Sunday, March 10, 2013

Bitcoin


I'm getting sick watching bitcoon rise and rise. Up past $40 today, and I don't see any selling pressure just yet. People are buying them to hoarde, and the price could easily rise to several hundred dollars before crashing again.

I still suspect some technical weakness will eventually be found in the bitcoin system. You have to remember the originators of bitcoin are unknown, and their only control over the cryptocurrency is an emergency alert system secured by a private key. If anything does go wrong with the system, or even if bitcoin fluctuates too wildly, an alternative might be found (I don't think litecoin is a worthwhile alternative, being much the same as bitcoin).




Rallies in gold last about 6 months before they play themselves out, see this 10 year chart for instance, you see the same thing over and over, 6 months up, then it levels off. The 6 months has to do with new, dumb money coming into the market.



You can maybe make out a 6 month pattern with the first bitcoin bubble, this current one is much larger and faster of course, but then the usage of bitcoin is larger (though as far as I can tell no where near enough to justify the price). Without a central bank, or any prices, assets or liabilities denominated in BTC, there is absolutely nothing to control the exchange rate besides peoples reluctance to sell at a low price.

Some things I'd like to know, but don't:
How much BTC is generated per day
How much BTC is saved per day
How much BTC is traded per day
How much BTC is lost per day (through lost wallet.dat files)

Don't be surprised if more and more people come into the market, and the price keeps increasing. This just feels like the makings of a bubble, though everyone I've talked to so far decries it as too complicated and are smart enough to realise that there's no good reason for the increase in prices.

And no, I have no bitcoin, I'm staying out of this.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Advancements in Science

The major drivers of economic progress are technological advancements. Booms have often been associated with the periods following an exciting new technology - the South Sea Bubble, the dotcom Boom, the long Nuclear and Space Age boom following on from World War 2, etc. On the other hand once technology matures growth and employment always slow.

Technology in the world today is generally taken to refer to computers, electronic whizzbangs that glow and look shiny and do all sorts of cool things. People have hopes for real technological advancement outside of that, but the sort of insanely awesome visions of the future people had in the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s just don't exist any more. That is a mistake.

The first two technologies are energy based. Consider the Nickel-Hydrogen Fusion Technology currently under development by multiple laboratories:

"If Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, is correct, the future of energy may lie in a nuclear reactor small enough and safe enough to be installed where the home water heater once sat. Using weak nuclear forces that turn nickel and hydrogen into a new source of atomic energy, the process offers a light, portable means of producing tremendous amounts of energy for the amount of fuel used. It could conceivably power homes, revolutionize transportation and even clean the environment."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/22/0219216/nasas-basement-nuclear-reactor

The article postulates a home reactor, but that is not really economically feasible in my opinion. People have been predicting home based energy production for a long time, the reality is that capital outlay is too high, distribution costs too low and most people aren't technically minded enough for this to be a competitive solution.

Before you dismiss this technology as speculative, consider the following:
Robert Duncan, Vice Chancellor for Research University of Missouri:
"There have been great advances in this discipline over the last five years by research labs and private institutions around the world, and this work will be explored at ICCF-18. The Naval Research Lab (NRL), and many other excellent laboratories have confirmed that the excess heat effects reported by Fleischmann and Pons are real, and roughly one thousand times larger than can be attributed to a chemical process."
 http://iccf18.research.missouri.edu/welcome.php
Dennis Bushnell, NASA:
"The current situation is that we now have over two decades of hundreds of experiments worldwide indicating heat and transmutations with minimal radiation and low energy input. By any rational measure, this evidence indicates something real is occurring. So, is LENR "Real?" Evidently, from the now long standing and diverse experimental evidence. And, yes - with effects occurring from using diverse materials, methods of energy addition etc. This is far from a "Narrow Band" set of physical phenomena. " 
 http://futureinnovation.larc.nasa.go...reactions.html

