Greece: Communities Ditch Euro, Use Local Currencies and Bartering to Beat the Economic Crisis
January 5th, 2013When I first posted about the Tem back in March 2012, there were only an estimated 300 people using it. Now, there are 1,300.
Via: Guardian:
It’s been a busy day at the market in downtown Volos. Angeliki Ioanitou has sold a decent quantity of olive oil and soap, while her friend Maria has done good business with her fresh pies.
But not a single euro has changed hands – none of the customers on this drizzly Saturday morning has bothered carrying money at all. For many, browsing through the racks of second-hand clothes, electrical appliances and homemade jams, the need to survive means money has been usurped.
“It’s all about exchange and solidarity, helping one another out in these very hard times,” enthused Ioanitou, her hair tucked under a floppy felt cap. “You could say a lot of us have dreams of a utopia without the euro.”
In this bustling port city at the foot of Mount Pelion, in the heart of Greece’s most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity – adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success. Organisers say some 1,300 people have signed up to the informal bartering network.
Research Credit: HongPong
In Spain, Locksmiths Refuse to Cooperate with Foreclosures and Evictions
January 5th, 2013Via: The World:
In Spain, in 2012, more than 50,000 families were evicted from their homes when they failed to pay their rent or mortgage. As the year wound down a handful of people committed suicide after learning they would be evicted. Now, in Pamplona, a group of experts who help carry out the evictions has said ‘No more.’ Those experts? Locksmiths.
It’s a pretty ingenious way to stop evictions, really.
The police might come and drag debtors out. But if no one changes the locks on the apartment, the bank can’t repossess it. Because the evictees can get back in. And the legal proceedings to get them out again would take months, even years.
Research Credit: luky
U.S. Military Does Deal with Microsoft for Windows 8 and Other Software
January 5th, 2013Since Windows 8 is a bigger turd than Vista, it must be nice for Microsoft to be able to dump it on the U.S. taxpayer via Uncle $cam.
Via: U.S. Department of Defense:
The Defense Department has leveraged the buying power of more than two million information technology users to award a three-year, $617 million joint enterprise license agreement for Microsoft products, defense officials announced.
The deal, led by the Army Contracting Command in collaboration with the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Army and the Air Force, demonstrates the best pricing DOD has received to date for Microsoft desktop and server software licenses, officials said.
“There’s a move afoot throughout the department to bring about efficiencies in the [information technology] world,” David L. DeVries, DOD deputy chief information officer, told American Forces Press Service. “We took a long, hard look at it … realizing that the Department of Defense relies upon the network and upon information technology to do its business.”
Under the agreement, the Army, Air Force and DISA can begin using the newest versions of Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Windows 8, officials said, adding that Office 2013 provides enhanced security and content management tools.
Cass ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ Sunstein on Gun Control
January 4th, 2013Via: Big Think:
While he left his post as the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs this past summer, Sunstein remains one of the most influential legal scholars of his generation. His ideas — which apply behavioral economics to public policy — are highly nuanced, and often make both libertarians and liberals nervous in equal measure.
Sunstein, along with co-author Richard Thaler, defines libertarian paternalism as follows:
Libertarian paternalism is a weak, soft, and non-intrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened…Still the approach we recommend does count as paternalistic, because private and public choice architects are not merely trying to track or implement people’s choices. Rather, they are self-consciously attempting to move people in directions that will make their lives better. They nudge.
In other words, the government can present a “framework of choices” to correct “errors in risk perception.” At the Nantucket Project, a festival of ideas held on Nantucket, Massachusetts, Sunstein delivered a spirited defense of this model for regulation.
Related: Obama Staffer Wants ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ of Conspiracy Groups
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Write Gambling Software, Go to Prison
January 3rd, 2013Via: Wired:
In a criminal case sure to make programmers nervous, a software maker who licenses a program used by online casinos and bookmakers overseas is being charged with promoting gambling in New York because authorities say his software was used by others for illegal betting in that state.
New York authorities say that about $2.3 million that Robert Stuart and his company, Extension Software, received in cash and money orders for licensing his software constitutes direct proceeds of illegal, U.S.-based bookmaking operations.
