Overview of High Frequency Trading - What’s Driving the Markets?

Introduction to High Frequency Trading

And hear our most excellent home-grown, all-Vermont Funk band, Electric Sorcery !! Playing 2:00 PM at the historic Gathering Inn, Hancock, Vermont !

The doors of sound have been ripped off the hinges by Electric Sorcery who routinely electrify Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Towns are regularly woken out of their slumber by the by the wicked sound of this power trio.

Electric Sorcery takes psychedelic music firmly rooted in the 70s and adds their own special twist. Funky rhythms and psychedelic guitar riffs come together to create an intriguing sound that is sometimes very heavy.... This is a fun listen and anyone who gravitates towards the psychedelic sounds of the 70s needs to hear this… - SeaOfTranquility.org 

Meet & Eat    Greet & Drink

Saturday, September 25, from 2 – 4 PM  

1295 Route 100

Diagonally opposite the Hancock Hotel

Please bring your concerns, your hard questions, and your ideas.  The Independent vision for Vermont is all about you, your families and communities !

Part 4 in a series focusing on how Vermont can generate much-needed revenue and restore Vermont's Commons in this new century.

BirdInTheHand

Folks,

As of Friday morning, I am officially on the ballot for Vermont Senator for Addison County!  Thanks to you all for your hard work and great ideas.  Your contributions have served to get the Independent word out there, encourage people to register to vote, even built a parade float.

But I’m not gonna do an NPR on you and beg for even more funds.  Funds’ll come, somehow.  What’s really needed is organisational help.  I’d like to set up a community forum in Addison County every month until the election.  A forum in which people from all walks of life can address the candidates directly with concerns, questions, and even vent steam together with neighbours on how broken the system is.  If you know something about community organising and publicity, please contact me directly, robert@senatorwagner.com.

Today's New York Times Magazine has a funny and fascinating article about freegans in Buffalo, New York, whose embrace of a lifestyle unencumbered by property relations has led them down the road to taking legal ownership of the mansion they'd been squatting in.

As I read the first part of the long article about young people living in a falling-apart mansion that they didn't own, I wondered how much effort they'd put into maintaining something that they could potentially be evicted from at any moment. It turns out that they put in a lot of effort, even before they had legal title. And they even cleaned up at least one other vacant property in the area, and they befriended neighbors.

The neighbors supported the squatters, in a twist that was surprising to the housing court judge who had been notified of the illegal occupation. The neighbors approached him at a Little League game and asked him to let the squatters stay, as their presence kept away the "thieves, drug dealers, and arsonists." (I picture a Scooby-Doo-like ring of the thieves, drug dealers, and arsonists wringing their hands and saying that they'd have gotten away with hanging out in the neighborhood, "if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.") 

The squatters were also unfailingly polite to authorities like a housing inspector and the judge, who commented that their politeness “probably gave them an unfair advantage that they shouldn’t have had.” 

The bust of the housing market has led to a boom of empty homes, and the bust in the economy as a whole has led more people to lose their ability to pay their bills and keep their homes. The article nicely captures one successful approach to improving a derelict home while providing low-income housing. More confrontational approaches are the subject of an hour-long, downloadable radio documentary by Circle A Radio in Portland, Oregon. Seven organizations are profiled from Boston to San Francisco, and including Midwestern cities like Toledo, Chicago, and Madison. They are part of a national Take Back the Land movement that uses Alinsky-like techniques to put people in empty homes or help them remain in their own homes. 

Meanwhile, on p. A19 of the New York print edition, the Times continues its bemused skepticism towards those who think that industrial civilization, which has radically changed life on most places on the planet, has some further dramatic changes in store. (An exception to its skeptical coverage is last year's favorable Magazine article about Transition Towns in the US, focusing on Sand Point, Idaho.)

Update: CollapseNet is Live ! 

http://collapsenet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1042...

We are not ineffective, we are not few in number. You are not alone. 

TWEET: #CollapseNet #Vermont #VTGov #Montp #TransitionTown  

Folks,

This will be a way for individuals, families and communities who are building lifeboats in Vermont, to connect, share information and expertise, teach, learn and reskill.

Please pass this on. If you are on Twitter, please tweet the ablve links with the hashtag #CollapseNet.

Here’s the press release:

• http://www.collapsenet.com
• http://www.collapsenetwork.com
• http://www.collapsenet.net

May 21, 2010 – CollapseNet ™, a long-anticipated new effort from internationally-recognized author, lecturer and activist Michael C. Ruppert, will officially launch on Tuesday June 8, 2010. The site will be a first-of-its-kind effort to promote the rapid and focused sharing of information between millions around the world who are preparing for the collapse of human industrial civilization – The Lifeboat Movement.

Breaking news from Business Insider, and it ain't pretty.

Thanks to our friend Carolyn Baker in Colorado, former Vermont Commons editorial board member, for passing this on...

Register for the June 9-11, 2010 Slow Money Gathering at Shelburne Farms, Vermont, convened by our guest editor, Woody Tasch.

We must bring money back down to earth.  

It might have sounded far-fetched even a year ago.  But today, surrounded by the politics of a trillion-dollar bailout, it has a different ring.  It has the ring of common sense in a world that is coming to realize that there is such a thing as intermediation that is too complex and money that is too fast.

While bank bailouts fatten Wall Street, states continue to battle the credit crisis. In the search for innovative solutions, some political candidates are proposing that states generate their own credit by setting up their own banks.

We've written quite extensively about local currencies here over the past five years, and will continued to do so in the weeks ahead. As the U.S. Empire's imminent bankruptcy begins to catch up to us all, forward-thinking towns are taking financial matters into their own hands.

More below the fold.

Most interesting, perhaps, is this line: