and the u.s. judicial system corrupt which takes a lot of nerve especially coming from a country that has no problem trampling on property rights now i'm not saying that the u.s. courts have any real right to force argentina to pay its holdouts but argentina's argument for failing to negotiate is flimsy at best and i mean very best argentina says that the amount owed is too arduous and that it would have to slash its foreign exchange reserves however the country recently settled some sixteen billion dollars in claims with repsol and the paris club of creditors with little impact on reserves by issuing new bonds or stretching out payments so here's the question what's the best case scenario sadly i don't think that there is a best case scenario here but we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

because. the puerto rico has been facing some serious fiscal problems to to the point that they've been considering legalizing marijuana and prostitution yeah that's on the list of possibilities but to get an update on puerto rico's finances and the state of new knee land i spoke to kate long kate is an expert on the municipal bond market and the founder of the puerto rico clearinghouse i first started our conversation by asking her about the macro outlook of puerto rico now i wanted to know how the government was doing in terms of spending and the tax receipts here's what you had to say. or the just clear in the 1930's day were short about four hundred million dollars and a tax hike from what their projections where they juggled the economy a little bit in kind of brought that down but they're still struggling to have a new budget in place for twenty fifteen range or i one they're hoping to the debt

that balanced that means they need to bring expenses genet out of billion dollars about a nine and a half billion dollar base. and how is the real economy in puerto rico in terms of employment and economic growth. there's still oil and water struggling there downsizing the government which is the primary employer in the in the island so as they shed jobs there they're hoping to make it up and they have been making up some in the private sector but it's pretty much a net. and. net loss a small net loss for them in terms of jobs and there's not it's not easy for them to attract new business there because you know corporations have to relocate and set up a new business but they're trying very hard to doing everything they can now since we last spoke the big deal in terms of municipal finances is the ring fence that

puerto rico put around its public corporation debt in june so can you break down what puerto rico did and what significance it has. absolutely and i think i'm the one that came up with the term ringfence. so i'm june twenty eighth in one day the puerto rico legislature introduced and passed but called the next seventy one or the recovery act in what ted does is it gives certain legal framework to some of the public corporations of them puerto rico government to restructure its debts to go through two processes first is consentual process with bondholders and other creditors that everyone is supposed to sit down and come to some kind of agreement about how they will restructure their debts or loans that they've made to the poet corporation and if that doesn't work we're tricare is basically a very small amount of approval less than forty percent of the creditors to approve it which is very low but it's out for us this doesn't work it would move to the

litigation of a court based process where. the public corporation would lay out what their liabilities are and work with the judge in the court setting to restructure those we believe. puerto rico clearing house and others other attorneys in than some of the litigants here that that x. seventeen when the recovery act is not constitutional and there's the possibility the federal court will strike it down. so this move effectively makes these public corporations stand on their own if it forces them to be self-sufficient if you will so the demise of one public corporation doesn't contaminate the finances of others is how i see it or of puerto rico geo bonds is that correct. that's actually ray and jim point to recognize these public corporations or sensual services in puerto rico the primary when you just question is predator which is the electric going up early and obviously you can't take out electric monopoly or let creditors take it

over that's an essential function service of the government and the people another one is the water system process and then a third is the highway in transportation authority which are the roads so these are all essential you know services infrastructure of the government and if you know what they have to say under the control of the government or some quad's a regular regulatory for. now after puerto rico governor allen controversy a pedia signed the ring fence into law s. and p. and moody's both immediately put puerto rico's general obligation bonds on credit watch so why would they do this if the g.a.o. bonds are ringfence from the public corporations i mean did you bonds now have less tax revenue to conserve a stem after this move by puerto rico no i actually have more because before this i am the law and more importantly before that the decision on the part of the government that they wouldn't subsidize the electric monopoly in the water monopoly

they were paying the general fund was paying about eight hundred million dollars a year to subsidize these public corporations and the decision on the part of the government and large part of how they're balancing the budget this year is to say no more money to subsidize the water system electric system the general i would guess you bind have rallied pretty much since the law was passed the immediately went down but they rally back to the point they were before the lowest put in place now the march madness of a bond deal by puerto rico was the largest high yield muni deal ever anneke puerto rico much needed cash but how do these bonds trading in light of recent how are these bonds trading in light of recent developments. you know it's very interesting i've been watching them some of closely is that they're starting to treat on a two tier basis what we see is and we had talked about this last time we were together which is that the hedge funds who come in you know playing very actively in this credit now and this. for general gration binds in so big blocks plus five

