money

WikiLeaks raises $12,000 in Bitcoin for Edward Snowden’s defense

"Now that he’s found asylum in Russia and faces espionage charges at home, a legal defense fund launched by WikiLeaks has raised over $16,000 to pay Snowden’s legal fees. 75 percent ($12,740 by current exchange rates) of that money came in the form of Bitcoins raised in just the past two weeks. A Bitcoin is currently selling for about $130 on Mt. Gox, the currency’s largest exchange. Over 105 Bitcoins from 144 donors have made their way to a Bitcoin wallet set up by WikiLeaks specifically for Snowden donations. Since they began accepting Bitcoin donations on August 12, the single largest deposit to the account has been an impressive 25 Bitcoins ($2,908)." Continue reading →

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An Important History Lesson: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic

"Why did the German government not act to halt the inflation? It was a shaky, fragile government…More than inflation, the Germans feared unemployment. In 1919 the Communists had tried to take over, and severe unemployment might give the Communists another chance. The great German industrial combines — Krupp, Thysen, Farben, Stinnes — condoned the inflation and survived it well. A cheaper mark, they reasoned, would make German goods cheap and easy to export, and they needed the export earnings to buy raw materials abroad. Inflation kept everyone working. So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop." Continue reading →

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How Do You Like Your Central Planners, Bookish or Flamboyant?

"I knew Yellen in grad school and have encountered Summers in person, and I agree fully with these characterizations. But the Economist’s editorialist misses entirely the bizarre, indeed grotesque, context of this discussion. The Fed is the world’s most powerful government economic planning organization and its decisions affect the lives and prosperity of millions, if not billions. All this will hinge on the personality of one person? How about a system in which authority is decentralized, power is limited, and nobody cares who calls himself 'Fed Chair'?" Continue reading →

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The More Attention on The Next Fed Chair, The Better!

"The head of the AFL-CIO and Bette Midler are making Fed Chair endorsements??!! That has to make the establishment's skin crawl! People are talking...and that's not good for The Fed. The more that people talk, the more they will find out...or hopefully want to find out. Senator Barry Goldwater once said 'Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international moneylenders. The bankers want it that way.'" Continue reading →

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So you want to invent your own currency

"Our ability to exchange without knowing where things come from blinds us to the real core of the economy: not money, but the physical things we must wrench from the ground by human effort, which is underpinned by agricultural systems, and energised by sunlight, water and soil. The more we abstract and fetishise money as a thing in itself, the more we lose sight of its sources and its goals. We get confused, and feel disempowered relative to those who wield larger flows of it. Sealed off from inquiry in its hermetic shell, money distorts our perceptions of one another. We can’t seem to remember that it is merely one means of exchange among many." Continue reading →

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10 Small or remote places that have embraced Bitcoin

"World travelers may occasionally find themselves in a beautiful but also small and remote location and go through the difficult experience of having to deal with foreign currency. But what if there was a business around the corner that accepted Bitcoin? That would completely change the way you live your adventures. Well, in some cases this can happen, as there are actually remote places that know and have embraced cyptocurrency. In other cases, Bitcoin is a reality, but is still waiting to be accepted." Continue reading →

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Understanding & How To Avoid Bank Fees While Traveling

"It is important to understand & learn how to avoid bank fees while traveling. Avoiding credit card fees, currency exchange fees, and foreign transaction fees while traveling overseas is important in order to save money for more trips and adventures. In this travel tips post we are going to cover the main fees charged by banking and credit card institutions. The fees can be broken down into three types; ATM withdrawal fees, foreign conversion fees (which can also be tied into credit card fees), and exchange rate fees. Its quite easy to avoid paying bank fees while traveling once we understand the structure of how banks charge customers for service." Continue reading →

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Following the Bitcoin trail

"Before the paranoid start dumping their Bitcoins, Ms Meiklejohn says that changes could be made to reduce the trail that her group followed. Mixing services, for instance, can take money from one party and return it using entirely an new key. 'Those kinds of services would completely thwart our kind of analysis', she says. But caveat emptor: in the team’s testing of four mixing services, one stole their money and another returned the same key. She says the trust required and volume necessary for mixing simply doesn’t yet exist. The fundamental problem is that 'right now there are not enough ways to buy and sell Bitcoins,' which means that it is difficult to take advantage of the underlying protocol’s anonymity." Continue reading →

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Rentalutions enables US residents to pay rent in bitcoins

"A company in the US is now enabling tenants to pay their rent in bitcoins, which has the potential to significantly increase the currency’s use. Rentalutions was co-founded in Chicago by Ryan Coon as an online property management platform to help landlords vet potential tenants and look after their properties, plus enable tenants to pay their rent and request maintenance work. Landlords signed up with the company have to pay between $5 and $150 per month depending on the level of services they want to receive. Currently, there is no option for landlords to pay these monthly fees in bitcoins, but Coon said he hopes to set this feature up in the near future." Continue reading →

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How the IRS Violates Legal Tender Laws

"One would think that it is more costly to deal with non-cash methods of payment. In any case, the last time I checked, the Federal Reserve Notes in my wallet all still bore the notice, 'This note is legal tender for all debts public and private' This means that they cannot be refused by the creditor for repayment of a debt previously incurred–especially not for payment of taxes, which are the pre-eminent 'public debt.' While the IRS may not be strictly in violation of legal tender laws, because one can still use cash to pay at some IRS offices, its anti-cash policy is just another tactic in the Federal government’s relentless war to stamp out cash payments." Continue reading →

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