THE PM CHRONICLE

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Broken Heart Syndrome Really Does Exist

Broken Heart Syndrome Really Does Exist
December 20, 2013 11:26 PM

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — How many times have you heard someone say they’re so sad about something that they have a broken heart? More often than not, they don’t really have a broken heart but it can actually happen. Broken heart syndrome is a serious medical condition caused by sadness.

When Janet Ghise’s 14-year-old dog, Maggie died unexpectedly at a kennel while she was on vacation, she was devastated.

“She was just the nicest dog,” said Ghise.

So upset, she nearly died of a broken heart.

“I said to my husband, ‘I’m going to the doctor’s, to the cardiologist, to see if he can fix my broken heart.’ It’s exactly what I said,” Ghise said.

Luckily, she just happened to have a doctor’s appointment a few days later.

“To tell you the truth, I was really short of breath, but I didn’t put any weight on it. I thought, well, this is because I’m upset,” she said.

“She walked into the office, and she just did not look well,” said Dr. Jeffrey Friedel, a cardiologist. “She was very pale; she was breaking out in a cold sweat. She was short of breath, and she was complaining of a lot of chest pressure.”

He sent her to the hospital where a heart cath showed the problem, an actual illness called broken heart syndrome.

“The heart becomes severely weakened in a very characteristic shape, and it’s usually in response to an intensely stressful event,” said Dr. Friedel. “They can be in heart failure, they can be in shock; and in the worst case scenario, they can present in full cardiac arrest.”

The symptoms, EKG, and blood tests can be just like a heart attack. But it’s not.

“With broken heart syndrome, there’s no blockage to explain this extent of heart damage,” Dr. Friedel said.

It’s seen after the death of a loved one, after an argument, after extreme emotional turmoil.

“There’s this intense surge of stress hormones that basically damage the heart,” Dr. Friedel said.

What clinches the diagnosis is a distinctive appearance on the cath, a stagnant bulge in the lower part of the heart.

“There’s a whole section of the heart that has essentially ballooned outward and is not moving,” said Dr. Friedel. “And that’s clearly abnormal.”

It’s generally an unexpected diagnosis. Dr. Friedel sees fewer than 10 cases a year. It’s more common in women.

“Usually, we’re expecting to find a blockage that we can fix, and get the heart to recover. So, yeah, it’s always a surprise,” he said. “Ten, 20 years ago, we never diagnosed it, we just didn’t know about it.”

Broken heart syndrome can be treated with medicines to strengthen pumping, lower the blood pressure, and slow the pulse. The vast majority of patients do well.

“The heart was healing, and it’s almost back to normal function,” said Ghise. “I’m feeling good.”

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Friday, December 20, 2013

NDAA 2014 being fast-tracked through congress

NDAA 2014 being fast-tracked through congress
Posted on December 19, 2013 by Cathleen

Examiner – by Lori Stacey

The 2014 version of the National Defense Authorization Act is said to be going through congress with lightning speed. With all the controversy surrounding the dangerous provisions approved under the last 2 versions, it is no wonder that congress is attempting to fast-track this latest bill before the American people catch wind of it.

For those that recall, it was the NDAA bill for 2012 that first codified into “law” the dangerous provisions for indefinite detention without trial or even a lawyer for any person even suspected of being some type of threat to the US government. It also stipulated that members of our military could be used against its citizens in facilitating such arrests and that the accused could be held in military or foreign prisons off of our shores. It also went a step further and granted tremendously dangerous authority to a President of the United States to “legally” assassinate such individuals merely accused of supposedly being a threat to the US.

A recent article published by the New American has sounded the alarm that the 2014 version of the NDAA is currently being pushed through congress in time for a final vote before the end of the year with barely any time left for the American people to voice objections.

Section 1071 of this bill is an even further expansion of dangerous provisions. It is like a dreadful merging of NSA-acquired spying documentation fused together with the indefinite detention provisions of the Department of Defense. It authorizes a bettersharing of all the illegally obtained and cataloged NSA data into a new center called the “Conflict Records Research Center”. This data referred to as “captured records” can be anything from phone records, emails, browsing history or even posts on social media sites.

This time around, one thing is for certain, no member of congress should be allowed to get away with claiming ignorance of the dangerous provisions included in this bill. The American people are much more aware of the NDAA’s provisions than they were originally, approximately 2 years ago. Members of congress voting in favor of this bill under any circumstances without the elimination of section 1071 and all other sections that virtually shred our Bill of Rights should serve as a litmus test for the 2014 elections.

No exceptions, no more excuses.

http://www.examiner.com/article/ndaa-2014-being-fast-tracked-through-congress

New Link Added to PM Resources: Aviation Herald

New Link Added:

http://avherald.com/

This website reports on daily commercial aviation incidents and accidents.

New Link Added to PM Resources: RAD JOURNAL

New Link Added:
http://www.radjournal.com

This website reports on harmful radiation sources.

Oliver North predicts Russians will kill Snowden: ‘He’s a dead man walking’

Oliver North predicts Russians will kill Snowden: ‘He’s a dead man walking’

Matt Labo
bizpacreview.com
November 10, 2013

Ever the crack military analyst, Lt. Col. Oliver North predicted that the Russians will kill famed National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and pin the murder on the United States.