hundred million dollar blocks the bonds are trading at a higher price and the smaller blocks of bonds which is very unusual typically it's the other way around which is shows you that there's a premium that you have these big players in the general abrogation that they're very interested you know. so it's there's a lot of moving pieces but i think that the basically the ring fencing is work where we're seeing you'll differentials between those bonds that are protected under this legislation in those bonds that are not how many believe puerto rico's debt crisis is headed for us style bankruptcy resolution making paper losses inevitable for investors a twenty billion dollars in bonds issued by puerto rico's highway water and electric authority so do you think we're going to see default here. well it yes definitely i mean it restructures a default and. basically i mean if you don't just look at the electric utility it's

not sustainable the electric rates are extremely high we talked about this before too how the electric rates around twenty eight cents a kilowatt in puerto rico and here in the mainland they average around twelve cents a kilowatt so it's just crippling really to the economy and even if you wanted to attract business it's very high with these high letter grades so they underline absent the electric monopoly in the water west of the water monopoly in the highways they just have too much debt in they need new investment which you can't do when you have all that debt and this process has to happen one way or another it's just unclear and under what legal framework it will happen that was municipal bond market expert on. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return overstock c.e.o. patrick byrne is on the program now his company was one of the first major

retailers to accept big point and he's giving us an update on how the big point platform is working at overstock and in today's big deal edward harris and i are talking about hoover air b.n. b. and corporate expansion plus remember you can see all segments featured in today's show on you tube and you tube dot com slash the about thirty and on hulu at hulu dot com slash zoom dash now before we go here are a look at some your closing numbers of the bell time about the.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. in fish farms waters today you have the front of me because. i saw it spread all over norway is the most toxic food you have in the whole. process drowns out in the

tissue inquiry furthermore tells restrictions. really. what's inside the. secret laboratory kirby was able to build the its most sophisticated robot which on fortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tombs mission to teach creation why it should care about humans in this this is why you should care what you're only on the.

wealthy guy now if the classic chicken or egg story if it quite has already become a viable currency should the community focus on getting more bequests into the pockets of the people who use it or convincing retailers to accept them to get a sense of the challenges and issues around accepting decline as payment i spoke to overstock c.e.o. patrick byrne about his company's experience with korn overstock was one of the first major internet retailers to accept declines and i began our conversation by asking him about what kind of transactional volume and decline his company has seen since accepting the cryptocurrency take a look what he had to say. i think since really announced it it's a quarter of one percent of sales just the last calculation twenty four hundreds of one percent of settle so your quarter one percent on a billion and a half dollar company that's bodes well but it is excel or i mean in general the secular level opens. now in terms of other retailers who want to take big clients

what have operational hiccups have you had that you think can be avoided in other companies it's been surprisingly seamless and smooth we integrated with coyne because there are other companies i shouldn't like big pay and clone a poll among them the integration that our team about eight days make probably is corn based probably got it down even tighter than not so the integration is very seamless since it's. i mean it's and hasn't had a hiccup since we started and it's really the we integrated all kinds of different payment systems but this is the first i can think of where there's just no hiccups at all once once you integrate it it's just it's just beautiful we've even got our customer service agents are now able to issue refunds in bitcoin that was a lot of a month or so ago and then another all give you some breaking news or all give you

the first look at some of those in about a month or six weeks we'll be introducing into our international platform so our international viewers including those russia will be able to shop on our site and pay in bitcoin well thank you for that bit of breaking news now like you mentioned you've been working with point but have there been any new innovations implemented by coyne both in the past couple months that you've benefited from prepayment that overstock. not that i'm aware of i think they're a fluke assange from what i understand it so it's a lot on the wall so they offer a wallet to consumers and i think that they're focusing on that side of it as well for their focus and that's one primarily from what i hear but there's really not anything we need from that is no new innovations we're we're looking for someone with some point hope somebody creates a derivatives market because we can hedge our risk that way but we're not really looking for anything else from current pics when we have kind of all we need from them are you at all surprised by the adoption rate of decline by retailers and what

