“Big Talk” : How To Skip the Small Talk and Connect With Anyone | Kalina Silverman | TEDx

Kalina Silverman wanted to see what could happen if she approached strangers and skipped the small talk to have more meaningful conversations with them instead. She made a video documenting the experience. The stories she heard and the connections she made proved that there’s power in taking the time to stop and ask people to reflect on the questions that truly matter in life.

Since then, she has continued to work on expanding Big Talk into a movement that inspires and enables people to connect with one another on a deeper level.

Learn more about it at www.makebigtalk.com and visit Kalina at www.kalinasilverman.com

How the US government is using blockchain to fight fraud | Kathryn Haun (TEDx)

Kathryn is sharing about the first case of the US government using blockchain to fight fraud. She is sharing about how they could shut down the silk road and even indicted federal agents in the process. Based in San Francisco, Kathryn Haun is a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice and is its first-ever coordinator for emerging financial technologies. Since 2006, she has served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, first in the Washington D.C. area and later in San Francisco, California. She has investigated and prosecuted hundreds of violations of federal criminal law in U.S. courts, with a focus on organized crime syndicates, cybercrime, the Dark Net, and fraud. In addition to her role at the Justice Department, she teaches Stanford Law School’s first-ever course on Cybercrime and Digital Currency and is frequently called on by U.S. and international policymakers for her expertise in these areas.

The Bizarre Economics of Tax Havens and Pirate Banking: James S. Henry at TEDxRadboudU 2013

James S. Henry introduces a hot topic: offshore banking. The G8 and G20 are planning meetings to discuss it. Even the Netherlands is a tax haven for certain types of companies. The huge amount of numbers and graphs tells us that we are confronted with nothing less than a global tax haven industry. For example, Apple makes 100 billion dollars a year of tax free profits because of the games private bankers know how to play.

In medieval times people couldn’t hide their wealth when tax collectors came to inventory it. Nowadays they can. It is said that 64 percent of the global profits are parked offshore, for an important part by multinationals from the first world.

The third world is the victim of this practise. An example from the banana industry: exporting a banana from the Cayman Islands costs 13 pence. When it arrives in the UK to be consumed, the costs have grown to 60 pence. All of this money goes to other parties than the Cayman Islands.

Because of the tax havens, countries from the Third World are not able to receive the tax incomes they are entitled to. Henry even concludes that the debt problem of the third world is not a debt problem, but a tax problem. Both amount to almost the same.

About TEDx
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)