MV = PY

M = money supply
V = velocity of money relative to the money supply
P = general price level
Y = quantity of goods produced

(both sides of the equation are equal to nominal GDP)

M can increase without increasing P so long as either Y increases or V decreases (or some combination thereof)

What rapid devaluation? The one happening inside your head?

Here in the real world, inflation has been less than 2.5% annually since 2008, lower than in any similar period in at least 50 years.

I cashed out of the equities the afternoon that putz dubya signed the tarp. I doubt I'll ever be back.

IOW: "I got scared, cashed out at nearly the lowest point possible, lost a ton of money, missed a historic run-up and now I'm bitter!"

Over the last 12 months, Facebook, had revenues of nearly $7B and profits of about $1B. You can argue that their stock is overvalued (and I'd tend to agree), but they clearly have a pretty solid business plan.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=FB+Key+Statistics

If they spent 5 years iterating through various designs and dead ends, that's $20M/year. Figure each engineer/designer/program manager at an average of about $200K/yr fully loaded (wages/bonus/stock/benefits/equipment/real estate/etc.), and that's 100 people working on it each year for 5 years.

I really don't find that terribly unreasonable at a company the size of MSFT, particularly if they were trying some more ambitious designs before settling on the final HW.

Officially, the Venezuelan government pegs the Bolivar to the USD at 6.3Bs per USD and theoretically all other foreign currency exchange rates flow from that peg. For the vast majority, however, this is effectively a one way exchange - the government will happily give you 6.3Bs for one USD but you need to be well connected to get 1 USD (or an equivalent amount of other hard currency) for 6.3Bs. The state run stores selling at 1/5th the price fall into the category of "well connected".

For everyone who is not well connected, they need to acquire foreign currency on the black market where 1 USD (or an equivalent amount of other foreign currency - like 0.8 Euros or 90 Yen) costs 60Bs. This makes imported goods 10x more expensive for anyone who does not have access to the official exchange rate.

This is a fairly common tactic of governments that have horribly mismanaged their economy and want to paper over the collapse of their currency. It doesn't actually work, but it does make for some spectacular political theater as reality sets in.

Except they had to pay out in bitcoins, not dollars. If Bitcoins increased their value against the dollar, it made the 8% per week even more implausible.

Since there are no actual investments with legitimate earnings yields that are nominally denominated in bitcoin (or at least not enough to matter), any sort of banking scheme that offers interest denominated in bitcoin is either a scam or a pure short-play (bc to $, wait for price to drop, buy more bc). Welcome to full reserve banking, where the only legitimate banking charges you to hold your money.

I bought a house in Willow Glen last September for $550K - the schools in this area are fine (great, even) and so is the neighborhood. If you're focused on a perfect house in Cupertino or Shallow Alto, yeah, its gonna be pricey, but there are plenty of perfectly fine areas in San Jose and Santa Clara with older, smaller homes that sell in the $500-$600K range, which should be easily affordable on a $200K salary (or lower, even). Heck, our mortgage+taxes are less than we were paying in rent on a downtown SJ condo and that's before taking into account tax benefits...

A "checking account" in the US is a demand deposit account that the depositor can write checks against and virtually always comes with an ATM/debit card as well. It never costs money to deposit money to this account, but if you do not maintain a minimum balance (usually $500 or $1000), there may be a nominal monthly fee.

The vast majority of people in the US and probably 99.9% of the slashdot crowd get paid via direct deposit via the ACH (automated clearing house). The exceptions tend to be people who work in cash businesses (bartenders earning tips, handyman types, etc.) and people who do not or cannot have a checking account. Generally speaking, those who cannot have a checking account are either illegal immigrants or people who have either committed bank fraud or have absolutely dismal credit. Those who do not (but can) have checking accounts are either very young and haven't gotten around to it or are dodging tax liens, alimony, or other court judgments and are trying to hide their money from authorities.

In the absence of a deposit account, most employers used to issue paper checks which would then be cashed by shady operators for scandalously high fees (in part due to the prevalence of fraud, because remember - they are dealing with the subset of people who cannot get a bank account, a large percentage of which is due to fraud issues). These cards are actually probably lower fee than the previous status quo and allow things like online transactions that most of the employees who receive these would have been hard-pressed to do without a bank account.

For many people in low-wage, low-skill work, particularly if they are young or have gotten themselves into severe financial trouble, these cards are probably not a bad option. If its the only option, though, that can certainly be a problem, but that seems to be fairly limited (the article mentions a single McDonalds franchise owner who is actually forcing these cards) and for 90%+ of US workers, this is a complete non-issue.

No, the alternative is what existed before HFT - If Jim wants to sell an apple, and Bob wants to buy an apple, Jim must sell it to someone with a seat on the exchange who will extract 12.5 cents per share on each side of the trade.

HFT effectively put the traditional market-makers out of business by providing liquidity at fractional pennies per share rather than taking 1/8th of a point per share on each end, but people bitch about how unfair it is because microseconds or something.

Besides, JTAG and such will continue to render inoperable phones operable

If you put a fuse on the die in the some important place (voltage regulator, memory controller, CPU) or even on package in the bonding with a way to allow the CPU to blow the fuse, you can render the device completely inoperable short of the thief replacing the SoC (which is unlikely to be worthwhile)

Property taxes are still low in California - I pay less property tax on my recently purchased house in San Jose than my parents do in Erie, PA despite having an assessment that is 3x higher.

I haven't had the Grange Hermitage, but I have had a couple of bottles of the 1996 Penfolds 707, and even in 2010 it still tasted really young. I suspect the Grange may just need to be cellared for a *really* long time.

I've probably spent about a total of 9 months in Germany over the last 10 years. Their beers are boring. I'll take a Russian River or Dogfishhead (or Green Flash or Bruery or heck, even Sierra Nevada) any day over pretty much any German beer.

I prefer to be able to set my own schedule, work from home when that is a reasonable choice and otherwise be marginally attached via email 24/7 to keep up on things. I like spending 25-30 hours/week in the office, I suspect a union would really fuck that up.