Month: June 2017

"We live in an age of advanced monetary surrealism…." is how Incrementum's Ronald-Peter Stoeferle and Mark J. Valek begin their latest epic tome on the precious metals market "In Gold We Trust."

 In Q1 2017 alone, the largest central banks created the equivalent of almost USD 1,000 bn. worth of central bank money ex nihilo. Naturally the fresh currency was not used to fund philanthropic projects but to purchase financial securities1. Although this ongoing liquidity supernova has temporarily created an uneasy calm in financial markets, we are strongly convinced that the real costs of this monetary madness will reveal themselves down the line.

We believe that the monetary tsunami created in the past years, consisting of a flood of central bank money and new debt, has created a dangerous illusion: the illusion of a carefree present at the expense of a fragile future. The frivolity displayed by many investors is for example reflected by record-low volatility in equities, which have acquired the nimbus of being without alternative, and is also highlighted by the minimal spreads on corporate and government bonds. Almost a decade of zero and negative interest rates has atomised any form of risk aversion.

In the past years, rate cuts and other monetary stimuli have affected mainly asset price inflation. Last year, we wrote: “Sooner or later, the reflation measures will take hold, and asset price inflation will spill over into consumer prices. Given that consumer price inflation cannot be fine-tuned by the central banks at their discretion, a prolonged cycle of price inflation may now be looming ahead.” 2016 might have been the year when price inflation turned the corner. However, the hopes of an economic upswing due to Trumponomics and the strong US dollar have caused inflation pressure to decrease for the time being. Upcoming recession fears resulting in a U-turn by the Fed, and the consequential depreciation of the US dollar would probably finalise the entry into a new age of inflation. This will be the moment in which gold will begin to shine again.

The following chart shows the similarities between the 1970s and the status quo. The analysis reveals the fact that the bear market since 2011 has been following largely the same structure and depth as the mid-cycle correction from 1974 to 1976. However, we can see that the duration of both corrections diverges significantly.

Not only the absolute, but also the relative development is important for a comprehensive assessment of the status quo of the gold market. Along with gold, silver, and mining shares, industrial metals such as zinc, nickel, copper and energy commodities (especially coal and oil) marked stellar performances last year. All of this happened in an environment where the US dollar climbed to a 14-year high. We regard this as a remarkable development and as a prime example of a bull market, whose starting gun has not been heard yet by the majority of investors.

"Sell economic ignorance; buy gold." – Tim Price

We consider a bullish stock market currently as the most significant opportunity cost for gold. Therefore, a clear break-out of the gold price should only be occurring amid a stagnating or weaker equity market. If we now compare the gold price performance with the development of equity prices, we can see that the relative weakness of gold seems to be slowly coming to an end. Last year we had already noticed that the intensity of the upward trend had declined significantly. After almost five years of underperformance relative to the broad equity market, the tables might slowly be turning now in favour of gold.

In a historical context, the relative valuation of commodities to equities seems extremely low. In relation to the S&P500, the GSCI commodity index is currently trading at the lowest level in 50 years. Also, the ratio sits significantly below the long-term median of 4.1. Following the notion of mean reversion, we should be seeing attractive investment opportunities.

*  *  *

Key topics and takeaways of the full report include:

• High expectations of Trump's growth policy dampened the gold price increase in 2016 – Still up 8.5% in 2016 and 10.2% since Jan. 2017
• The further development of the normalization of monetary policy in the US will be the litmus test for the US economy.
• Bitcoin: Digital gold or fool's gold?
• White, Gray and Black Swans and their consequences for the gold price
• Exclusive Interview with Dr. Judy Shelton (Economic advisor to Donald Trump) about a possible remonetisation of gold
• 5 Reasons why the gold bull market will continue

Full Incrementum report below (note the complete 170-page version is available here)

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Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Since the election there has been this perception among the American public that the economy is improving, but that has not been the case at all.  U.S. GDP growth for the first quarter was just revised up to 1.2 percent, but that is even lower than the average growth of just 1.33 percent that we saw over the previous ten years.  But when you look even deeper into the numbers a much more alarming picture emerges.  Commercial and industrial loan growth is declining, auto loan defaults are rising, bankruptcies are absolutely surging and we are on pace to break the all-time record for most store closings in a single year in the United States by more than 20 percent.  All of these are points that I have covered before, but today I have 12 new facts to share with you. 

The following are 12 signs that the economic slowdown that the experts have been warning about is now here…

#1 According to Challenger, the number of job cuts in May was 71 percent higher than it was in May 2016.

#2 We just witnessed the third worst drop in U.S. construction spending in the last six years.

#3 U.S. manufacturing PMI fell to an 8 month low in May.

#4 Financial stocks have lost all of their gains for the year, and some analysts are saying that this is “a terrible sign”.

#5 One new survey has found that 39 percent of all millionaires “plan to avoid investing in the coming month”.  That is the highest that figure has been since December 2013.

#6 Jobless claims just shot up to a five week high of 248,000.

#7 General Motors just reported another sales decline in May, and it is being reported that the company may be preparing for “more job cuts at its American factories”.

#8 After an initial bump after Donald Trump’s surprise election victory, U.S. consumer confidence is starting to fall.

#9 Since Memorial Day, Radio Shack has officially shut down more than 1,000 stores.

#10 Payless has just increased the number of stores that it plans to close to about 800.

#11 According to the Los Angeles Times, it is being projected that 25 percent of all shopping malls in the United States may close within the next five years.

#12 Over the past 12 months, the number of homeless people living in Los Angeles County has risen by a  staggering 23 percent.

And in case those numbers have not persuaded you that the U.S. economy is heading for rough times, I would encourage you to go check out my previous article entitled “11 Facts That Prove That The U.S. Economy In 2017 Is In Far Worse Shape Than It Was In 2016” for even more eye-popping statistics.

During a bubble, it can feel like the good times are just going to keep rolling forever.

But that never actually happens in reality.

The truth is that we are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble of all time, and the evidence is starting to mount that this debt bubble has just about run its course.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

A recurring theme on this website has been to periodically highlight the tremendous build up in US corporate debt, most recently in April when we showed that “Corporate Debt To EBITDA Hits All Time High.” The relentless debt build up is something which even the IMF recently noted, when in April it released a special report on financial stability, according to which 20% of US corporations were at risk of default should rates rise. It is also the topic of the latest piece by SocGen’s strategist Andrew Lapthorne who uses even more colorful adjectives to describe what has happened since the financial crisis, noting that “the debt build-up during this cycle has been incredible, particularly when compared to the stagnant progression of EBITDA.”

 

Lapthorne calculates that S&P1500 ex financial net debt has risen by almost $2 trillion in five years, a 150% increase, but this mild in comparison to the tripling of the debt pile in the Russell 2000 in six years. He also notes, as shown he previously, that as a result of this debt surge, interest payments cost the smallest 50% of stocks in the US fully 30% of their EBIT compared with just 10% of profits for the largest 10% and states that “clearly the sensitivity to higher interest rates is then going to be with this smallest 50%, while the dominance and financial strength of the largest 10% disguises this problem in the aggregate index measures.”

The same report noted that net debt growth in the U.S. is quickly headed toward negative territory, and the last time that happened was during the last recession.

We see similar things when we look at the 2nd largest economy on the entire planet.  According to Jim Rickards, China “has multiple bubbles, and they’re all getting ready to burst”…

China is in the greatest financial bubble in history. Yet, calling China a bubble does not do justice to the situation. This story has been touched on periodically over the last year.

 

China has multiple bubbles, and they’re all getting ready to burst. If you make the right moves now, you could be well positioned even as Chinese credit and currency crash and burn.

 

The first and most obvious bubble is credit. The combined Chinese government and corporate debt-to-equity ratio is over 300-to-1 after hidden liabilities, such as provincial guarantees and shadow banking system liabilities, are taken into account.

We just got the worst Chinese manufacturing number in about a year, and it looks like economic conditions over there are really starting to slow down as well.

Just like 2008, the coming crisis is going to be truly global in scope.

It is funny how our perspective colors our reality.  Just like in 2007, many are mocking those that are warning that a crisis is coming, but just like in 2009, after the crisis strikes many will be complaining that nobody warned them in advance about what was ahead.

