explains in this brief but extremely succinct interview, they are wrong – and simply won’t (or can’t) see the next one coming. “People in the public think economists are experts on money; but, in fact, they are experts in finding ways not to include money, debt, and banks in their models”

And yet, despite their failed forecasts and dismal ‘scientific’ models, we trust they can enter (and exit) the greatest monetary experiment in history with no bad outcome…

 

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

“Conventional economic theory says ‘crisis don’t happen’ unless they are hit by an [outside] shock” exclaims Steve Keen, adding that numerous Nobel Prize winning economists have suggested that “capitalism is stable…” and “the problem of avoiding depressions has been solved for many decades.”

But as Keen explains in this brief but extremely succinct interview, they are wrong – and simply won’t (or can’t) see the next one coming. “People in the public think economists are experts on money; but, in fact, they are experts in finding ways not to include money, debt, and banks in their models”

And yet, despite their failed forecasts and dismal ‘scientific’ models, we trust they can enter (and exit) the greatest monetary experiment in history with no bad outcome…

 

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

Almost a year ago, the French constitutional court ruled against Francois Hollande’s triumphal blast into socialist wealth redistribution, with his proposed 75% tax rate on high earners, and so indefinitely delayed the exodus of the bulk of French high earners (even if some, like Obelix, aka Gerard Depardieu, promptly made their way to the country that has become the land of solace for all oppressed people everywhere, Russia) into more tax-hospitable  climes. That delay is now over, when earlier today the same court approved a 75% tax on all those earning over €1 million. The proposal passed after the government modified it to make employers liable for the 75% tax. As BBC reports, the levy will last two years, affecting income earned this year and in 2014.

And with the tax passage, the preparations for an exodus by all high earnings begin, first among the local football teams. BBC reports:

Football clubs in France went on strike earlier this year over the issue, saying many of France’s clubs are financially fragile and say the plans could spark an exodus of top players who are paid huge salaries.

 

The Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain has more than 10 players whose pay exceeds 1m euros, including the Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

 

There has also been a chorus of protest from businesses and wealthy individuals who have condemned the tax – including film star Gerard Depardieu, who left the country in protest.

 

Polls suggest a large majority in France back the temporary tax.

 

Unlike many other countries in Europe, France aims to bring down its huge public deficit by raising taxes as well as some spending cuts. The highest tax rate in the UK is 45% and is applied to individuals.

While the numerous unintended consequences of this shock and awe tax hike will be amusing to watch in real time as this move will almost certainly be the long-awaited catalyst to push France into its long-predicted recession (to the benefit of countries like Belgium where the French uber-rich are already relocating to), one wonders if the drop in the value of French ultra-high end real estate will be offset by the soaring valuations of London’s already “beyond housing bubble” home prices, and just what the local response will be now that domestic real estate is even more inaccessible to anyone but the wealthiest global oligarchs and billionaires (aside from the capital gains tax of course, which as we wrote previously, is about to be launched first in London, and then everywhere else).

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-bAnW59nZZs/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Two months ago, we reported when a female suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a bus in the Russian city of Volgograd, located 400 miles northeast of Sochi where the winter Olympic games begin in just over a month.

The explosion was caught on dashcam (the video can be seen here). But more than a mere isolated terrorist incident in a region of Russia which has historically been rife with conflict between Russia and Chechen separatists, this explosion, which took place just after Russia managed to impose its will in the Syrian conflict’s outcome, and left Saudi (and Israeli) relations with the US in tatters, we reminded readers just who is the invisible hand behind all terrorist activities in proximity to Sochi: Saudi Arabia.

