Jobless Claims – The Economic Miracle That Wasn’t

The noise in the jobless claims data over the past few months has been unprecedented and yet the impressive jump lower in recent weeks has been trumpeted as the all-clear for Tapering and as a signal that the recovery is ‘real’ this time. Except, thanks to a huge ‘glitch’ in Florida’s new CONNECT unemployment claims website, the data is completely FUBAR

 

Via The Miami Herald,

The story so far…

Florida’s ongoing claims for unemployment benefits plummeted to the lowest level in six years from mid-October to early December. The average of 20,000 fewer weekly claims from the prior nine weeks represents a plunge of 18 percent, the sharpest decline in 15 years.

 

Yet rather than herald an improving job market, chalk up Florida’s shrinking claims numbers instead to the troubled debut of the state’s unemployment claims website, CONNECT.

And echoing Obamacare’s SNAFU…

Since its October launch, the $63 million website has been plagued by glitches, sowing confusion and despair among many of the 235,000 claimants who file every other week to help pay for essentials like food and rent.

 

Difficulties in logging on or navigating CONNECT have precluded thousands from collecting.

With significant implications…

I’m about to be thrown out on the street,” said Allen Schwalb of Seminole, who was laid off from a warehouse job in October but as of this week had yet to receive any benefits despite many attempts to file. “The state now owes me $1,400 for eight weeks of unemployment. I don’t know what I will do if I don’t receive it soon.”

 

 

Upon going live Oct. 15, the CONNECT site struggled anyway.

 

Unemployment offices were packed with those who said they couldn’t log on. Phone lines were jammed. Calls were dropped. Frustration grew.

To which the government first denied…

Some of the press stories about CONNECT have been incomplete and focused on a narrative that is more likely to grab readers than to accurately report facts,” Panuccio told the Senate’s Commerce and Tourism Committee on Nov. 4.

Then admitted…

By December, however, Panuccio conceded all was not going well. The project was no longer meeting expectations. He posted messages on the DEO’s website acknowledging difficulties.

Which means, simply, the data is useless and the people who need it the most are not getting it…

The drop in claims is so dramatic and so precisely coincides with the launching of CONNECT that there can be no other explanation,” Greenfield said. “This is having an effect on a huge group of people. We’re very disappointed in the length of time it’s taken to get these people their benefits.”

 

 

Florida is notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to unemployment benefits, which makes CONNECT’s failings even more glaring.

 

“Florida in the last few years has made it virtually impossible to access benefits,” said Maurice Emsellem, a staff director with the National Employment Law Project. “The digital divide is a reality, so why on earth would you require to register online? It’s not fair access.”

But it’s going to get worse…

Florida is one of six states that provides job-seekers fewer than 26 weeks of coverage. Now offering 19 weeks, Florida will drop to 16 weeks starting in January. Under Florida law, the lower the unemployment rate (which has fallen to 6.4 percent), the fewer weeks of compensation an unemployed person receives.

 

Once federal unemployment compensations expire, coverage for Ewing and 73,000 other Floridians is immediately eliminated.

It’s a narrative we hear all too often – failure of big government, deny, deny, deny, small admission… but any good headline is clung to and any naysayer shrugged off as meaningless, racist, or a doomsayer…

 


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/iiIw5JvN22c/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Jobless Claims – The Economic Miracle That Wasn't

The noise in the jobless claims data over the past few months has been unprecedented and yet the impressive jump lower in recent weeks has been trumpeted as the all-clear for Tapering and as a signal that the recovery is ‘real’ this time. Except, thanks to a huge ‘glitch’ in Florida’s new CONNECT unemployment claims website, the data is completely FUBAR

 

Via The Miami Herald,

The story so far…

Florida’s ongoing claims for unemployment benefits plummeted to the lowest level in six years from mid-October to early December. The average of 20,000 fewer weekly claims from the prior nine weeks represents a plunge of 18 percent, the sharpest decline in 15 years.

 

Yet rather than herald an improving job market, chalk up Florida’s shrinking claims numbers instead to the troubled debut of the state’s unemployment claims website, CONNECT.