And at this moment it may seem like we have all the time in the world to get prepared for the approaching storm, but once it is here people will be talking about how it seemed to hit us so quickly.

My hope is that many Americans will finally be fed up with our fundamentally flawed financial system once they realize that we are facing another horrendous economic crisis, and that in the aftermath they will finally be ready for the dramatic solutions that are necessary in order to permanently fix things.

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Puerto Rico’s economic decline and, now bankruptcy, has triggered an astonishing exodus as thousands flee the commonwealth in search of economic opportunity in the Continental US, Bloomberg reported.

The population has been declining rapidly. The island has lost 2 percent of its people in each of the past three years, a comparable departure in the 50 states would mean 18 million people moving out since 2013. About 400,000 fewer Puerto Ricans live on an island of 3.4 million today compared with a decade ago, when its economy began contracting, Bloomberg reports.

“I had to choose for my family,’’ said Aledie Amariah Navas Nazario, 39, a pediatric pulmonologist, told Bloomberg. She left behind young asthma patients when she, her husband and two small daughters moved to Orlando, Florida.
Reasons for leaving were compelling enough for Navas Nazario, who treated asthma on an island where it’s more prevalent than anywhere else in the U.S.

Puerto Rico’s economy had taken yet another leg down, and she was worried about her future income because of uncertainty about health insurance.

“I’m sad about not being able to take care of those kids anymore,’’ said Navas Nazario, who keeps in touch with former patients on Facebook. “You have to make a hard decision to leave relationships with friends and family just to get out, just because you need a better life.’’

Departures like Navas Nazario’s have trapped the commonwealth’s economy in a downward spiral, Bloomberg reports.

Joblessness at 11.5 percent, and a $74 billion mountain of debt that pushed the island to insolvency have made collecting taxes key to an economic rebound, Bloomberg said. At the same time, more Puerto Ricans from all walks of life are moving away to better their lives, meaning government revenue is dwindling.

The island’s debt has grown 87% since 2006, and one easy way to avoid paying any of the debt is for Puerto Ricans to leave the island. But one telling sign for anyone who owns Puerto Rican debt: The government’s official turnaround plan – a path to sustainability approved by a US oversight board – assumes the population will shrink by just 0.2% each year for the next decade.

The government is using this number as the basis for its projections of tax receipts and economic growth. Expect it to fall far short on both measures.

“Most people believe that those forecasts in the fiscal plan are really, really optimistic and probably would have to be revised at some point,’’ said Sergio Marxuach, public policy director at the Center for the New Economy in San Juan, told Bloomberg.

And professionals aren’t the only ones leaving: The exodus includes blue-collar construction workers and taxi drivers. Research by the New York Fed found that college graduates make up roughly the same proportion of emigres as they do the broader population, suggesting, as Bloomberg reports, that the departures have touched “every corner” of the commonwealth.

The reason for leaving is obvious: The earnings disparity between PR and the mainland can be wide. John Starkey, a principal of the Lafayette International Community High School in upstate Buffalo, New York, told Bloomberg he traveled to the island to recruit teachers after it started shutting down schools to save money. On the mainland, Starkey said, educators find they can double or triple their earnings, even if it means trading a balmy Caribbean island for the frigid shores of Lake Erie.

“Many of the candidates wanted to stay on the island to help their community,’’ Starkey said. “Our pitch was: come up to Buffalo and you’ll be able to better provide for your family, but you’ll also be able to help your community here.’’

The commonwealth applied for Title III protection from its creditors last month in what will be the largest-ever US municipal debt restructuring, further complicating the territory’s efforts to pull itself out of a financial crisis.

The Puerto Rico restructuring would be far larger than Detroit’s record-setting bankruptcy, with little to no details how long a court proceeding would last or what cuts would are imposed on bondholders. The island’s financial recovery plan covers less than a quarter of the debt payments due over the next decade.

The island has been a U.S. possession since American troops invaded in the Spanish-American War, and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. That means there’s little to prevent them from seeking better prospects on the mainland, something they’ve always done, just not to this extent.

