“Jeffrey Albert Tucker is the executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. Tucker is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Foundation for Economic Education; an American economist.”
“Mark Thornton appeared in an exclusive interview on RT TV to discuss the arrest of Charlie Shrem, and the motivation behind the U.S. government’s war on Bitcoin and other private digital currencies. Thornton is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute.”
“Since online retailer TigerDirect has started accepting Bitcoins about 3 days ago, they have processed more then half a million dollars worth of purchases where Bitcoin was used as a payment method. The amount was spent in more then 2500 orders. They told us earlier that they got $250,000 in sales in the first 17 hours of accepting the payment method. They have just sent us these new statistics after reaching the $500,000 milestone. The company processes about $2 billion worth of purchases each year.”
http://bitcoinboard.net/tigerdirect-processes-500000-in-bitcoin-payments-in-3-days/
“Lloyds is the largest retail bank group in the UK with 30 million customers. The chief executive of TSB, Paul Pester, said its customers’ debit card transactions had been affected after problems with two out of seven IT servers. Mr Pester told the BBC two of the seven servers that process TSB debit card payments had suffered problems, which meant that about a quarter of TSB card transactions were affected. Mr Pester later tweeted: ‘The cause of the problems at TSB is now fixed. It’ll take a while to sort the backlog. Sorry customers may have problems for an hour or so.’ TSB has about five million UK customers and is in the process of being split from Lloyds Banking Group.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25907000
“In floating this new policy, the banks have changed their traditional role as a monetary storage facility. They have now been granted the authority to refuse the return of funds that have been entrusted to them, based upon their authority to be satisfied that the money will be well spent by the depositor. If the depositor is, in effect, being expected to prove to the bank that he does not plan to perform a criminal act, the bank goes beyond its function as a business and becomes a regulatory body. Throughout Europe, the US, and much of the rest of the world, we are seeing a growing tendency for governments to allow banks to control depositors’ funds.”
https://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/1077-shutting-off-the-money-tap
“Move over, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. Step aside, Mario Draghi and Haruhiko Kuroda. When it comes to monetary stimulus, Zhou Xiaochuan, the longtime governor of the People’s Bank of China, has no rivals. The latest data show that the country’s rapid growth in money supply has continued. Mr. Zhou and his colleagues at the Chinese central bank have only begun the difficult and dangerous task of reining it in. The amount of money sloshing around China’s economy, according to a broad measure that is closely watched here, has now tripled since the end of 2006. Housing prices have soared, feeding fears of a bubble while leaving many ordinary Chinese feeling poor and left out.”
“When combined with war, inflations tear apart the human community. One example is the Great Chinese Inflation of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the destruction of the Chinese monetary system during this period helped Mao Zedong’s communist movement to triumph on the Chinese mainland in 1949. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Imperial and then Republican China had no central bank. The monetary system was based on a diverse network of private banks operating in the various regions of the country. While copper was widely used in coins, the primary medium of exchange was silver, and the entire Chinese economy functioned on an informal silver standard.”
“We are supposed to forget that the Swiss had one of the great currencies in the world. Instead, we can see from this article that the Swiss seek the validation of the Chinese renminbi. Once, the Swiss franc was linked to gold but the Swiss destroyed that link a decade ago. Then the Swiss placed a ceiling on the franc to ensure that it wouldn’t go much past the failing euro. And now the Swiss want to become a renminbi hub. ‘The prestige and profits of becoming RMB conduits …’ Once upon a time there was prestige and profit in trading the Swiss franc. The Swiss had a reputation for probity and privacy. But the US attack has cracked open Swiss privacy and devastated private banking.”
“Investigators say they suspect the cash, which had been concealed in hidden compartments in luggage on a flight from Honduras, was being moved for a powerful cartel, but they haven’t said which one. The money was mostly in U.S. $100 bills, authorities said. In a case that highlights the regional impacts of the drug trade, now Honduran investigators are trying to figure out how the suitcases slipped by airport authorities, drug police and special investigators at the Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa. Authorities have suspended dozens of officers as they investigate, Honduran police told CNN affiliate Televicentro.”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/15/world/americas/panama-airport-suitcases-cash/index.html
“Federal agents at the Philadelphia International Airport Sunday seized nearly $27,000 from a Ghana couple after the duo allegedly failed to report the cash. Investigators said the couple was after their arrival from Germany referred to a secondary inspection during which the man said he had $6,000. When U.S. Customs and Border Protections officers explained federal currency reporting requirements, the man revised his estimate and wrote he had $16,000, according to authorities. A baggage examination allegedly turned up multiple envelopes containing $27,431.30 in U.S. currency, British pounds, Swiss francs and Ghana cedi. Officers returned $500 to the couple for ‘humanitarian purposes.'”
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Feds_seize_27K_from_couple_at_PHL.html