And echoing Obamacare’s SNAFU…

Since its October launch, the $63 million website has been plagued by glitches, sowing confusion and despair among many of the 235,000 claimants who file every other week to help pay for essentials like food and rent.

 

Difficulties in logging on or navigating CONNECT have precluded thousands from collecting.

With significant implications…

I’m about to be thrown out on the street,” said Allen Schwalb of Seminole, who was laid off from a warehouse job in October but as of this week had yet to receive any benefits despite many attempts to file. “The state now owes me $1,400 for eight weeks of unemployment. I don’t know what I will do if I don’t receive it soon.”

 

 

Upon going live Oct. 15, the CONNECT site struggled anyway.

 

Unemployment offices were packed with those who said they couldn’t log on. Phone lines were jammed. Calls were dropped. Frustration grew.

To which the government first denied…

Some of the press stories about CONNECT have been incomplete and focused on a narrative that is more likely to grab readers than to accurately report facts,” Panuccio told the Senate’s Commerce and Tourism Committee on Nov. 4.

Then admitted…

By December, however, Panuccio conceded all was not going well. The project was no longer meeting expectations. He posted messages on the DEO’s website acknowledging difficulties.

Which means, simply, the data is useless and the people who need it the most are not getting it…

The drop in claims is so dramatic and so precisely coincides with the launching of CONNECT that there can be no other explanation,” Greenfield said. “This is having an effect on a huge group of people. We’re very disappointed in the length of time it’s taken to get these people their benefits.”

 

 

Florida is notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to unemployment benefits, which makes CONNECT’s failings even more glaring.

 

“Florida in the last few years has made it virtually impossible to access benefits,” said Maurice Emsellem, a staff director with the National Employment Law Project. “The digital divide is a reality, so why on earth would you require to register online? It’s not fair access.”

But it’s going to get worse…

Florida is one of six states that provides job-seekers fewer than 26 weeks of coverage. Now offering 19 weeks, Florida will drop to 16 weeks starting in January. Under Florida law, the lower the unemployment rate (which has fallen to 6.4 percent), the fewer weeks of compensation an unemployed person receives.

 

Once federal unemployment compensations expire, coverage for Ewing and 73,000 other Floridians is immediately eliminated.

It’s a narrative we hear all too often – failure of big government, deny, deny, deny, small admission… but any good headline is clung to and any naysayer shrugged off as meaningless, racist, or a doomsayer…

 


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/iiIw5JvN22c/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The NSA’s 50-Page Catalog Of Back Door Penetration Techniques Revealed

While the world may have become habituated to (and perhaps revels in, thank you social media exhibitionist culture) the fact that the NSA is watching anyone and everyone, intercepting, recording, and hacking every electronic exchange regardless if it involves foreign “terrorists” or US housewives, the discoveries from the Snowden whistleblowing campaign continue. The latest revelation from the biggest wholesale spying scandal since Nixon, exposed by Germany’s Spiegel which continues the strategy of revealing Snowden leaks on a staggered, delayed basis, involves a back door access-focused NSA division called ANT, (which supposedly stands for Access Network Technology), described by Spiegel as “master carpenters” for the NSA’s TAO (Tailored Access Operations, read more about TAO here). The ANT people have “burrowed into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry — including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.” More importantly, thanks to Spiegel (and Snowden of course), the NSA’s 50-page catalog of “backdoor penetration” techniques has been revealed.

The details of how the NSA can surmount any “erected” walls, via Spiegel:

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives — from computing centers to individual computers, from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA’s specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

 

This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets’ data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.

Nothing quite like an extensive, taxpayer funded catalog listing back-door entry strategy imaginable. Say you wanted to have some backdoor fun with Juniper Networks, the world’s second largest network equipment manufacturer (which claims the performance of the company’s special computers is “unmatched” and their firewalls are the “best-in-class.”)

In the case of Juniper, the name of this particular digital lock pick is “FEEDTROUGH.” This malware burrows into Juniper firewalls and makes it possible to smuggle other NSA programs into mainframe computers. Thanks to FEEDTROUGH, these implants can, by design, even survive “across reboots and software upgrades.” In this way, US government spies can secure themselves a permanent presence in computer networks. The catalog states that FEEDTROUGH “has been deployed on many target platforms.”

