Hadetoleaveitalone: Making Money With Options

Of course we know that it is a crisis not in a sense that the Federal Government is unable to honour all its obligations, a point which I have been making repeatedly. It is a political game of chicken, the result of which can threaten global economic growth.

Debt ceiling itself is something rather pointless. It has never been able to constraint government spending, and the Congress has been raising it routinely, at least until now. Yet it gives opportunities for some pointless political posturing every time when the borrowing limit is reached. As Calculated Risk puts it:

The debt ceiling is a joke. It serves no purpose except political posturing. It is not about the deficit – it is about paying the bills, and the U.S. will pay the bills.

A similar point has been made by James Surowiecki at the New Yorker:

The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. There’s no debt limit in the Constitution. And, if Congress really wants to hold down government debt, it already has a way to do so that doesn’t risk economic chaos—namely, the annual budgeting process.

Now, there are ways around the debt ceiling which may or may not have been considered by the Obama Administration, as explained by Yves Smith.

Here are the three ways around:

Use the 14th amendment of the constitution to declare (or threaten to declare) debt ceiling as unconstitutional – but it seems that the administration is reluctant to use this.

Cancel the US government debts held by the Federal Reserve – the government can probably cancel a trillion or two of debts, large chunk of them purchased during the quantitative easing programme. This can buy a year or two, perhaps.

Coin Seigniorage – this requires a little bit more explanation.

The third option, as explained in great detail here, uses the fact that the US Mint can create a platinum coin of any arbitrary face value. The profit from seigniorage (i.e. the face value of this coin minus the cost of making this coin) can somehow go into the Treasury General Account. The Mint can, for instance, mint a few US$1 Trillion platinum coins, book the seigniorage profit at the Federal Reserve Mint’s account, then “sweep” that to the Treasury General Account, magically solving all deficits problems.

It is not quite so clear to me if these are politically viable options, and it is also not quite so clear to me if any of these can be useful tactics on the negotiation table for President Obama to get his way. But at least there are ways around this joke.

This article originally appeared here: 3 Ways Around The Debt Ceiling
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eBay owned PayPal has been making some interesting acquisitions over the past few months that clearly show the direction of the company in capturing payments flow from digital goods, and physical products at a local level. The company bought local payments and advertising company Where for over $100 million in April, snapped up mobile payments company Fig Card and most recently shelled out $240 million for mobile payments company Zong. The payments giant is clearly serious about mobile and local payments and is buying its way into commanding the space. In terms of future strategy, PayPal believes that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S., from local businesses to large chains.

Of course, this ambitious goal is easier said than done. Considering that PayPal is a digital product and doesn’t have built in reach to local businesses with point of sale systems, scaling to the local level is going to take a significant amount of work. We were able to chat with Sam Shrauger, VP of global product and strategy for PayPal about the company’s future strategy to dominate the ‘digital wallet.’

Shrauger tells us that PayPal’s plan is less about making the wallet digital and more about letting people take advantage of technology to use money better. As for making this a reality, Shrauger says that letting people use PayPal in the physical world is critical for the payments technology.

He explains that innovating in the payments space in the physical world is about giving customers mor options to pay, as opposed to offering a single technology. PayPal wants to add more ways your money can work for you, beyond just the payment itself. As for what that means, Shrauger declined the reveal the company’s plans but did say that PayPal would be launching new products later this year dealing with this issue.

There are two advantates PayPal has in its favor. First, the company now has over 100 million active users, which is impressive. And second, the company’s userbase is increasingly using mobile devices to pay for products. PayPal recently announced that it was upping the estimates of the amount of mobile payments transactions using the technology this year; doubling the estimate to $3 billion in mobile total payments volume (TPV) in 2011.

Payments in the physical world is going to be a big step for PayPal and I’m very curious how the company is planning to use its technology in this expansion. For Google, NFC and mobile phones are part of the gateway for payments in local, with the launch of Google Wallet. For Square, small businesses popularity and ease of use have been helping the mobile payments startup grow like crazy.

It’s not the first time I’ve pointed out that PayPal has an ambitious plan on its hands by becoming the digital wallet. And it should be interesting to see what killer technology the company has up its sleeve later this year.

Check out this video below in which PayPal President Scott Thompson challenges his employees to use only digital currency to pay for all of their purchases.

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Friday, July 29, 2011

Making Money With Options

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