sell! sell! sell!

[tiznow]

Things stable for now

------------

Bitcoin quietly best performing currency of 2015.. Just got way ahead of itself on that parabolic run to 1000+ usd.. Had the shakeout now climbing back.. It will have longevity IMO

----------

Bitcoin: How the Isle of Man is leading a cryptocurrency revolution

Like most coffee shops, Java Express in Douglas offers its clientele a diverting range of beverages, from an invigorating espresso to a gold-dusted hot chocolate. It is only when customers reach the cash till that they might notice a difference: the bill for a couple of shots of caffeine comes to 0.01202 Bitcoins.
The smart café in the Isle of Man’s sedate capital is one of a scattering of Manx businesses, including a chauffeur company and a popular pub, that accept the cryptocurrency for everyday transactions alongside sterling.
The process is slightly cumbersome. In order to pay with Bitcoin, a receipt has to be produced carrying a conversion from pounds and a square QR code. A mobile phone app then reads the code and sends the requisite fraction of a Bitcoin from the payee’s cryptocurrency virtual wallet. A Bitcoin payment takes maybe three or four seconds longer to perform than a conventional one.
Even so, the company that installed the payment system says it has processed transactions for “thousands of pounds worth” of coffees.
The ability of Douglas’ 27,000 residents to go about at least some of their daily business using a form of money that many still associate with a netherworld of nerds is emblematic of a wider embrace of digital currency on the Isle of Man. While some jurisdictions, including the UK, continue to be cautious on cryptocurrencies, this crown dependency in the Irish Sea has set out its stall to become a global leader in the sector. Many are now referring to the Isle of Man as “Bitcoin Island”.
As of last month, legislation came into force that requires all cryptocurrency businesses on the island to formally register with its government and submit to inspection by its financial regulator.
What is Bitcoin?
Unlike conventional currency, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies hold no physical form as coins or notes.
Instead, they inhabit cyber space as “hashes” or unique solutions to mathematical problems, each of which holds a monetary value that can be exchanged between individuals.
Vast amounts of computing energy are dedicated to “mining” each hash code. The resulting “bitcoin”, currently worth about £300, is then traded via a network of computers that holds the “blockchain” – a publicly held database that verifies each coin and records each transaction.
Born from the idea that people should be able to trade without the need for a third-party guarantor, the system has no central authority. The result is a truly devolved currency, governed by consensus. But when it comes to debate about its future – for example, whether to increase the size of each blockchain to increase the number of transactions it can process – that consensus can be difficult to find.


It is one of the final pieces in a two-year process to put in place what Manx legislators insist is the world’s first regulatory framework to help digital currencies become a game-changing tool.
About 25 start-ups using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are now working on an island hitherto best known for its tailless cats and annual TT motorbike race.
Brian Donegan, the head of digital business at the Manx government’s Department of Economic Development, told The Independent: “We have an advantage here in that we can put the legislation in place and provide the rigorous oversight that is needed more rapidly than other jurisdictions.
“We move quickly because we can see the potential of what is out there. This technology is transformational and we want to be in the lead.”
As recently as a few decades ago, the Isle of Man was the polar opposite of the hub of techno-globalisation to which it now stakes a claim. Its economy relied on fishing, agriculture and tourism.
But over the past three decades it has grown at three times the rate as the UK, helped by ultra-low tax rates and a willingness to embrace the new. After first cornering the market in satellite operators in the 1990s, the Isle of Man has in recent years offered online gambling companies a home to the extent that electronic gaming now represents 16.7 per cent of its £4.1bn GDP.
It is this heady cocktail of financial and technological expertise, pragmatic government and robust infrastructure – the Isle of Man sits astride several heavy-duty global internet cables running from Britain and Ireland – that has helped spark the Manx cryptocurrency goldrush.
Invented in 2008 by a programmer operating under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has become synonymous with all the strengths and many of the failings of cryptocurrencies.
Born from a libertarian ideal of individuals being able to transfer money without the intervention of a bank, digital currency works using unbreakable mathematical codes “mined” using vast computer power and then recorded on a public database, known as a blockchain or distributed ledger. The result is an ability to send money to anyone around the globe for little or nothing.
UK supermarkets ranked by value for money