Recall from our commentary on the October Volgograd explosion:

Disturbing as this video is, we believe it is only going to get worse as the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics approach. Recall from “Meet Saudi Arabia’s Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War“:

Bandar told Putin, “…The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya…. As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us…

Was today’s terrorist explosion just a warning shot ultimately funded and organized by none other than the biggest loser from the Syrian detente: Saudi Arabia, because recall that it was Saudi Arabia which orchestrated the near-US invasion after playing Obama and Kerry like a fiddle, in hopes of getting the natgas pipeline under Syria. Following the Putin-brokered peace plan, Saudi will now have to wait at least one more year before re-escalating tensions in the Syria region with hopes of installing its own puppet regime.  In the meantime, is Saudi now openly lashing out at the one country that made this delay a reality. And if so, when, where and how will Putin retaliate against the country that serves as the anchor of the petrodollar system? We look forward to finding out.  

It’s two months later and if indeed Bandar bin Sultan is in funding and enabling the local terrorists, then Saudi Arabia is increasingly demonstrating its displeasure with Russia, and furthermore, sending a warning to the world that the Sochi games may be hazardous to one’s health. Overnight, another almost identical explosion rocked Volgograd, when a female suicide bomber set off a bomb in one of the five largest train stations in Russia in what is a clear warning to Russia as the Winter Olympics approach.

This is what happened earlier today:

A suicide bombing has killed at least 14 people and injured over 40 in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, raising concerns about terrorism just over a month before Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The train station attacked today is one of the five largest in Russia
and is a major transit point for much of southern Russia. It was unclear
whether the train station was the woman’s intended target or whether
she planned to travel elsewhere to carry out an attack. 

 

A female bomber carried out the blast in a Volgograd train station, 400 miles from the site of the upcoming Olympics in the Russian resort town of Sochi, Russian authorities said. The Sochi 2014 Olympic Games are scheduled to begin on Feb. 7. A total of 33 people were hospitalized, with eight in serious condition and one in “extremely serious condition,” Oleg Solagai, a spokesman for the Russian health ministry, told Russian news agency Rossiya24.

 

Authorities in Volgograd said the attack left 27 people seriously injured, and that the death toll may increase. A police officer was among the dead, and a nine-year-old girl was injured, authorities said.

 

A severed head found at the site of the bombing is suspected to be that of the woman who carried out the attack, making it “possible to identify her,” a Volgograd law enforcement source told the Russian news agency Interfax. Investigators have reason to believe the woman came from Russia’s Dagestan region, the source told the agency. 

 

The bombing took place in the same city where another female suicide bomber was blamed for an attack an October bus attack that killed seven people, including the bomber.  Like the October bomb attack, today’s blast was caught on camera. Surveillance video showed the exact moment the explosion took place, just inside an entranceway to the train station.

 

Volgograd reeled from the attack just before the New Year’s celebrations, a major holiday in Russia that would have likely meant a high amount of traffic was passing through the train station today. Yulia Chemova with Volunteers of Russia, who was at the railway station minutes after the attack to help out, told ABC News she believed the attack was planned around the New Year holiday.

 

“The timing for the terrorist attack in Volgograd is perfect,” she said. “It’s holiday season; airports and train stations are packed at this time of year.”

 

There have been 32 terrorist attacks in Russia in the year ahead of Sochi 2014, according to Kavkazskiyuzel, a Russian think tank.

 

The power of today’s explosion was equivalent to at least 22 pounds of TNT, and police officers averted a much larger tragedy by stopping the woman right at the entrance to the train station, according to a committee investigating the attack. Had she made it inside, a spokesman for the committee said, casualties could have reached the hundreds. Russia’s interior ministry said it would deploy more police at all rail stations in Russia and that passengers would be subject to strict security measures.

 

Today’s attack bore some similarities to the October bus bombing, which authorities said was also carried out by a woman from Dagestan. Russia has for years been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a region that encompasses the restive Russian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, as well as the Olympic host city, Sochi.

 

Suicide bombers, often female, from Chechnya or Dagestan and sometimes known as “black widows,” have carried out many attacks on Russian targets in the past decade, including the dual bombing of the Moscow subway in 2010 that claimed 39 lives. Female bombers from the Caucasus were also blamed for the simultaneous bombing o
f two Russian airplanes in 2004, an attack that killed 90 people.

