The first attack took place in the volatile province of Kandahar, taking five US lives in an improvised roadside bomb incident on Saturday, according to US officials in Kabul and provincial authorities.Another incident took two US lives when an Afghan soldier in the western province of Farah turned his gun on the Americans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack via email, according to Reuters.The spokesman, Qari Yousouf Ahmadi, explained that the Afghan soldier was actually an “infiltrated mujahidin.”Aside from Saturday’s attacks, three British soldiers were also killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province on Tuesday.Last week’s death toll for US troops amounts to 21, including Saturday’s attacks and three air crashes.The bloody week of violence underlines the lasting volatility in Afghanistan and the dangers faced by the NATO-led international Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ahead of their power handover to Afghan security forces next year, when the US withdraws from the country. … Read More
Separate attacks in Afghanistan kill 8 NATO soldiers
The first attack took place in the volatile province of Kandahar, taking the lives of five US soldiers in an improvised roadside bomb incident on Saturday, according to US officials in Kabul and provincial authorities.Another incident took the lives of another two soldiers when an Afghan soldier in the western province of Farah turned his gun on the troops. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack via email, according to Reuters.One of the soldiers killed was a German national, part of the special forces, the German army confirmed in a statement on Sunday, adding that the soldier was killed in an insurgent attack during a joint operation near the northern city of Baghlan. Another German soldier was wounded during the operation.The spokesman, Qari Yousouf Ahmadi, explained that the Afghan soldier was actually an “infiltrated mujahidin.”Aside from Saturday’s attacks, three British soldiers were also killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand province on Tuesday.Last week’s death toll for US troops amounts to 21, including Saturday’s attacks and three air crashes.The bloody week of violence underlines the lasting volatility in Afghanistan and the dangers faced by the NATO-led international Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ahead of their power handover to Afghan security forces next year, when the US withdraws from the country. … Read More
Should Bitcoin peg its price to US dollar?
China became the second biggest economy in the world by pegging their currency to the dollar at an artificially cheap rate. This boosted exports and built up reserves to the multi-trillion yuan level – of which more than a 1 trillion is US dollars. The Chinese workers themselves cannot afford the goods they make for Apple and hundreds of other companies that manufacture their products on ‘the world’s factory floor’ but they are better off working in these sweatshops than working the land; so we are told. With Bitcoin, there is an interesting corollary with China and its currency peg. And the question is, why not peg Bitcoin to the dollar, at let’s say $100 BTC to the dollar. This might solve two problems. First, the volatility issue – with merchants and spenders of Bitcoin uncomfortable with the exchange rate of Bitcoin’s wild fluctuations – having a fixed exchange rate would introduce stability and predictability into the economy. Secondly, having a fixed exchange rate would open up a possible workaround of the the FinCEN problem.”At least three exchanges in the U.S. that traded the digital currency Bitcoin have shut down, apparently as a result of guidance issued last month by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. That agency has emerged as the top threat, at least in the United States, to the decentralized Bitcoin network – more so than the widely reported price volatility and hacker attacks.” John Matonis writing in Forbes. FinCEN, a captured regulator (like the SEC, and CFTC) is muscling Bitcoin exchanges and shutting them down, hoping to take off the market any potential competitor to entrenched oligopolists Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. Having a fixed rate of exchange for Bitcoin would allow all Bitcoin exchanges to ‘go dark’and hide behind cryptology. The conversion price of $100 is known so there is no need to ‘see’ the market. Without the need to publish trading activity, exchange rates, and current prices; there would be no need to operate within eyesight of troublesome thugs-for-hire working for the payment and currency cartel looking to shut down a competitor. The fixed exchange rate could be managed by the Bitcoin Foundation who would publish the official ‘fix’ every day and continuously be adjusted upward to keep miners incentivized to continue mining. At some point in the future, when the Bitcoin industry and economy are big enough to lobby politicians and regulators sufficiently to get them to back off, the exchanges can come out of the dark and business can be transacted more transparently. But until then, having a fixed rate and dark exchanges might be the most expedient way to grow this new economy. … Read More
‘Bitcoin is not a repository of value, yet’
The bitcoin exchange, MTGox, went offline twice on Friday, first, in order to install new hardware to help cope with increased trading volumes and then to avoid a “stronger than usual” hack attack. The shutdowns led to a round of panic selling that forced values to plunge from record-high $260 for one bitcoin on 10 April to less than $100. Financial advisor, George Cotsikis, believes that there’s nothing extraordinary about Friday’s events as one shouldn’t expect stable prices from bitcoin in the future. RT: Are you a Bitcoin convert yourself?George Cotsikis: I have been following quite a bit on what has been happening; I’m an interested party not an investor. I think it is a trustworthy currency algorithmically. It is very elegant, mathematically based structure which is quite robust and very beautiful. However as investment, as a possible store of value, I think it is pretty bad. The volatility that we have been seeing in the last few days is characteristic of what we will be seeing in the future with bitcoin. So I’m not sure that the people who have just started going into this market actually realize the issues they could be facing.RT: The value has been going up and down quite abruptly over the last couple of months. It reached its peak earlier this month, I guess over Cyprus, but is this kind of thing pie in the sky or is it the shape of stuff to come?GC: Long term, math-based currencies are the stuff to come. However, I don’t think that bitcoin is the answer yet. It has a very inelastic supply structure, it has no central authority, which is interesting philosophically but in practice is a problem. We just had a one-day stagnation from $260+ dollars to $105. This is not a store of value, at this stage at least. It is also a very thin market place which is really easy money made by speculators, so from a technological standpoint it is a future. But is it a short term or a medium term solution? No.RT: How is the value determined?GC: Short demand and supply that is part of philosophy of the bitcoin. There’s no central authority which is very interesting and probably the way to go. But only if there is enough demand and supply volume, if the liquidity is good enough to make sure that the price is achieved. There is some semblance of where the fair value for this should be. At this point in time, the supply curve is very, very limited. Bitcoins are supplied according to a very specific algorithm through time. So unfortunately the demand and supply will produce very volatile prices. RT: Some converts, one couple in America in Texas, they’ve sold their house with it and another couple have sold their Porsche. Were they chucking the money in the bin, as far as you’re concerned?GC: Yes, I think especially when you [sell] a house. There is a lot of hot dust, people want to get out of currencies, which are to a large extent manipulated. They feel very worried about the financial system, especially after Cyprus, and they should be. Southern Europe will possibly not be in the same shape, banking wise, in the next few years. But there’re a lot of possibilities, very good alternatives in real estate, in precious metals, in precious stones, in private and public equities and intellectual property which are much better stores of value than bitcoins. … Read More
The Psychology of Gulf Coast Victims
Today, we are beginning to see some very early trend curves with regard to health . . . and the trends are frightening. However, I am afraid that the emerging health data will fall upon deaf ears. … Read More
IMF to add AUD and CAD as reserve currencies; which one’s next?
