[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

Morat · Post by **Morat** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:42 am

So, effectively, the eurozone is a machine for turning small problems into major crises and medium problems into catastrophic disasters.

And the only way to solve this is to get EU citizens to think of themselves as EU citizens way, way ahead of being Dutch or Spanish. For rich EU citizens to just pay taxes to fund benefits for poor EU citizens without balking because it's going to foreigners. Not to mention that a real union would mean the end of things like the Irish government being forced to eat all the losses from stupid bets on Irish real estate by EU core banks. Why would they want that?

But as these crises arrive one after another and then drag on for years without getting resolved, we've seen a significant uptick in nationalist sentiment. They're clearly not making progress towards the day when Europe or even a significant part of Europe actually unifies.

As an example, for the Articles of Confederation to be replaced by the US Constitution, they needed to obviously fail in several areas (defense, foreign policy, economy, law & order) while the new USA was under serious threat and while the politicians were all willing to make a reasonable deal. And the states had just had the unifying experience of a successful rebellion, and were much more culturally homogenous.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:56 am

Greek PM Tsipras Allegedly Asked Russia for $10 Bln to Print Drachmas

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 11:54 pm

So, effectively, the eurozone is a machine for turning small problems into major crises and medium problems into catastrophic disasters.

It's a machine where all the profits from everything are taken by the banks, and all the losses by the government in whose country those banks were gambling at the time. Same as the US or Australia or anywhere else.

The thing is, without banks everyone starves. Starving people are bad for the continued existence of the state, so the state will preserve the banks at all costs. Banks know this and are thus grossly irresponsible, because they face zero real risks. Lose a couple trillion dollars by fraud: still get all your bonuses. Loan money on mansions in the desert: get the state to buy them all. Got a lot of loans tied up in fossil fuels: get more subsidies for them, and kill any attempts to get cheaper new power generation systems going.

Ideally there would be strict government regulation of the banking sector, or just let them go broke and buy them for $1, but then they offer really nice jobs for life to serving politicians (and their kids, their cousins, their friends and neighbours, whatever it takes) and that doesn't work either.

But you know, it's less bad than the arms industry, because bankers don't start wars, or at least not the sort there they bomb cities for "freedom". Probably kill just as many people, but ... yeh, I got nothing.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 2:10 am

You think we are only doing this to greece and other countries?
One of our bigger radio shack analoges just went bust.
And the first thing that happened was to blame the customers.
Demands for people to pay higher prices to enable the corps to pay higher salaries so people can buy more and save the economy . .
Which, of course, is bullshit. I work for a multi million € corp, i get minimum wage, which is 8.5€ per hour, and the corp is proud to now be paying minimum wage to all it's employees . . and we are losing benefits that had us effectively above the 8.50€ per hour we had before left, right, front and center. Higher prices to save the economy is still bullshit.
The wageslaves will not be paying it forward, because it does not work.
The money will not tricke down but be kept by the higher ups, while the people buying simple get poorer and poorer.
First you need to raise wages all over the place so people can actually afford to buy more stuff and THEN you can talk about saving the economy!
I, myelf, have after rent etc. maybe 300 bucks left over for personal usage. Which is too much to claim any benefits from the state and not enough to do anything meaningfull with.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:36 am

FrankTrollman wrote: China has closed most trading on their stock market for the next six months. Most analysts seem to think that because the stock prices still haven't fallen far enough to erase the last year's bubble-gains, that the market is still under pressure to fall as soon as those restrictions end. So no reason to believe that those restrictions will be ending in full when they are currently scheduled to.

Of course, whatever the fuck you think the fundamentals of Chinese corporate stock actually is, why the fuckity fuck would you want to buy any of it? The PRC has shown that it is more powerful than the stock market, but only by reminding everyone that the Chinese government can and will change the rules at any time. Think about it: if you buy Chinese stock, it is entirely possible that when you want to cash out you will be forbidden to by the Chinese government. Whatever the face value of the stocks you own might be, its effective value may well be zero when you need it.

Pricing in that kind of uncertainty is going to put huge downward pressure on Chinese stock prices, which in turn is going to put more pressure on the government to do more of these crazy iron fisted things. You're looking at a confidence spiral where the stock market effectively no longer exists as a thing that foreign investment interacts with. At all.

-Username17

Read this and thought it relevant to the conversation - apparently, Chinese exposure to their own stock market is more severe than anticipated, it's been a sink for their fractional-reserve banking system. So the reason they intervened like this was (essentially) to prevent a bank run:
http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/b ... hould-care

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:45 pm

So... you are probably aware that ISIL is a brutal revolutionary regime that has loose control over territory in Syria and Iraq. You probably also know that one of the most effective groups fighting against ISIL are the Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq.

Well, a bunch of left wing students got bombed in Turkey, which most people are blaming on ISIL forces from Syria. Turkey's response has been swift. And it has been... to start bombing the Kurds in Iraq.

Now superficially, that would seem to be extremely counterproductive and wholly unjustified. And um... yeah. It is. But having a right wing politician with imperial ambitions respond to a fundamentalist Islamist terrorist attack by attacking the perpetrators' enemies in Iraq is apparently just a thing now. So Erdogan is basically George W Bush in Turkish.