And, as noted, the explosion was caught on video and can be seen below:

So, like before, if Saudi Arabia is doing its best to poke Vladimir Putin with ever escalating provocations, how long until the former KGB spy retaliates?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hj7SrZAnFiQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Two months ago, we reported when a female suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a bus in the Russian city of Volgograd, located 400 miles northeast of Sochi where the winter Olympic games begin in just over a month.

The explosion was caught on dashcam (the video can be seen here). But more than a mere isolated terrorist incident in a region of Russia which has historically been rife with conflict between Russia and Chechen separatists, this explosion, which took place just after Russia managed to impose its will in the Syrian conflict’s outcome, and left Saudi (and Israeli) relations with the US in tatters, we reminded readers just who is the invisible hand behind all terrorist activities in proximity to Sochi: Saudi Arabia.

Recall from our commentary on the October Volgograd explosion:

Disturbing as this video is, we believe it is only going to get worse as the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics approach. Recall from “Meet Saudi Arabia’s Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War“:

Bandar told Putin, “…The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya…. As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us…

Was today’s terrorist explosion just a warning shot ultimately funded and organized by none other than the biggest loser from the Syrian detente: Saudi Arabia, because recall that it was Saudi Arabia which orchestrated the near-US invasion after playing Obama and Kerry like a fiddle, in hopes of getting the natgas pipeline under Syria. Following the Putin-brokered peace plan, Saudi will now have to wait at least one more year before re-escalating tensions in the Syria region with hopes of installing its own puppet regime.  In the meantime, is Saudi now openly lashing out at the one country that made this delay a reality. And if so, when, where and how will Putin retaliate against the country that serves as the anchor of the petrodollar system? We look forward to finding out.  

It’s two months later and if indeed Bandar bin Sultan is in funding and enabling the local terrorists, then Saudi Arabia is increasingly demonstrating its displeasure with Russia, and furthermore, sending a warning to the world that the Sochi games may be hazardous to one’s health. Overnight, another almost identical explosion rocked Volgograd, when a female suicide bomber set off a bomb in one of the five largest train stations in Russia in what is a clear warning to Russia as the Winter Olympics approach.

This is what happened earlier today:

A suicide bombing has killed at least 14 people and injured over 40 in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, raising concerns about terrorism just over a month before Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The train station attacked today is one of the five largest in Russia
and is a major transit point for much of southern Russia. It was unclear
whether the train station was the woman’s intended target or whether
she planned to travel elsewhere to carry out an attack. 

 

A female bomber carried out the blast in a Volgograd train station, 400 miles from the site of the upcoming Olympics in the Russian resort town of Sochi, Russian authorities said. The Sochi 2014 Olympic Games are scheduled to begin on Feb. 7. A total of 33 people were hospitalized, with eight in serious condition and one in “extremely serious condition,” Oleg Solagai, a spokesman for the Russian health ministry, told Russian news agency Rossiya24.

 

Authorities in Volgograd said the attack left 27 people seriously injured, and that the death toll may increase. A police officer was among the dead, and a nine-year-old girl was injured, authorities said.

 

A severed head found at the site of the bombing is suspected to be that of the woman who carried out the attack, making it “possible to identify her,” a Volgograd law enforcement source told the Russian news agency Interfax. Investigators have reason to believe the woman came from Russia’s Dagestan region, the source told the agency. 

 

The bombing took place in the same city where another female suicide bomber was blamed for an attack an October bus attack that killed seven people, including the bomber.  Like the October bomb attack, today’s blast was caught on camera. Surveillance video showed the exact moment the explosion took place, just inside an entranceway to the train station.

 

Volgograd reeled from the attack just before the New Year’s celebrations, a major holiday in Russia that would have likely meant a high amount of traffic was passing through the train station today. Yulia Chemova with Volunteers of Russia, who was at the railway station minutes after the attack to help out, told ABC News she believed the attack was planned around the New Year holiday.

