Tag: news

Why We Need Government: To Prevent 9-Year-Olds From Running Free Little Lending Libraries

Advances in providing for the education and enlightenment of the
general public, from the city of Leawood, Kansas,
as reported by KMBC TV:

Leawood city leaders have told Spencer Collins that he has to
stop sharing books with his neighbors.

Collins had to take down his little free library, essentially a
communal bookshelf, on Wednesday. The motto of the sharing center
had been “take a book, leave a book,” but Collins learned there’s a
lot less give and take in city government….

“When we got home from vacation, there was a letter from the
city of Leawood saying that it was in code violation and it needed
to be down by the 19th or we would receive a citation,” said
Spencer’s mother, Sarah Collins. 

Leawood said the little house is an accessory structure. The
city bans buildings that aren’t attached to someone’s home.

The hand of government is wise, and sympathetic, but it
must be firm:

“We empathize with them, but we still have to follow the rules,”
said Richard Coleman of the City of Leawood. “We need to treat
everybody the same. So we can’t say if somebody files a complaint
but we like the little libraries — we think they’re cute — so we
ignore it. We can’t do that.”

Because Leawood is a community that cares about
culture, but also about safety: “Leawood said it has received
two complaints about Spencer Collins’ library.”

Meanwhile, the utopian anarchists in neighboring community
Prairie Valley “told KMBC 9’s Haley Harrison that the city
simply doesn’t enforce codes that would restrict little free
libraries.”

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Baltimore Cop Slits Dog's Throat, Gets Charged with Animal Cruelty

an heroIt
looks like a cop in Baltimore won’t be getting away with killing a
dog in the line of duty. WRIC, the ABC affiliate in Richmond,
Virginia,
reports:

Officer Jeffrey Bolger is charged with felony animal cruelty and
has been suspended without pay.

Police say Bolger, along with other officers, responded to a
woman who said she’d been bitten by a dog. Police say the dog, a
7-year-old Shar Pei, had already been secured with a dog pole when
Bolger allegedly pulled out a knife and slit the dog’s throat.

Police say the dog didn’t appear to be posing any threat to the
cops. Bolger is actually the second Baltimore cop to be charged
with animal cruelty this year. In February, Officer

Alec Taylor beat and choked to death his girlfriend’s
seven-month-old dog and then sent her a picture, telling
investigators he was tired of cleaning up after the dog. Taylor,
too, was suspended without pay but not immediately fired.

Private sector employees in roles that require interaction with
the public would almost certainly be fired after being charged with
animal cruelty—it would be difficult otherwise for a private
company to survive the damage such incidents would cause to its
reputation. The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and its officers
have no such worries. The officers’ jobs are protected by union
contracts, and the BPD has a guaranteed revenue stream from
taxpayers. Government is just the things we do together and the
sociopaths we hire to do them.

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Baltimore Cop Slits Dog’s Throat, Gets Charged with Animal Cruelty

an heroIt
looks like a cop in Baltimore won’t be getting away with killing a
dog in the line of duty. WRIC, the ABC affiliate in Richmond,
Virginia,
reports:

Officer Jeffrey Bolger is charged with felony animal cruelty and
has been suspended without pay.

Police say Bolger, along with other officers, responded to a
woman who said she’d been bitten by a dog. Police say the dog, a
7-year-old Shar Pei, had already been secured with a dog pole when
Bolger allegedly pulled out a knife and slit the dog’s throat.

Police say the dog didn’t appear to be posing any threat to the
cops. Bolger is actually the second Baltimore cop to be charged
with animal cruelty this year. In February, Officer

Alec Taylor beat and choked to death his girlfriend’s
seven-month-old dog and then sent her a picture, telling
investigators he was tired of cleaning up after the dog. Taylor,
too, was suspended without pay but not immediately fired.

