wintersFright

Europe has repeatedly stated cyprus is a template for future bailouts.

Actually, foreign Central Banks don't even need to dump treasuries to require QE Infinity - they can just reduce or stop absorbing the continual outflow of debt emitted by the USG. The USG has a trillion dollar+ yearly budget deficit. If central banks don't absorb that outflow of debt then either the USG reduces its spend (as if, those NSA datacentres aren't cheap), interest rates go up (USG will need will need even more debt to pay its debt) or the fed continues to buy it all up.

Buffet is just a shill for the USG in the confidence game of US treasuries. Sure the fed is under no pressure to sell, the pressure is really on the fed to not stop buying.

QE infinity is all about hiding the fact foreigners are exiting treasuries so the fed is the last resort buyer of USG debt. Without the fed backstopping, interest rates paid by the USG on its debt would have to go up which would very quickly crash the system.

Warren is just doing his patriotic duty to kick the can a little further down the road.

I'm surprised he is so open about the weed. Especially since his daughter will read that. I thought the USA was all gung ho on the war on drugs?

Central Banks sit on bonds because holding USD in their reserve banks does not earn interest.

Congress doesn't print money. The Fed does. Congress can spend money that it doesn't have by getting the treasury to sell bonds. Foreign CBs are not mopping up all those bonds which is why the Fed is buying them up with QE.

What is the problem with a toy model in extreme to illustrate the absurdity of your position?

normal people, no. USG yes.

So your position is, if Bernanke made it rain 100 trillion dollars and 250 million people charged each other $(100 trillion/250 million) for the massage, then money is not devalued?

Yes the example is contrived but it illustrates you are wrong.

Why does money printing cause more unemployment? I don't see the link? EDIT: I guess a good debt destroying hyperinflation would root out all the FIRE jobs and cause unemployment there. A high inflation would funnel more wages into debt payoff so think I can see the link.

So if bernanke rained money from his helicopter but everyone sold their neighbour a massage that night then the money is not devalued because it was absorbed?

some snippets I found in the T&C's linked from Windows 8.1 RTM (even the the document still says preview)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/windows-8-1-pri...

Windows Search also sends an identifier to provide personalized search results based on your interactions withBing and other Microsoft products and services.

If you sign in to Windows with aMicrosoft account, the identifier will be associated with your Microsoft account.

If you allow Windows Search to use your location, the physical location of your device as provided by the Windows Location Platform will be sent to Microsoft as a part of each search request. Alternatively, we may attempt to derive your approximate physical location based on your IP address.

If you choose to use Windows Search to get web search results, we use the search term you have provided, your local and online search history, information associated with yourMicrosoft account, and the location of your device to provide relevant search suggestions, personalized search results, and personalized experiences in other Microsoft products and services

You can also clear your search history and turn off personalized search results for WindowsSearch in Search in Search & apps in PC settings. This clears your local search history and instructs Microsoft not to use any previously collected search history stored byBing that’s used to personalize your WindowsSearch experience. It does not delete information that is used by Microsoft in aggregate to improve search results and otherMicrosoft experiences. That information is retained and anonymized

Not big data in a personally identifiable sense - but big data in aggregated advertising market data:

At install, all options on this screen were defaulted to on http://imgur.com/RP4UNhG Note the "Let apps use my Advertising ID for experiences across apps" option. Also let apps access "other account info"...what info is that?

Windows 8.1 Smart Search now renders Bing ads into the search results - so ads brought onto your desktop - not just in the browser experience http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043518/windows-8-1-smart-sea...

oh i see what you are saying - you create account at the spot where they are asking you to logon. I never clicked that as I have several accounts. Still it is very hostile UI as is pointed out. I'm not making up fud and if you look at my profile I'm no karma whore.

True. I did it twice on two different installs in the last few days for 8.1 Pro RTM - upgrading from 8.0 which had local account. Both times I looked very hard to create a local account.

Here is a blog describing how to get around it for preview but he describes exactly my experience for RTM. http://www.infobyte.hr/blog/337/windows-8-1-preview-how-to-i...

note: I'm talking about the install process. not in the OS UI after install.

They really do seem to have jumped the shark and it makes me wonder whether I'll still be using Windows at home and coding in the Windows stack in a few years.

8.1 also heavily pushes logging on with a Microsoft Account. 8.0 had a small print option to use a local account but that is gone now and you have to submit a bad email/password combo 3 times before it gives in and lets you setup a local account.

I'll stick to a local account per machine thanks very much. Would rather not have MS holding the keys on whether I can logon to my own machine or not, nor give them free big data for onselling to marketers.

