D'coda Dcoda's List: Economy

• How many Senators does it take to dismantle a cryptographically secured, completely decentralized, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network of voluntary, free market traders exchanging goods and services across six continents using tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of individual computers and some of the most advanced cyber technology and software coding known to date?
• Senators Charles Schumer (D, New York) and Joe Manchin (D, West Virginia), seemingly immune to common ignominy, have taken on the challenge anyway.
• Long story short, bitcoin is a limited supply, decentralized digital currency; a free market alternative to state issued notes and coins. As such, it poses a direct – though entirely non-violent – threat to the state’s monopoly on counterfeiting. This, cry the powers that be, must not be tolerated. Of course, before any politico can act, they must first have a distraction, a fall boy, a pretense, a reason for rescuing us from the horror that is our own decision-making capacity. We picked it in that first column, the relevant portion of which is reprised here:
• Another cause for concern among bitcoin skeptics is that, as the economy of the free market currency expands it will inevitably begin posing a threat to the state’s own money-printing racket. It will, thereby, raise the ire of bankers and politicians who will have every incentive to make the currency illegal in order that they may protect their own monopoly and continue cheating their citizens of the value of their president-stamped notes and coins.
• For now, we wonder what users of bitcoin are to do now that the self-appointed invigilators of free market activity are on their case? Well, for the past few weeks at least, they’ve been rejoicing. The currency has almost quadrupled in value since the Silk Road issue came to the fore.

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• August 18, 2011 – PARIS – “Sovereign debt, growth, and social instability” are the three major challenges facing the global economy today. Addressing the Council of Foreign Relations on her 22nd day as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde outlined the nature and scale of threats to a worldwide economic recovery. For debt to be sustainable, spoke Lagarde, it must be reinforced by strong underlying growth; and for growth to be achieved, it must be delivered by a stable and equitable society. Troubles on the periphery of the Eurozone have been met by cooperation among creditor states along with ‘political courage’ amongst Europe’s leaders. Echoing the UK’s Business Secretary, Vince Cable’s attack on ‘right wing nutters’ in the US impeding raising the debt ceiling, Lagarde blasted the mounting debt as the greatest threat to fiscal stability: “I’m hopeful that the political courage shown by European leaders will soon be followed by bold fiscal action in the U.S. On the debt ceiling, the clock is ticking, and clearly the issue needs to be resolved immediately. Indeed, an adverse fiscal shock in the United States could have serious spillovers on the rest of the world. “But more fundamentally,” continued Lagarde, “a credible fiscal adjustment plan is needed sooner rather than later. –Fresh Business Thinking
• Engineering a collapse: But is the IMF helping member nations or actually contributing to their collapse with a monetary policy that is designed to increase sovereign debt, enrich corrupt bureaucrats, speculators and international bankers? Joseph Stiglitz said: “When the IMF arrives in a country, they are interested in only one thing. How do we make sure the banks and financial institutions are paid?… It is the IMF that keeps the [financial] speculators in business. They’re not interested in development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.” -Independent
• Max Keiser says: “The International Monetary Fund is that last thing you need. As a nation, you will lose your sovereignty. It exercises terrorism. You will be raped in such a way, that it will be the worst pain you have ever felt.” –Max Keiser 
• Global Markets Meltdown: Short-term traders, hedge fund investors, and option traders love volatility because a moving price means there’s money to be made buying and selling at the right time when there’s dramatic market fluctuation. But for the rest of us, the bumpy ride can make planning for the future through equity investment next to impossible. On August 18, 2011, global equity markets went into another tailspin with London markets dropping 3%, Frankfort falling 5%, and the U.S. Dow falling more than -500 points after the opening bell.

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• Government spending on Britain's nuclear weapons programme is defying the swingeing budget cuts being experienced across Whitehall.

  As the Ministry of Defence cuts frontline positions in the military, a previously confidential report reveals that the taxpayer is committed to paying almost £750m for the construction of a new enriched-uranium facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire.

  The 32-page MoD report, Defence Equipment & Support … UK Enriched Uranium (EU) Capability Investment Appraisal, spells out the taxpayer's commitment to funding Project Pegasus, which will replace the enriched-uranium facility built at the site in the 1950s.

  The report, marked "Secret UK Eyes Only", was published in heavily redacted form earlier this year following freedom of information requests. The Information Commissioner recently ruled that the redaction, hiding the full £747m investment cost of the project, should now be made public.

• There is now the new era of a multicurrency society. Numerous non-monetary currencies are coveted, amassed and exchanged including reputation, social graph, time, ideas, intention, attention, affinity, preference, health, and resource access. The internet is already doing a good job of serving as a clearing exchange and means of valuation for the currencies of reputation, social graph, intention, and attention. The next generation of economy 3.0 startups is building even more dimensionality into the multicurrency society.

  Blippy broadcasts purchasing activity and serves as a leading indicator for public company quarterly sales; a real-time economy feed.

  Hunch goes a step further with the grand vision of mapping and predicting the affinity of all people for all objects.
• Value, preference, and affinity could become an expected attribute of any product, brand, website, and experience just like social networking is and gaming principles are starting to be. These seemingly unobtrusive currencies could stream nicely into exchange via automatic markets.Read more at futurememes.blogspot.com

• The global economy could withstand widespread disruption from a major natural disaster or attack by militants for only a week, a report by UK-based think-tank Chatham House said on Friday

• The frequency of natural disasters, such as extreme weather events, appears to be increasing and globalisation has increased their impact, the report found.

  Events such as the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, which grounded flights in Europe, Japan's earthquake and tsunami and Thailand's floods last year, showed that key sectors and businesses can be severely affected if disruption to production or transport goes on for more than a week.
• "One week seems to be the maximum tolerance of the 'just-in-time' global economy," Chatham House said.

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• The world economy will lose momentum in 2012 but it will keep moving in the right direction, according to Reuters polls of around 600 economists who said crisis-hit Europe would drag on global growth.
• Asian economies will again power the expansion of the world economy this year, but with relatively subdued performances. The United States, meanwhile, should continue to contribute modest growth that will easily outpace its recession-hit European peers.

• Brazil will be one of the few big economies that will pick up steam this year, outshining slower Latin American stablemates Mexico and Argentina.

  A Reuters poll that covers all of the top 20 developed and emerging economies, as well as some others in Asia, suggests global economic growth will slow to around 3.3 percent this year from an estimated 3.7 percent in 2011.

• That is more optimistic than the latest forecast from the World Bank, which predicted world GDP would rise only 2.5 percent this year.

  Although the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis represents a huge risk to the world's economic health, there have at least been promising signs of life from the United States.

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• Germany and France have opened new battlefront with Britain over a demand for   new EU powers to set business and energy taxes on top of their push for a   controversial Europe-wide levy on financial transactions.

• A confidential Franco-German paper, seen by the Daily Telegraph, reveals that   the financial transaction tax is seen in Berlin and Paris as the first step   to giving the EU a new power to "coordinate" taxation. 

   

   The secret text also links existing European Commission proposals on energy   taxation and a common method for calculating corporate tax to the push for   new EU powers,   heralding a major battle over sovereignty this spring. 
• "European institutions and member states should accelerate the process of   tax co-ordination," the Franco-German paper argues. "In particular   the negotiation of the European Commission proposals on energy tax   directive, common consolidated corporate tax base and common system of   financial transaction tax should be accelerated."

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