It gets better, because when simple penetration is not enough, the NSA adds “implants.”

In cases where TAO’s usual hacking and data-skimming methods don’t suffice, ANT workers step in with their special tools, penetrating networking equipment, monitoring mobile phones and computers and diverting or even modifying data. Such “implants,” as they are referred to in NSA parlance, have played a considerable role in the intelligence agency’s ability to establish a global covert network that operates alongside the Internet.

So what exactly is to be found in the 50-page catalog?

Some of the equipment available is quite inexpensive. A rigged monitor cable that allows “TAO personnel to see what is displayed on the targeted monitor,” for example, is available for just $30. But an “active GSM base station” — a tool that makes it possible to mimic a mobile phone tower and thus monitor cell phones — costs a full $40,000. Computer bugging devices disguised as normal USB plugs, capable of sending and receiving data via radio undetected, are available in packs of 50 for over $1 million.

 

The ANT division doesn’t just manufacture surveillance hardware. It also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS, software located on a computer’s motherboard that is the first thing to load when a computer is turned on.

 

This has a number of valuable advantages: an infected PC or server appears to be functioning normally, so the infection remains invisible to virus protection and other security programs. And even if the hard drive of an infected computer has been completely erased and a new operating system is installed, the ANT malware can continue to function and ensures that new spyware can once again be loaded onto what is presumed to be a clean computer. The ANT developers call this “Persistence” and believe this approach has provided them with the possibility of permanent access.

 

Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the exception of latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products of American companies.

 

Other ANT programs target Internet routers meant for professional use or hardware firewalls intended to protect company networks from online attacks. Many digital attack weapons are “remotely installable” — in other words, over the Internet. Others require a direct attack on an end-user device — an “interdiction,” as it is known in NSA jargon — in order to install malware or bugging equipment.

The conclusion here is an easy one, and one we have repeated ever since before the Snowden revelations: Big Brother is bigger and badder than ever, he knows exactly what you’ve been doing, and the second the NSA wants to nuke your computer out of orbit and/or destroy your digital life, it can do so in a millisecond.  What is more amusing is that with each passing disclosure, it is increasingly clear that the NSA has gotten its inspiration for its dealings with the US public from a Danielle Steel book at best, or a Vivid Video bootlegged tape at worst.


    



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

The NSA's 50-Page Catalog Of Back Door Penetration Techniques Revealed

While the world may have become habituated to (and perhaps revels in, thank you social media exhibitionist culture) the fact that the NSA is watching anyone and everyone, intercepting, recording, and hacking every electronic exchange regardless if it involves foreign “terrorists” or US housewives, the discoveries from the Snowden whistleblowing campaign continue. The latest revelation from the biggest wholesale spying scandal since Nixon, exposed by Germany’s Spiegel which continues the strategy of revealing Snowden leaks on a staggered, delayed basis, involves a back door access-focused NSA division called ANT, (which supposedly stands for Access Network Technology), described by Spiegel as “master carpenters” for the NSA’s TAO (Tailored Access Operations, read more about TAO here). The ANT people have “burrowed into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry — including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.” More importantly, thanks to Spiegel (and Snowden of course), the NSA’s 50-page catalog of “backdoor penetration” techniques has been revealed.

The details of how the NSA can surmount any “erected” walls, via Spiegel:

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives — from computing centers to individual computers, from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA’s specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

 

This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets’ data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.

Nothing quite like an extensive, taxpayer funded catalog listing back-door entry strategy imaginable. Say you wanted to have some backdoor fun with Juniper Networks, the world’s second largest network equipment manufacturer (which claims the performance of the company’s special computers is “unmatched” and their firewalls are the “best-in-class.”)

In the case of Juniper, the name of this particular digital lock pick is “FEEDTROUGH.” This malware burrows into Juniper firewalls and makes it possible to smuggle other NSA programs into mainframe computers. Thanks to FEEDTROUGH, these implants can, by design, even survive “across reboots and software upgrades.” In this way, US government spies can secure themselves a permanent presence in computer networks. The catalog states that FEEDTROUGH “has been deployed on many target platforms.”