Don't tell your wife this :)

Did you see this recent news? http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/privacy-scandal-ns... It isn't just one slide pack. Glen greenwald et all were given 50000 documents

I haven't checked Dropbox t&c's but I wonder whether backups come under its 'suitable for' uses. Ie: do they consider it a highly reliable form of storage. Personally I wouldn't trust any cloud storage with hundreds of gigabytes of family photos and movies. I have multiple disks on site and one truecrypt terabyte disk offsite which is rotated regularly. For work/code though the vm + cloud is a good solution.

A good reminder to have offsite backups

DAC=Digital Analog Converter. You are using a DAC in your computer (onboard sound card probably) when you connect from the PC to your speakers but it will be a very cheap DAC and the reproduction of the analogue signal won't be as accurate as a more expensive DAC. Some people with pricey headphones will buy a pricey DAC. Otherwise you are coupling nice headphones to a crappy onboard sound card DACs which is a bit of a mismatch.

surprising to see you read zerohedge AND have faith in the dollar's status as world reserve ;)

For a scary conclusion to the use of social graphs and drones, see this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...

in ground gold reserves are reasonably well known and factored in. There is a finite amount of gold in the crust. There is no limit to the amount of digits one can add to the banks balance sheet. dollarizing won't be possible for the USD.

Here is a crazy theory: Say you have a really big oil field. Really really big. Unimaginally huge wealth flows in every day because the world wants, nay needs this modern lifeblood. How do you store that wealth. Do you stack IOU's from those countries in the form of currency? Nah. They will just inflate the currency to pay you back after they burn up all that precious oil? How about you just meter out enough oil to meet your life needs? Nah, they'll call your country a terrorist axis of evil and invade to help the oil flow.

ok how about this. How about you do a deal and pump as much oil as possible as long as you can exchange it for something real. and you have a long time cultural affilation for a yellow shiny metal. yeah that will do. How about we do a deal. We keep the oil pumping as long as we can exchange a ratio of oil barrels for this shiny metal. When the oil runs out in a hundred years or so we will have a stack of shiny metal to trade back.

More reading at this blog: http://fofoa.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/call-of-century.html

A lot of governments intervene in their currency to target an exchange rate (eg: Swiss). I don't see a lot of people flocking to frontrun them. It's volatile and risky. Sure traders do it, but not 'people' as in 'the people'.

Governments also won't care about losing money when taking strategic action to protect their seignorage and inflation tax racket.

Maybe the boom/bust wouldn't matter too much. It depends on how people see bitcoin. Are they trying to save in it? Anyone trying to save in bitcoin is delusional given its infancy and volatility. A better description would be some people are trying to speculate in it. For similar reasons, people won't use it as a unit of account.

If people use it as a medium of exchange then volatility won't be of as much concern. If you need to make a trade in BTC then obtain the BTC and trade your item quickly. Given there would be spreads to pay on each trade in and out of BTC then it doesn't seem that likely a strategy unless people wrongly think of BTC as anonymous and are 'hehe, the man have no idea i'm ordering this off silkroad'.

What is interesting is that BTC is not a sovereign currency. So say BTC takes off in Russia and Putin decides to smash it: Does he need to think of the American's reaction if he does? Any country in the world - or any entity big enough (a corporation, a multi billionaire) could decide to cause mischief without it being considered an act of war - which say if China decided to sell 1 trillion of US treasuries might be construed as.

They are a strong component of the European Union which is designed to act as a large trading block and compete with the US. The Euro is a competitor to the US Dollar. As the Euro displaces the USD throug out Europe, the US loses more of its "exorbitant Privilege" in being able to print money and export the inflation to the rest of the world.

Working in a .NET corporate dev shop, I'm shocked how many .NET devs now run MacOS at home as their primary OS. It starts out as a mac for some iPhone dev and then they just use MacOS by default and Windows in a VM when they need to.

yep - it also just means that right up until a bank holiday and your account is frozen, the official line will always be everything is fine, the bank is well capitalised and there is nothing to worry about...unless you are well connected in which case you will get a whisper to move your money out).

So if you aren't one of the well connected people, it pays to be a little paranoid and be first in line to withdraw your money while you can. It's kind of funny, the rational action for any individual is not to keep most of their money in a bank where it is at risk of going away with zero notice. The confidence of the banking system relies on everyone being irrational!

"When it becomes serious, you have to lie" - Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg PM and Head Euro-Zone Finance Minister

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/100087136/he-m...