Random News and Waiting for My First Grandchild

My eldest is pregnant and a week overdue. It is quite frustrating just waiting. Now, to the news.

New York Times - In Search of a Stable Electronic Currency. When I was an undergraduate in college studying for my degree in Political Science, one of my teachers required us to read either the New York Times everyday or the Christian Science Monitor (he was not of that faith), he claimed they were the two best and most objective newspapers. He required that we read it everyday from cover to cover. He would then give us tests which included issues that were in all the different sections.

The above article is interesting in that it discusses how Bitcoin will fail; but, has led the way in showing us how to adapt to an international electronic currency. Here is a quote from the article, "And there could be a “trills” unit — a concept that Mark Kamstra of York University and I have been advocating — that represents one trillionth of a country’s most recently estimated annual G.D.P. There should also be a unit that grows or retreats with per-capita daily consumption. This could be used for pension and Social Security payments as a form of intergenerational risk-sharing: The idea is that payments to older people would rise and fall with overall consumption. With many kinds of baskets, it will be easier to set prices and make contracts that are sensible for the long term."

Remember that quote, in the end, in my opinion, Bitcoin has been nothing more than a dry run for instituting and international, GDP based currency exchange and I have said that more than once.

Huffington Post - Wall Street Has Found Its Latest Dangerous Financial Product, Activists Warn. The story is pretty simple, hedge funds and investors have been buying up all the houses and paying cash. The article is complaining that is keeping good people from getting mortgages and buying the houses themselves and forces people into rentals. That is garbage. The real propaganda in the article is to get you to believe that the companies that own these homes are less likely to take care of them once they are rented out. I live in a rental owned by a family I know, it is a small building and fairly old. There are lots of families and people that own rental properties, I owned one. It can be a fairly passive income for retirees. What is coming is that increased pressures will be put on small owners of rental properties and they will be forced to sell their properties to these hedge funds and larger investors. The real beneficiary will be the federal government which owns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they own 70% or so of all the mortgages and the Federal Reserve. They are going to continue putting more and more regulations on rental properties, watch and see.

Yahoo - GMA - $10M Gold Coin Hoard Found in Yard May Have Been Stolen From Mint. This article is just amusing and gets people so emotional. A couple in California claims to have "found" $10,000,000 worth of gold coins. When this came up, I told some people that in the end the couple would not be allowed to keep any of the coins and guess what, it looks like they won't get to keep any of the coins as they "might" have been stolen back in the 1800s.

Here is the real issue, if you own gold you better be able to prove how you obtained it. A few years back the law was changed and any sale of gold valued at more than %500 must be reported to the federal government. None of the purveyors of fear of an economic crash who also sell gold bother telling people that, I don't sell anything. Don't waste your time buying gold and there will still be a complete breakdown of the current economic system which will lead to a new financial model that is all electronic and based on a countries Gross Domestic Product.

Los Angeles Daily News - Los Angeles City Council votes to regulate e-cigarettes as strictly as tobacco. It should be apparent that this type of regulation is not about harming others, it is about controlling what you do outside. E-cigarettes are not tobacco and they don't burn and they don't have a secondhand effect.

Wired - The Next Big Thing You Missed: How Starbucks Could Replace Your Bank. Here is what you need to take away from the article, traditional banking will be dead once we go to all electronic currencies. The real question is what will replace it for the average person and who loses when the big banks finally fail completely and are broken up into little local banks.

Mail Online - Turn your entire room into a SCREEN: Microsoft tool lets you browse the web and beam videos onto the walls of your home. I wrote about this over a year ago. Just imagine what kids will be like when they grow up in a safe, virtual world. They will be completely out of touch with real world risks and consequences.

Huffington Post - Obamacare Just Made Americans Richer Without Anyone Noticing. My first response is who cares as it is not about increasing the GDP, it is about making sure everyone has health insurance if they are to have access to healthcare. The first line is my favorite line, "Glenn Beck once said Obamacare would mean "the end of prosperity in America forever." LOL. Most of Europe and Canada have true government healthcare, we just force you to buy insurance, yet apparently that is going to prevent us from making money. Think about that, if you get healthcare, it means it costs your employer money. You know why, because they can't steal it because you will notice when you don't have your pills.

Huffington Post - Warren Buffett: Here's What We Need More Than A Minimum Wage Hike. I am not sure if I agree with him, he believes we should raise the tax deduction for low income earners instead of increasing the minimum wage. I think I like my idea better, what if individuals didn't have to pay anymore in taxes as a percentage of their income than companies pay or investments pay in taxes? What if rather than getting tax breaks and subsidies for corporations that outsource, we only gave companies tax breaks for investments they made in America and jobs they created in America?

Daily Beast - British Prime Minister’s Child Porn Adviser Arrested Over Child Porn. The Jimmy Saville case has exposed the political support for child molesters in Britain. There are many questions to be asked, why were these things covered up for so long, how can they be committed by the most powerful people in government and finance and why is this all coming out now; but, the most important question is how will these revelations be used to change societies? The end game explains the purpose to the other questions.

Well, that all folks, have a great week.