Recovery: ‘Families Hoard Cash 5 Years After Crisis’
October 6th, 2013Voluntary simplicity, or, living well on very little money, kicks evil people in the nuts and gouges out their eyes… Doing this in the U.S. has a force multiplier effect because the U.S. is the largest source of the funds that keep the global ponzi scheme running. When people in wealthy countries opt out, the action causes major economic damage to the machine.
—Commentary on Voluntary Simplicity from 2007
This AP piece is remarkable:
Shunning debt and spending less can be good for one family’s finances. When hundreds of millions do it together, it can starve the global economy.
If families, acting in their own best interests, “Can starve the global economy,” something is very wrong with the global economy.
Via: AP:
Five years after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis and shattering confidence worldwide, families in major countries around the world are still hunkered down, too spooked and distrustful to take chances with their money.
An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.
“It doesn’t take very much to destroy confidence, but it takes an awful lot to build it back,” says Ian Bright, senior economist at ING, a global bank based in Amsterdam. “The attitude toward risk is permanently reset.”
A flight to safety on such a global scale is unprecedented since the end of World War II.
The implications are huge: Shunning debt and spending less can be good for one family’s finances. When hundreds of millions do it together, it can starve the global economy.
Harvest Time: Canadian Government Takes Man’s Farm to Build Military Base
October 6th, 2013Via: Maclean’s:
In Frank Meyers’s eyes, the view from his dining room window is priceless. Literally. He can see the old wooden house where he lived as a little boy. The family barn, rebuilt with his talented hands. Rows and rows of sweet corn, sprouting from prime Ontario soil. No matter how many federal bureaucrats knocked on his door—or how much cash they offered to pay—the 85-year-old farmer refused, again and again, to sell his beloved land. As he likes to say: “You can’t eat the money.”
But as Frank Meyers learned today—in a heartbreaking moment he’d been dreading for years—you can’t stop the government, either. If the feds want your property (in his case, to build a state-of-the-art training ground for the Canadian military’s elite special forces commandos), fighting back is futile. “In other countries, they’re crushing you with bullets and guns and ammunition and tanks and explosives,” Meyers says. “Not in Canada. It’s pencil and paper here, and then they’ve got control.”
Treasury Will Run Out of Borrowed Money by October 17
October 6th, 2013“Or maybe it’s just a date in a video game”:
The Last of Us
😉
Via: USA Today:
The United States will run out of borrowed money “no later than Oct. 17” unless Congress raises the $16.7 trillion debt limit, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a letter to Congress Wednesday.
Lew’s letter marks the first time he has given a date certain for when the government would hit the debt ceiling and comes as Congress is at another impasse on how to keep the government running and pay its past bills.
STORY: Senate votes to avert government shutdown
It’s not a coincidence that Oct. 17 is a Thursday, said Steve Bell, economic policy director for the Bipartisan Policy Center.
That’s because the Treasury typically rolls over $100 billion in debt every Thursday, as old bonds mature and most investors simply use the proceeds to buy new bonds. Some bond holders may park their money elsewhere. Others may demand higher yields. “But at what price? That;s the big imponderable,” Bell said.
On the Possibility of Social Security Payments Not Going Out
October 6th, 2013I’m almost sure that they won’t let this situation hit the wall, but beware: If the dole train stops running for any reason, the U.S. will be facing a large scale internal collapse situation very fast.
Again, my guess is that the Social Security and Food Stamp band will keep playing on for now.
Via: Forbes:
In a speech in Rockville, Maryland today, President Barack Obama blew up the Democrat’s social-security “third rail” in eighteen words. Usually, Obama’s gaffes come off-the-cuff. Today’s remarks were, however, prepared; namely:
“In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown — if we don’t raise the debt ceiling — they don’t go out on time.”
Cryptogon Reader Contributions in October
October 5th, 2013Thank you very much.
Pookie $75
DM $15
Banana Farmers $50
JB $30
RD $50
In addition to the financial support, people have sent lovely cards celebrating Niamh’s birth. We’ve made a little shrine out of all of these cards in our kitchen/living room area. The Banana Farmers also sent a heavy box of homegrown delicacies from their tropical paradise; Kona coffee, dried pineapple rings, dried bananas and insanely delicious dark chocolate.
So, yes, daytime updates on Cryptogon are currently being fueled by homegrown Kona coffee from the Banana Farmers. Wow! It’s remarkably smooth and delicious coffee. I normally drink coffee with milk, cream and sometimes about half a tea spoon of raw sugar. Not with this stuff. For me, black is the way to go to fully appreciate the flavors in this coffee.
September Earnings
October 5th, 2013Earnings in September totaled $1383.49, which is a fantastic result. Thanks very much to everyone who sent funds and conducted business via Cryptogon’s affiliate links.
Laurel Farm Creamery
October 5th, 2013Via: Laurel Farm Creamery:
Laurel Farm Creamery is a small farm outside Asheville, NC. For years we have raised dairy animals and made cheese, and we have finally decided that, since there’s nothing any of us enjoy more, we should be doing it for a living. This blog will chronicle our adventures as we make the transition from small family homestead to full fledged micro dairy.
We milk Jersey cows right now, but are doing a bit of cross-breeding for hardiness and steady production on grass. Our first Jersey/Red Poll cross will be on the ground in June. We don’t plan to ever milk goats again, though we love to buy goat milk to play with in the cheese kitchen. We have a lovely little flock of milky sheep that contribute milk in the summer.
We will sell cheese in and around Asheville, and from the farm for those adventurous souls who would like to come out and see us!
‘Implanted Electrodes Reboot Brain Out of Intractable Depression’
October 5th, 2013Via: Scientific American:
Psychological depression is more than an emotional state. Good evidence for that comes from emerging new uses for a technology already widely prescribed for Parkinson’s patients. The more neurologists and surgeons learn about the aptly named deep brain stimulation, the more they are convinced that the currents from the technology’s implanted electrodes can literally reboot brain circuits involved with the mood disorder. Thomas Schlaepfer, a psychiatrist from the University of Bonn Hospital and a leading expert in researching deep brain stimulation, describes in the interview that follows the workings of the technique and why it may help the severely depressed.
Swiss to Vote on Basic Income for All Adults and Maximum Wage Limits for Executives
October 5th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Switzerland will hold a vote on whether to introduce a basic income for all adults, in a further sign of growing public activism over pay inequality since the financial crisis.
A grassroots committee is calling for all adults in Switzerland to receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,800) per month from the state, with the aim of providing a financial safety net for the population.
…
In March, Swiss voters backed some of the world’s strictest controls on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding vote on compensation.
A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company’s lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24.
Attacking Tor: How the NSA Targets Users’ Online Anonymity
October 5th, 2013Via: Guardian:
After identifying an individual Tor user on the internet, the NSA uses its network of secret internet servers to redirect those users to another set of secret internet servers, with the codename FoxAcid, to infect the user’s computer. FoxAcid is an NSA system designed to act as a matchmaker between potential targets and attacks developed by the NSA, giving the agency opportunity to launch prepared attacks against their systems.
Once the computer is successfully attacked, it secretly calls back to a FoxAcid server, which then performs additional attacks on the target computer to ensure that it remains compromised long-term, and continues to provide eavesdropping information back to the NSA.
…
To trick targets into visiting a FoxAcid server, the NSA relies on its secret partnerships with US telecoms companies. As part of the Turmoil system, the NSA places secret servers, codenamed Quantum, at key places on the internet backbone. This placement ensures that they can react faster than other websites can. By exploiting that speed difference, these servers can impersonate a visited website to the target before the legitimate website can respond, thereby tricking the target’s browser to visit a Foxacid server.
In the academic literature, these are called “man-in-the-middle” attacks, and have been known to the commercial and academic security communities. More specifically, they are examples of “man-on-the-side” attacks.
They are hard for any organization other than the NSA to reliably execute, because they require the attacker to have a privileged position on the internet backbone, and exploit a “race condition” between the NSA server and the legitimate website. This top-secret NSA diagram, made public last month, shows a Quantum server impersonating Google in this type of attack.
The NSA uses these fast Quantum servers to execute a packet injection attack, which surreptitiously redirects the target to the FoxAcid server. An article in the German magazine Spiegel, based on additional top secret Snowden documents, mentions an NSA developed attack technology with the name of QuantumInsert that performs redirection attacks. Another top-secret Tor presentation provided by Snowden mentions QuantumCookie to force cookies onto target browsers, and another Quantum program to “degrade/deny/disrupt Tor access”.
This same technique is used by the Chinese government to block its citizens from reading censored internet content, and has been hypothesized as a probable NSA attack technique.
Related: GCHQ Report on ‘MULLENIZE’ Program to ‘Stain’ Anonymous Electronic Traffic