Migration to the US mainland is by far the biggest driver of the island’s declining population, but a declining fertility rate isn’t helping either. The natural population increase — excess births over deaths — fell to 3,000 last year from 20,000 a decade ago, as families facing poorer economic prospects and the threat of the Zika virus put off having kids, Bloomberg reported. At the same time, younger generations of child-bearing age are more likely to take off for the mainland.
 

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Every year the Sydney Peace Foundation bestows their Global Peace Prize on extraordinary people who advocate for “true and lasting peace” by ending “war and violent conflict” through addressing “deep injustices and structural inequality.”

Previous years have seen such individuals as Noam Chomsky, Hans Blix and Archbishop Desmond Tutu receive the esteemed prize.

But this year the award is taking a different direction, and rather than being given to a single person, it is being awarded to an entire movement for the first time.

And the winner of the 2017 Global Peace Prize goes to…

Drum roll…

Black Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter, the movement against racial inequality and police violence in the US which began as a powerful hashtag and became a global rallying cry, will be the 2017 recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize – the first time the often-controversial award has gone to a movement and not an individual.

 

The prize recognises the work of the amorphous racial justice movement that exists under the catch-all moniker, but has nevertheless managed to unite activists from around the world, including in Australia.

 

…

 

The Sydney Peace Prize jury’s citation for this year’s winners applauded the movement “for building a powerful movement for racial equality, courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism. And for harnessing the potential of new platforms and power of people to inspire a bold movement for change at a time when peace is threatened by growing inequality and injustice.”

 

Via Sydney Peace Foundation

But as Louder With Crowder points out, peace is not exactly how one would describe the activities engaged in and supported by Black Lives Matter:

It’s like people don’t have internet access. Memories. Basic motor functions. If they did, they’d be able to use the digits sticking out of their hands to peck a few letters into The Google. Just to verify if Black Lives Matter is worthy of an award bestowment. Like a kind of “vetting” process, if you will. Since the Sydney Peace Foundation lacks finger privilege, I did the search for them.

• Black Lives Matter Activist Wants To ‘Kill The White House.’ Yes, Really
• ‘HUGE Rise in Chicago Crime Due to Black Lives Matter’ Says Former P.D. Chief
• Black Lives Matter: Amidst Record Crime, Chicago PD Gives Up
• WAR ON COPS: #BlackLivesMatter Violently Shuts Down Pro-Police Speech
• REAL RACISM: BlackLivesMatter Leader Calls for Genocide of White People
• TOLERANCE: #BlackLivesMatter ‘Peaceful Protesters’ Attack Trump-Supporter

If this is what the Sydney Peace Foundation considers champions of peace, I’d hate to see what they think war is.

In a world where former U.S. President Barrack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for doing absolutely nothing and then subsequently orchestrating campaigns that have led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people across the world it would make perfect sense for the Sydney Peace Foundation to award a similar prize to an organization whose immediate membership and loosely based offshoots advocate for racial segregation, violent protest, and the killing of police officers.

In the eyes of some, peace is war.

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If you believe San Francisco Fed President John Williams, the US labor market has almost never been ore robust than it is today. Of course, middle- and working-class Americans who are struggling with levels of financial uncertainty that would be unfamiliar to their parents’ generation don’t necessarily care that the official unemployment rate is 4.4%. They’re too busy struggling to make ends meet when real wages have been stagnant for decades and economic growth is expected to slouch along at 2% for the foreseeable future.

While researching their new book “The Financial Diaries,” Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider followed more than 200 working and middle-class families around for a year and tracked “every dollar of their financial lives." They found that millions of workers without college degrees, especially those who are paid hourly, or who are paid by commission, experience what they call call income variability – when their pay fluctuates by 25% above or below their average. One of Murdoch and Schneider's subjects, a truck mechanic named Jeremy, even quit his job to take a lower paying job with a steady salary.

They discussed their findings during an episode of Bloomberg's "Benchmark" podcast.