However, the system is not without its problems. Like other currencies, the value of each Bitcoin floats and has been subject to violent fluctuations. The system also conceals the identity of both payer and payee, an attribute that has provided Bitcoin with its main reputational problem. It has become the currency of choice for users of the so-called “dark web”, such as websites offering illegal merchandise from drugs to AK47s.
But the proponents of cryptocurrencies argue that this has allowed the established behemoths of global finance to unfairly tar the industry with the brush of shadiness as they seek to maintain their stranglehold on handling the £275 trillion of non-cash payments that take place around the globe each year.
The search for mainstream acceptance – and a slice of those revenues – is why cryptocurrency companies are making a dash to the Isle of Man. Among them is GreenCoin X, an alternative to Bitcoin that started life in the Indian city of Ahmedabad and has now set up shop in Douglas. It claims to be world’s first fully identifiable digital currency, incorporating the details of the customer on the blockchain detailing each transaction.
Alan Molloy, head of the company’s Isle of Man operations, said: “Generally speaking, banks see digital currencies as an enemy. But there is absolutely room for digital currency in the mainstream, and that revolution is coming.”
Charlie Woolnough, an Isle of Man native and founder of CoinCorner, a Douglas-based Bitcoin exchange, as well as the recently formed Manx Digital Currency Association, said: “Two years ago, banks were either horrified or largely unaware of cryptocurrency. Now they are waking up to the idea that it has some merits.”
The cryptocurrency pioneers are also turning their attention to blockchains or distributed ledgers in the belief that the engine behind digital currencies can be retooled for more diverse purposes. Blockchains are now being developed for uses from land registries to guarantees for luxury goods.
Mr Donegan said: “The potential for this technology is absolutely huge. It is the blockchain side of things that we are excited about. We may not be Bitcoin Island so much as Distributed Ledger Island.”

 

[eek.]

Britains Rich Tax dodging wankers all live in the Isle of Man (10% rate)

When they get ill they head for the mainland with its socialist healthcare system and enjoy all the privileges of living under the wing of a UK population paying proper tax rates

Told ya about bitcoin though, didn't I.

 

[tiznow]

Bitcoin and cryptocurtencies in general a libertarian comcept.. U a raging socialist so obviously not gonna like..

bitcoin dodges having to deal with banksters and paying fees.. Pure insanity what small business owners pay credit card guys for instance.. The big boys work out deals due to volume and get reduced rates.. Yet another example of stacked deck of big vs little guy.. Bitcoins ease of use plus low fees are huge for the small business owners.. Plus nations and their currencies come and go.. All will fail eventually on a long enough timeline..

 

[eek.]

I'm a socialist libertarian, minimal gun controls and bitcoins fine here

I take the bits that work for society and reject the bits that don't work.

I'm anti-dogma

 

[tiznow]

Story highlights

Rock Hill, South Carolina (CNN)A Muslim woman wearing a hijab was escorted out of Donald Trump's campaign event on Friday by police after she stood up in silent protest during Trump's speech.

Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant sitting in the stands directly behind Trump, stood up Friday during Trump's speech when the Republican front-runner suggested that Syrian refugees fleeing war in Syria were affiliated with ISIS.
Trump has previously called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.
Despite her silence, Trump supporters around her began chanting Trump's name -- as instructed by Trump campaign staff before the event in case of protests -- and pointed at Hamid and Marty Rosenbluth, the man alongside her who stood up as well.
As they were escorted out, Trump supporters roared -- booing the pair and shouting at them to "get out." One person shouted, "You have a bomb, you have a bomb," according to Hamid.
"The ugliness really came out fast and that's really scary," Hamid told CNN in a phone interview after she was ejected.
Major Steven Thompson of the Rock Hill Police Department told CNN Hamid was kicked out of the event because the campaign told him beforehand that "anybody who made any kind of disturbance" should be escorted out.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking why Hamid was escorted out of the venue.
After Hamid and three others, all wearing stars reminiscent of those worn by Jews during the Holocaust, were escorted out by police and Trump campaign officials, Trump commented on the disturbance.
"There is hatred against us that is unbelievable," Trump said. "It's their hatred, it's not our hatred."
Before the event, Hamid told CNN that she didn't plan to shout or disrupt the event -- she simply wanted to give Trump supporters a glimpse of what Muslims are like.
"I figured that most Trump supporters probably never met a Muslim so I figured that I'd give them the opportunity to meet one," she said, wearing a shirt that read "Salam, I come in peace." "I really don't plan to say anything. I don't want to be disrespectful but if he says something that I feel needs answering I might -- we'll just see what strikes me."
Hamid joined a group of people -- some friends, others strangers -- who wanted to silently protest Trump's Islamophobic proposals.
Several of those other people attended Trump's rally in Aiken, South Carolina, last month, including Jibril Hough.
Unlike Hamid, Hough did not stay silent, shouting "Islam is not the problem" as Trump spoke about radical Islamic extemism.