 

“The timing for the terrorist attack in Volgograd is perfect,” she said. “It’s holiday season; airports and train stations are packed at this time of year.”

 

There have been 32 terrorist attacks in Russia in the year ahead of Sochi 2014, according to Kavkazskiyuzel, a Russian think tank.

 

The power of today’s explosion was equivalent to at least 22 pounds of TNT, and police officers averted a much larger tragedy by stopping the woman right at the entrance to the train station, according to a committee investigating the attack. Had she made it inside, a spokesman for the committee said, casualties could have reached the hundreds. Russia’s interior ministry said it would deploy more police at all rail stations in Russia and that passengers would be subject to strict security measures.

 

Today’s attack bore some similarities to the October bus bombing, which authorities said was also carried out by a woman from Dagestan. Russia has for years been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a region that encompasses the restive Russian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, as well as the Olympic host city, Sochi.

 

Suicide bombers, often female, from Chechnya or Dagestan and sometimes known as “black widows,” have carried out many attacks on Russian targets in the past decade, including the dual bombing of the Moscow subway in 2010 that claimed 39 lives. Female bombers from the Caucasus were also blamed for the simultaneous bombing of two Russian airplanes in 2004, an attack that killed 90 people.

And, as noted, the explosion was caught on video and can be seen below:

So, like before, if Saudi Arabia is doing its best to poke Vladimir Putin with ever escalating provocations, how long until the former KGB spy retaliates?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hj7SrZAnFiQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Paul Mylchreest of Monument Securities

The New New Great Game: Geography, Energy, The Dollar and Gold (pdf link)

Sir Halford Mackinder’s 1904 speach in which he outlined his “Heartland Theory” was a founding moment for geo-politics. He argued that control of the Eurasian landmass (Europe, Asia and the Middle East), which contained the bulk of the world’s population and natural resources, was the major geo-political prize.

As time passed, energy (first crude oil then natural gas), became increasingly integral to this concept and its strategic significance cannot be overstated.

Remarkably, Mackinder’s theory has remained equally valid, if not more so, in the modern era – although key “pivot areas” for exercising control have evolved. In addition to Central Asia and Trans-Caucasus in Mackinder’s day, the oil producing nations of the Middle East took on increasing importance in the “New Great Game”.

The geo-political confrontation between the US on one hand and China (in increasingly close cooperation with Russia) on the other, is evolving rapidly. We see a “New New Great Game” (NNGG) emerging and have “tweaked” the Heartland Theory to include.

An additional geographic “pivot”, the South and East China Seas, due to their importance in terms of world trade, oil and gas reserves and numerous territorial claims.

A monetary “pivot”, the dollar-based system of world trade and its reserve status. China is taking the lead role in pushing ahead with its strategy of dismantling the dollar’s supremacy.

Geo-political tension in each of the pivot areas is escalating. For example Central Asia and Trans-Caucasus (Ukraine), Middle East (Iran) and South and East China Seas (Senkaku Islands). The rising powers, China and Russia, are adopting more aggressive geo-political tactics towards US/EU/NATO/Japanese interests. The more “dovish” US policy towards Iran, following the recent nuclear deal, is threatening to destabilise the decades-long status quo in diplomatic relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Just about every aspect of the escalating geo-political tension has an energy element, either directly or indirectly. Viewed from a “Mackinderian” perspective, the strategic value of the energy sector is immense. It begs the question whether, after five years of underperformance, the equity market is under-pricing energy assets, including those deeply out-of-favour integrated oil and gas stocks? Probably, in our view.

We believe that the significance of the monetary pivot in the NNGG is under-estimated as China accelerates preparations to undermine the dollar’s role in world trade. The other aspect of China’s strategy is its diversification into “hard assets” and, as far as we can tell, China is attempting to “corner” the market for physical gold. Its strategic significance is lost on most Western investors. We present some insights into today’s gold market which might shock Western investors – similarities with the run-up to the major lows in the gold price more than a decade ago – and China’s understanding of modern gold market mechanics.