“When we first met him, his weekly paychecks were very variable. And he was bearing all that risk. At the end of the year, he quit his job for another job with lower pay that was more steady. ”

“On average, we’re seeing households spend about five months of the year where their income was 25% above their average or 25% below their average. So income insecurity wasn’t about ‘am I going to lose my job,’ it’s about ‘how am I going to navigate the ups and downs in my given job.’”

The pair also found that existing financial services don't adequately serve the needs of workers struggling with income variability. Schneider discussed how one subject whom she called Jane intentionally placed obstacles to withdrawing money from her savings account.

“Often the strategies they were using to make that money stretch show gaps in how financial services are or are not serving them. For example, we tell the story in the book of a woman called Janice who has a savings account and a checking account but she cut up her checkbook for her checking account and she cut up her ATM card. She has those accounts in different institutions and the savings account is an hour’s drive from her home.”

 

“A bank might say she’s not using those products right, she’s paying check cashers and fees on money orders to pay her bills she’s using it wrong. But I look at it the other way she actually wants some wall between herself and her spending or savings. She cut up the check book because she doesn’t want temptation to take out payday loans which she’s had trouble with in the past.”

Regardless of race, workers without degrees are stuggling "in a lot of ways."

“One of the things that we see is that today workers without college degrees are struggling in a lot of ways. We see that in the labor market in terms of wages and what our data and related data are showing is it’s not just average wages they also are facing much more instability than other workers."

"The economic backlash is being felt by lower class workers, regardless of race, because the system isn’t working for the poor.Black workers have a hard time and white worker as well are living very precarious lives. Even though they have jobs there’s economic anxiety in America even for people with jobs. And that’s the big puzzle in America. That people are trying to sort out what the big answer is but you spend time and follow people month to month you see exactly why there’s so much anxiety in a sense because the system really isn’t working for them.”
 

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(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) – 6/2/2017 Robocalling is out of control.  Once the domain of sophisticated telemarketers, now it has spread to include cyber fraud, international telemarketing, and some unknown services that just ‘dial’ numbers with no reason (this appears to be the most bizarre).

The spam phone calls have become so out of control, it’s even common now for people to get a landline or other number just to use as their phone number, in that case what’s the point of having a phone?  The issue here needs to be looked into at the network level, by telcos like ATT (T), Verizon (VZ), and others.  How spammers, fraudsters, and barely legal telemarketers (who often cross the lines of ‘regulation’) use the networks to harass legitimate users needs to be stopped.  The ‘Do Not Call’ list is a joke – it’s not enforced and not used.  Registration will stop a small percentage of legitimate telemarketers who use the lists and go through the compliance process, but the problem is that it doesn’t protect anyone from the ‘black’ side of the robocalling industry, which is organized largely outside of the legal borders of USA.

Global Intel Hub interviewed our parent company about this issue, Elite E Services.  EES has many registered domains, for more than 15 years with a Godaddy reseller FX System Hosting (a brand).  Godaddy is now a public company Godaddy Inc (NYSE:GDDY), so they are subject to the same complaints and oversight as any public company.  And Godaddy needs to be careful, as this is a potentially toxic legal issue.

Godaddy sells ‘privacy’ for each domain, making the owner of record ‘private’ – showing only a proxy company operated by Godaddy “Domains by Proxy” – it’s possible to break this veil of privacy only in extreme cases such as a subpoena or matters of national security.  But why would the average domain owner want to keep their records private, especially since the idea of having a website at all is usually for the purposes of marketing (or at least, having your business information become public).  Recently, the answer has been in order to stop the spam calls and emails.  Godaddy makes the whois records public, which are somehow picked up by these foreign robocallers automatically, and the calls start.  They don’t know what is DNC and they don’t speak English.  Half of the time when you actually answer these calls they just disconnect.  Other times, a scratchy connection as one would hear when calling Afghanistan in the 80s from a phone booth, a man speaking broken English is asking if you need website design.  An agent of Elite E Services asked for this man’s name and address to which he replied “Sector 5, Calcutta – Justin Smith” – with a little Google research at least Sector 5 really is a real place.  Justin Smith, doesn’t sound like an Indian name though.  When confronted with this fact he says “My fathers’ name is Joseph Thomas Smith we are Christian” – maybe, but anyway who is to know?  And why are they calling a number that is on the Do Not Call list?

