money money money

The BRIC nations were the ones tagged to drag the globe out of economic despair. But, as the world struggles to recover from the credit boom and bust, they too are stumbling. (Which economies will emerge best from financial crisis?

Federal regulators are increasingly paying attention to Bitcoin, the decentralized virtual currency. Last week, two of the most senior figures of the Bitcoin community trekked to Washington to try convince D.C.’s power brokers that they are eager to work with federal officials. But that may prove easier said than done.

The budgets of local authorities are being cut while the needs of their populations remain the same. In this difficult financial environment, borrowing is rising. UK local authorities owed £81.8bn in the financial year 2011-12, costing hundreds of millions in interest on repayments.

Risk managers at UK-based banks, insurers and investment funds believe that the chance of another financial crisis over the next three years has fallen to its lowest since 2008, according to a Bank of England survey released today.

Noah's complaint seems to be that David is confusing or confused or both. In his words: “his [Graber’s] pronouncements on the subject are vague or seemingly contradictory on all of the questions listed above.” In all fairness, Debt is a very long book, which deals both with one might call a Chartalist view of money, and (in my reading) a vaguely Marxist (certainly non-neoclassical) view of the functioning of the economy, but discussing the evolution of debt and economic development more or less since the beginning of Civilization.

What with the NSA and PRISM hogging the headlines lately, Bitcoin appears to have slipped off the radar somewhat. Yet the cryptocurrency has seen a fairly dramatic drop in its value since the spying allegations emerged, falling from a high of $118 on June 7 to just $89 on June 9, prompting some BTC watchers to suggest that it could be linked to last week’s revelations.

The attraction of the Bitcoin is not just the anonymity it provides to users (an anonymity that the U.S. government has alleged some users have employed for money laundering). Bitcoin is also secure against traditional forms of counterfeiting. More important, the Bitcoin is designed to be scarce and thus immune to inflation. There is a limit to the number of Bitcoins—21 million—that is determined by a transparent rule and not by the whim of a central banker....

chicksdaddy writes "Beware you barons of BitCoin – you World of Warcraft one-percenters: the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service may soon be reaching into your treasure hoard to extract Uncle Sam's fair share of your virtual wealth.

So you've got some Bitcoins. Now what, you ask yourself. You can't spend them on apps, alcohol or amusement park rides. For the vast majority of purchases, online and in real life, they're pretty much useless.

Could attackers make your web browser mine for bitcoins? How about your TV? Security flaws in some systems might make it possible, say experts.

The 2007-2008 financial crisis, you might think, was an unpredictable one-time crash. But Didier Sornette and his Financial Crisis Observatory have plotted a set of early warning signs for unstable, growing systems, tracking the moment when any bubble is about to pop. (And he's seeing it happen again, right now.)

George Soros delivers remarks for the CFS Presidential Lecture series at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Whether or not Congress passes regulation attempting to restrict the extremes of the financial sector will have little to do with whether we experience another near death experience within the economy. It will also have little to do with the "freedom" of the marketplace. There is no regulation that can overcome the restrictions and controls and instability placed on the economy by a coercive currency.

Economic dominos falling one by one Across the globe, financial markets are falling like dominos, one by one. As America and other developed nations struggle.

Government regulations will actually help bitcoin, not hurt it, digital currency entrepreneur Cameron Winklevoss says.

Bitcoin and Litecoin are incredibly similar. Both are decentralized electronic currency, meaning that they aren't linked in any way to big banks. They're independent. And where the money supply of US dollars is always fluctuating, both Bitcoin and Litecoin will reach eventually reach a gross sum and maintain a finite, unchanging supply

Oxford Pound plan to help local businesses
BBC Bristol website
"What you do with a local currency is you pass on the obligation so, if you spend your Oxford Pounds in your local hairdresser, they have to spend it in a local shop as well.