Oliver North

“Edward Snowden is in the hands of the Russian intelligence services. Everyone he meets every day with is a Russian intelligence agent,” North said Tuesday on the Fox News show, “Markets Now.” “They’re all asking the questions: ‘How do the Americans do this? Can we do this? How do we protect ourselves from what you’re doing? How do we penetrate things like the American data system for, let’s say, the Affordable Care Act?’ And at the end of the day, what will happen is the Russians will kill Edward Snowden. And we will be blamed for it.”

Edward Snowden, seen during a video interview with The Guardian.

Edward Snowden, seen during a video interview with The Guardian.

Edward Snowden

Given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s momentum in the Middle East and the tenuous relationship between the Obama administration and the Russians, prospects don’t look good, for Snowden or America. Snowden’s death would benefit Russia, North said. He also offered this advice to Secretary of State John Kerry:

“And the reason they’ll kill him is because they don’t want us to know how much he gave away. This is a very, very serious problem. And what Mr. Kerry really ought to be doing is traveling to Moscow to see if he can convince Edward Snowden’s dad to get the kid back home to face the music because the Russians will kill him.”

When asked about Obama’s handling of intelligence matters and the NSA scandal, North said the president hasn’t done his job well in either case.

“I don’t think this president has handled anything in regards to national security in this country well.”

© 2013 PrisonPlanet.com is a Free Speech Systems, LLC company. All rights reserved. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice.

Government Using NSA to Change Amount in Bank Accounts, Warns Panel

Government Using NSA to Change Amount in Bank Accounts, Warns Panel

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 19, 2013

A White House review panel report into the activities of the NSA suggested that the government was using the spy agency to launch cyber attacks against financial institutions and change the amounts held in bank accounts.

Image: ATM Customers (YouTube).

The 300 page report prepared for President Barack Obama by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology called for the NSA to be stripped of its power to obtain bulk collections of telephone records.

Page 221 of the panel’s report states;

(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;

(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.

Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier Foundation responded to the report by suggesting that the NSA was targeting major financial institutions.

In the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations it was confirmed that, “The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions,” under the auspices of an international branch called Follow the Money (FTM), and that the spy agency has full access to the VISA and SWIFT payment systems.

“Top financial experts say that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using information gained from spying to profit from this inside information. And the NSA wants to ramp up its spying on Wall Street … to “protect” it. “Whose money, exactly, is the NSA “protecting” … and how are they protecting it?” asks Washington’s Blog, “What about the money of people that the U.S. government considers undesirables?”

The government’s ability to use the NSA to directly amend bank accounts increases the risk of Americans being subjected to a Cyprus-style “bail-in” where a tax on savings deposits is directly levied in the name of austerity.

Earlier this year, Chase Bank customers attempted to withdraw their cash from ATMs only to be shocked at seeing their balance reduced to zero by a mystery system “glitch”. Was this in any way connected to the NSA’s activities?

With banks increasingly moving towards capital controls in a bid to stave off the risk of a sudden flight from the US dollar, the prospect of the US government relying on cyber attacks launched by the NSA to manipulate financial markets and bank accounts remains a genuine possibility.

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*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

© 2013 Infowars.com is a Free Speech Systems, LLC company. All rights reserved. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice.

Phony copyright claims exploit holes in U.S. Internet law

Columbus, Ohio • Dec 20, 2013 • 51° Overcast
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Glenn Garvin commentary: Phony copyright claims exploit holes in U.S. Internet law

Ecuador, having bargained away virtually all its oil production to China in return for low-interest loans to finance President Rafael Correa’s spendthrift populism, is in dire need of a new export. And the president seems to have found one: tyrannical censorship of his critics.

Correa’s increasingly novel inventions for suppressing free speech in his own country are doubtless the subject of much envious chatter whenever Iran, North Korea and the rest of the fellows get together for meetings of Despots R Us. His latest wrinkle: a proposed law that would criminalize wisecracks on Facebook, enforced by placing video cameras in every cybercafe in Ecuador.

But now Correa has gone international. He’s using phony copyright claims to force American companies such as YouTube and Google to remove videos and documents that criticize his government.

Rafael Correa

Last month, more than 140 videos posted by Chevron abruptly vanished from YouTube, replaced by notices that said they were yanked due to copyright-infringement claims by a Spanish video-distribution company called Filmin.

Filmin didn’t specify what copyrights it owns on the videos for the excellent reason that it doesn’t have any. Nearly all of them were outtakes from a film called Crude, a documentary about an Ecuadorian lawsuit against Chevron over oil-drilling pollution.

Chevron’s attorneys won the legal right to view and disseminate the outtakes, which show various sleazy acts of behind-the-scenes collaboration between the plaintiffs, the Ecuadorian government and the supposedly neutral judicial authorities hearing the case.

But YouTube, like many Internet companies, doesn’t want to get dragged into a potentially expensive and time-consuming lawsuit over somebody else’s copyrights. So it simply took down Chevron’s videos without investigating Filmin’s claim.