Sergio Martellucci, President of the Italian National Agency For Energy (ENEA):
"In other words, two government programs – carried out in close interaction and with check of results – have proved the existence of this phenomenon in terms that are not ascribable to a chemical process."
 http://old.enea.it/produzione_scient...oldFusion.html

Another interesting new technology is thorium based fission. This is a technology that substitutes thorium metal in place of the traditional uranium metal in a nuclear reactor. Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful than uranium, and is found in a wider variety of locations. Consider the following:

"The Energy From Thorium blog reports, 'The People's Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology. It was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences annual conference on Tuesday, January 25.' The liquid-fluoride thorium reactor is an alternative reactor design that 1) burns existing nuclear waste, 2) uses abundant thorium as a base fuel, 3) produces far less toxic, shorter-lived waste than existing designs, and 4) can be mass produced, run unattended for years, and installed underground for safety."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/047232/china-starts-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-project

The idea of using Thorium as a nuclear fuel is quite old, and it was in fact used in several "pebble bed" reactors, at least two of which generated electricity, one in Germany and one Colorado, however they both had problems and were closed as uneconomic. It appears that the new technology of Thorium reactor will probably run on the molten fluoride salt of Thorium, using a liquid nuclear fuel as opposed to a solid might improve safety, though only time will tell.

Its worth noting that fuel cost is only a small proportion of the cost of generating nuclear electricity. It equates to 0.68 cents / kWh out of a 2.19 cents / kWh total, according to the US nuclear industry lobby group Nuclear Energy Institute (and these costs are probably understated as a result of indirect subsidies like centralised waste disposal and loan guarantees).

Nonetheless, the ability to produce electricity in the volumes it would be needed at, at any reasonable cost, in the absence of fossil fuels such as coal and oil might be vitally important to a future economy.

The final new technology I would detail is far more speculative, though this research all comes from the most reputable of sources:
ESA Announces Gravity-Modification Breakthrough

The European Space Agency announced the results of an experimental test in which a superconductor rotating at 6,500 rpm is shown to gain acceleration as the result of what is believed to be a gravity-modification effect.

...
Dr. Clive Woods of Iowa State University addressed the issue of gravitational-coupling in superconductors in a recent publication entitled "High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Optics". His research revisits earlier calculations by Li & Torr showing that gravitational waves inside a Type-II superconductor propogate with a phase-velocity 300 times slower than in free-space, and leading to the hypothesis that a superconductor may require focusing in order to correctly absorb & re-radiate gravitational waves. This notion may explain in part at least some of the difficulty found in obtaining consistent experimental results, as illustrated by the experimental failure of Dr. Raymond Chiao's "gravity-radio" experiment in 2003.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb364473.htm

This technology is fascinating, and although obviously of no practical use now, might someday replace expensive and unreliable rocket engines for space transport (the majority of the cost of space flight is related to the issue of propulsion, not only fuel, which is typically less than 1%, but also surprisingly complex rocket motors, light weight materials, and the shielding needed to protect a ship during a fast descent through the atmosphere).

With new technologies such as these developed to open up new frontiers as well as to lower costs of living at home, there is good reason to be cheerful about the future. We need optimism and caution more than anything.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Unemployment in Europe

I was playing around with the excellent Google Public Data Explorer, which graphs data from Eurostat:



Unemployment in Greece and Spain is up to 25%. In Ireland unemployment has reached 15%, the same as during the 1980s, and just like then it is been held in check by emigration. I guess Greeks and Spaniards aren't emigrating, the Greeks I can understand, no one speaks Greece, but the Spanish have the white countries of Latin America to move to. For comparison, 25% is about the unemployment rate in Germany and the USA during the Great Depression. Not good stuff, don't be surprised if we see major upsets in the future in those two countries. At the very least faith in the European project and the bona fides of Greater Germany as a force for good has been destroyed.




Wednesday, February 6, 2013

New Bailout Drama in Ireland


THE DÁIL is to sit late tonight to deal with emergency legislation to liquidate the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation – transferring its assets to the National Asset Management Agency.