That’s not all.  Another ‘foreign’ US caller, when asked that we be removed from their list, said “No, no no no.. no – NO .. no no no .. I WILL NOT remove you from my list (click).” at which point the really aggressive calls started, saying that we could be arrested due to an IRS issue, call this number immediately, 202 334 4562 (has been shut down).  “Sometimes we can get 20 or 30 spam calls a day,” says an anonymous agent working for Elite E Services, “Sometimes, they will call 2 or 3 times in a row, you can’t block them – they use another number.”

Supposedly, Trump’s appointee is doing something about this:

Ajit Pai, the FCC chairman appointed by President Trump, called robocalls a “scourge” in a blog post earlier this month. He noted that an estimated 2.4 billion robocalls are placed to Americans each month.

“There is no reason why any legitimate caller should be spoofing an unassigned or invalid phone number,” Pai wrote. “It’s just a way for scammers to evade the law.”

The FCC currently prevents phone companies from proactively blocking calls. The new rule would let phone companies block any robocaller that uses a number that has not been assigned to any customer or that has a nonexistent area code.

The FCC’s approach was developed in partnership with a “robocall strike force” of tech, cable and telecom companies formed last year. Members include Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Google(GOOGL, Tech30), Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30), Verizon (VZ, Tech30) and AT&T (T, Tech30).

The rules probably won’t be finalized and approved for at least a few months.

Meanwhile, the calls continue.  And since most of the callers are hiding behind the international wall of stupidity erected around the USA’s legal system, there’s little US phone users can do except turn off their phones.

This is a bad sign for the telecom sector and for Godaddy, at a time when the ‘telephone’ struggles for its place in a busy digital world.  

If you would like a free consultation from a consumer rights law firm, visit Fortis Law Group @ http://ift.tt/2r7AQWj

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Authored by Teeka Tiwari via InternationalMan.com,

On June 20, 2011, Forbes wrote “So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then.”

On January 16, 2015, USA Today wrote “Bitcoin Is Headed to the ‘Ash Heap.’”

On May 5, 2017, The Daily Reckoning wrote “The Death of Bitcoin.”

Since 2011, bitcoin’s been declared dead at least 129 times.

Newsletter writers, journalists, and academics have called it a “Ponzi scheme.”

Others like the idea in theory but have doubts. They are convinced the government will shut down bitcoin and render it worthless.

If it were 2013, I would have agreed with them.

From 2009–13, bitcoin rallied from a fraction of a penny to over $1,100… and then spectacularly crashed 85% to $185.

It looked like a classic “pump and dump” to me. That’s why I ignored it.

But then something very interesting happened.

Instead of collapsing back to pennies, bitcoin found support in the $200 range. Even after the bubble popped, bitcoin was still worth billions.

This intrigued me because true Ponzi schemes have zero value when they crash.

The fact that bitcoin was still attracting buyers even after the onslaught of negative news… an 85% price crash… and universal scorn… said something to me.

It said that maybe this asset had real value. At the very least, it told me that more investigation was needed.

Lessons From the Dot-Com Bubble

I’ve seen skepticism like this before…

Back in May 1997, Amazon went public at the split equivalent of $1.30.

Amazon shot up to $113 during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. When the bubble popped, Amazon crashed 94%—to the split equivalent of $5.97.

But again, something interesting happened…

In the depths of the dot-com hatred, Amazon started quietly climbing in price. Back then, I made the mistake of dismissing this action.

My error was buying into the prevailing belief that dot-com stocks were dumb and worthless.

I listened to the narrative instead of digging deeper into the Amazon story.

That was a mistake of lazy thinking.

So when I saw the same thing happen with bitcoin, I decided to do something different.

Instead of listening to the skeptics, I asked myself: “Why are people still buying this supposedly worthless asset?”

That’s when I did a deep dive into bitcoin.

I traveled all over the world interviewing experts, development teams, and venture capitalists. I wanted to understand why bitcoin had value.

Even Governments Are Embracing Bitcoin

Just as important, I wanted to know what would stop the U.S. government from banning it.

How would the currency outgrow its widespread reputation as a form of “black money” used by criminals?