Private sector employees in roles that require interaction with
the public would almost certainly be fired after being charged with
animal cruelty—it would be difficult otherwise for a private
company to survive the damage such incidents would cause to its
reputation. The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and its officers
have no such worries. The officers’ jobs are protected by union
contracts, and the BPD has a guaranteed revenue stream from
taxpayers. Government is just the things we do together and the
sociopaths we hire to do them.

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Philly Fed Beats; Prices Paid & "Hope" Spike Most In 5 Years

The headlines are all about Philly Fed’s rise to 9-month highs – just shy of the cycle’s highs last September. Employment is up, and orders are improving… all good (buy, buy, buy)… But… the ‘outlook’ or hope index has exploded in the last 2 months by the most since 2009 rebounding from the winter doldrums. Perhaps most worrisome – though we are sure Yellen will dismiss it as “noise”, Prices Paid are surging – up most in the last 2 months since June 2009. This is the biggest surge since the Fed started printing money… furthermore, prices received are down notably (ending the margin expansions dream).

 

“Noise”!

 

Full Breakdown…

 

Yellen has a problem…

The surveyed respondents indicated that price increases for purchased inputs were more widespread this month. The prices paid index increased 12 points and hasnow increased 24 points over the past two months. Over 36 percent of the firms re-ported higher input prices this month com-pared with 25 percent last month.

 

The prices received index, reflecting firms’ own final goods prices, however, declined from 17.0 to 14.1. The percent of firms reporting higher prices (22percent) exceeded the percentage reporting lower prices (8percent), but 71percent of the firms reported steady prices.

So “widespread” price increases and margin compression…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nkwFZA Tyler Durden

Philly Fed Beats; Prices Paid & “Hope” Spike Most In 5 Years

The headlines are all about Philly Fed’s rise to 9-month highs – just shy of the cycle’s highs last September. Employment is up, and orders are improving… all good (buy, buy, buy)… But… the ‘outlook’ or hope index has exploded in the last 2 months by the most since 2009 rebounding from the winter doldrums. Perhaps most worrisome – though we are sure Yellen will dismiss it as “noise”, Prices Paid are surging – up most in the last 2 months since June 2009. This is the biggest surge since the Fed started printing money… furthermore, prices received are down notably (ending the margin expansions dream).

 

“Noise”!

 

Full Breakdown…

 

Yellen has a problem…

The surveyed respondents indicated that price increases for purchased inputs were more widespread this month. The prices paid index increased 12 points and hasnow increased 24 points over the past two months. Over 36 percent of the firms re-ported higher input prices this month com-pared with 25 percent last month.

 

The prices received index, reflecting firms’ own final goods prices, however, declined from 17.0 to 14.1. The percent of firms reporting higher prices (22percent) exceeded the percentage reporting lower prices (8percent), but 71percent of the firms reported steady prices.

So “widespread” price increases and margin compression…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nkwFZA Tyler Durden

Sheldon Richman on How Non-Interventionists Told You So About Iraq

Contrary to
popular belief, there is no satisfaction in being able to say, “I
told you so.” This is especially so with Iraq, where recent
events are enough to sicken one’s stomach. Yet it still must be
said: those who opposed the George W. Bush administration’s
invasion of Iraq in March 2003 — not to mention his father’s war on
Iraq in 1991 and the sanctions enforced through the administration
of Bill Clinton — were right. The noninterventionists predicted a
violent unraveling of the country, and that’s what we’re
witnessing. They agreed with Amr Moussa, chairman of the Arab
League, who warned in September 2002 that the invasion
would “open the gates of hell.” There was no Islamic State in Iraq
and al-Sham (ISIS) or al-Qaeda in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
before the U.S. invasion. And once again, writes Sheldon
Richman, the establishment news media have ill-served the American
public.

View this article.

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Speaking of Disruptive Innovation, Much Of Wall Street Won't Be Here In 10 Years!

Wall street, pay attention (and Canary Wharf as well)!!! Newspaper magnates and media
moguls, when queried about the prospects of the Internet, proffered disbelief in the early ‘90s. When was the last time you read
the classifieds, rented a Blockbuster movie or called into a radio station? As
the Internet clearly showed us in the ‘90s, when change comes… It comes fast
and takes no prisoners!

