Daily Archives: August 4, 2013

Police assault, bind Libertarian candidate for 3.5 hours in Detroit

"Scotty Boman, a candidate for Detroit clerk, was assaulted by police and left alone in handcuffs and without water in a closet-sized room for more than three hours for trying to take photos of what he considered unethical signs posted by incumbent Clerk Janice Winfrey. The math and physics professor at Wayne County Community College also was trying to hand out campaign literature. Boman said the officers laughed at him while he was stuck in handcuffs. By the time his camera was returned, incriminating video he took of the police was deleted. The officers, he said, threatened to arrest him if he brought the camera back to the campus." Continue reading →

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New Rochelle sued by veterans group over Gadsden flag removal

"A veterans group is alleging in a federal lawsuit that the city violated its free-speech rights and the state’s Open Meetings Law. The lawsuit, filed July 26 in federal court in White Plains, seeks a court order permitting the association to fly the Gadsden flag and 'nominal and compensatory damages.' The yellow flag, featuring a coiled rattlesnake, was hoisted below the Stars and Stripes at the former city armory March 21. But the Democratic council majority decided to take it down about a week later, suggesting it was a Tea Party symbol." Continue reading →

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Employment Ratios: Total, Men, and Women

"Tyler Cowen and Scott Sumner are debating over the significance of the sharp decline in the employment ratio (which looks at what percentage of the working-age population is employed, and is a different indicator from the labor force which considers the percentage of those actively seeking employment). Although someone brought it up in his comments, Scott didn’t deal with what is clearly one of the huge drivers of the total ratio over the last 50 years: women entering the work force. When you decompose it by sex (red=women, green=men, blue=total), it sure does look like the economy is broken." Continue reading →

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Government Proposes in Effect to Put Itself in Charge of Apple Pricing

"This was actually an attempt by publishers to regain control over their e-book pricing from retailers, and ended when publishers signed consent decrees with the government. This should be the end of the story but instead the government now wants to appoint a monitor who will review all Apple pricing for the next ten years. No economy can thrive without an honest and unmanipulated price system, as the Soviet Union demonstrated so vividly by collapsing. Yet we are at a moment in which our government wants to control more and more prices throughout the economy, now even wanting to control a leading technology company’s prices for a decade." Continue reading →

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The Sad Unemployment Picture Now Compared to the 1982 Recession Recovery

"The chart below via John Taylor shows the change in the employment-to-population ratio—the percentage of working age population that is actually working--now compared with the end of the 1982 recession. The current increase in jobs is not enough to employ a greater fraction of the working population. Blame it on growing regulations businesses are forced to deal with, minimum wage laws and the confusion and unknown costs associated with Obamacare." Continue reading →

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Bankers, bankers uber alles, uber alles in der welt

"The episode has long weighed on the reputation of the BIS. However, what has received less attention is the role of the BoE in the affair. What emerges from the history, which appeared on the BoE's website on Tuesday, is that the UK's central bank prioritised the appeasement of the BIS over the British government's wishes to freeze the sale of Czech assets. The history, written by BoE officials and completed in 1950 but never published, also records that the UK central bank sold gold after this date on behalf of the Nazis -- and without waiting for the consent of the British government -- on the back of pressure from the BIS." Continue reading →

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Bank of England helped the Nazis to sell plundered gold

"The Bank of England insists its role in the episode was 'widely misunderstood.' The Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in September 1938. In March the following year, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) asked the Bank of England to switch £5.6m-worth of gold from an account for the Czech national bank to one belonging to the Reichsbank. Much of the gold - nearly 2,000 gold bars - was then 'disposed' of in Belgium, Holland and London. The BIS was chaired at the time by Bank of England director, German Otto Niemeyer. The UK central bank also sold gold for the Nazis in June 1939, without waiting for approval from Westminster." Continue reading →

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How Bank of England ‘helped Nazis sell gold stolen from Czechs’

"Bank of England records detailing its involvement in the transfer and sale of gold stolen by Nazis after the invasion of Czechoslovakia were revealed online on Tuesday. The gold had been deposited during the 1930s with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the so-called Central Banker's bank, as the Czechoslovak government faced a growing threat from Germany. The document goes on to detail how a request was made in March 1939 to transfer gold, then worth £5.6m, from a Czech National Bank account at the BIS to an account operated by Germany's Reichsbank. Some £4m of the gold went to banks in the Netherlands and Belgium, while the rest was sold in London." Continue reading →

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Bank of England Vault Floor Layout

"The Bank of England Virtual Tour is pretty neat - specifically the 360 degree rotatable picture of the main gold vault. 'Crazy to do from a security perspective', so interesting to consider the need for transparency was greater than the need for secrecy. The website/app is great fun for anyone liking shiny things. I wanted to explore a few additional details, create a historical record for posterity and completely debunk the 1,300 tonnes of leased gold idea before it gains too much traction in the metals space." Continue reading →

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Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

"A month after ace programmer Sergey Aleynikov left Goldman Sachs, he was arrested. Exactly what he’d done neither the F.B.I., which interrogated him, nor the jury, which convicted him a year later, seemed to understand. But Goldman had accused him of stealing computer code, and the 41-year-old father of three was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Investigating Aleynikov’s case, Michael Lewis holds a second trial." Continue reading →

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