The threats to the existing US-centric order are substantial and the geo-political sands are shifting. The US will respond and has the largest economy and military (with vast ocean-going naval advantage), most powerful investment banks and deepest financial markets and significant (albeit declining) political/diplomatic influence. In terms of boxing metaphors, we wonder whether the Ali versus Foreman fight in Kinshasa in 1974 (knockout in the eighth) or the Leonard versus Hagler fight at Caesar’s Palace in 1987 (points victory where the argument as to who actually won continues) will be the parallel.

* * *

From an anonymous source prior to the major lows in the gold price more than a decade ago.

“Someone once said, ‘no one wants gold, that’s why the US$ price keeps falling.’ Many thinking ones laugh at such foolish chatter. They know that the price of gold is dropping precisely because ‘too many people are buying it’! Think now, if you are a person of ‘great worth’ is it not better for you to acquire gold over years, at better prices? If you are one of ‘small worth’, can you not follow in the footsteps of giants? The real money is selling ALL FORMS of paper gold and buying physical! Why? Because any form of paper gold is losing value much, much faster than metal. Some paper will disappear all together in a fire of epic proportions! The massive trading continues at LBMA, but something is now missing…We have reached production costs…The great mistake by the BIS was in underestimating the Asians. Some big traders said they would buy it all below $365+/- and they did. That’s what forced LBMA to go on a spree of paper selling! Now, it’s a mess.”

Interesting?

The gold price is approaching production cost again.

We have the physical versus paper demarcation again (most commentators are clueless on this – the paper market is still determining the screen price, but it will probably die once and for all this time around – the question is at what level?).

The Asians are being underestimated again when the price is declining (although not by the BIS – China is buying physical gold in unprecedented volumes – at least 70-75% of world mining production this year).

But accelerating developments in the monetary sphere is only one element of…

The “New New Great Game”

Mackinder’s “Heartland Theory”

The traditional “Great Game” obviously dates back to the geo-political rivalry between Great Britain and Russia for supremacy in the central Asian region during the nineteenth and early part of the last century. In his famous speech, “The Geographical Pivot of History”, to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, Sir Halford Mackinder outlined his “Heartland Theory. ” According to Wikipedia.

“This is often considered a, if not the, founding moment of geo-politics…”

Briefly, this posited that the major geo-political prize is Eurasia (the “World Island”), i.e. the European, Asian and Middle Eastern land mass, which contained the bulk of the world’s population and its natural resources. Mackinder argued that control of the “pivot area“ of central Asia was the key to controlling Eurasia.

This is taken from his paper published in the April 1904 edition of the “The Geographical Journal.”

He also emphasised the important difference between sea power and land power. From Zurich-based ISN’s 2009 “Geopolitics and US Middle Eastern Policy: Mackinder and Brzezinski.”

“Mackinder’s theory was a counter-argument to notions that maritime supremacy was sufficient for a power such as Great Britain to safeguard its hegemony. He claimed that, with the emergence of new transporta
tion routes [e.g. Trans-Siberian railway] and technology, a power that could control the centre (and the abundant resources) of the Eurasian landmass…would ultimately be able to attack the colonies of a sea power everywhere on the continent. “

The Trans-Siberian Railway.

In the wake of World War One, Mackinder argued the case for preventing a convergence of interests between Russia and new “pivot” states of Eastern Europe (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland). This led to his famous dictum.

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island;
Who rules the World Island commands the World.”

It’s important to emphasise that the pivot area does evolve/fluctuate with changes in geo-political reality. Indeed, Mackinder included the Baltic states in one of his revisions.

As the world industrialised and became increasingly dependent on crude oil (and later, natural gas), energy resources became ever more integral to the Great Game. With such a large proportion of the world’s oil and gas reserves found on the Eurasian land mass, this was easily accommodated within Mackinder’s theory.