The government’s chief whip Paul Kehoe told TheJournal.ie that the Dáil would convene at “10 or 10:30pm” to debate the legislation, which forms part of moves to conclude a deal with the European Central Bank that would replace IBRC’s promissory notes with long-term government bonds.

TDs voted this evening to extend the working today, reconvening at 10:30pm with a vote on the legislation – the IBRC Resolution Bill 2013 – at around 12:40am.

The Seanad will then debate the legislation overnight, with President Higgins interrupting a trip to Italy to be available to sign any legislation.

Staff at IBRC were told this evening that the bank would be going into liquidation under the control of KPMG, while its chairman Alan Dukes said the board had been stood down with figures from KPMG now in direct control of the institution.
http://www.thejournal.ie/ibrc-emergency-legislation-dail-785250-Feb2013/


Our treasonous government is hard at work tonight, turning "promissory notes" we cannot pay into sovereign debt we cannot pay. This can only lead to the sovereign default of this country.


I can't say anything. There isn't really much you can
do when your country is led by men determined to do the bidding of someone else. This is good for the banks, good for the insiders, and bad for the ordinary people, just like everything our politicians have done.


As we can make out, what's happening is that Anglo/IBRC is being merged with NAMA (there is nothing in IBRC to "liquidate", although KPMG will be sure enrich themselves on fees anyway), that part of the bailout debt formerly covered by "promissory notes" payable to the Irish Central Bank will now be Sovereign Debt owed directly to the ECB, and the Minister for Finance is getting some sort of legal power to arbitrate ownership of leveraged assets and debt.
All of which is good from the perspective of continuing the bailout, but bad from the perspective of getting Ireland back as a legitimate, solvent country again. You need to remember, the current government was elected on a pro-free market, anti-bailout platform in 2011. The turned around on that issue, and it was clear to us all that they had betrayed their voters within the first month of their gaining power.

Its weird how people laughed at me when I said in 2009 that Ireland would default. The point at which Ireland's debt became unpayable was shortly before the IMF bailout in late 2010.

It won't be so bad, going through European style sovereign default,
just look to Greece for how things go. It looks like the plan is now to make Ireland Greek. At least most people get fed, most medical services run most of the time. At least its much better than the Latin American style default, like Argentina in 2001.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Asset Forefeiture vs Jailtime

This is something I wrote for facebook about the controversy over the death of US Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi. Copy and paste for archival.
America is strange when it comes to casualties. You can't run a global empire without losing a few people, the British lost several every day back when they ruled the world.

I understand losing Ambassadors is a big deal, and this one was a senior member of the shadowy intelligence world, but you just gotta take your losses and move on.

British Ambassadors were a target of the IRA for a while, they potted the Dutch ambassador in 1976, and the Irish one in 1979. When it became clear that the Brits didn't care, the IRA switched emphasis to aristocrats, bombing Mountbatten's boat later on in 1979, but again the British didn't care. Not even blowing up the Tory party conference made any difference.

It was only in the 90s that IRA switched targets to destroying stuff, for instance the Financial District of London, with lots of telephone warnings to minimise casualties. That's the only way to get through to people, destroy their stuff, they care way more about their stuff than they do about themselves.

Some people may be skeptical about the last point, but its worth noting that no amount of jail time could break up the Italian Mafia in the United States, it was only when the RICO statutes of c. 1970 introduced civil asset forefeiture that the Mob decided to legitimise itself, somewhat.

Also it was only when the United States began to make a move on the property and lands of the Mormon church in Utah, seizing them in accordance with the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act, that the Church banned polygamy (the 1890 Manifesto).

People get romantic when they think of jailtime, they get pragmatic when they think of losing their houses and cars. Its better to go for the stuff.

As a footnote, longer jail sentences are sometimes unsuccessful in preventing crime, as Rockefeller found out after introducing incredibly draconian minimum sentences for various drug crimes while Governor of New York (the 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws). Drug crime just grew and grew, and the jails filled up.