Cliven Bundy, who lacks a prior criminal record, was denied his 8th amendment constitutional right to make bail for reasonable pretrial release by United States Court judge Janice Stewart. Hope for constitutional justice which has long been endangered in the United States might have finally died under uncertain circumstances with its last strong champion this past weekend.

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Police in the Netherlands arrested 10 men for moving their own money around, a phenomenon which is unfortunately still prosecuted as money laundering by the morally bankrupt (archived). Police allege the financial activities of these men are connected to other men who are actively involved in marketing drugs, the drug sellers remain "under investigation" instead of being arrested. According to "press" agents who were invited to accompany "law enforcement" agents the men were caught because they deposited money to their bank accounts and swiftly withdrew their money using ATMs. This is a peculiar fact to present as critical to the case as it presents as abnormal minimizing the amount of time cash stays in the bank, a sane course of action when the struggles of fiat institutions make bail ins, negative interest rates, and all kinds of other evils a danger for money left in the custody of a bank.

Stock markets in the United States closed out their worst initial 5 day performance in history to open 2016 (archived). The Dow Jones Industrial average after going up 137 points to recover some losses from earlier in the week closed down 167. The collapsing price of US stocks follows China's extreme measures,  oil struggling to stay above 30 United States dollars a barrel, and a year in which a 5% loss in value made lead the highest performing metal of the year. It appears the stock market Ponzi is beginning to deflate following bouts of pronounced pain last year, and further suggests diminishing actual economic activity in these fiat markets. For what it's worth the publicly reported prices of Bitcoin at various fiat/Bitcoin interfaces is up marginally this week over the end of 2015.