do you think accounts for the uptick and bequeath acceptance by march and. will we like to think that we had that we broke the ice i think the fact the biggest before we announced that we were taking about the biggest merchant was i think about a million dollars that was taken big coing so by us doing this we see them going you know finding a ten million dollar one hundred million dollar billion dollar merchants were billion and a half dollar merchant and i think we still like to think we saved them about four or five years of the revolution and then once we did it it kind of forces other people's hands other laurence merchants like newegg like. road dish t.v. . i like to think that we put it on the map but my expectation was assuming we did that you were going to see a lot of other people maybe just not an attempt to get the p.r. we got to be all that we didn't do it for p.r. with that for philosophical to return reasons you know but now that we've broken

another has broken into the billion dollar vendor more i think it's just a matter of time before the other or the other dominoes fall project as a retailer what's more important in terms of platform acceptance for new payment platform retailers are users. well it's a chicken and egg thing on in wall street they have a saying liquidity begets liquidity once you have people coming in and buy on or selling at a place you have network effects which made even a take off from work so now you can't really have the merchants don't want to sign up that's where the consumers do it consumers don't have any sign of where the merchants to source chicken egg. once it gets spinning as a spin and now it tends to explode very quickly i think that you may even see the pace of adoption in kreutz from here until we get from a quarter of one percent up to a more significant percentage of share of sales across the world and this isn't

just us from amman i think this will spread across the world and we've broken through that tipping point. now in the financial blogosphere there has been some talk about using decline as a test case for government created. so first do you see something like that happening and second do you think government has a role in encouraging at all. that's a funny question it's a smart question i say reminds me of dorothy parker said when she her fears that when she heard she said that what you hear is the two people collaborated to write a book it always made her sound to her like it's hearing of three people collaborating to make a baby just don't i don't i don't know what the third person does pull similar if you've got an eternity don't know what that's limited by the rules of mathematics like or by you know critical like group occurrences are not sure what the rule of government it is does it you don't it's like needing three people to make

a baby what's they don't need the government currency is a mechanism for humans to communicate information to each other price community and prices are little packets of information about scarcity and value and i don't know what you need that other party for when when we actually what you don't need the other institutions when you've got an institutional it lets humans interact directly there like that that's really all to me we want cryptocurrency so subversive towards authoritarian states sloat frankly like russia and one russia has outlawed it outlawed big calling exchanges because it's ultimately very subversive technology towards all authoritarian regimes and it is now patrick you've been quoted as saying the federal reserve is like a tumor in america you cut it out you don't replace it with anything and that you think big question enables one to simply check out of the whole federal reserve system so here's my question is that really true today though and what i basically

mean is are you speaking literally or figuratively when you say that. well. first i should mention i was quoting a great economist thomas soul who described federal reserve as a cancer that should be cut out and somebody said to him well what i mean well what do you replace it with then he said that's what it sounds like a tumor when you cut it to you know replace it with and then i don't mean it's literally a tumor it's it's a it's it is a metaphor. and. i'm sorry what was the second part of the question what it is how it is yes do you think it's really true today that one can check out of the whole system it's seems like that's not possible on some level well not yet you have to pay your taxes and dollars big corn isn't leaving tender yet not that's one of the ways that governments protect the monopolies is their seniority is what it really is the right to clinch is they make their currency the legal tender to pay taxes you can't do that yet but you can pretty much buy everything you need at

overstock we're introducing more and more food products. and there's a lot of things you can't buy with bitcoin but as you buy more expiate will convert more and more to bitcoin that creates more incentive for people selling other products products such as housing or gasoline to start accepting bitcoin and so again the pitch virtual circles sped up that was overstocked theo patrick byrne time now for today's big deal. time with the wonderful we're here and then today we are discussing air b.n. b. corporate expansion and the fundamental value of these companies now it was announced tuesday that air b.n. b. and are planning to target business travelers and the business community so edward

what's going on here what can you tell me about this and why are they going after business consumers well. so you're for your second question i think they're going after business consumers because that's where the money is basically you know when it comes to pay more business customers always are going to be able to pay more so when you want to build your brand in your market unless you get volume out of the consumers definitely you want to go with the business so that's definitely why they're doing it and another thing i think that's really interesting and actually good about the way they're going about this is you know the integration into how expenses are made and so forth if you think about like american express in terms of business consumers the reason american express is so integrated in is because they make it so easy to expense you know they have the reports etc and so forth so they they're working with a third party to make it so that they can have your travel expenses can go directly into your business expense forms and it is this also because you know business