“47% of all jobs will be automated by 2034, and no government is
prepared.” – Economist

“In the next 10-20 years, 58% of financial
advisors will be replaced by robots and AI.”- Frey and Osborne, Oxford University

I’ve had difficulty sourcing the expertise that I neede from the bitcoin community, so I sourced it from the general and fintech community, getting them up to speed on Bitcoin. After totally replacing my devlopment team with (4) seasoned veterans from the fintech (hedge funds, trading platforms) and distributed app (Yahoo, Google, Amazon) space, I’ve come to an interesting conclusion. The vast majority of hardcore technical talent still has absolutely no idea what this protocol is capable of. When I walked my team through what I was doing, they were literally – and absolutely… Amazed. 

This tells me that as the true higher end intellectual talent comes onboard, things will start to become very, very interesting. As it is, shortly after launch, I expect Fortune 5000 companies and data providers such as Bloomberg and Reuters to provide interest. This is for a product category and underlying technology implemention that didn’t even exist this time last year.

What does this portend? Well let’s look at it via its most simplest attributes.

The Redefining of Business

A promise is a commitment, made now, to perform an action in
the future. All business transactions are essentially a string of promises. The
basic business transaction consists of two promises – the promise to deliver a
product/service and the promise to pay for said delivery. Business can get much
more complex by involving intricate, interwoven models of transactions, which
are essentially just layered… promises.

 

Significant resources are spent ensuring people and business
entities keep their promises to pay, to perform, to honor their words and
contractual agreements. Due diligence, research, lawyers, litigation, mediation,
arbitrators, escrow agents are all methods of doing such, but historically a
promise has always been just a commitment to perform a future act, and nothing
more.

Veritaseum has discovered a way to codify promises in the actual money
used in a business transaction. We make and sell… “Unbreakable Promises”!

What is the typical Wall Street transaction? A string of promises. I agree to pay you $X for Y asset at this date. Whether it’s Goldman Sachs selling interest rate swaps to Greece, or Morgan Stanley selling real estate units to HNW expats – it all amounst to the same thing. Unfortunately, so do the meltdowns from the last decade. What if every promise given a government by Goldman Sachs, or a private investor by Morgan Stanley, or… What if everything said was forced to be true?

This is the new world, and it is automated… performed through software, not through $17 million per year traders. I’ll opine on the transformation of Wall Street in a later post (or those who are massively curious and can’t wait, download this research report) for now I’ll continue my PSA on well funded bitcoin startup valuations (reference my valuation estimate of Bitpay, a rapidly growing payment processor), I bring a forensic analysis and valuation of Coinbase, likely the 2nd largest money exchanger in the bitcoin business.

 Valuation Case 2- COINBASE

Revenues for Coinbase is calculated based on global monthly transaction size (US$) of the company. Annualizing the transaction resulted in Total transactions for 2014  

As per the information available, Coinbase charges 1% as transaction fee resulting in the revenue of the company.    

Table 3- Revenue Forecast, US$

  
 

2014F

2015F

2016F

  

Annual Transactions*, US$

1,085,488,973

     1,248,312,319

     1,435,559,166

  

Transaction Fee (%)

1.0%

1.0%

1.0%

  

Total Revenue

        10,854,890

    12,483,123

    14,355,592

  

*Growth assumed under moderate scenario

  

As per the news for funding in Coinbase, the valuation of Coinbase ranged between US$140 million – US$1 billion. Based on weighted average (by applying 70% weight to the lower figure in the range), the above valuation is derived at US$398 million. Applying the multiples at which Bitpay and Circle are estimated to have been funded recently (using average revenue multiple of Bitpay and Circle), the valuation based on 2015 and 2016 revenues is as shown below:

Table 4- Relative valuation

Particulars

2015F

2016F

Revenue ($)

    12,483,123

    14,355,592

Multiple Comparable- Bitpay and Circle

16.0x

13.5x

Valuation (US$mn)

                      200.31

                      194.23

Of course, we feel that these rapidly growing payment processor companies, although now profitable and expanding their reach like weeds, are barely touching the tip of what the Bitcoin industry will look like just two years into the future. 

