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[quote=”johnnyh”]. . . can one go to Costa Rica and pay with 3 Silver American Eagles (current value $25-$30.00) your hotel room? :D[/quote]
We always encourage our visitors to deal only in Costa Rican colones when paying for anything while here. Just be sure to exchange dollars for colones only at a bank or to withdraw colones from one of the many ATMs. That way, you’re assured of getting the right exchange rate. Airport currency exchange booths, both here and in the United States, give notoriously lousy exchange rates. Don’t even consider using them!
Paying for something with coins which have numismatic or metal content value different from their face value would be unwieldy at best. How would a hotel desk clerk determine the value of a silver eagle, a silver dime or a Confederate dollar even if they could determine that they’re genuine? How would they make change?
And why would they bother? None of those circulate in the economy here and there’s probably no market for them. Redeeming them would be a nightmare. The same would apply to your grandfather’s watch, Babe Ruth’s autograph or most anything else of value only to collectors.
bnb, I’m afraid you’re deluding yourself. If U.S. satellites can read the labels on the golf balls you lost in Minnesota, Annapolis, or Dallas, they can surely read those same labels in Costa Rica. This country may or may not adopt a lot more surveillance technology (plenty exists here already) but to think you’ll be out of sight here is a lost cause.
If you think you’re not being watched, just go into any bank wearing a hat or sunglasses. The trained killer at the door will make you take ’em off. Why do you suppose that is?
It’s been my understanding all along that an annual meeting is required. What is not clear is what the consequences of failing to hold that meeting may be. Especially in the case of an inactive corporation the shares of which are held by (say) a couple, whose interests might be jeopardized if the meeting were not held? Who would complain?
Hmmm . . . I’m assuming you’re coming in from outside Costa Rica whereas I’m in-country. Our experiences could be different although that’s not likely the problem.
Are you using a VPN that blocks your true IP address? Maybe BN sees that.
Also, the BN website uses Java about which there have been security issues lately. Do you have Java fully enabled?
Or might your security software be getting into the way? If you’re trying to access BN from work, can you get in from home?
The web address you listed looks like the one I use, too.
Acknowledging the likely proliferation of drones, both public and private, how will that really change anything? Today, many city streets are fitted with surveillance cameras that can count the fillings in your teeth if you yawn.
In the wake of Monday’s bombing in Boston, you can bet that the stock of surveillance camera companies will go up as more cities install more cameras. What real difference does it make if your fillings are cataloged by a stationary camera or a moving one? In what sense are drones game changers?
It is a sad truth that there is no privacy, nor has there been any for a very long time. Between governmental and private entities, nothing you say or do is yours alone. If there’s something you don’t want anyone to know about, your only recourse is not to do, or say, or have it. If you don’t want your DNA to be on record, never have another blood test or PAP smear, although it’s probably too late for it to matter.
It matters little whether your e-mail or comments here are monitored or whether you are spied upon from 10,000 feet or from 200 miles above the earth. The effect is the same. Only the means varies.
Scott, what is [b]Attorney[/b] John Whitehead’s source for all this? As always, where’s the confirmation? From where do the numbers come? Did he take a course in drone law in law school that makes him a credible source? If yes, which law school?
And what about the microscopic intestinal drones that will be impregnated into toilet paper to travel up our GI tracts to monitor everything we eat and everything we say? And report to “them”.
U.S. citizens are taxed on their worldwide incomes regardless where that income is received. There is a tax exclusion of around $95,000 for income derived from employment (actual work) outside the U.S., but that income must still be reported on the federal income tax return. The foreign earned income tax exclusion applies only to compensation for work. It does not apply to rents, interest or dividends, capital gains, and other forms of unearned income.
Costa Rica taxes most income derived in Costa Rica. Actual collection is another matter.
[quote=”imxploring”] When the world’s confidence in the US gets hammered and the extenders of our credit (buyers of our bonds) lose their appetite for our paper our credit dries up.
[/quote]The foregoing sounds like something that has happened before. Can you elaborate? When did this happen in the past? Or is this mere conjecture? There is a rich literature about the coming disaster, but none of it has actually happened yet. Or has it? Doomsday scenarios abound.
If investors are buying Greek securities, what makes you think they won’t buy American?
And if you go to
and search on “krugman stockman”
you’ll find a series of columns and blogs by the Nobelist which pretty thoroughly discredits Stockman’s work.
I miss the salmon fishing in the streams of western Michigan in the fall and winter after the water turns cold and the fish move upstream from Lake Michigan to spawn.
Oh! And good Thai food.
[quote=”jmcbuilder”]
David, if you find the link shoot it to us. I would be interested. With gold I have never been able to get a handle on it.[/quote]
Please see my comment above with today’s date at 1:31pm. I pasted in Krugman’s introduction and the Adam Smith passage.
[quote=”jmcbuilder”] People are still buying gold also.[/quote]
. . . the price of which has dropped lately to 2011 levels.
In the past day or two, Paul Krugman quoted Adam Smith on the value of gold. He was writing with regard to Bitcoin, but I think it’s still relevant . . .
Krugman wrote, “Smith actually wrote eloquently about the fundamental foolishness of relying on gold and silver currency, which — as he pointed out — serve only a symbolic function, yet absorbed real resources in their production, and why it would be smart to replace them with paper currency:
[and then quoted Adam Smith] “The gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which, the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. It is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enable the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and labour.”
