Coin News

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A partial shutdown of 29 U.S. West Coast ports stretched into a third day on Monday ahead of the U.S. labor secretary's scheduled arrival in San Francisco to try to broker a settlement ending months of disruptions on the cargo-clogged docks.

President Barack Obama, under pressure to weigh in on a labor dispute that has rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain and beyond, said on Saturday he would dispatch Labor Secretary Tom Perez to meet with the two sides in the conflict.

A spokeswoman said the labor secretary was due to arrive in San Francisco on Tuesday to join in talks between the shipping companies and the union representing 20,000 dockworkers.

The secretary's spokeswoman, Xochitl Hinojosa, declined to detail his itinerary or his meetings schedule. The White House said last week that Perez had already been in contact with the parties and would keep Obama informed.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the shipping companies' bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime Association, have said nothing about the status of the talks since they agreed on Friday to honor a news blackout requested by a federal mediator.

The PMA previously said the talks, which have dragged on for nine months, hit a new snag over a union demand for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract disputes. The union has insisted the two sides are near an accord.

Inbound cargo vessels continued to stack up at anchor, with 34 freighters idled on Monday morning waiting for a berth outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's two busiest cargo hubs.

Loading and unloading of cargo vessels at all 29 West Coast ports have been halted since Friday night and were not set to resume until Tuesday morning. Vessel operations were likewise suspended last weekend, and again on Thursday.

But the ports were not left entirely dormant. The companies said work had continued in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal gates as they seek to clear some of the backlogged cargo containers stacked up on the waterfronts.

DOMINO EFFECT

The affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 percent of imports from Asia. A domino effect has rippled across much of the U.S. economic landscape, affecting agriculture, manufacturing, retail and transportation.

California farmers have been especially hard hit, with port disruptions posing a major barrier to perishable goods headed to overseas markets and export losses estimated to be running at hundreds of millions of dollars a day. [ID:nL1N0VN01L]

Asian exporters faced rising shipping rates and some have been forced to reroute their goods by more costly air freight. One automaker, Japan's Honda Motor Co <7267.T>, said on Sunday it would slow production for a week at plants in Ohio, Indiana and the Canadian province of Ontario, because of port-related delays in parts shipments to those factories [ID:nL5N0VQ07H].

The shippers have said they were curtailing port operations because they were no longer willing to pay union workers premium overnight, holiday and weekend wages during work slowdowns the companies have accused the union of orchestrating.

The union has faulted changes in shipping practices instituted by the carriers themselves for causing worsening backlogs. Union officials also say the shippers are engaging in brinkmanship, using the partial shutdown to exaggerate the magnitude of the crisis as a pressure tactic.

The last time contract talks led to a full shutdown of the West Coast ports was in 2002, when the companies imposed a lockout that was lifted 10 days later under a court order sought by President George W. Bush.

The shipping industry has estimated the 2002 lockout caused $15.6 billion in economic losses. The retail and manufacturing industries have projected that a full, extended shutdown of the ports now could cost the U.S. economy some $2 billion a day.

(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Rancho, Mirage, Calif.; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Join the conversation about this story »

Foreign Affairs hosted an event to discuss the issues around trust where cryptocurrency is involved in global banking, payments and identity.

Fresh off $2.5m in seed funding, colored coins startup Colu has announced that eToro CEO Yoni Assia has joined its board of directors.

One of the challenges of storing bitcoin securely is finding the appropriate tradeoff between security and convenience. On one end of the spectrum, hosted online wallets make it super simple to store your bitcoin online and access them from any computer by logging in with a username and password. However, this means that your account can be compromised easily by an attacker who learns your email and password. This also means that you must trust your hosted wallet provider to offer appropriate security measures. On the high-security end of the spectrum, paper wallets allow you to store bitcoin completely offline, but the process of creating a paper wallet securely and spending bitcoin from your paper wallet is quite complex and […]

The post The Ledger Wallet Nano: Cutting-Edge Hardware Security appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

PokerStars, the world's largest poker site, issues official denial that it will soon accept bitcoin, quashing persistent rumours.

Trading pulled the Bitcoin price from $268 to $228 (1665 to 1407 CNY) on Sunday after an exuberant high was achieved earlier in the day. Profit-taking changed into cynical short selling until price reversed from support near $230, as discussed below. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full […]

The post Bitcoin Price Smash Down appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

CoinDesk speaks with New York City council member Mark Levine about his proposed bill that would see the city accept bitcoin for fines and fees.

At 20, Wences Casares launched Argentina's first Internet service provider. Now 40, and with several successful startups under his belt, the serial entrepreneur is on a mission to bring financial security to underserved communities through Bitcoin

The Bitcoin Core development team released version 0.1 of its wallet software packages for all platforms this morning. The wallet was made available via the BitTorrent protocol, specifically to better serve regions of the world where Bitcoin.org official servers are either banned or hard to access. Among the goodies bundled in the new release were […]

The post Ultra Fast Blockchain with New Bitcoin Wallet appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The bitcoin price jumped $50 in four days of trading, but settled back below the $250 mark after crossing the threshold in earlier trading.

Can you make solid parallels between accounting or financial practices in the fiat currency world and the digital currency world? In a less and less private world, is seeking privacy in your digital financial transactions wrong? Can you “launder money” in the digital realm if Bitcoin is not actually, legally money? These grey area questions […]

The post Bitcoin Tumbling: For Privacy Advocates or Money Launderers? appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

UK-based company Netagio has announced that it will close its bitcoin, pound, US dollar and euro exchange platforms as of today. The news marks the start of a 30-day notice period for its customers to withdraw their funds and close their trading accounts. Simon Hamblin, CEO of Netagio, said: "We are immensely proud of our efforts and achievements to […]

Mobile payments pioneer mHITs has created a bitcoin platform it claims is the "easiest way" to send phone credit across borders.

New Hampshire has a well-earned reputation for being one of the most libertarian, progressive, and affluent municipalities in the United States. And we have covered its natural love of the revolutionary digital currency Bitcoin here at CCN. Now, the one of the smallest states in the Union is looking to take a leading step in […]

The post New Hampshire Bitcoiners Testify to State Regulators appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Decentral Talk Live will cover a diverse array of topics. Co-hosts Anthony Di Iorio and Ethan Wilding prepare us for a decentralized road-trip with Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMaps. OSM is a free and open map-data project that is updated through the collaborative efforts of its decentralized users. Viewers will find out more about how to become part of this robust and fast-growing project. Among the users of OpenStreetMaps is the Digital Humanitarian Network. Patrick Meier of DHN beams in to the DTL studio to talk about the role of digital networks in the delivery of 21st century humanitarian response. He will discuss the interface between formal, professional humanitarian organizations and informal, yet skilled-and-agile, volunteer & technical networks. ChangeTip has been making headlines lately with its […]

The post This week on Decentral Talk Live appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Voter engagement in the ongoing Bitcoin Foundation board elections is too low, some candidates have claimed, due to lack of information.