What was Filmin’s motive? Adam Steinbaugh, a law-school graduate who writes an excellent blog about law and technology, discovered that Filmin is linked with another Spanish company called Ares Rights that frequently acts as a hired gun for Ecuador, filing numerous copyright complaints, ranging from dubious to absurd, against critics of Correa’s government.

Using a U.S. law known as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Ares has claimed it owns everything from a mock wanted poster for the father of a Correa cabinet member accused of raping a child to a left-wing documentary criticizing the government for granting mining concessions to foreign companies.

(We pause here for a government-mandated warning that too much irony may be bad for your blood. Irony No. 1: Among the many documents Ecuador has tried to get kicked off the Internet is a series of reports from the country’s intelligence agency about its spying on, yes, the Internet. Which leads us to Irony No. 2: WikiLeaker-in-Chief Julian Assange is holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, seeking political asylum for leaking U.S. government documents on, yes, the Internet.)

A lot of people may find it difficult to get worked up about Correa pushing around a multinational corporation like Chevron, which is certainly big enough to defend itself.

But that misses the point. If Correa is willing to mess with a $200 billion corporation on the Internet, then he’s certainly not going to hesitate to mess with you.

Rosie Gray, a reporter for Buzzfeed.com, learned that when she published a story based on leaked government documents that revealed Correa is trying to buy surveillance drones and telecommunications devices that would allow his spies to monkey with people’s cellphones.

Ecuador promptly filed a copyright-infringement notice that got the documents supporting her story removed from the Internet. Gray posted them on a different site, and Ecuador got them yanked again.

“It was a pretty ham-fisted attempt to intimidate us and put the genie back in the bottle,” Gray told me this week. Only on her third try did she find a site, DocumentCloud.com, with the spine to stand up to Correa.

There’s another reason to care about this: If Correa gets away with using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to jerk around his enemies, it won’t be long until others follow suit.

“And it won’t always be a foreign state,” says blogger Steinbaugh. “This abuse is growing. Any person or corporation can misuse this law to punish someone who criticizes them. It’s a real weakness in the law, which offers no incentive for Internet companies to question copyright-infringement claims, no matter how doubtful they are.” Unlike bananas and oil, this is an Ecuadorian export we can do without.

Glenn Garvin writes for The Miami Herald.

ggarvin@miamiherald.com

© 2013 The Dispatch Printing Company, reproduction prohibited. All Rights Reserved.

Cryptolocker Ransomware Being Described As ‘The Perfect Crime’

Cryptolocker Ransomware Being Described As ‘The Perfect Crime’
By Chief Correspondent Joe Shortsleeve, WBZ-TVDecember 18, 2013 5:34 PM

BOSTON (CBS) — It is being called the perfect crime and it has law enforcement around the globe baffled.

It all starts with a simple email.

“They are scared and they are angry. It is a real terrible experience for them.”

Joe Ruthaford is talking about computer users who mistakenly launched a potent internet phishing scheme.

He recently saw one of those ravaged computers in his Beacon Hill repair shop.

“It is extremely damaging. It is one of the worst ones.”

It’s called cryptolocker ransomware.

Kevin Swindon is with the FBI in Boston.

“I would think about this particular type of malware as what would happen if your computer was destroyed,” Swindon said.

In the past 90 days, thousands of people worldwide have opened a seemingly innocuous link to track a holiday package. Suddenly, all the files on their computer are encrypted.

Joan Goodchild is the editor of “CSO,” Chief Security Officer magazine based in Framingham.

“This is a criminal operation. They are holding your folders and files ransom. We call this ransomware because that is exactly what it is. You need to pay in order to have access to them once again.”

And that is exactly what happened last month at the Swansea Police Department.

Cryptolocker ransomware took over the department’s entire computer system and the police were forced to pay a $750 ransom to get back control.

As the ransomware takes over your computer, a countdown clock appears and shows victims how long they have to pay up. That means purchasing a key, or software, to reverse the process. And victims must do that using the online virtual currency known as bitcoins.

“Once you have purchased a bitcoin, then the transaction that you use that bitcoin in is encrypted, and therefore you cannot trace it,” explained Goodchild.

Swindon says it appears to be the perfect crime.

The FBI tells WBZ-TV they are very worried about this spreading in 2014.

The scheme could be the work of organized gangs overseas. So far, no one has been caught.

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Scientists looking closer at what happens when body dies; edge closer to new understanding

Scientists looking closer at what happens when body dies; edge closer to new understanding
Lee Bowman, Scripps Howard News Service
Dec 18, 2013

Getty Images

Scientists are stretching the boundaries of understanding what happens as the body dies - and learning more about ways to perhaps interrupt the process, which takes longer than we might suppose.

Death is the final outcome for 100 percent of patients. But there's growing evidence that revival is possible for at least some patients whose hearts and lungs have stopped working for many minutes, even hours. And brain death - when the brain irreversibly ceases function -- is also proving less open and shut.

For decades, doctors have recorded cases where people immersed in very cold water have been revived after hours have gone by. Normally, brain cells start dying within a few minutes after the heart stops pumping oxygen.

Many studies have found that hypothermia protects the brain by decreasing its need for oxygen and staving off cell death. Body cooling has become common for many patients after cardiac arrest.

