While Bitcoin and its ilk have recovered from their selloff on Friday — thanks in part to Coincheck’s assurances over the weekend that customers would be partially reimbursed — market observers say concerns over security lapses […]
Monday, January 29th, 2018
Marianne Lavelle , David Hasemyer, - Inside Climate News
Stephan: The level of corruption and willful ignorance in the American congress is so grotesque it has taken on a Dickensian quality. Here's an example of what I mean.
Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith
FREDERICKSBURG, Texas—It’s midway through fall, and cold has yet to settle over the Eckhardt family orchard. So, Diane Eckhardt waits with rising apprehension.
Cold is the switch that triggers the growing sequence that by summer has limbs sagging with ripe, juicy peaches. The reliable chill season in Texas Hill Country allowed Eckhardt’s grandfather, Otto, to start the family business here in the 1930s.
But last year, with temperatures the warmest since 1939, Eckhardt’s trees produced just 10 percent of their usual yield. And the year before, warm weather reduced production between 60 and 70 percent. Now, Eckhardt worries not only about the next crop, but about the future of a business she hopes will be passed on to her niece and nephews.
“We know climate change is happening,” she said.
But while the Eckhardts face that certainty, their congressman sows uncertainty, casting doubt on the consensus science that greenhouse gases are the dominant cause of rising global temperatures, and opposing government action to curb them.
Sixteen-term Republican Lamar Smith has used […]
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Sunday, January 28th, 2018
Umair Haque, - Eudaimonia & Co
Stephan: I am beginning to see more and more stories in this vein and, even more alarming, SR readers in other countries are beginning to send such stories to me. It is my view that there has been an almost complete disconnect between the stock market NASDAQ, and other traditional benchmarks for national health, and the actual situation being lived by ordinary Americans.
Community gathering after school shooting
You might say, having read some of my recent essays, “Umair! Don’t worry! Everything will be fine! It’s not that bad!” I would look at you politely, and then say gently, “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re taking collapse nearly seriously enough.”
Why? When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I’ve never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever “numbers” we use to represent decline — shrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on —we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the “human toll”, but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety […]
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Sunday, January 28th, 2018
ANDREW D. HWANG, - Money/Associated Press
Stephan: The Davos conference has made me think more than usual about the wealth inequity that is plaguing the world and, particularly, America. As I read the social outcome data it seems clear that capitalism with profit as the only social priority ultimately implodes. And, with the Nordic countries and a couple of others excepted this is the process we are living through. Part of the reason I think this is tolerated is that people really don't see the differential in life styles. Here's one take on the scale.
The world’s wealthiest are prospering. As of February 2017, there were about 2,000 billionaires in the world. This micro-elite controls over US$7.6 trillion, an increase of 18 percent from 2016.
A billionaire’s spending power is difficult to grasp, both because most people do not correctly intuit large numbers, and because a billion dollars far outstrips most people’s experience.
What does a household budget look like to a billionaire? To find out, let’s scale down a billionaire’s income to $50,000, the median American income, adjusting budget items proportionally.
A year in the life of Joe Billionaire
To start, we need to estimate a billionaire’s annual income.
In the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, Bill and Melinda Gates amassed about $120 billion. This figure represents $80 billion in net worth and $40 billion controlled by their charitable foundation. The Gates’ average annual income for these years is $120 billion divided by 30, or $4 billion. (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a strategic partner of The Conversation US and provides funding for The Conversation internationally.)
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At 2:57 a.m. on Friday morning in Tokyo, someone hacked into the digital wallet of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange 
