Alternative News

The Future of Transportation

"The Hyperloop is a futuristic form of travel, whereby passengers will be blasted to their destinations in ultra-high-speed pneumatic vacuum tubes. It’s not exactly teleportation… but it’s pretty darn close. We’re talking about traveling at speeds of up to 4,000 mph. Shooting from the East Coast to the West Coast in less than an hour will be doable. In keeping with his entrepreneurial spirit (Musk co-founded PayPal and is co-founder and CEO of electric car company Tesla Motors and private spaceflight company SpaceX), he wants partners who share his vision of 'breakthrough tech done fast without wasting money on BS.'" Continue reading →

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How payday lenders pop back up even after states crack down

"The products reflect a basic fact: Many low-income borrowers are desperate enough to accept any terms. In a recent Pew Charitable Trusts survey, 37 percent of payday loan borrowers responded that they’d pay any price for a loan. In 2012, New Hampshire joined states like Georgia and Arizona that have banned triple-digit-rate payday loans but allow similarly structured triple-digit-rate auto-title loans. And as in Ohio, Texas lenders started defining themselves as credit repair organizations, which, under Texas law, can charge steep fees. Texas now has nearly 3,500 of such businesses, almost all of which are, effectively, high-cost lenders." Continue reading →

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Is Bitcoin Too Big for Government to Ignore?

"Forty-eight states require businesses to register as money service transmitters, which Brito said can be an onerous and expensive process. Bitcoin startup BTC Global estimates that $10 million or more is required for a business to reach total legal compliance in all 50 states. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Texas and New York are among the states taking a hard look at regulations for virtual currencies as well as money transmission rules.The Journal said state regulations can be expensive, citing Texas’ policy requiring companies seeking a license to provide a surety bond of as much as $2 million." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin is crucial for the future of free speech, say experts

"First Amendment rights to free speech would make it a tough legal battle to prosecute WikiLeaks legally. However, government officials were able to target financial organizations such as Visa and PayPal, getting them to stop processing donations for the site. Timm also highlighted the importance that technologies like Bitmessage – the anonymous, encrypted messaging service built on the Bitcoin protocol – have in maintaining a free press. It eliminates the need for a third-party arbitrator when sending messages, enabling a zero-trust messaging system. It also hides the metadata surrounding such conversations, he added." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBitcoin is crucial for the future of free speech, say experts

Send Micro-Transactions With Zero Fees via Coinbase

"We launched an exciting feature today: off blockchain micro-transactions between Coinbase accounts! Here is a bitcoin transaction I just sent myself for 1 satoshi (that is 0.00000001 Bitcoin). The transaction arrived instantly, confirmed instantly, and cost zero in fees. This was possible because it did not touch the 'blockchain' (the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions), and instead was sent directly between two Coinbase accounts." Continue reading →

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New Silver Liberty Dollar QR Coin Obtains Live Bitcoin Prices

"Vaughn Perling had the courage to issue The New Liberty Dollar with a strikingly similar appearance to that of the NORFED Liberty Dollar while von NotHaus was awaiting sentencing on counterfeiting and fraud charges. However, Vaughn Perling added a disclaimer to his website that the purchaser acknowledges that The New Liberty Dollar is a 'silver piece medallion, and not any government issued coin.' The new QR engraved medallions enable a user of the coin to obtain real-time 'manufacturer’s suggested trade value' which is based on the silver spot market price. The price will be in Bitcoin as well as other crypto and national currencies." Continue reading →

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40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 CPI-Adjusted Minimum Wage

"40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968. That is how far we have fallen. Good paying full-time jobs are disappearing, and they are being replaced by low paying part-time jobs. So far this year, 76.7 percent of the jobs that have been 'created' in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs. That would be depressing enough, but what makes it worse is that wages for many of these low paying jobs have actually been declining over the past decade even as the cost of living keeps going up." Continue reading →

Continue Reading40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 CPI-Adjusted Minimum Wage

Bond Losses at Federal Reserve Top $192 Billion In 3 Months

"Granted, the Bernanke & Co. does not value its massive bond portfolio on a mark-to-market basis. But the surge in interest rates has already erased almost $200 billion in the Federal Reserve’s capital. But that’s not all. If interest rates continue to head higher, the value of the Fed’s liquid assets that it could sell would decline and further undermine its capital cushion. And if the velocity of rate increases intensifies, the Fed, with only $62 billion in capital, could see its entire capital base completely wiped out. This could have a serious domino effect. It could paralyze the Fed’s ability to defend the dollar’s purchasing power." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBond Losses at Federal Reserve Top $192 Billion In 3 Months

Housing…”For-Sale” Supply Wave Hitting Market?

"The housing market has been turbocharged by the greatest direct stimulus in history over the past 18 months. I hear so much that the past year 'recovery' has to be 'organic' because the 'government' is not providing any stimulus or subsidies. Perhaps, technically they are correct because the Fed is not a government agency. But when you factor in the power of the Fed buying rates down from 5.5% in 2011 to 3.25% in 2012/13 on demand and 6.5 million mortgage mods on supply you come up with a very volatile situation if that go-go-juice is ever taken away. And it was just taken away." Continue reading →

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Bad Day for Beltway Liberalism: August 5, 2013

"The reporters who work for the Post are in the wrong profession. Their peers in Boston could do nothing. They sat their until most were fired, one by one. They will suffer the same fate. The industry is a buggy whip. The industry was liberalism’s trifecta: newspapers, television networks, and the school system. Two are bleeding red ink. The third soon will be, as online education enables students to live at home, take courses online, graduate with accredited degrees, and pay $15,000 in tuition, total. A widely accepted estimate is that half of all American universities will go under over the next five decades." Continue reading →

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