However, cooling more a few degrees below normal temperature can also cause cell damage.

Cardiologists are still tinkering to find the best approach. Two recent studies presented at the American Heart Association's scientific meeting in Dallas in November tried to see whether early cooling by paramedics after they get a heart restarted is helpful (it didn't seem affect survival or brain damage) or whether cooling to 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit or 96.8 degrees during the first day in the hospital brings better results (again, not much difference).

Then there's the issue of how long to perform CPR. One 2012 study found the median duration in hospitals was 20 minutes for patients that didn't survive; 12 minutes for those who did. The AHA recommends bystanders keep performing CPR until emergency medical services arrive.

A Japanese study presented at the AHA meeting, based on six years of data on cardiac arrest survival across Japan, concluded it is worthwhile to continue CPR for 38 minutes or longer and still have a chance to avoid major brain damage.

Defining brain death is becoming more complex as researchers find signs of activity in both human and animal subjects whose brain waves at first show they've "flat-lined" to the point that there is no brain function. While some doctors use the EEG as a final check for signs of life in the brain, most rely on a series of reflex and respiration tests given over several hours to determine brain death.

Scientists at the University of Montreal reported in September on the case of one Romanian patient who was in an extreme deep coma after treatment with a powerful anti-epileptic drug. Although the electroencephalogram (EEG) showed no activity in the man's cortex (the master processor of the brain), there was activity in the hippocampus, the region responsible for memory and learning.

The Montreal team, which reported their findings in the journal PLOS One, recreated the same coma state in 26 cats, and observed the same type of oscillations being generated in the hippocampus of each one.

Although the clinical determination of brain death in a hospital relies on more than a flat EEG, the Montreal study is one of many that suggest the criteria may need to be changed. And it points to the possibility that greater use of medically-induced deep coma to help brain-injured people recover may be possible.

Just how conscious the brain remains after cardiac arrest is frequently debated and researched. Various studies of cardiac arrest survivors shows many experience profound mental or emotional change. About 20 percent of survivors say they heard or saw something while they were clinically dead.

During the AHA meeting, Dr. Sam Parnia, head of intensive care at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York, reported early results of a 25-hospital study of how frequently cardiac arrest survivors see or hear things while their hearts are stopped. Of 152 survivors interviewed, 37 percent said they had recollections from the unconscious period. Only two recalled actually seeing events and one described any events that could be verified. None saw images mounted in the treatment room as part of the experiment.

Still, there's evidence that dying brains can remain active. In August, researchers at the University of Michigan reported on brain studies of rats dying from induced cardiac arrest and suffocation. They found that within the first 30 seconds after death, all the rats displayed a surge of brain activity. The rodents' brains showed consciousness that exceeded levels normally found in the animals when they're awake.

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.Back to Top

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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Mysterious Object Has Stopped Enormous Drill “Bertha” In Seattle (VIDEO)

FREE STYLE

Posted by Austin Petersen on 11 Dec 2013 / 9 Comments

What lies below the cold ground that could stop such a mighty machine?

SEATTLE, WA - The world’s largest boring machine ground to a halt after striking a mysterious object of unknown origin that is lurking underground. Speculation about the object has run rampant, causing people to believe that the object could be an Ice Age-era boulder, or a pioneer-era rail car.
The $80 million, five-story tall machine named “Bertha” was supposed to be drilling a new two-mile tunnel for Highway 99. Bertha’s boulder-busting was forced to shut down however when she was unable to break through an object at the 1,000 foot marker.
Some people thought it was dinosaur bones, or an ancient pyramid left by aliens. Others thought it may have been a huge wad of already chewed bubblegum.
Still, the best guess may be that it’s a probably a part of a glacier erratic, which is a rock that differs in size or shape from the native rocks around it.
Transportation Department engineers and the Seattle Tunnel Partners contracting team are working to figure out what the object is, and are said to be considering drilling 60 feet down into the object from above.
“We don’t know whether it is man-made or natural,” a WSDOT official told the Seattle Times.

Sunday, December 08, 2013

Unmasked: Area 51's Biggest, Stealthiest Spy Drone Yet

Unmasked: Area 51's Biggest, Stealthiest Spy Drone Yet
Posted By Zach Rosenberg

Friday, December 6, 2013 - 9:53 AM

The drone that spied on bin Laden and on Iran's nukes was just the start. Meet its bigger, higher-flying, stealthier cousin, the Northrop Grumman RQ-180. It's probably been flying for a few years now, but you weren't supposed to know that; the existence of this secret project, based out of Area 51, was revealed Friday by Aviation Week.

The existence of the RQ-180 has been long rumored. Cryptic public statements by U.S. Air Force officials indicated a secret high-altitude reconnaissance drone, and Northrop officials frequently reference the broad strokes of the program. For that matter, it is likely not the only classified unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. Other companies, including Lockheed and Boeing, also have a stable of smaller secretaircraft.

The RQ-180 is likely flying from the secret Air Force test facility at Groom Lake, Nevada, widely known as Area 51. Its exact specifications, including such crucial details as the number of engines, is unknown, but Aviation Week suggests a wingspan of over 130 feet, based on hangar construction at Northrop's Palmdale, California facility. The number of aircraft built is also unknown; however, a flight test program, relatively quick entry into service and open budget documents suggest a small fleet are flying routinely.