It gets better, because when simple penetration is not enough, the NSA adds “implants.”

In cases where TAO’s usual hacking and data-skimming methods don’t suffice, ANT workers step in with their special tools, penetrating networking equipment, monitoring mobile phones and computers and diverting or even modifying data. Such “implants,” as they are referred to in NSA parlance, have played a considerable role in the intelligence agency’s ability to establish a global covert network that operates alongside the Internet.

So what exactly is to be found in the 50-page catalog?

Some of the equipment available is quite inexpensive. A rigged monitor cable that allows “TAO personnel to see what is displayed on the targeted monitor,” for example, is available for just $30. But an “active GSM base station” — a tool that makes it possible to mimic a mobile phone tower and thus monitor cell phones — costs a full $40,000. Computer bugging devices disguised as normal USB plugs, capable of sending and receiving data via radio undetected, are available in packs of 50 for over $1 million.

 

The ANT division doesn’t just manufacture surveillance hardware. It also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS, software located on a computer’s motherboard that is the first thing to load when a computer is turned on.

 

This has a number of valuable advantages: an infected PC or server appears to be functioning normally, so the infection remains invisible to virus protection and other security programs. And even if the hard drive of an infected computer has been completely erased and a new operating system is installed, the ANT malware can continue to function and ensures that new spyware can once again be loaded onto what is presumed to be a clean computer. The ANT developers call this “Persistence” and believe this approach has provided them with the possibility of permanent access.

 

Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the exception of latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products of American companies.

 

Other ANT programs target Internet routers meant for professional use or hardware firewalls intended to protect company networks from online attacks. Many digital attack weapons are “remotely installable” — in other words, over the Internet. Others require a direct attack on an end-user device — an “interdiction,” as it is known in NSA jargon — in order to install malware or bugging equipment.

The conclusion here is an easy one, and one we have repeated ever since before the Snowden revelations: Big Brother is bigger and badder than ever, he knows exactly what you’ve been doing, and the second the NSA wants to nuke your computer out of orbit and/or destroy your digital life, it can do so in a millisecond.  What is more amusing is that with each passing disclosure, it is increasingly clear that the NSA has gotten its inspiration for its dealings with the US public from a Danielle Steel book at best, or a Vivid Video bootlegged tape at worst.


    



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

Russia Wishes NATO A Happy New Year… As Only Russia Can

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has sent NATO a rather unusual New Year’s card… picturing Santa alongside a Russian inter-continental ballistic missile.

 

 

 

Direct from his Twitter account – the Deputy PM literally says “We wish our friends from NATO a Happy New Year

 


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/X4ieRjTL8w4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Cowgirls Wearing Pink Shades

PINK-Rose-Colored-Glasses

(Originally posted on Slope of Hope, hence the references to Slopers and SOH): Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, I just could not bear sitting in silence any longer while all the blabbering bulls boast and gloat as they roast bear chestnuts over an open fire.  Enjoy your happy holidays highs, my bloated bovine butt-heads, as you sip your rosy bubbly and toast each other’s good fortunes.   As for BDI, he went along briefly for a spectacular Santa sleigh ride to close out an otherwise dismal year with a BOOM.  Blow me momos, technos, and especially you trendos!

For the New Year, it seems that SOH, that last true refuge for pensive brooding bears, has been overrun with pompous bulls peddling & pumping a new 21st century high tech plateau of permanent prosperity, that would make even Irving Fisher’s rose twittering cheeks blush.  I wonder if old Irving would have Linked himself In or posted his rip roaring 20s rosy market views on a pretty pink Facebook page?

As for The Idiot Savant, he sure does not smell the long stem roses.  Take off your pink shades and take a good sniff, smell the rotting rancid rot, Cowgirls!

pink-sunglassesPink Shades # 1:  Europe is still deeply mired in an intractable recession, trapped in a crippling cluster-fucked currency union contraction with no way for the struggling periphery nations to pull themselves out of a dreadful debt death dive.  Don’t believe the mindless misdirection manifested by the recent rosy European capital markets’ marvelously manufactured momentum.  France just printed a near all time high unemployment rate. 

