Last week India imposed a 20% tariff on a number of hot rolled steel products to "safeguard" domestic production. According to the Business Standard this has lead domestic producers to drop their customarily negotiated discounts and begin charging customers according to their actual published price sheets (archived). Earlier this month the United States began an investigation (archived) into hot rolled steel products of their own and have just announced that based on early findings they intend to continue the investigation (archived) as imports appear to impose "harm" on US producers in their determination through low prices. The US can be expected to follow India in introducing protectionist tariffs on hot rolled steel soon. As a larger tend expect bureaucracy heavy states struggling to support domestic industry such as the United States and India to begin ramping up their imposition of protectionist tariffs in an effort to keep the remains of their domestic production capacity from being gutted.
Category Archives: Altcoins
FDA Regulatory Overreach Allows Price Gouging
Recently news has been circulating that condemns Turing Pharmaceuticals for price gouging United States consumers of pyrimethamine1 an antimalarial which sells for under ten cents per dose in markets other than the United States where generic forms are available. Pyrimethamine is very popular in areas of the world where malaria is endemic due to its efficacy against most strains of the falciparum and vivax species of the Plasmodium malaria parasite, but in the United States it is typically used to treat toxoplasmosis in immunocompromised patients making it a niche treatment. Turing Pharmaceuticals managed to get a contract to exclusively market pyrimethamine in the United States thanks to FDA regulations. Because the FDA allows them exclusive marketing rights they can set prices arbitrarily, and if they can they must. Continue reading
trade name Daparim, released in 1953 ↩
Bet Over Ethereum's Survival Rockets Past 100 BTC in Wagers
A six day old Bet on whether Ethereum rides into 2016 as a continuing economically viable thing has managed to so far draw more than 129 Bitcoin in wagers. The criteria assigned for Ethereum to fail include the value of Ethereum tokens falling under 0.001 BTC per Ethereum token during December 2015 or if the volume of Ethereum tokens traded during the month of December 2015 being less than 100 Bitcoin in value. At the present 23 Bitcoin have been staked on Ethereum's failure while 106.11 Bitcoin are staked on Ethereum surviving December. According the the wager on BitBet price information is to be taken from Poloniex. As of this writing Ethereum is trading for around 0.004 Bitcoin per token with an all time low price of 0.00243990 Bitcoin per token on August 10th shortly after Ethereum's release. Continue reading
Trump Campaign Payment Processor Fleeces Donors
MWTW in Portland, Maine alleges a third party payment processor used by Donald Trump's presidential campaign is repeating donation charges and in at least one case was reported to have charged a man who entered payment information but decided not to purchase anything from the campaign's online store (archived). In all 13 charges were attempted of which 6 ended up successfully debiting a balance from the man's bank account. The station is referring to the charges as unauthorized while the payment processor blames a 'glitch' in their system. Continue reading
Ferguson Government's Creditworthiness Reclassified as 'Junk'
Ferguson, Missouri the site of numerous clashes over the past year between rebels and Government forces has had their creditworthiness as evaluated by Moody's reduced seven levels from Aa3 to Ba1 "junk" status (archived). Moody's cites a rapid deterioration in Ferguson's financial health following the beginning of the rebellion, and if Ferguson's government continues to conceal information about how their efforts to stabilize the situation have adversely affect their finances Moody's has threatened to withdraw their rating of Ferguson completely. Ferguson government leader James Knowles considers Moody's action "unfair" and that the embattled government is financially healthy enough to not require further debt issuances at this time. Moody's is predicting Ferguson's government could be insolvent by 2017.
"Y Combinator" Too Generic To Trademark
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has ruled against startup and censorship incubator Y Combinator's petition to register their name as a trademark (archived). The office in making the decision noted that "Y Combinator" as a term of art used in computer science and mathematics is by its nature too generic to stand as a distinguishing mark denoting a particular trade venture.
Former Reddit CEO Surrenders Legal Fight After Losing Media Outlet
Today Ellen Pao has dropped an appeal of her courtroom loss against one of her former employers, the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and will have to pay the firm's costs related to the affair (archived). At trial her allegations of discrimination were determined to be unfounded and she was ordered to pay the firm's legal fees. Even though she had advanced her career at the firm to the point she was elevated to partner at the firm, she still alleged that systemic gender discrimination had limited her potential to advance her career. Pao was determined to appeal the ruling during her short tenure as CEO of the social media outlet Reddit where she advanced a censorship agenda which involved shuttering communities that celebrate healthy lifestyle choices and suppression of accurate legal analysis of her case. Near the end of her reign there was further a large rebellion of unpaid moderation staff as she cut a number of resources once available to support them. Pao's post Kleiner legacy as a business leader raises serious questions about the managerial competence at any firm that would elevate Ellen Pao to partner.
MIT Sacrifices Rag in XTCoin Push
Since the original XTCoin fork of Bitcoin was announced MIT's Technology Review has been the solitary media outlet of note lending its complete and unreserved support to XTCoin's social media propaganda war. MIT's rag has effectively sacrificed whatever reputation it may have still had as it attempts to force a narrative that frames Gavin Andressen and Mike Hearn's efforts as an attempt to somehow save Bitcoin. The once storied Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, which has taken money from the United States Military to research Bitcoin prices and rescued Gavin Andressen from poverty when the Vessenes' Foundation collapsed is now set on burning the last of its credibility in an attack on Bitcoin.
XT Node Blacklists Fail to Prevent DDoS Attack
Mike Hearn and Gavin Andressen recently chose to use the Bitcoin-XT project to attempt to provoke a hard fork in the blockchain to increase the block size limit. Users who support Gavin's code to hard fork the network to increase the block size, began switching to, and launching Bitcoin-XT nodes. After Mike Hearn's declaration of war, the number of XT-Nodes on the network began to increase. However Mike Hearn began seeing a pattern of nodes getting attacked by heavy DDoS attacks. Continue reading
BIP-101 Syndicate Shares Fiat Ties, Opposition to Actual Bitcoin
Upon a Crunchbase investigation of the companies attached to the open letter (text) published on Blockchain.info's blog supporting BIP-101, a correlation arose that indicates these companies have most likely been compromised for some time. All of these companies who have been known to employ heavy KYC terms, are heavily funded by fiat institutions that want to pervert Bitcoin. Continue reading