Free Republic

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

The Internal Revenue Service’s watchdog warned taxpayers Thursday about a sophisticated nationwide phone scheme that it said is “the largest scam of its kind” it has seen. The scheme involves callers claiming to represent the IRS and demanding immediate payments with a prepaid debit card or wire transfer, the watchdog said. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George said that “thousands of victims” have paid more than $1 million to fraudsters and that his agency has received more than 20,000 reports of contact.

Shares of Australian investment firm Macro Energy gained 42% yesterday, after news emerged that it plans to enter the bitcoin space and raise A$9.1m ($8.2m) in funding.

U.S. and Japanese regulators are investigating the collapse of the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoins, the virtual currency that has grown in popularity among technophiles for buying products and services online. The separate investigations were launched Wednesday as supporters of the virtual currency insisted that the shutdown of Mt. Gox was only a temporary setback for the novel monetary system. The failure of the Tokyo exchange, which may have included the theft of almost 750,000 bitcoins worth more than $300 million, was seen by critics as derailing prospects for the virtual currency. But several high-profile bitcoin investors came forward...

Aretha Holland-Jackson, 45, admitted in federal court that she used her access to the Department of Human Services’ computer system to set up public assistance for nearly two dozen phony beneficiaries. Using fake names and Social Security numbers, Holland-Jackson obtained government ID cards that she and others used to withdraw food stamps, cash and other public benefits from ATMs, according to prosecutors. Allison Holland, Holland-Jackson’s 47-year-old sister, also admitted involvement in the scheme. Prosecutors said Holland, of Cheltenham, used three of the fake cards, then saved cash for her sister in a shoebox.

Enough people were upset with my previous post claiming that Mt. Gox is suffering a bitcoin bank run because it is holding only a fractional bitcoin reserve that it caused me to think twice about the claim.I could have been wrong, but I doubt it.Actually, the backlash was strong enough that it made me think that perhaps I was using some common terms in strange ways. I referred to Mt. Gox as a bank, which is a stretch by some definitions, but it definitely stores bitcoin for clients and as such, acts as a custodian.Maybe it was the term “bank...

WASHINGTON -- The baffling Bitcoin boom is either an exercise in self-delusion -- a high-tech Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down -- or an imaginative new Internet technology that will ultimately change how millions of people around the world conduct everyday business. There is little middle ground. Called a "digital currency," Bitcoin originated in early 2009 with a software program written by Satoshi Nakamoto. Who is Nakamoto? Good question. It's a pseudonym, and we don't know who's behind it -- whether man or woman; individual or group; American, Japanese, Russian or some other nationality. But what seems clear is...

You’ve all heard about Bitcoin. No one knows who created it, although some writers have made very educated guesses about the identity of the pseudonymous creator. I have sometimes wondered whether Bitcoin is the product of some transnational criminal organization or rogue state that wants to undermine developed economies by casting their payment systems into doubt. I am less concerned with Bitcoin’s origin than with its flaws. I shall enumerate those flaws forthwith. Bitcoin enables fraud and other criminal activities. This is absolutely the single most salient feature of Bitcoin’s anonymity. Conventional currencies are indeed subject to laundering and counterfeit....

Bitcoin is the name of a group of peer-to-peer payment networks that serve as an open-source form of digital currency that was originally introduced in 2009 by a software developer with the alias of 'Satoshi Nakamoto." Bitcoin currency is created as rewards to "miners" for providing the computing power to solve difficult math problems to maintain the "blockchain" of internet transactions in the currency. Unlike online credit cards and PayPal systems that allow buyers to claim their money back, bitcoin permanently transfers value. The bitcoin cyber-economy compassed of merchants, users, service providers, and startup enterprises has flourished for the past...

On the flat lava plain of Reykjanesbaer, Iceland, near the Arctic Circle, you can find the mines of Bitcoin. To get there, you pass through a fortified gate and enter a featureless yellow building. After checking in with a guard behind bulletproof glass, you face four more security checkpoints, including a so-called man trap that allows passage only after the door behind you has shut. This brings you to the center of the operation, a fluorescent-lit room with more than 100 whirring silver computers, each in a locked cabinet and each cooled by blasts of Arctic air shot up from...

Overstock.com – the American internet retailer with over a billion dollars per year in sales – will accept Bitcoin starting in 2014. As Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne told the Financial Times: I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn’t an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can’t control. If there’s going to be some part of the population which adopts it… I think that we’ll get that business. And the people who switch to it will respect that we started adopting it. Europe...

China’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, BTCChina, has stopped accepting deposits in Chinese yuan. The shutdown has sent the currency into a downward spin, stripping it of half its value overnight. It is trading at $572 on Mt.Gox, down from a high of about $1,200 last week.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is holding the first congressional hearing on the future of Bitcoin. The first panel features senior figures from the Obama administration. And their comments about Bitcoin have been remarkably positive.

Lauren Zanardelli and Graham Foster are the kind of customers the government needs to make Obamacare work. The chefs own and operate a bright orange hipster magnet called the Neue Southern Food Truck. The farm-to-table vehicle stands out in Greenville, South Carolina, even among the new gastropubs that dot the city's charming Main Street. Today Zanardelli and Foster are zooming around their rented kitchen on the edge of town, preparing deep-fried Brussels sprouts, Ramen with seaweed and pumpkin sweet rolls. They won't have time after their 12-hour work day to explore the new health insurance marketplaces that opened this morning,...

CBS Anchor: 'We Are Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again' "Our house is on fire." Daniel Halper May 11, 2013 12:09 PM CBS anchor Scott Pelley said at a speech at Quinnipiac University that journalists "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again." "Our house is on fire," said Pelley. The video of Pelley's speech is courtesy of nowthisnews.com. "These have been a bad few months for journalism," he added. "We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again." The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. "Let me take the first arrow:...

Why is the global economy in so much trouble? How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash? Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail. In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts. So you could take every single penny out of the banks, multiply...

Hundreds of LIRR employees have allegedly exploited the overlap between the LIRR pension and the RRB disability program by pre-planning the date on which they would falsely declare themselves disabled so that it would coincide with their projected retirement date.These false statements, made under oath in disability applications, allowed LIRR employees to retire as early as age 50 with an LIRR pension, supplemented by the fraudulently obtained RRB disability annuity. From 1995 through 2011, more than 75 percent of LIRR employees stopped working and began receiving RRB disability benefits.

The first message to supporters from President Barack Obama‘s campaign following Mitt Romney’s announcement of Paul Ryan as his running mate was tepid at best. Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, framed Ryan as a purveyor of “failed policies“ who would ”slash the investments we need” in the economy. The Obama team attacked the Wisconsin congressman and House Budget Committee chairman as “radical” and “extreme” by quoting the New York Times. The campaign then asked supporters to stand with the president “at another major moment” and solicited donations:

EVEN IN THE DAKOTA, the storied apartment building on New York’s Upper West Side, home to such cultural icons as Yoko Ono and Lauren Bacall, Buddy Fletcher stood out. African American, fantastically accomplished, and wealthy, Fletcher had grown up in modest circumstances, gone to Harvard, and graduated as “first marshal” of his class in 1987. From there he hit Wall Street, earned millions before he turned 25, and started his own firm, Fletcher Asset Management. By the time he was 30, the company was operating as a hedge fund and boasting of triple-digit returns. Fletcher made multimillion-dollar donations to Harvard,...