What I found out was this: At its core, bitcoin is just a way to send and receive value without the need for a trusted middleman.

Bitcoin has no central location. That means no government (including the U.S. government) can ever shut it down.

In fact, several countries have already tried to ban bitcoin and found that it was impossible.

At least two of them (Russia and India) have decided to recognize bitcoin as money.

Governments are realizing that it’s better to have a hand in how bitcoin is shaped and regulated than try to destroy it (which they can’t).

Think back to when the U.S. government finally realized that prohibition was unenforceable. Better to regulate alcohol and tax it.

Where’s the Future Value?

The real strength of bitcoin is the underlying network of highly secure computers that support it (called the blockchain).

This is where much of the value creation will come from.

As I write, software developers across the world are building applications designed to piggyback off this network.

Over the next three years, we’ll begin to see a slew of new applications emerge for bitcoin and the network that supports it.

They will support everything from asset tracking to recording land registries.

And much more that we can’t even think of yet.

That’s why bitcoin will continue to grow in value.

Since those obituaries started popping up in 2011, bitcoin has rocketed from a low of 75 cents to as high as $2,770—an astronomical 369,223% gain.

The next time you find yourself being scared out of owning bitcoin by a negative article, do yourself a favor… Read the last 129 times bitcoin was declared dead.

*  *  *

Teeka Tiwari has put together the ultimate asymmetric trade bundle of cryptocurrencies. The basket has four cryptocurrencies Teeka and his team have hand-selected from hundreds of man-hours of research. One is up 196% and another 231% in less than four months. All four already have positive gains. Click here to learn more.

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It used to be that low state income taxes and practically non-existent property taxes, at least compared the neighboring county of Westchester in New York, was more than enough to lure Manhattan’s hedge fund billionaires out to Greenwich, CT.  But, it seems that a festering pension crisis and resulting state income tax hikes in Connecticut has resulted in many of NYC’s gazillionaires choosing a trophy 3,000 square foot apartment in “the city” over a 10,000 square foot Greenwich mega-mansion.  

As the Wall Street Journal points out today, sales of ultra-luxury Greenwich estates, priced at over $10 million, collapsed after 2008 and have just continued to deteriorate year after year ever since.

There were only five sales for $10 million or more in 2015 and 2016, the slowest pace in this category since at least 2008, and less than half the average, according to brokerage Houlihan Lawrence. In all, there are 38 properties listed for $10 million in and around Greenwich, meaning it would take at least seven years to sell them all at the current pace.

 

Although brokers say showings have picked up this spring, some worry that among the most affluent buyers a suburban mansion in Connecticut is losing ground to a trophy Manhattan apartment.

 

And two massive state income tax hikes in the past 6 years, to nearly 7%, are likely to blame…

At play, also is the rising state income tax burden on the very wealthy that makes Connecticut less of a tax haven than it used to be compared with New York, brokers said. Connecticut raised its top tax rate twice in the last decade, in 2011 and 2015, to the current 6.99%.

 

“For the longest time we were definitely benefiting from very low state taxes,” said Tamar Lurie, an agent at Coldwell Banker Real Estate in Greenwich. “We are inching higher and of course it impacts buyers.”

 

“The high-end city property owner is generally staying in the city and we are not seeing the flight to the suburbs at the upper end of the market,” he noted.

…which we suspect has something to do with that pesky $68 billion underfunded pension liability.

 

Of course, while New York’s ultra-rich, liberal investment bankers and hedge fund managers are all too willing to advocate for the “pay your fair share” political candidates, they’re wholly unwilling to actually practice what they preach.

All of which raises the obvious question: where exactly will NYC’s hedge fund managers park those Bugattis now that they’re giving up their 8-car garages?

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Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

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Amid Murica's spelling-bee week, Google mapped the nation's most mis-spelled words…

"Sauerkraut" in Pennsylvania, "Chaos" in Tennessee, Diarrhea" in New Hampshire, and "Chihuahua" in South Carolina"?

Source: Google

And here are the most-used words in each state…

Source: xkcd.com

via http://ift.tt/2snvJ1n Tyler Durden