The period just before World War One, with the British Navy’s switch from coal to oil and the adoption of the automobile, set the stage for this. Indeed, in 1913, the British government acquired a 51% controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the forerunner of BP.

Remarkably, the validity of Mackinder’s theory has stood the test of time, even though most people are unfamiliar with it. The following quote is from the Reagan Administration’s “National Security Strategy of the United States” published in January 1988.

“The first historical dimension of our strategy is relatively simple, clear-cut, and immensely sensible. It is the conviction that the United States’ most basic national security interests would be endangered if a hostile state or group of states were to dominate the Eurasian land mass – that area of the globe often referred to as the world’s heartland.”

Right now, it’s obvious that US national security interests are threatened by a combination of China and Russia.

This was the influential globalist (and former National Security Advisor), Zbigniew Brzezinski, writing in his famous 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard.”

“Ever since the continents started interacting politically some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power… For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”

In the “New Great Game”, (NGG) of the modern era, the major rivalry is between US/NATO on one side and China, Russia, other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the likes of Iran, on the other.

The “pivot states” in the NGG are.

• The key nations in Central Asia and the Trans-Caucasus: especially those with substantial energy resources and/or pipelines (e.g. Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan etc). Here is a chart showing the major gas pipelines

And the major oil pipelines:

• The major OPEC nations of the Middle East: here we borrow part of US geo-strategist, Nicholas Spykman’s, “Rimland” theory. Spykman, the “godfather of containment” was both a disciple and critic of Mackinder. He believed that the “Rimland”, European coast, Arabian-Middle Eastern desert and Asiatic Monsoon region was more important for controlling the Heartland.

This was Brzezinksi on the Central Asian Republics, or “Eurasian Balkans” as he terms them in his book. This was in 1997, when China’s economic and military might was still a distant prospect.

“They are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most important and more powerful neighbours, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signalling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize; an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals including gold.”

It’s a reminder of the strategic importance of energy and gold and puts the US-supported “Color revolutions” into sharper focus – Ukraine (Orange, 2004), Georgia (Rose, 2003) and Kyrgyzstan (Tulip, 2005).

Tweaking the Heartland Theory

We agree with the modern interpretation of the NGG, but we see TWO additional elements which make the current situation a “New New Great Game.”

… continue reading below (pdf link)

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/R2Pwf_aBoTk/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Patrick Byrne, the embattled CEO of Overstock.com, had plenty to say in a recent Fortune interview. The outspoken CEO, whose company recently became the first US retailer to accept Bitcoin (beginning later next year) aligns his beliefs with Ron Paul, holds enough gold that if “zombies walked the Earth,” he’d be taken care of. Byrne believes “the long-run value of all fiat money is zero,” adding that,”we’re not going to get rid of the Federal Reserve any time soon, so bitcoin is a step in the right direction.”

Via Fortune,

Fortune: Do you own any bitcoins?

Patrick Byrne: No. I own gold.

Really, how much gold?

A lot. Let’s just say enough that if zombies walked the Earth I will have enough gold that me and mine are taken care of.

I hope you’re kidding about the zombies, but let’s get back to bitcoin. Do you plan to buy any for yourself?

I’m not investing in bitcoin. I’m just saying we’ll accept it. I don’t have any opinions on its value, and I don’t even know how one would go about finding that out beyond just looking it up everyday and what it’s trading at. Overstock accepting bitcoin shouldn’t be read as an endorsement or a view that the value of it is going to go up. We’re not going to be holding any bitcoin — it’s just a medium of exchange.

But you’re obviously a bitcoin fan. Why?

There are business and philosophical reasons. First, the business reason: I think there are a legitimate number of consumers who want to be able to shop with bitcoin. They like the anonymity of the currency. So far, the market has only served them with shady websites, like Silk Road. Also, it saves us about 2% from interchange fees. It’s no secret that our net margin is about 2% now. And so the savings would be a very substantial improvement to our bottom line.