 




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1piTqQc Reggie Middleton

Speaking of Disruptive Innovation, Much Of Wall Street Won’t Be Here In 10 Years!

Wall street, pay attention (and Canary Wharf as well)!!! Newspaper magnates and media
moguls, when queried about the prospects of the Internet, proffered disbelief in the early ‘90s. When was the last time you read
the classifieds, rented a Blockbuster movie or called into a radio station? As
the Internet clearly showed us in the ‘90s, when change comes… It comes fast
and takes no prisoners!

“47% of all jobs will be automated by 2034, and no government is
prepared.” – Economist

“In the next 10-20 years, 58% of financial
advisors will be replaced by robots and AI.”- Frey and Osborne, Oxford University

I’ve had difficulty sourcing the expertise that I neede from the bitcoin community, so I sourced it from the general and fintech community, getting them up to speed on Bitcoin. After totally replacing my devlopment team with (4) seasoned veterans from the fintech (hedge funds, trading platforms) and distributed app (Yahoo, Google, Amazon) space, I’ve come to an interesting conclusion. The vast majority of hardcore technical talent still has absolutely no idea what this protocol is capable of. When I walked my team through what I was doing, they were literally – and absolutely… Amazed. 

This tells me that as the true higher end intellectual talent comes onboard, things will start to become very, very interesting. As it is, shortly after launch, I expect Fortune 5000 companies and data providers such as Bloomberg and Reuters to provide interest. This is for a product category and underlying technology implemention that didn’t even exist this time last year.

What does this portend? Well let’s look at it via its most simplest attributes.

The Redefining of Business

A promise is a commitment, made now, to perform an action in
the future. All business transactions are essentially a string of promises. The
basic business transaction consists of two promises – the promise to deliver a
product/service and the promise to pay for said delivery. Business can get much
more complex by involving intricate, interwoven models of transactions, which
are essentially just layered… promises.

 

Significant resources are spent ensuring people and business
entities keep their promises to pay, to perform, to honor their words and
contractual agreements. Due diligence, research, lawyers, litigation, mediation,
arbitrators, escrow agents are all methods of doing such, but historically a
promise has always been just a commitment to perform a future act, and nothing
more.

Veritaseum has discovered a way to codify promises in the actual money
used in a business transaction. We make and sell… “Unbreakable Promises”!

What is the typical Wall Street transaction? A string of promises. I agree to pay you $X for Y asset at this date. Whether it’s Goldman Sachs selling interest rate swaps to Greece, or Morgan Stanley selling real estate units to HNW expats – it all amounst to the same thing. Unfortunately, so do the meltdowns from the last decade. What if every promise given a government by Goldman Sachs, or a private investor by Morgan Stanley, or… What if everything said was forced to be true?

This is the new world, and it is automated… performed through software, not through $17 million per year traders. I’ll opine on the transformation of Wall Street in a later post (or those who are massively curious and can’t wait, download this research report) for now I’ll continue my PSA on well funded bitcoin startup valuations (reference my valuation estimate of Bitpay, a rapidly growing payment processor), I bring a forensic analysis and valuation of Coinbase, likely the 2nd largest money exchanger in the bitcoin business.

 Valuation Case 2- COINBASE

Revenues for Coinbase is calculated based on global monthly transaction size (US$) of the company. Annualizing the transaction resulted in Total transactions for 2014  

As per the information available, Coinbase charges 1% as transaction fee resulting in the revenue of the company.    