Despite her early exit, Hamid did manage to speak with the Trump supporters sitting around her in the stands, several of whom held her hand and said "sorry" as she was forced to leave the venue.
"The people around me who I had an opportunity to talk with were very sweet," she said. "The people I did not make contact with, the people who Trump influenced were really nasty."
One woman Hamid spoke with in line remarked that she "didn't look scary," but "like a good one."
"People don't have a chance to see anything other than the Muslims they see on TV," Hamid said, pointing to footage of terrorists and Islamist militants.
Hamid said before the event that she was not concerned for her safety, explaining her ardent belief that "people are mostly decent."
After her chaotic exit, Hamid remained optimistic about the character of most people -- even those who shouted at her to "get out" -- instead blaming Trump's heated rhetoric and outsized influence.
"This demonstrates how when you start dehumanizing the other it can turn people into very hateful, ugly people," she said. "It needs to be known."

 

[snoop]

Oil at 12 year low

The harder it's falling, the faster they're pumping until they drop dead.

 

[tiznow]

The harder it's falling, the faster they're pumping until they drop dead.

Just classic boom/bust .. Oil will be fine come back to 50+ once the dust settle after the next recession/swan dive cleans out all the fracking debt.. One of the many unintended consequences of QE.. Lotsa cheap debt funded fracking boom in us.. Pumping oil that uneconomical below 60-70 a barrel... 20s probably coming if nasty recession hits soon..

 

[tiznow]

http://hussman.net/wmc/wmc160111.htm

The immediate conclusion that one might draw is that the Federal Reserve made a “policy mistake” by raising interest rates in December. But that would far understate the actual damage contributed by the Fed. No, the real policy mistake was to provoke years of yield-seeking speculation through Ben Bernanke’s deranged policy of quantitative easing, which propagated like a virus to central banks across the globe. The extreme and extended nature of the recent speculative episode means that we do not simply have to worry about a run-of-the-mill recession or an ordinary bear market. We instead have to be concerned about the potential for another global financial crisis, born of years of capital misallocation and expansion of low-quality debt both here in the U.S. and in the emerging economies. For a review of these concerns, see The Next Big Short: The Third Crest of a Rolling Tsunami.

 

[snoop]

BP chop 4000 headcounts, is div next? I think so.

 

[BigHurt007]

Paid $3.50 for gas today
When's it goin down?

 

[tiznow]

Cali has local refinery issues.. Their standards are higher so almost all production occurs in state .. if a refinery has an issue there are supply problems.. Blame the hippies.. Down to 1.70s where I'm at

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]The richer the 1% get, the more miserable you get[/h]Feeling miserable these days? You may be able to blame the 1%.
As the share of income held by the super rich (those in the top 1% of the income distribution) increases, the life satisfaction of the rest of us decreases, according to the “Top Incomes and Human Well-being Around the World” study released on Dec. 28th.
“Our research shows that, worldwide, income inequality at the very top makes us all less happy with our lives, even if we’re relatively well-off,” said co-author Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an associate professor in economics and strategy at the University of Oxford, in a statement released Tuesday.
.

The study used data from the Gallup World Poll and the World Top Incomes Database to plot the share of taxable income by the so-called 1% as compared to reported levels of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotional well-being.
Furthermore, in general, in societies where the 1% holds a larger share of the wealth, citizens report feeling more negative emotions than in those where income is more evenly distributed.
.