As far as the philosophical reason: I am from the Austrian School of Economics, which means we’re the guys who hate fiat money. The long-run value of all fiat money is zero. If you believe in limited government, you want to have a monetary system that is based on something where no government mandarin can just create money with a stroke of a pen. Gold is a solution, we’re not going to bring back the gold standard any time soon. We’re not going to get rid of the Federal Reserve any time soon, so bitcoin is a step in the right direction.

Bitcoin has gotten a lot of attention. Would you say that accepting it at Overstock is just a marketing tool for your company?

Adoption of bitcoin is low, but I think once we and some other major guys start accepting it that could change very quickly.

In December alone, bitcoin fluctuated between $480 and $1,280. This is super volatile. Does that freak you out at all?

No. We’re not going to be holding any bitcoin. It’s just a medium of exchange. We’re just going to be taking bitcoins as payment and converting them into U.S. dollars, at least initially. If we just do the conversion every day, the most risk would be the volatility it experiences in one day, which is still pretty high I know.

There aren’t any derivative instruments out there yet to hedge that risk, but we anticipate they will be created in one way or another.

Any other risks you see?

I really don’t see any. Plus a certain type of person is using bitcoin — not just the guys shopping on Silk Road.  An increasing population distrusts the government’s ability to manage the economy. This is a way of signaling to these people that we stand with them and we share their same doubts.

Washington has been holding Congressional hearings on Bitcoin? Have you talked to anyone about the currency?

I avoid discussions with anyone in Washington, but we have lawyers that talk to them, and they say that in Washington there are questions about bitcoin and how it’s going to be regulated, if at all. The concern is primarily the Silk Road kind of crowd and money launderers. We certainly don’t want to encourage or condone that kind of behavior and we’ll do everything the law requires us to do.

Can the U.S. stop bitcoin from being adopted and used, especially by retailers and consumers?

I don’t’ see how they can. If anything, I think if usage gets widespread enough, it could have a beautiful effect for the United States. If our current system starts melting down or we start experiencing hyperinflation and systemic risks and all kinds of things we experienced in 2008, then it will provide a very convenient way for people to move to a safe store of value as they lose faith in the current government-run institutions.

A few bitcoin exchange start-ups have emerged. Who are you planning to use?

We’re down to negotiating with three companies.

Which ones?

We haven’t disclosed that yet.

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

Submitted by Ralph Benko via The Cobden Centre blog,

The United States Senate moves toward the confirmation of Janet Yellen, now posited for next January 6th, as chair of the Federal Reserve System. Let us in this moment of recess reflect on eerily similar observations by two of history’s most transformational figures:  John Maynard Keynes and Nicolas Copernicus.

One of Keynes’s most often-cited observations, from his 1919 The Economic Consequences of the Peace, chapter VI, contains an indictment of policies very like those which the Federal Reserve System has been implementing for the past dozen, and more, years.  These policies in slow motion are, in the opinion of this columnist, at the root of  the very political, social, and cultural dysphoria — uneasiness or generalized dissatisfaction — predicted by Keynes:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

 

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

An almost identical point was made almost four centuries before Keynes by iconic savant and polymath Nicolas Copernicus.

Copernicus commenced a study composed for the Prussian and Polish governments around 1525, On the Minting of Money, with these words:

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE COUNTLESS MALADIES that are forever causing the decline of kingdoms, princedoms, and republics, the following four (in my judgment) are the most serious: civil discord, a high death rate, sterility of the soil, and the debasement of coinage.

 

The first three are so obvious that everybody recognizes the damage they cause; but the fourth one, which has to do with money, is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.

This does not imply plagiarism by Keynes.  The coincidence between Keynes’s “[To debauch the currency] engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose” and Copernicus’s “[The debasement of coinage] … is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way” is, however, striking.

Keynes, like Copernicus a paradigm-shifter, was himself extraordinarily erudite.  It is not impossible the young Keynes came across Copernicus’s work (which reportedly was first actually published in 1826).   The question as to whether Copernicus’s Essay may have inspired Keynes’s observation must be left to authentic scholars such as Lord Skidelsky.