One such aircraft is Lockheed's RQ-170, first shown to the world in grainy pictures from Kandahar air base, Afghanistan, but only officially acknowledged after one crashed almost-intact in Iran. The RQ-170 was (and maybe still is) tasked by the CIA to spy on Iran's contentious nuclear program. The drone was reportedly used to spy on Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan before and during the raid that killed him. RQ-170 has also been reported in South Korea, possibly to look at North Korea's nuclear program. RQ-170 was impressive, but limited: it showed only some stealth characteristics, and was widely believed to be slightly outdated by the time it was discovered. The larger and stealthier RQ-180 would be able to fly higher, longer, allowing the CIA to watch the same targets for days at a time, and -- just maybe -- spy on more sophisticated countries.

The RQ-180 is based off the X-47B, a much smaller experimental aircraft that became the first drone to takeoff and land from an aircraft carrier. Where the smaller X-47B lacks range and stealth, RQ-180 evidently delivers. Though RQ-180 is far too large for an aircraft carrier, it may have the same air-to-air refueling capabilities as the X-47B, allowing it to stay in the air virtually indefinitely. It may also have attack capabilities: X-47B has bomb bays, which have thus far gone unused, and indeed Aviation Week suggests it is used for electronic attack and carries sophisticated sensors.

The aircraft's performance is said to be similar to Northrop's white-world entry, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, which can fly for days and cover thousands of miles. Hopefully the RQ-180 performs better; Global Hawk has received mixed marks on its evaluations, and the aircraft it was meant to replace, the venerable Lockheed U-2, will continue to fly for decades to come.

White-world reconnaissance capabilities, such as the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper and a plethora of modified Beechcraft King Airs, are incapable of stealth and can easily be tracked on radar. Though few doubt stealthier capabilities, the Air Force has been closemouthed on its stealthy intelligence aircraft.

The Nevada desert has a long history of supporting whole squadrons of classified aircraft, including the famed Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 stealth fighter and the RQ-170. Often upon becoming public the aircraft are transferred to other facilities, usually the slightly-less-classified Tonopah Test Range airport. The wheels of declassification turn slowly, so as with RQ-170, details of the RQ-180 will likely remain opaque for years to come.

Who was the tougher World War II enemy, the Germans or the Japanese?
Son of a Blackbird: The Pentagon Eyes New Stealth Spy Plane
Gen. Ridgway on combat, man, and the extraordinary flaws of Gen. MacArthur
Pic of the day: Close up of China's J-31 stealth fighter
How a rogue pilot misbehaved for years in a B-52 squadron, and so killed 4 people

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Tuesday, December 03, 2013

The young won’t show up for Obamacare

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The young won’t show up for Obamacare.
DEC 9, 2013, VOL. 19, NO. 13 • BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

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Former president Bill Clinton said recently that Obamacare “only works . . . if young people show up.” But it won’t work—because young people won’t show up. Obamacare gives them too many reasons not to do so.

...AND REFUSE TO ENROLL, WHILE YOU’RE AT IT.

BROOKS KRAFT / CORBIS / AP

One reason is that Obamacare makes things more expensive for them. The Obamacare arithmetic depends on more young people choosing to buy government-approved insurance than were previously willing to buy cheaper, often better, insurance through the free market.

In its government-run exchanges, Obamacare raises premiums for the young by suspending actuarial science. It forbids insurers from considering some variables that are actuarially relevant to health care, such as sex and health, while also limiting their ability to take age into account in an actuarially based way. Under ordinary principles of insurance, a healthy young person pays a lot less than a person nearing retirement. Under Obamacare, that’s not so. Yet President Obama’s centerpiece legislation depends upon young people’s willingness to pay these artificially inflated premiums.

Another reason the young are unlikely to show up in sufficient numbers is that Obamacare gives many of them an easy out: They can stay on their parents’ insurance free of charge until they’re 26. As for the rest, with the elimination of preexisting conditions as a barrier to buying health insurance, many will choose to go without coverage until they’re sick or injured.

In other words, Obama-care makes insurance more costly while simultaneously making it less necessary—especially for the young.

In order to induce young people to buy in, Obamacare uses the carrot of taxpayer-funded subsidies and the stick of compulsion, enforced by the IRS’s collection of a fine from those who fail to show proof of government-approved health insurance.

But how attractive will these subsidies actually be? A new study by the 2017 Project finds that the subsidies—which flow to insurance companies, not to individual citizens—benefit the old at the expense of the young, and the near-poor at the expense of the middle class. At a given income, the younger you are, the lower your subsidy will be (assuming you qualify for a subsidy at all). In fact, it turns out that younger Americans will generally be better off financially if they simply pay the fine and forgo the expensive product that the government is trying to compel them to buy. In the long run, Obamacare’s website “glitches” will pale in importance next to nonparticipation by the young.

