I haven't mentioned it recently, or at all, but a few months ago I spoke with a Bitcoin guy. He was my first, a tecky by trade who really believed in the Bit.

I asked him what the appeal was. For him, it was to take control of money in ways that separate it from people. ( Things proceeded to weird. )

One of the better tiny books I've ever bought has to be, in my opinion, In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World by Christopher J. Moore. In it, we learn that there are languages without certain terms speakers of other languages take for granted. Once those terms are made known, the odd language out ( Read more... )

If you haven't already, check out Frontline's "The Untouchables", the story of why no bankers have been prosecuted for their misdeeds despite ample evidence to do so.

Next, consider what happens to people who actually do prosecute bankers. Do they rise in government? No. They find quiet teaching jobs somewhere far from civil service ( Read more... )

Got a heads-up today about a notion I've heard before, but which now seems to be getting some actual attention: What if the Treasury minted a couple trillion-dollar platinum pennies?

Thanks to an odd loophole in current law, the U.S. Treasury is technically allowed to mint as many coins made of platinum as it wants and can assign them whatever ( Read more... )

The Planet Money blog mentioned the new iPhone 5 coming out soon, and quoted a note from someone at JPMorgan. The claim, according to Planet Money:

The JPMorgan note seems very mathy and precise. It starts with the full cost of the new phone, subtracts the value of the imports in each phone (imports are subtracted from economic growth numbers) ( Read more... )

I have to admit, I was a bit shocked when a simple observation of mine, that the GOP has a plank in its platform stating its aim to "explore a greater role for private enterprise in appropriate aspects of the mail-processing system", blew up into such a kerfuffle. The GOP, after all, has long been the party supported by anti-union forces in ( Read more... )

For too long now, I have been remiss in a promise I made to alobar. For too long, I have been contemplating writing about L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the money parables others have found in it, but not writing it. So, fresh from a road trip to the Oregon Country Fair, today I sat down to actually write it . . . and found out that ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago, htpcl wrote a fine piece concerning the current Greek political situation and the rise of the extremist parties in the face of economic collapse and chaos. He made some excellent points, noting how the far-left Alexis Tsipras and ultra-nationalist Panos Kammenos have been making political points demonizing the centrist parties ( Read more... )

The two words "investment" and "speculation" are to some synonymous, to others diametrically opposed. I find myself in the latter camp, though the confusions and conflations these two terms suffer makes it difficult to say the least even to articulate what about the differences should be emphasized. I guess I'll first let a supposed expert ( Read more... )

(Just another tl;dr post I place here as well as the talk_politics community. Move along; nothing to see . . . unless you want to.)

I recently shocked montecristo by dropping a name not many bandy about: Ellen H. Brown. Ms. Brown is the author of the blog Web of Debt and has published an informative book of the same name. She is also one of the names associated with ( Read more... )