The similarity may be merely that of “great minds working alike.”  This columnist has found but one direct reference by Keynes to Copernicus.

Keynes (whose thinking was mostly, although not exclusively, opposed to the gold standard) was fascinated by one of Copernicus’s most accomplished scientific successors, Sir Isaac Newton.  Newton, also, achieved iconic status, both for his contributions to physics and, as Master of the Mint of Great Britain, as the architect of the modern classical gold standard. Newton’s gold standard was designed along Copernican principles of close correlation toward nominal and intrinsic value.  It served the world very well for almost 200 years.

Keynes was to have addressed the Royal Society of London’s gathering to celebrate the tercentenary of Newton’s birth, an event delayed by the war.  Keynes died a few months before he could present his remarks.  Maynard’s remarks, Newton, the Man, were presented by his brother Geoffrey (and thus might even be characterized as Keynes’s last words).  A brief excerpt:

Why do I call [Newton] a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood.

 

…

 

[H]e became one of the greatest and most efficient of our civil servants. He was a very successful investor of funds, surmounting the crisis of the South Sea Bubble, and died a rich man. He possessed in exceptional degree almost every kind of intellectual aptitude – lawyer, historian, theologian, not less than mathematician, physicist, astronomer.

 

…

 

As one broods over these queer collections [of Newton's alchemical writings, which Keynes collected], it seems easier to understand – with an understanding which is not, I hope, distorted in the other direction – this strange spirit, who was tempted by the Devil to believe at the time when within these walls he was solving so much, that he could reach all the secrets of God and Nature by the pure power of mind Copernicus and Faustus in one.

As for Copernicus, On the Minting of Money has been translated into English several times yet those translations remained difficult to obtain for students of the monetary arts and sciences.  It has remained mostly the property of elite historians.  Scant and intriguing references were limited to all-too-brief articles such as “Treatise On the Minting of Coin and Copernicus views on economics” by Leszek Zygner of  Nicolaus Copernicus University.

The full text of Copernicus’s fascinating and invaluable essay remained elusive, that is, until last month.

Laissez Faire Books published a meticulous and fresh English translation from the Latin, with prefatory remarks, bibliography, and invaluable critical apparatus by classicist Prof. Gerald Malsb
ary. (The volume was co-edited by this columnist and by his  fellow Forbes.com columnist Charles Kadlec, with a foreword by Reagan Gold Commissioner Lewis E. Lehrman, whose eponymous Institute this columnist professionally serves).

From Prof. Malsbary’s Prefatory Remarks to Copernicus’s Essay on Money:

NICOLAS COPERNICUS the astronomer embodies the modern scientific ideal: the revolutionary revealer of a new, verifiable scientific theory that shocks our conventional perceptions. However, it is not very widely known, outside of Eastern Europe at least, that Copernicus also spent about twenty years working on economic theory. His treatise On the Minting of Money (Monetae Cudendae Ratio), was first printed in 1826, three hundred years after its composition in 1525–1526. At the time, the semi-autonomous ecclesiastical region between Poland and Prussia where he lived (Varmia) was undergoing a political and economic metamorphosis, and his judgment and expertise (a fruit of the best late Scholastic and Humanist learning) was summoned by the Prussian and Polish governments to help stabilize an inflated currency. Was his insight into monetary matters as revolutionary as his astronomy?

Keynes: “The process [of debauching the currency] engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”  Copernicus: “[The debasement of coinage] … is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.”

Malsbary: “Was [Copernicus's] insight into monetary matters as revolutionary as his astronomy?” In a word, yes.

Madame Yellen?  Whether one follows Keynes or Copernicus … it is time to return to the principle of meticulous monetary integrity — as exemplified by the classical gold standard — to restore legitimacy both to to the social order and to government.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/XncjlYA5Cpg/story01.htm Tyler Durden