80_s-_technicolor_wayfarer_sunglasses_pink3

Pink Shades # 2:  The 10 year U.S. bond just closed above 3% and is most certainly trending for a continued move higher. Those sporting rose colored Ray Bans on their elongated noses, will tell you the economy is surely picking up, and thus, it is a welcome quite natural sign to see interest rates edge higher at this point.  What they won’t tell you is that newly issued commercial bank loan volumes are near all time record lows.  Don’t kid yourselves my pink pussy cats, interest rates are not being driven up by healthy demand pull forces in the real economy, but rather by the early signs of stagflationary supply push forces which always inevitably show up when too much money is being circulated in a monetary system.

wildfox_eactwg000_pink-1Pink Shades # 3:  Super strength stagnating inflation is right around the bend. Its insipid effect always first appears in pesky peak priced fixed and financial asset of all kinds before it metastasizes into and onto the real economy on the ground. Here again take off your silly rose spectacles and smell the smelly stagflationary stench.  Rents, Food, Energy, Utilities, Education, Healthcare, TV/Internet/Smartphone bills, Entertainment tickets……etc, all hitting high water marks.  Ask yourselves, are fixed operating costs getting cheaper in your pink picket fenced palaces?

dior air light pink sunglasses-f80916Pink Shades # 4:  The USD is skating on thin ice here, having recently broken the all important 80 level on its typically trusted treadmill DXY inde
x. You really think a country that converts these degraded debased dollars in order to import over 70% of what it consumes will not see higher prices in the near future? You think China’s appreciating and better yielding yellow Yuan will not increase the prices that your fat pink asses pay at the Walmart checkout counter?  What about that petro-dollar oil barrel price perpetually parked above $100 once again?  Attention all waddling whale Walmart shoppers!

Pink Shades # 5:  Despite the tiny timid taper, the FED’s balance sheet continues to grow exponentially with each passing month. Despite the frantically feeble fiscal budget agreement reached by the cowardly congressional clowns, the country continues to spend its way into oblivion with no end in site.  As interest rates inevitably rise, these terrific twin time bombs will be right back in your sights, front and center, quickly clearing up your fogged rose tinted lenses.

2013Oakley-Asian-Fit-Sunglasses-Pink-Frame-Purple-Lens---Fake-Oakleys-Outlet186Pink Shades # 6:  Unemployment claims & benefits. The BLS tells us that countless copious crappy jobs are constantly being created and the unemployment rate is steadily heading down. Yet, unemployment claims have moved back up recently and the goofy Government goons are about to debate whether or not to resume the extended benefits program.  So, which is it?   Does this add up to you giddy ghey girly men wearing suave mauve designer shades? Seems to me that the problem is rather entrenched and not going anywhere anytime soon, as the middle class continues to lose ground from all sides.  Did you know that the number of 18-30 year olds living at home with their parents has never been higher in half a century.

pinkPink Shades # 7:  The Black Stone brick and mortar housing asinine asset abomination. Remember that virtual housing market our fiendish fraudulent financial friends blew up with their demented dubiously deranged debacle of mirage money mortgages that detonated last time around?  Well, that bogus busted bubble seems to have reemerged, reincarnated via the rabidly rapacious rapid re-inflation of free flowing FED funded subsidies, handed directly to the very same elite financial institutions whose unabashed greed preyed on us all the last time around. Everyone talks so re-assuredly about the guaranteed rental income streams these new real structures, as opposed to falsely structured investments, will genuinely generate.  Do these fabulous freeloading financial wizards really understand the actual fixed costs and real world care on the ground level, involved in maintaining hundreds of thousands of single family homes?  When interest rates head back up and the housing prices collapse will rents not follow suit?  Will the high prices they have set on these hard asset backed investments not head south in a hurry.  Did they not sell us on the exact same pipe dream with the so called safe and sound moronic MBS meme?  At the end of the day, have they not simply repriced and re-financialized the exact same assets which are dependent on the very same income stream generated from the busted american middle class.  Don’t forget where the real value in housing comes from, it’s not the standing structures themselves, but those that actually live in them that determine their value.  Speaking of houses, keep your eyes on existing home sales, they be going downtown in a hurry!