travelers they obviously spend more money because on a corporate account and if there's only a small pool of individuals who can fly business on their personal buy or and it just seems like a larger pool to dive in is that where they're doing that they're doing it because again you know like if you have to go somewhere you must do it then you're going to pay the full price airlines with business customers and so forth or even hotels with business customers they want to have their internet you know they wanted to be at a certain. they need to leave at a certain time there's no it's ands or buts and they're willing to pay the price to do that and therefore you're going to get the highest margin from for that reason and the same thing goes with surge pricing. who's going to be with his surge pricing business customers going to be able to if you've got to get to a meeting to close a deal you're going to pay whatever it cost to get to that meeting now there is still plenty of skepticism surrounding arab fashion specifically when it comes to

safety and security both in and out of the country now edward we've talked about some creepy experiences with you and i'm sure there exist with a long left we're not going to throw her under the bus because i'm a big fan of her but you know the drivers coming after passengers are spin a little too creepy so here's the question i would think with business travel there's a heightened. problematics that you the the legal issues that could come out of you know any sort of harassment any sort of traffic jam any sort of traffic accident how are they going to combat that in terms of insurance you know the question almost i mean personally i think if it's a personal issue they have someone picking you up at your house or they see where you're going to your friend's house or whatever that's more intrusive personal like if you're a business traveler you just traveling from the airport to your hotel or whatever i mean what could really happen in the accident which could happen if you were. going

to the office i think up in the air you see them everywhere. check it out about business travel now on the other side there's clients and you have this security and control that's going on here but you know why cater to business clients if there are these security control issues you said that you think they're less but could it possibly be that this is going to be much greater because you're dealing with massive corporations that can sue you out of business who are well maybe not if you have an eighteen billion dollars but like generally can sue you out of business i would think that would be so. the thing that you have to add to the equation when they're your they're your customer your client so they're not going to sue you out of business in the sense that they're only going to go to another vendor if necessary but the great thing about it for. perspective is that it gives . into the regulatory space meaning if you have like these big companies are saying look we using google we're using the regulators we need these companies because

we're businesses that's going to. push and so i think that that's part of their plan as well it's not just the monetary aspect it's also from a regulatory perspective you know just think new york if new york businesses are telling snyderman and whoever else we need air b.n. b. that's going to have some some push and it's not just going to be while there's money there's good stuff to sell now we've also discussed how playing defense of hardball against other ride sharing outs like trying to cut prices in order to defend market share and you've also say that over is way over valued typically if there's a move by air b.n. b. and over to grow and expand in the midst of competition we have ten seconds but i want to get your i think yes you know you know you want to grow as much as possible so get as much into these different spaces as you can get him a fact and then you can win the war of it i love this topic and i want to talk about again so we're going to that's all for now thank you had really love hearing

from you please check out our facebook page facebook dot com slash from buster t. please tweet us at our need at edward and h. and all of us here from the bus thank you we'll see you next time ciao. i want to thank you. for destroying the teaching every minute. lead. plug me the law of the web. my overlap like the plane. was listening to say the molten plane skis is most elite clubs played sometimes from nothing which lead to sleep it is simple. to look just

keep still we can still be just if you could you see a stately eight look to be to sleep but speech was still. plenty. please please please. please let your cultural phenomena like the bank of new knowledge face life you know i'm own. luck. a pleasure to have you with us you're our teens today i roll researcher.

you surely know where you're. the. love her.

iran syria has been. constant sad. isn't it justified that it's not pursuing the. raising the specter. of a government leader who. has. nuclear weapons. to see if they are being removed before. we. take you.

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the stories that impact your life. choose me access to. breaking news today or not see international israeli tanks fire on a. school in gaza killing some fifteen people that's according to palestinian health officials more details in just a month. another round of sanctions against russia over the ukraine conflict targeting key players for the financial and energy sectors. the civilian casualty count of the ukrainian army intensifies its offensive in the east of the country moving ever closer to the russian border moscow is struggling to get children out of a combat zone.