“The IMF is expanding the list of currencies separatelyidentified in the Composition of Foreign Exchange Reservesreporting (COFER) template,” said an IMF spokeswoman as citedby The Wall Street Journal. “The implementation of the revisedCOFER Report Form, with separate identification of the Australiandollar and Canadian dollar, is scheduled for the first half of2013.”The IMF holds report figures of the global reserve holdings in adatabase known as the COFER mainly in just five currencies, deemedby many investors to be among the world’s safest: US dollars,euros, British pounds, Japanese yen and Swissfrancs. Recent economic problems associated with the euro and the dollarset a continuing trend for the diversification of the reservecurrencies as a way out from the volatility, Yaroslav Lissovolik,chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow told RT.“It is definitely a trend and this trend will continue. Thereis a global demand for more reserve currencies. The world economywants to diversify the set of reserve currencies as a way from thevolatility and the problems associated with the current reservecurrencies, because both US and Europe are plagued by economicproblems. This is natural and clear that the global economy shoulduse more foundations, more columns on which to stand and build astronger foundation of a more complex globaleconomy,” said Lissovolik.The best chance to join the Canadian and Australian dollar thisyear has the New Zealand dollar which looks in the longterm more reliable, Anna Bodrova currency analyst from Investcafetold RT. If the IMF adds it to the list of reserve currencies, theinternational system calculations will be more transparent andthere will be an opportunity to make more accurate long-termforecasts, she said.Australia and Canada both have resource based economies thathave been benefiting from the growing demand for raw materials inAsia and other regions, which have given both countries the opportunity to emerge from the global financial crisis in muchbetter shape than either the US or Europe, according to The WallStreet Journal.Russia is with Australia and Canada in the same group of theresource focused economies. But Russian ruble is not as readyas it seems to become a reserve currency, as it is subject toexternal influence, Bodrova told RT. For the situation to beclearer, the Russian Central Bank needs to decide whether it shouldlet the ruble float freely or continue to regulate it. If theCentral Bank continues to regulate it, ruble’s chances to become areserve currency will increase.”So far I see no basis to include the Russian ruble tothe list of reserve currencies in the next two years”, Bodrovasaid.There are some differences that may pertain to issues concerningmonetary policy, exchange rate flexibility and the degree of thedependency of the economy on oil and oil prices that limit Russia’sprogress, according to Lissovolik.If Russia strengthens the ruble’s role in the Commonwealth ofIndependent States (CIS) region and increases the share of tradeand investment in rubles globally, then the Russian currency willbecome a global reserve currency, he says.“If we see the ruble used more intensively in the Russiantrade, then this is something that may eventually lead to the rubletaking the role of one of the global reserve currencies. Thepotential for that is very much there,” Lissovolik says adding“Eventually it is a question of time the ruble becomes a globalreserve currency”.Concerning the Chinese yuan, it is unlikely to becomea reserve currency in the near future, as China has been aclosed country for a long time, and only in the last year anda half the country began to open up, to let in foreigninvestors and show willingness to reform its system, Bodrova toldRT.“The yuan is not yet being traded by its marketvalue,” she said. … Read More
5 reasons American workers could care less about the Dow record
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Dow roared to a record Tuesday. Yet the market’s run-up feels worlds away from the lives of many Americans.Wages have only recently started to recover after months of declines that stretched family budgets thin. Unemployment is stuck near 8 percent, high enough that most Americans still know people who are out of work. Signs of a housing recovery have boosted stocks, yet millions of people face foreclosure.Here are five reasons why many Americans don’t share Wall Street’s cork-popping mood:___Fewer people have money invested in the stock market, so many missed out on the rally.Americans sold more stocks than they bought for a fifth straight year in 2012, despite unprecedented efforts by the Federal Reserve to juice the market and encourage investment. Americans have sold hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of stock — the first time on record that’s happened during a sustained bull market. The market rise has been powered by companies buying their own stock.The flight from stock markets has coincided with a series of confidence-rattling stumbles: last year’s botched initial public offerings by Facebook and BATS Global Markets; the 2010 flash crash that sent the Dow plunging 600 points in five minutes; unprecedented volatility related to European and U.S. fiscal policy debates.Continue Reading… … Read More