Table 3- Revenue Forecast, US$

  
 

2014F

2015F

2016F

  

Annual Transactions*, US$

1,085,488,973

     1,248,312,319

     1,435,559,166

  

Transaction Fee (%)

1.0%

1.0%

1.0%

  

Total Revenue

        10,854,890

    12,483,123

    14,355,592

  

*Growth assumed under moderate scenario

  

As per the news for funding in Coinbase, the valuation of Coinbase ranged between US$140 million – US$1 billion. Based on weighted average (by applying 70% weight to the lower figure in the range), the above valuation is derived at US$398 million. Applying the multiples at which Bitpay and Circle are estimated to have been funded recently (using average revenue multiple of Bitpay and Circle), the valuation based on 2015 and 2016 revenues is as shown below:

Table 4- Relative valuation

Particulars

2015F

2016F

Revenue ($)

    12,483,123

    14,355,592

Multiple Comparable- Bitpay and Circle

16.0x

13.5x

Valuation (US$mn)

                      200.31

                      194.23

Of course, we feel that these rapidly growing payment processor companies, although now profitable and expanding their reach like weeds, are barely touching the tip of what the Bitcoin industry will look like just two years into the future. 

 




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1piTqQc Reggie Middleton

US "Ready To Act" As Russia Looks To Ban US Consultants & Block EU Gas Transit

It appears Russia ‘retaliation’ continues for the ‘costs’ imposed by the West on Putin and his people (Russia +28%, S&P +6% since sanctions). Putin looks set to take on both EU and US as RT reports that Russian MPs are preparing a bill to ban the use of US consulting companies in Russia; and then Ukraine’s Naftogaz says Russia’s Gazprom seeks to end its accord on daily gas transit – a move which could threaten EU gas supplies. The US put its best man forward to respond and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew thretatened “US is ready to act” on Russia if Ukraine escalates…

 

Russia retaliation #1:

MP Yevgeniy Fyodorov of the United Russia party is preparing a bill that would ban state-owned companies from using services of American consulting firms, Russia Today reports.

Russia retaliation #2:

  • *UKRAINE: GAZPROM SEEKS TO END ACCORD ON DAILY TRANSIT BALANCE
  • *NAFTOGAZ SAYS GAZPROM MOVE MAY THREATEN EU GAS TRANSIT
  • *NAFTOGAZ: GAZPROM TO END ACCORD ON DAILY BALANCING JUNE 23

Jack lew warns…

  • *U.S. WOULD BE READY TO SEEK FURTHER RUSSIA SANCTIONS, LEW SAYS
  • *U.S. READY TO ACT ON RUSSIA IF UKRAINE ESCALATES, LEW SAYS

But we suspect Russia is not quaking…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pmxAxe Tyler Durden

US “Ready To Act” As Russia Looks To Ban US Consultants & Block EU Gas Transit

It appears Russia ‘retaliation’ continues for the ‘costs’ imposed by the West on Putin and his people (Russia +28%, S&P +6% since sanctions). Putin looks set to take on both EU and US as RT reports that Russian MPs are preparing a bill to ban the use of US consulting companies in Russia; and then Ukraine’s Naftogaz says Russia’s Gazprom seeks to end its accord on daily gas transit – a move which could threaten EU gas supplies. The US put its best man forward to respond and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew thretatened “US is ready to act” on Russia if Ukraine escalates…

 

Russia retaliation #1:

MP Yevgeniy Fyodorov of the United Russia party is preparing a bill that would ban state-owned companies from using services of American consulting firms, Russia Today reports.

Russia retaliation #2:

  • *UKRAINE: GAZPROM SEEKS TO END ACCORD ON DAILY TRANSIT BALANCE
  • *NAFTOGAZ SAYS GAZPROM MOVE MAY THREATEN EU GAS TRANSIT
  • *NAFTOGAZ: GAZPROM TO END ACCORD ON DAILY BALANCING JUNE 23

Jack lew warns…

  • *U.S. WOULD BE READY TO SEEK FURTHER RUSSIA SANCTIONS, LEW SAYS
  • *U.S. READY TO ACT ON RUSSIA IF UKRAINE ESCALATES, LEW SAYS

But we suspect Russia is not quaking…




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1pmxAxe Tyler Durden