These findings come at a same time that income inequality has been rising in many countries. “In advanced economies, the gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades,” according to research published by the International Monetary Fund last year.
In America, for example, the total share of income earned by the top 1% of families was less than 10% in the late 1970s; by 2012, it had reached levels not seen since the Great Depression, with more than 20% of the income owned by the top 1%, according to research from Emmanuel Saez, an economics professors at the University of California at Berkeley. (In fact, America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit in one Gulfstream G650 jet — have more wealth than the 152 million people who make up the least wealthy 50% of U.S. households.)
The reason we become less happy as income inequality rises may be that as rich people get richer, they “extend the range of the income distribution,” which means that even reasonably well-off people can no longer afford certain things like private school or homes in the best neighborhoods, the researchers write in a post published Tuesday on Harvard Business Review.
Furthermore, “an increase in the share of income held by the richest 1% can make you feel as if your chance of moving up the ladder and becoming very rich yourself is growing increasingly beyond your reach,” they conclude.
This study does not prove causation; it simply shows that there is a strong correlation between rising income inequality and lowered life satisfaction and increased negative emotions. Plus, it did not look at this relationship in all countries, as data on that was not available.
Catey Hill covers personal finance and travel for MarketWatch in New York. Follow her on Twitter @CateyHill.


More From MarketWatch

• Here’s when you should jump back into stocks this year
• Oil at $10 a barrel — maybe even under $0? Analysts play ‘how low can you go’
• MetLife shows firms would rather not be too big to fail

 

[tiznow]

Ben/qe/zirp bubble finally going pop .. was only a matter of when and how big they would inflate it.. Yellen and company decided time to prick it with rate hike vs trying to blow it up further.. As usual previous guy hands new guy the left over garbage they created..

marlets took almost 2 years for topping process to complete before things got nasty (coming soon)... Big ol head and shoulders top on the major indexes...

 

[tiznow]

Fake out squeeze yesterday.. Oil break 30.. Markets cratering too... Volatility picking up big time..

nother fed/global central banking created bubble goes pop! Middle America already struggling gonna get interesting..

 

[RoofTop]

Gonna be an ugly day

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]NEW YORK-AREA MANUFACTURING COLLAPSES, WORST SINCE THE GREAT RECESSION[/h]

NY Fed
Manufacturing in America continues to struggle.
The New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey index plunged to -19.37 in January from -6.21 in December.
"Business activity declined for New York manufacturing firms more sharply than at any time since the 2007-09 recession, according to the January 2016 survey," the New York Fed said.
This is in line with the theme of a struggling American manufacturing sector, which has seen the demand for exports get slammed by the strong dollar and slowing growth overseas.
Earlier this month, we learned the ISM manufacturing index fell to 48.2 in December, reflecting a nationwide recession in manufacturing.
The Empire State survey's new orders index, which is an indicator of future activity, plunged 17 points to -23.5.
And the survey respondents don't think it will get much better in the near term.
"Indexes for the six-month outlook fell sharply this month, suggesting that optimism about future business conditions weakened considerably," the survey said. "The index for future business conditions plunged twenty-six points to 9.5, its lowest level since 2009."
While manufacturing accounts for a relatively small portion of the US economy, it nevertheless seems to be a reliable indicator of general aggregate economic activity.

 

[eek.]

It's a bit cheeky, the Fed is basically saying crash your market to a sustainable level or we'll up the interest rate until you do

 

[tiznow]

The bubble was already created by Ben nothing Yellen could do.. Other than continue to stick with zirp and QE more to blow it a bit bigger. Or prick the bubble now

every successive batch of QE was less productive and all QE did was increase inequality with all the gains going to the elite... Protected status quo.. And created more long term imbalances/problems.. It's quite clear

main ? Going forward how long till fed reverses and jumps back into QE.. Or do they just let things play out as they may since the financial system is in decent health.. The issue is more malinvestment/overvaluations

 

[tiznow]

Wonder how exposed the big guys are to oil debt etc.. Really have no idea

recently saw cdos making a come back (the stuff that forced fed to bail out banks).. Maybe that's why they were like enough is enough time to prick the bubble..

Us student debt bubble up to 1.3 trillion

im sure a lot of local/state governments are going to have a super tough time during this next bubble pop phase.. They already struggling now..

will be interesting to see the chaos play out..

Thank the the beloved fed doing their job fostering price stability 

 

[eek.]

I haven't seen a good old interest rate bitch-slapping hike for a long time now, they can get messy

It's a bit like using a baseball bat to control naughty children in a sweetshop