The 2017 Project study (online at 2017project.org) examines premiums and subsidies for plans sold through Obama-care exchanges in the 50 largest counties in the United States (excluding Massachusetts, which Obama-care allows to play by different rules, and Hawaii and Maryland, where the state-based exchanges weren’t working and thus did not allow for data-collection). Those 50 counties comprise more than 29 percent of the U.S. population. The study compares the costs and subsidies under Obamacare for various ages and incomes, in 5-year and $5,000 increments, starting with a 21-year-old making $20,000.

The findings are striking. Consider a 26-year-old (newly ineligible for Mom and Dad’s coverage) making $30,000 a year. Across these 50 counties, the average cost of the cheapest subsidized plan—the cheapest “bronze” plan—available to someone of that age from the Obama-care exchanges would be $2,134 a year. That’s roughly three times the cost of the cheapest plan this person could have bought pre-Obamacare, according to figures from the Government Accountability Office. Meanwhile, this 26-year-old’s taxpayer-funded subsidy, on average, would be $482, or just 23 percent of the premium. By contrast, a 61-year-old making that same $30,000 would, on average, get a subsidy of $4,018, covering 82 percent of the $4,885 premium for someone of that age.

In the normal world of actuarially based insurance, a health plan would cost a 61-year-old about five times as much as a 26-year-old, reflecting the roughly fivefold difference in the expected price of their care. But in the peculiar redistributive world of Obamacare, that notion is turned on its head. Once the respective subsidies are factored in, the 61-year-old would pay, on average, $867 a year in premiums, while the 26-year-old would pay, on average, $1,652. That’s right—under Obamacare, the person who’s expected to cost the health care system only about one-fifth as much would, on average, have to pay about twice as much.

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[OPINION] Bitcoin Has No Intrinsic Value, And Will Never Be A Threat To Fiat Currency

44
MARKETSMore: Bitcoin
Bitcoin Has No Intrinsic Value, And Will Never Be A Threat To Fiat Currency

JOE WEISENTHAL

APR. 11, 2013, 4:59 PM 19,518 80

REUTERS / Philimon Bulawayo

A crisp 100 billion Zimbabwean dollar

The best sentence I read today was this one:

“It has been four years and it has yet to be discredited as a viable alternative to fiat currency.”

That's from Tyler Winklevoss (yes, that one), referring to Bitcoin (naturally), in a NYT story which reveals that the famous Winkelvoss twins own about 1% of the total Bitcoins that are out there.

The crazy price swings of the digital "currency" — which has an ultimately finite supply and is distributed via cryptology, with no Central Bank-like issuer — has prompted numerous discussions about whether the currency could become an important economic entity that's actually a "viable alternative" to, say, the U.S. dollar. There's also a lot of discussion about whether the currency is in a bubble, though in a way that's a less interesting debate.

The real interesting question is whether Bitcoin could become a real thing with an important economic function.

It's not just the Winkelvosses who think it can.

Last month, well-known VC Chris Dixon said that Bitcoin represented the 3rd great era of currency (first gold, then fiat, then math-based).

Here's the problem: Fiat currency has intrinsic value. Bitcoin doesn't.

There's a popular meme going around that fiat currencies (like the dollar, the British pound, the euro, and the yen) have no intrinsic value, and that they're only accepted because they're accepted, and that at some point, people will see through the "illusion" of the value of paper money, and realize that wealth lies somewhere else. Usually this argument is made by gold bugs.

But fiat currencies have tremendous intrinsic value because governmentssay they do. That's why they're called fiat currencies. They have value by government fiat.

This truth might be annoying, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a world of laws, where governments have armies, and can imprison you if you don't pay taxes. And every transaction that you do is taxed in some way, meaning that to operate in any practical matter in this world means transacting in U.S. dollars.

So the U.S. dollar isn't just important because other people think it is. The U.S. dollar is important, because the world's strongest entity, with the full force of the U.S. army, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and various local authorities with guns demands that you pay them in U.S. dollars. That's not faith. That's the law. Sorry.

Even outside of the requirement to pay taxes in U.S. dollars, the Federal Reserve system has established the dollar as the unit of currency for banking in the United States. So if you want to be plugged into the banking system at all — which is a requirement for virtually all individuals — you have to use U.S. dollars.

So instantly, anyone who says the U.S. dollar is backed by "faith" or an "illusion" has no concept of the sheer force behind the currency.

This isn't true of Bitcoins at all.

It's true that there's a scarcity to them — there's only a finite amount and there's a limit to how many there will ever be — but scarcity alone does not give something lasting value.

After all, I could create JoeCoins, and say that I will only issue 100. But it's unlikely that anybody would give me even a penny for one. And I can't force anyone to use them, because I don't have my own army or police force or my own set of laws.

Nobody in the Bitcoin world has the power to compel usage and unlike, say, a commodity, a Bitcoin provides no beauty or functional use outside of that of a trading vehicle.

This Bitcoin, unlike fiat currency (which is backed by the force of law) or commodity-based monies (which have some intrinsic value via use or beauty) is only of value because someone else will accept it, or pay more for it than what you bought it for.

Meanwhile, any hope that merchants would be willing to regularly transact in Bitcoin is blown apart by the recent volatility, which makes it tremendously risky to engage in anything other than ultra-short-term transactions. You'd certainly never have someone perform a service priced in Bitcoin lasting any length of time, since you'd have no idea whether you were paying the person $20,000, $100,000 or $1 million.