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:36 pm

So, funny story. You know how the latest Greek crisis had everyone cracking jokes about yet another German attempt to take over Europe? Well, they've officially stopped being jokes. Schauble is now openly pushing for a partial "economic union" (it isn't) that grants Brussels the power to tax member states and spend that money as they see fit (i.e. give Brussels Germany money and if you want it back do what Brussels Germany says). That is to say, it's a plan to extend Brussels' power of the purse from EU nations in dire situations to EU nations period.

Talking about the "fourth reich" is no longer slightly-hyperbolic-but-still-pretty-on-the-nose criticism of Germany's economic destruction of Europe. It's a real plan on real paper being discussed in real newspapers by real German officials.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:44 pm

I'm... honestly not sure how to feel about that.

I mean, on the one hand, at least they're not rounding up minorities and gassing them. On the other hand, if they institute conservative fiscal policies and gut economies... they might as well be.

Which, I suppose, is to say that there's a certain amount that people are more comfortable with economic conquest than physical. Possibly because people (like me) forget that there is a life toll there with the "right" policies.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:48 pm

Prak wrote:I mean, on the one hand, at least they're not rounding up minorities and gassing them.

Yet.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jul 28, 2015 3:16 am

This plot somewhat happened in an old spy thriller called "Cauldron" by Larry Bond. Basically France and Germany tag-team the rest of europe using the EU as a weapon (not sure if the actual EU had happened yet at writing), and various states got fucked about as hard as Greece before shit got real.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 9:20 pm

DSMatticus wrote:So, funny story. You know how the latest Greek crisis had everyone cracking jokes about yet another German attempt to take over Europe? Well, they've officially stopped being jokes. Schauble is now openly pushing for a partial "economic union" (it isn't) that grants Brussels the power to tax member states and spend that money as they see fit (i.e. give Brussels Germany money and if you want it back do what Brussels Germany says). That is to say, it's a plan to extend Brussels' power of the purse from EU nations in dire situations to EU nations period.

Talking about the "fourth reich" is no longer slightly-hyperbolic-but-still-pretty-on-the-nose criticism of Germany's economic destruction of Europe. It's a real plan on real paper being discussed in real newspapers by real German officials.

My Google-Fu is weak, got a link for that?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 10:06 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:So... you are probably aware that ISIL is a brutal revolutionary regime that has loose control over territory in Syria and Iraq. You probably also know that one of the most effective groups fighting against ISIL are the Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq.

Well, a bunch of left wing students got bombed in Turkey, which most people are blaming on ISIL forces from Syria. Turkey's response has been swift. And it has been... to start bombing the Kurds in Iraq.

Now superficially, that would seem to be extremely counterproductive and wholly unjustified. And um... yeah. It is. But having a right wing politician with imperial ambitions respond to a fundamentalist Islamist terrorist attack by attacking the perpetrators' enemies in Iraq is apparently just a thing now. So Erdogan is basically George W Bush in Turkish.

-Username17

In face you haven't notice, Turkey really hates Kurds, a lot.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 10:57 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:So, funny story. You know how the latest Greek crisis had everyone cracking jokes about yet another German attempt to take over Europe? Well, they've officially stopped being jokes. Schauble is now openly pushing for a partial "economic union" (it isn't) that grants Brussels the power to tax member states and spend that money as they see fit (i.e. give Brussels Germany money and if you want it back do what Brussels Germany says). That is to say, it's a plan to extend Brussels' power of the purse from EU nations in dire situations to EU nations period.

Talking about the "fourth reich" is no longer slightly-hyperbolic-but-still-pretty-on-the-nose criticism of Germany's economic destruction of Europe. It's a real plan on real paper being discussed in real newspapers by real German officials.
My Google-Fu is weak, got a link for that?

I saw it in a couple places binging Greek crisis news shortly before I posted about it. Googling "Schauble economic union" turns up these three, and they get the gist across if you know what you're reading:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/econ ... -1.2297860
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-euro ... ers-2015-7
http://en.europeonline-magazine.eu/germ ... 04330.html

The Greek crisis has a number of Europe's elite pushing for further economic integration, but very few pushing for further political integration. In practice, this makes their ideas a transfer of fiscal authority (of varying extents) from democratically-elected governments in sovereign nations to the rather undemocratic institutions of the EU, which are ruled by sado-monetarists, austerity fanatics, bankers, and oligarchs (note that the ECB already has rather complete monetary authority over countries on the euro).

Remember that the point of treating Greece so harshly was to force them to cede fiscal sovereignty to the troika in all but name. Greece was in the middle of a crisis that could realistically only be solved by monetary policy, and instead of saying "we've got your back," the ECB said "we're turning off liquidity assistance until you accept fiscal policy dictates from Brussels." When Greece caved, Brussels savaged them in order to force through a bunch of neoliberal reforms. The reforms aren't going to work and no one thinks they're going to work and no one cares that they're not going to work; the reforms themselves are the goal, because the reforms will redistribute wealth upwards and that (and that alone) is the goal of the people who wrote them. The EU is corrupt as fuck.