max_mara_13_pink_sunglassesPink Shades # 8: GDP & Inventories, smell the rot. There is no doubt that massive magnanimous monetary policy can generate real growth and create actual production. The question I have for you, my pinko friends, is can that fantastically force fed growth actually be sustained. If the new growth was achieved through the artifice of ZIRP & QE, will it not correspondingly dissipate in their absence?  Do you all really believe that we will magically arrive at escape velocity which will carry us forward even as the monetary fire hoses are turned off?  And, should they not turn off the emergency fire hoses, do you actually believe we will escape the powerfully potent physical universal laws of inflation and the inevitable upward push on interest that necessarily follows? The US public and private sectors are both leveraged to the hilt, loaded to the gills with unmanageable debt.  The free money has only served one purpose, and that is to avoid your rose colored world to be seen as the looming liquidity debt trap that it is, flashing a bright code red alert.  We are being lulled into a false sense of security my friends, and your cozy pink blankets and comforting lullabies will turn into your worst nightmares as soon as you remove your rose colored glasses.

I’m certain that most of my pretty in pink cowgirl equity cheer-leading friends will promptly pump their red white and blue USA, USA, USA  pompoms, singing and shouting their tried and true cheer; “the economy is NOT the market BDI!!! The economy is NOT the market you Idiot!!!”. &nb
sp;Well, all I can reply to you, my fine fair weather friends, is that your future is so bright you will definitely need to wear your silly pink shades.  As for your idiot French friend, he will most assuredly be set up short by week’s end, in anticipation of a steamy valentines date complete with a dozen pink roses.

paul-frank-julius-pink-sunglasses-w-top-black-1530-medium-1 BDI SOH’s Idiot Savant

John Maynard 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.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/9lFWqPOiCRo/story01.htm Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

Amie Stepanovich on the Eroded Fourth Amendment

Fourth AmendmentThe Fourth Amendment protects Americans’ right to
be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. But government
lawyers have argued repeatedly that this right should be limited,
and the Supreme Court has often agreed. Amie Stepanovich, director
of the domestic surveillance project at the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, offers three ways the government has attempted
to erode Fourth Amendment protections.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/29/amie-stepanovich-on-the-eroded-fourth-am
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How Retailers are Seeing Big Upside by Accepting Bitcoin

For a while now, I have been highlighting the fact that it is an absolute no brainer for small businesses to accept Bitcoin. Not only are you providing your customers with another method of payment with essentially zero downside (if you use a payment processor such as BitPay or Coinbase), it is the best free PR you could ever achieve. Back in November I wrote the following in my article You Can Now Buy a Plane Ticket with Bitcoin:

Notice the CEO’s comment about people coming to his site just because of Bitcoin. This is undoubtedly true, and as I have mentioned before on several occasions, it is a no brainer for a small business to accept bitcoin. It is early enough in the adoption phase that it will still drive tremendous press and buzz for your business and make you look technologically savvy.

It seems many businesses in NYC are finally recognizing the upside. According to the New York Post:

Sure, its value might rise and fall by the day, but some small-business owners in New York City are buying into bitcoin by accepting the buzzed-about currency at their brick-and-mortar locations. They’re saying the benefits are many, and the disadvantages are next to none.

That’s right, the digital currency — infamously linked to the purchase of drugs and guns — isn’t just for buying illegal goods anonymously online. It’s becoming a preferred method of payment for innovative business owners.

Daniel Lee, owner of Greene Ave. Market in Fort Greene, is even incentivizing with a 10-percent-off discount offer for customers who pay with bitcoin.

This “Bitcoin discount” is a trend that I expect to accelerate, and could be one of the primary drivers that sends Bitcoin adoption into the stratosphere in 2014. One recent example of this is the huge 40%-60% discount New York property firm RentHop is offering for clients that use Bitcoin.

More from the New York Post:

continue reading

from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/29/how-retailers-are-seeing-big-upside-by-accepting-bitcoin/
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Steve Keen (Briefly) Explains Why Janet Yellen Won’t See The Next Big One Coming

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

Steve Keen (Briefly) Explains Why Janet Yellen Won't See The Next Big One Coming

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