In light of these obvious problems, a strain of counter argument has emerged that the intrinsic value of Bitcoin lies in its role as a technology that's disruptive to the payments space.

Timothy Lee writes in Forbes:

As I write this, the value of all outstanding Bitcoins is a bit less than $3 billion. Is that a big number or a small number? It’s a difficult question because the answer depends on what happens to the underlying Bitcoin economy in the coming years. The value of Bitcoin-denominated transactions has been rising steadily. If that process continues, the “Bitcoin economy” could be much larger in five or ten years than it is today.

To give just one example, Western Union has a market capitalization of $8.5 billion and earned $1.3 billion in profit in 2010. If you think Bitcoin will eventually become a popular way to transmit money internationally, it’s not crazy to think Bitcoin’s “market cap” will be in the same ballpark as Western Union’s.

Obviously, that’s just a rough back-of-the-envelope estimate. Maybe Bitcoins won’t pose a competitive threat to Western Union. But the point is that at the scale of global financial networks, $3 billion is a pretty small amount of money. If Bitcoin proves superior to conventional financial networks for at least one significant application, it’s easy to imagine enough demand for the currency to justify the current valuation.

Felix Salmon, in his widely-read piece on Bitcoin kind of said the same thing:

... bitcoin is in many ways the best and cleanest payments mechanism the world has ever seen. So if we’re ever going to create something better, we’re going to have to learn from what bitcoin does right – as well as what it does wrong.

Jerry Britto says something similar:

The answer is that bitcoin doesn’t need to be a good unit of account or a good store of value to be a good medium of exchange. Indeed, the prices of products and services being sold for bitcoin online today are denominated in dollars and are converted at the market rate for bitcoin when the transaction happens. This is how WordPress, one of the most prominent companies accepting bitcoin, does it. In fact, WordPress never even handles bitcoin. They employ the services of a very interesting company called Bitpay that manages bitcoin payment processing for them.

When you check out at WordPress using bitcoin, Bitpay quotes you the total of your dollar-denominated shopping cart in bitcoin at the current exchange rate, takes your bitcoin payment, and then deposits dollars in WordPress’s account. This allows WordPress to sell to persons in Iran or Haiti or anyone of the dozens of other countries where PayPal, Visa and MasterCard are not available. It also highlights bitcoin’s true disruptive quality as a payments system—one that is unstoppable, largely anonymous, and incredibly cheap to boot.

It's possible that in fact Bitcoin has created the most efficient, disruptive payment system ever.

But here's the thing, and this addresses Tim Lee's point above: If this is the only value, then all the world needs is one Bitcoin, since a digital currency should be divisible into an infinite number of "Bitcents" or whatever you want to call them. If we're just talking about a technological idea to transport money and communicate, then why do you need to create new ones? You don't. And if for some reason, people really want to make payment with this level of secrecy and cryptology (and admittedly, there's obviously a demand for private, untraceable money) then you can just create a Bitcoin clone or competitor (which already exist).

So Bitcoin has no intrinsic worth from a currency perspective (no army, no functional use, no law backing it) and its role as a disruptive medium of payment is something that needn't involve scarcity, and is susceptible to cloning.

We should also take a moment to praise what an amazing invention fiat currency as we know it is.

People love to talk about how the Fed is debasing the dollar, but that's total nonsense.

We've lived through extraordinary economic times in recent years, with monetary policy acrobatics that are virtually unprecedented. And a dollar will more or less buy you the same amount of "real stuff" (beer, rent, gas, etc.) that it did before all this. Yes, there's slow inflation over time, but that's mostly matched by increases in salaries, so it doesn't make a big deal.

Even Europe, which is currently an economic and monetary disaster of historic proportions, has a currency that's stunningly stable and liquid. Think about that. Despite the horrible policy in the Eurozone, the Euro is still a fine currency to do business in.

Heck, you know those pictures of Weimar Germany?

As awful as the hyperinflation was, people were still using the currency (at least to some extent) because they had to.

So paper currency backed by government is amazingly stable, useful, and even in terrible times, still gets used. Bitcoin, sadly, has none of that going for it.

It's a fascinating real-time economics lesson. The bubble mentality is just mesmerizing. If you remember the Yahoo Finance Message Boards back during the dotcom bubble, then the Bitcoin page on Reddit will seem very familiar. But little digital tokens backed by nothing but a hope that you can sell them to a greater fool tomorrow are not the future of currency, and have no intrinsic value.

All governments have a Rule of Law. Anything that holds the power of the Rule of Law is a government. How the Rule of Law is set up and how it's executed matter. It is by no means non-democratic.

Show non-Insider replies
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rickf82 on Apr 11, 5:50 PM said:
"So Bitcoin has no intrinsic worth from a currency perspective (no army, no functional use, no law backing it)"

I don't think the key difference between the Dollar and the Bitcoin is government force. We can use anything as a token unit to conduct business, but the difference is that the government can step in with policies to control the value of a monetary unit in comparison to the economy.

