Please wait...
Black and Decker does seem poised to move itself firmly into the lead now.
Actually they had merged with Stanley in 2010, so now Stanley, Black & Decker, and Craftsman are all going to be the same company. They also announced yesterday that they are going to move a lot of their manufacturing back into the United States (MAGA!)
I can never remember if Sears bought K-Mart or K-mart purchased Sears. In July 2015 Sears closed in our city, the K-mart remained. I didn't understand this, the K-mart was in horrible condition, the store outside looked well worn, the grocery store that was next to it moved 30 years ago, the space was never filled. The parking lot always looked empty. The last time I was in the K-mart the floors were filthy, cracked and missing tiles. The ceiling tiles had stains, or were missing. Product and shelving looked unkempt and dirty. I never understood why they closed Sears but kept the K-mart. It was just announced they are closing the K-mart as well.
I thought Sears was one of those stores that would always be around.
Sears did purchase K-mart, this is from the article on Sears closing.
The store and auto center have a combined 109 employees. Associates who are eligible will receive severance and the opportunity to apply for open positions at other area Sears or Kmart stores, both of which are subsidies of Sears Holdings
Unless of course, Sears was holding it for K-mart.
I thought Sears was one of those stores that would always be around.
Kind of like Radio Shack, which went out of business but the damn stores are somehow still open.
Trump and Bernie Sanders both get the same things wrong:
http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump
Trump wants a weak dollar. He's not going to get it unless he pursues policies that are unpalatable to his base--or to his buddy-buddies.
https://www.ft.com/content/2a01d6c2-de6f-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6
It's carefully hidden. The Alphaville blogs are free with registration. This also gets you access to certain select FT articles - the ones where they want to get the word out...
Go to any Alphaville post and you should get the free registration option. Such as - https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/01/27/2183344/americas-growth-has-a-slowed-a-lot-in-the-past-two-years-why/
Jim Rogers prophesies death of cash & total govt control of spending.
The time will come when you won't be able to buy a cup of coffee without being traced, warns investment guru Jim Rogers. To control people, governments will increasingly seek to hunt down cash spending, he adds.
https://www.rt.com/business/377307-jim-rogers-currency-control-cash/
The narrative here in Germany is "Cash is bad, mkay?!", too. The Greyfaces are also suggesting, that other countries (ze Scandinavians) are pretty much ahead of us and almost already do it.
The thing is, small payments in Germany are hell, no matter how you do it. There are so many 50€ bills in circulation and ATMs will gladly give you more, that they drive small businesses nuts. They simply can't give you change in the later hours of the day. So you might think that they offer payments by cards... but no! Ze usual german as no trust in credit cards, so the places you can use one are limited. But even normal "ec cards" (no clue what your equivalent is. the ones your bank gives you, the ones that are no credit card.) can hardly be used for small payments. "No card payment under 10€" is a very common sign, if they have the option at all. And if they have one, they are still mostly operated via telephone lines, so slow baud rates. The smaller the shop, the bigger the chance it fails completely.
All anti-cash asshole should die in an ATM fire!
All anti-cash asshole should die in an ATM fire!
Starting with Narendra Modi. If you weren't following what he did late last year, dear God, it was so terrifyingly stupid. Declared probably the majority of the circulating cash in his third-world country illegal. The results were predictably horrible, and yet his supporters are so many and so misguided that he may still cling to power.
Where "cashless society" goes is pretty obvious:
1. All within-view-of-the-government transactions become electronic
2. Cash payments become forbidden; all remaining cash becomes redeemable only for electronic currency
3. A barter economy comes into existence
4. Because like-for-like value is difficult to achieve, some "fiat currency" comes into existence. It could be a foreign currency, or even something electronic-but-not-the-government.
From there, two possible outcomes:
A. Government cracks down and starts killing anyone found with cash, because The Russians
B. Non-fiat currency comes back into existence
Of course, the government wants to collect tax anyway [ https://www.irs.gov/uac/four-things-to-know-about-bartering-1 ] but it's a LOT harder to track, which means another massive expansion of your country's tax collection agency (IRS, Finanzamt, etc). This by itself could be a motive for them to want to go cashless.
This was a thing a few years ago, I don't know if it still is.
https://www.google.com/#q=laundry+detergent+drug+dealers
I was thinking for cash transactions people would buy those debit/gift cards. It is still traceable but works for simple cash transactions between people.
Heh... oh man... that'd be chaos, to get away from cash altogether.
The hackers would have a field day.
Just flip a few bits and you can create money from literally nothing.
Nothing to account for it. Nothing to protect the economy from malfeasance.
It could be interesting.
Just flip a few bits and you can create money from literally nothing.
Bankers and traders have been doing that since forever.
Back to the discussion on automation, productivity, and the welfare state. There are two ways this could play out:
(1) Universal basic income. (Latest proponent to add to the list: Elon Musk)
(2) Scapegoat the guys causing the problem (software developers) and kill (US citizens) or deport (Indians) them all. (The Donald Trump approach.)