Giving Brussels limited fiscal authority over members of the EU will make it easier to strong-arm them into accepting undemocratic policy dictates from the EU elite, just as the ECB has done to Greece through its monetary authority. Schaubles imagines a Europe in which the neoliberals no longer have to wait for economic crises to strike nations before seizing control of them. The ultimate targets are countries like France; successful nations with generous welfare programs who are slowly being squeezed into crisis by incredible mismanagement at the EU-level. There's a lot of money to be had by a neoliberal takeover of France - a lot of services to privatize, a lot of old people to starve for corporate tax cuts, so on and so on. And France is probably going to help them do it, because no matter how completely fucking stupid it is Europe's mainstream is still devoted to the EU project.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 2:08 am

It makes you wonder if the subversion of the non-overclass by way of EU financial interests was planned from the very start or if it was a 'happy accident' kind of discovery.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 7:49 pm

So, Russia vetoed the tribunal proposition, making the internet explode with "GOTCHA!"

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:20 pm

Well, all heads of state have basically decided to blame Russia (and/or Russian-backed "rebels") automatically. And a lot of people who are not heads of state but watch some form of local news agree with them.

They'd be stupid not to veto a kangaroo court. And presumably the people calling for a tribunal (our foreign minister is claiming full credit for this) know that but are high-fiving each other about this spreading some shame and "obvious guilt" on Russia.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:42 am

France is going to pay a refund for Mistrals

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 11:07 pm

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 12:18 am

Apparently the former Greek Finance Minister did have a plan for Grexit. It was just secret.

And then they didn't take it. For some reason.

He also said that Germany has been pushing to have an example made out of Greece in order to let them convince France to turn over more fiscal control to the EU. In other news, France has agreed to turn over more fiscal control to the EU.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 12:59 pm

Longes wrote:

This looks really bad, but the more I analyze the data the more it looks like it's not anything that I didn't already know was bad. The second image shows a lot of yellow where previously there was white, but 10-99 deaths per year in nations with populations in the millions ultimately comes out to an increase in violent crime. Bad, but not a crisis. Other than that, what I see is that a previously peaceful Syria has exploded into war and that Iraq has gotten worse, no surprise, the war in Nigeria has significantly worsened, and new and significant wars have started in Ukraine and Libya, and the ones in Mali and Egypt the severity of which I'm having difficulty interpreting. Meanwhile, the war in Pakistan has de-escalated and the war in Sudan has de-escalated quite a bit.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 1:06 pm

I stopped even bothering to try to puzzle out the map when I realized they had Ivory Coast in white in 2010. I was in Ghana, I remember the ongoing conflict in neighboring Ivory Coast while I was there. Over a thousand people died in that conflict, in 2010. It should be red in the first map, but it's written in as white. The map is a fucking useless pack of poorly researched lies.

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:40 pm

It's possible that unlabelled countries are white because they haven't been included in the results, and not because of an absence of conflict. Of course, excluding the Ivory Coast would be its own form of bullshit, because its conflict was far more severe in 2010 than 2015. And the yellow designation itself is almost wholly pointless. Ten people is a gunman taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It's bullshit small.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:56 pm

DSMatticus wrote:It's possible that unlabelled countries are white because they haven't been included in the results, and not because of an absence of conflict. Of course, excluding the Ivory Coast would be its own form of bullshit, because its conflict was far more severe in 2010 than 2015. And the yellow designation itself is almost wholly pointless. Ten people is a gunman taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It's bullshit small.

I think the point is that any "map" that shows unreported areas as zero is fucking bullshit on first principles. If you do that, you can make your map say fuck all anything. I could do a map of racist bullshit preventing black people from voting that shows it is worse now than it was in 1910, but that map would just involve pretending that an unavailability of specific data in 1910 counts as zero, and not saying so on the map.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 5:38 pm

DSMatticus wrote:It's possible that unlabelled countries are white because they haven't been included in the results, and not because of an absence of conflict. Of course, excluding the Ivory Coast would be its own form of bullshit, because its conflict was far more severe in 2010 than 2015. And the yellow designation itself is almost wholly pointless. Ten people is a gunman taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It's bullshit small.

In that case, white countries should still be white in the second map. They aren't.

It's a comparison map. You have to compare the same countries, or else it doesn't work.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Aug 01, 2015 6:09 pm

hyzmarca wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:It's possible that unlabelled countries are white because they haven't been included in the results, and not because of an absence of conflict. Of course, excluding the Ivory Coast would be its own form of bullshit, because its conflict was far more severe in 2010 than 2015. And the yellow designation itself is almost wholly pointless. Ten people is a gunman taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It's bullshit small.
In that case, white countries should still be white in the second map. They aren't.

It's a comparison map. You have to compare the same countries, or else it doesn't work.

Technically, "countries named on this map" are being compared - but they still should've explicitly had a "Not included in this comparison" colour that wasn't the same white as "Zero".