The government can take policies to prevent/encourage inflation/deflation. Bitcoin can only rise and fall in response to the market. And its that radical instability that makes it inferior to fiat currency.
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aki009 on Apr 11, 6:30 PM said:
Good article, but one of the statements was a bit short sighted:

"""And a dollar will more or less buy you the same amount of "real stuff" (beer, rent, gas, etc.) that it did before all this [the recent fed monetary gymnastics]."""

The problem with that is the cost of the actions of the fed. While they seem to have stabilized the currency for the moment, there is now unprecedented uncertainty for the long term, and the actions are disproportionately impacting portions of the population that are least able to respond to them.

In short, I see two major issues.

First is modified business behavior, as any promise of payment that's more than a year or two into the future now must be greatly discounted. This impacts everything from investment to business transaction behavior, mostly negatively, especially for the small business end, which historically has been the driver of economic recovery.

Second is the Cyprus-like tax -- but hidden -- that has hit anyone with savings, in the form of non-existent interest rates and the very real expectation of collapse in value. This not only disproportionately hits those who live on fixed income, but it also encourages unsafe behavior in the future, and undermines long term personal financial planning.

What I feel is the real tragedy here, is that nobody, and I mean nobody, seems to be talking about fixing the regulatory, tax and business-dissentive environment that has brought about the halt in our economy.

There's plenty of money and talent looking for opportunities, but uncertainty driven by the class warfare rhetoric of one party (and the current occupant of the White House) are bringing an Atlas Shrugged scenario closer and closer to reality. While we still can, why not tackle the issues at the root, rather than keep looking for ever stronger pain medication for the cancer that needs curing?

‘
Joe said it, not me…
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fiat currencies have tremendous intrinsic value because governments say they do
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Fiat currency has intrinsic value. Bitcoin doesn't.
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the U.S. dollar isn't just important because other people think it is. The U.S. dollar is important, because the world's strongest entity, with the full force of the U.S. army, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and various local authorities with guns demands that you pay them in U.S. dollars. That's not faith. That's the law.
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This Bitcoin, unlike fiat currency (which is backed by the force of law) or commodity-based monies (which have some intrinsic value via use or beauty) is only of value because someone else will accept it, or pay more for it than what you bought it for.
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People love to talk about how the Fed is debasing the dollar, but that's total nonsense.
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TIC-TIC-TIC: The Ominous Warning In Foreigners' U.S. Bond Positions

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-11/tic-tic-tic-ominous-warning-foreigners-us-bond-positions
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Oawwh!

There you go! Confusing the argument with logical criticism and facts!

What's poor ol' Weizy gonna do?

•∆•
V-V
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yup on Apr 12, 12:28 AM said:
Well at least you are being honest now. We have gone from

"congress shall have the authority to coin money and regulate the value thereof" (see constitution and other irrelevancies) to

"the people will use whatever the freak money we say they will use or we will kill them"

RIP America
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dividist (URL) on Apr 12, 1:33 AM said:
I guess I have to take the opportunity to completely agree with Joe whenever that rare opportunity arises. For some reason I find him most entertaining when he is writing about minting irrational coins ( both "trillion dollar" ones and "bits"). A great post except for the part at the end where Joe goes off the rails making an unsupported hand-waving assertion that the extraordinary monetary "acrobatics" being performed by our Fed and other central banks are "no big deal". But I can overlook that.

The only thing that surprises me about the extraordinary popular delusional madness of the Bitcoin bubble is that anyone thinks it is remarkable. There is another commenter here who regularly invokes the similarity to the beanie babies "market". That comparison is spot on. It lasted a few years, actually achieved a level of pricing stability in semi-liquid markets and then flamed out spectacularly with true believers still professing the intrinsic value in the manufactured rarity of the commodity.

The only thing that is of true potential intrinsic value in bitcoin is the promise of anonymous transactions and guaranteed rarity that can never be counterfeited. Is there real intrinsic value in that? Maybe. But let us at least face reality and note that these promises are based on sophisticated mathematical algorithms that I am absolutely certain something north of 99.99% of bitcoin users have zero ability to understand, let alone confirm. So belief in bitcoin value is nothing more than that - purely a leap of blind faith. A shared hallucination.

That said, this was the most interesting thing Joe said in the post:

"So the U.S. dollar isn't just important because other people think it is. The U.S. dollar is important, because the world's strongest entity, with the full force of the U.S. army, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and various local authorities with guns demands that you pay them in U.S. dollars. That's not faith. That's the law. Sorry." - JW

This is absolutely true and beautifully stated, and probably the best articulation of a purely libertarian perspective that has ever been uttered by JW. Not only is this a perfect explanation of the true nature of "fiat currency", it is a precise articulation of the libertarian view of "fiat everything". It is a description of the underlying nature of ALL government action. Whether it is a war on terrorism, or a war on poverty, or a war on drugs, or a war on salt in restaurants, or a war on smokers, or war on 32 oz sugary soft drinks, or .... whatever. Every single thing the government does comes with the same explicit threat of force against the governed. It's just the nature of the beast. And it's an important thing for us to remember whenever we want the government to "do something".

Alas, a blind faith in bitcoins is not likely to be a fruitful path for those seeking to shield some part of their life from the naked force of governmental scrutiny or mandates.

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