Reports have emerged today that the United States regional governments of Illinois (archived) and Pennsylvania (archived) have had their credit ratings lowered joining the embattled municipality of Ferguson as the creditworthiness of the United States and its parts continue sliding due to the structural insolvency of the fiat currency experiment. Illinois was downgraded by Fitch Ratings while Pennsylvania was downgraded by Moody's. Illinois already lead the United States with the lowest credit rating of any State government, and is embroiled in a budgetary dispute between new Governor Bruce Rauner and the legislature run by the opposing political party. The financial situation in Illinois has degraded to the point the self funding state lottery can no longer pay out winning tickets about $600 with ongoing labor unrest including a teacher's strike in East Saint Louis threatening to destabilize some of Illinois most volatile areas. Pennsylvania by contrast was downgraded due to ongoing structural deficits and underfunded pension obligations.
Category Archives: Banks
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.
Twitter Continues Flirtation With Politicians
After gifting politicians with an embargo against following their retractions, Twitter yesterday announced a further gift for politicians which begins with those running for office in the United States. In a blog post today (archived) that could not be contained within their otherwise customary 140 character limit, Twitter announced they would be unveiling "cash tags" facilitating donations to politicians named in a $cashtag through an arrangement with Jack Dorsey's social payments startup Square. 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
British 'Cultural' Capital Controls Interfere With Commerce
CNN reports that government of the United Kingdom is forbidding a buyer who paid 146,500 pounds formerly known as sterling for a watercolor painting from taking it to his home (archived) outside of Britain. According to the Kingdom's government it hopes that the ban will encourage the buyer, who purchased the piece as the highest bidder at Christie's auction house would make the decision to sell the painting on to a buyer intending to keep the watercolor in the United Kingdom. This is in spite of the fact that no such buyer for the artwork was interested in outbidding the actual purchaser in an auction. The export ban was put into place by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. Continue reading
Scottish Bank, Police & Court Harass Bitcoin Trader, Conspire To Steal His Cash
The Herald Scotland reports (archive) that a bitcoin trader recently had £5,500 seized by Scottish police under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 after his bank closed his account and requested he attend the branch to collect his cash. Having collected his cash as requested, Max Flores left the bank branch only to be greeted by police who absconded with the money despite not placing him under arrest. This act of theft was further supported by a court which allowed the thieves to keep Flores' cash for a period of three months while an investigation was carried out to established whether or not Flores was involved in money laundering. Continue reading
Cecil the Lion is a Pretext for Expanding Extraterritoriality of US Law
Recent social media uproar over a dentist's alleged killing of an African Lion referred to by persons as Cecil, in honor of Cecil Rhodes. Cecil was killed outside of the sanctuary within which his typical range was in Zimbabwe, a country which was also once named for Cecil Rhodes. The story was picked up by the social media outrage machine and amplified by mainstream media organs. Continue reading
Coin.mx Operators Arrested For Violating Anti Money Laundering Laws
Anthony Murgio and Yuri Lebedev operators of the Bitcoin/Fiat exchange Coin.mx were arrested by the FBI at their Florida homes last week and charges in the Southern District of New York by Preet Bharara's office were unsealed against them this week. The Feds accuse Coin.mx of trading roughly 1.8 million dollars worth of Bitcoin and Fiat using the pretext of a memorabilia collector's club to conceal their actual activities from their banks and later acquiring control of a small credit union for greater autonomy. Continue reading