U.S. Cities Where It’s Cheaper to Buy Than Rent
"9. Birmingham, Ala.; 8. Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.; 7. Toledo, Ohio; 6. Memphis; 5. Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, Mich.; 4. Gary, Ind.; 3. Dayton, Ohio; 2. Cleveland, Ohio; 1. Detroit." Continue reading →
How You Can Quickly Make It into the World’s 1% Richest
"You might already be there. If not, get a job at McDonald's and work overtime. It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots. CNN reports on Milanovic data: 'The true global middle class, falls far short of owning a home, having a car in a driveway, saving for retirement and sending their kids to college. In fact, people at the world's true middle -- as defined by median income -- live on just $1,225 a year. (And, yes, Milanovic's numbers are adjusted to account for different costs of living across the globe.)'" Continue reading →
Your Computer Is Watching You: AOL Rolls Out Emotion Tracking
"One of the fastest growing areas in neuromarketing is webcam-based emotion tracking. The popularity of this technique is underscored by AOL’s new partnership withRealEyes. Be On, an AOL unit that offers advertisers branded video, will provide their customers with quick feedback on how viewers reacted to their videos. The emotions are determined by automated analysis of facial expressions captured by webcam. Regular users don’t need to worry about being secretly analyzed, at least for now. Only panels of subjects that have explicitly consented to participate in the expression monitoring activity will be tested." Continue reading →
‘I filmed the first fight and arrest through Google Glass’
"A few rowdy July 4th celebrations on a New Jersey boardwalk turned into real-life Jersey Shore as one of Google’s Glass Explorers happened to be testing the extended video recording option on his Google Glass device. ;I picked up my Google Glass explorer edition last week,' Chris Barrett told me. 'I wanted to test Glass out, so I filmed some fireworks, getting a very cool first-person perspective. About 10 minutes after the fireworks, we were walking back to our car, and I just decided to try it out on the boardwalk.' The result is that Barrett caught the aftermath of a fight and arrest, on camera, through Google Glass." Continue reading →
And how would you like to pay, sir – cash, credit card, or Bitcoin?
"In Iceland, people liked to build their own houses at the time, but they couldn't put the money they were saving to build their homes into the bank, because it disappeared. Somebody had the idea to buy certificates in building materials in advance, and those certificates were denominated in cubic metres of concrete. It became very popular on payday, and our company would issue the certificates. One day the company got a call from the inland revenue asking if we had issued these vouchers. We confirmed it, but asked why they wanted to know. The official said somebody was trying to use the vouchers to pay his taxes." Continue reading →
Marc Faber: This Will End In Disaster
"With gold and silver plunging, the US dollar strengthening, and oil still above $100 a barrel, today Marc Faber told King World News this will 'end in disaster.' This is part I of a series of written interviews that will be released today on KWN in which Faber discusses the end game, government theft, how investors can protect themselves, gold, silver, bail-ins, central planner actions, global markets, and much more." Continue reading →
Jim Rogers: Gold Could Fall To $900, India To Blame For Correction
"What caused it to finally go down, and as much as I love India and Indians, they are the largest buyers of gold in the world. And India has a huge balance of trade deficit. The largest drivers are oil and gold. You can't do anything about oil so the Indian politicians are blaming their problems on gold. And they've taken many measures, and more measures are coming to diminish or even eliminate the import of gold. That was the main catalyst or the straw which broke the camel's back which made gold start going down finally, after 12 years of going up. So you have a lot of governments coming together with measures against gold and silver, but especially the Indians." Continue reading →
Gold jewellery stocks hammered in India
"Gold jewellery stocks are in a freefall in India. The curbs imposed by the Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India to curtail domestic gold consumption and imports, has led to a hammering of stock prices. Some leading jewellers shares have dived by 20% to 50% during the past fortnight. Analysts attribute the mayhem to the fact that most gold retailers in India hold huge inventories of gold. Shares of Gitanjali Gems, touted as India’s largest gold and jewellery company, have slumped more than 60% since mid-June with investors preferring to bail out even on July 4." Continue reading →
Credit card transactions for gold purchases curtailed in India
"Buying gold in India has got a little more difficult for consumers used to using plastic money to buy large jewellery sets or heavy gold ornaments. India's apex bank has asked banks not to convert gold purchases done through credit cards into equated monthly installments. Continuing its fight against gold consumption, the Reserve Bank of India is leaving no stone unturned to discourage gold buyers in India. The ban on conversion of gold purchases at jewellery stores into equated monthly instalments for credit card purchases has already triggered a slump in sales." Continue reading →
Can the Fed Become Insolvent?
"In light of my recent posts on Morgan Stanley’s analysis of this question–which show that a rise of less than a percentage point across the yield curve would render the Fed 'bankrupt'–let me direct you to my original Mises.org essay on this question. I walk through various hypothetical Fed balance sheets to show what we mean by saying it could become insolvent. Then, in this article I walk through the January 2011 change in accounting rules that was instituted so that technically, the Fed can’t have negative equity from a fall in its asset prices. It would, however, drive home to more people around the world just how screwy our 'modern' monetary system really is." Continue reading →