“These defendants abetted large-scale illegal gambling in the U.S. and abroad,” said District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. in a press release in October when Stuart was charged. “In doing so, they gave bettors an easy way to place illegal wagers, and created an appetite for further unlawful activity.”
…
The prosecution of a commercial programmer for crimes committed by people who used his software would set a dangerous precedent for other software makers who might be held liable for how their legally licensed software is used, says Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University.
“It’s scary for software distributors, if someone happens to use their software for illegal activity,” she says. “If you know what people could use it for, and didn’t prevent it, did you take enough steps? What level of knowledge you need to have and all of that is not as clear as it should be [under current laws].”
But This Is Legal: The Rise of the HFT Machines
Military Must Prep Now for ‘Mutant’ Future
January 3rd, 2013Via: Wired:
The U.S. military is already using, or fast developing, a wide range of technologies meant to give troops what California Polytechnic State University researcher Patrick Lin calls “mutant powers.” Greater strength and endurance. Superior cognition. Better teamwork. Fearlessness.
But the risk, ethics and policy issues arising out of these so-called “military human enhancements” — including drugs, special nutrition, electroshock, gene therapy and robotic implants and prostheses — are poorly understood, Lin and his colleagues Maxwell Mehlman and Keith Abney posit in a new report for The Greenwall Foundation (.pdf), scheduled for wide release tomorrow. In other words, we better think long and hard before we unleash our army of super soldiers.
If we don’t, we could find ourselves in big trouble down the road. Among the nightmare scenarios: Botched enhancements could harm the very soldiers they’re meant to help and spawn pricey lawsuits. Tweaked troopers could run afoul of international law, potentially sparking a diplomatic crisis every time the U.S. deploys troops overseas. And poorly planned enhancements could provoke disproportionate responses by America’s enemies, resulting in a potentially devastating arms race.
Why Did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?
January 3rd, 2013Via: Oil Price:
This enabled Bioversal to accumulate over 12 million RINs from the 24 trips, worth between 50 cents and $1 each, which they can then sell on to oil companies that haven’t met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Mississippi River Nears Historic Lows, Shipping at Risk
January 3rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
The drought-drained Mississippi River will rise slightly later this week between St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois, but later continue its decline toward historic lows, according to a National Weather Service forecast.
Low water, due to the worst U.S. drought since 1956, has already impeded the flow of billions of dollars worth of grain, coal, fertilizer and other commodities between the central United States and shipping terminals at the Gulf of Mexico.
A further drop in river levels could halt commercial shipping traffic entirely by this weekend, the American Waterways Operators and the Waterways Council Inc said in a statement on Wednesday.
Former Icelandic Bank Executives Jailed for Fraud
January 2nd, 2013Nine months isn’t much, unless you consider that U.S. executives involved with these rackets got taxpayer funded bonuses instead of prison sentences.
Via: Reuters:
Two former executives at an Icelandic bank which collapsed in the 2008 financial meltdown were sentenced to jail on Friday for fraud which led to a 53 million euro loss, in the first major trial of Icelandic bankers linked to the crisis.
All three of the small North Atlantic island’s top banks collapsed in quick succession in October 2008 due to big debts incurred during a rapid overseas expansion.
Glitnir was the first to fall after the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused international credit markets to freeze up.
A Reykjavik court sentenced Glitnir’s former chief executive, Larus Welding, and former head of corporate finance, Gudmundur Hjaltason, each to nine months in jail, of which six months were suspended for two years. They had denied the charges.
Fiscal Cliff ‘Debt Reduction’ Deal Adds $4 Trillion to Federal Deficits Over a Decade
January 2nd, 2013Your what hurts?
Via: Reuters:
In the controversy surrounding the “fiscal cliff” issue, it’s easy to forget that the origin of the entire debate was a professed desire to reduce swollen federal deficits.
Whether the target was $4 trillion over 10 years, as proposed by the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission, or in the $2 trillion range, as tossed around by House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama, the idea was to rein in total debt that now tops $16 trillion.
By those standards, the bill passed by the U.S. Senate early on New Year’s Day to avoid the cliff’s automatic steep tax hikes and across-the-board spending cuts, looks paltry indeed.
The legislation, which as of Tuesday evening had yet to be passed by the House, would add nearly $4 trillion to federal deficits over a decade compared to the debt reduction envisioned in the extreme scenario of the cliff, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
