Golden quote from McFuckface Wikileak rapist who is hiding from the law:

But there is a responsible tradition of redacting potentially harmful private information. In 2010, just before publishing the first Afghan war logs provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, Mr. Assange and a group of journalists from The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel were engaged in a tussle over redacting the names of Afghan informants. The three publications all decided to do so, but Mr. Assange disagreed. As he told Nick Davies of The Guardian, “If an Afghan civilian helps coalition forces, he deserves to die.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/can-we-trust-julian-assange-and-wikileaks.html?emc=edit_ty_20160808&nl=opinion&nlid=40977923

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 1:49am PST - promote requested by lurgee.

like payback said, vancouver has been "rich washing" for decades. i've heard some crazy stories from expo 88 era. before the olympics they cracked down on the poor. often ostensibly rounding them up and sending them to the suburbs (this is fairly normal procedure for cops who "catch" binners/panhandlers in richer areas: they "arrest" them, drive them out to the suburbs, and just leave them there).

http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/10/14/OlympicsHomelessLaws/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/03/vancouver-winter-olympics-homeless-row

2010

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, November 7th, 2010 10:32pm PST - promote requested by deathcow.

Note that he bets 2010-2020 will be THE hottest decade ever recorded, and not just among the top 10 hottest decades. This is how we know the warming is significant, the more data (ie longer timespan) , the more clear the trend is. Individual years might not be THE warmest, just because they are the latest, but if you measure in decades, this is almost certainly the case. it would be an even more slam-dunk case if you bet with centuries. This is also why deniers sometimes literally use snowballs to prove GW isnt real, because if you go for local weather on a particular day, you can "prove" anything, but the amount of data in your "research" is insignificant.

Uh no, anime characters are not "drawn to look more like westerners"

I think this article explains it well:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, July 25th, 2010 2:06am PDT - promote requested by ravioli.

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

It reminds me of the ancient Roman surveying device, the Hodometer, which used pebbles dropped into a bowl to count the number of Roman (~1500m) miles travelled.

http://johns-spot112948.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/ancient-roman-pedometer-called.html

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 1:16pm PDT - promote requested by radx.

Apologies, I got carried away... wall of text incoming.

@RedSky

I agree, monetary policy at low rates has very little to offer in terms of economic stimulus. Then again, the focus almost solely on monetary policy is part of the problem. Fiscal policy can have a massive impact, both directly (government purchases of goods and services) and indirectly (increase in automatic stabilizers). But for that you either need to be in control of your central bank, so that you can engage in Overt Monetary Financing ("printing" money). Or you need the blessing of the private banks, which is particularly true for a Vollgeld system.

The budget is the core of a parliamentary democracy, and to be at the whim of the folks at Deutsche Bank, HSBC or Credit Suisse -- no, thank you very much. We saw how that played out in Greece.

Anyway, the central bank can do miraculous things: if it provides funds to the democratically elected body in charge of the budget, aka parliament/the government. Trying to "motivate" the private banks to stock up on cheap reserves to stimulate lending is just a sign of ideology.

The great Michal Kalecki, in his essay The Political Aspects of Full Employment, summarized the general issue of government spending quite clearly. The industrial leaders stand in opposition to government spending aimed at full employment for three distinct reasons: a) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; b) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); c) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.

I'd say control over your currency is too great a tool to leave it in the hands of unelected managers. Clement Attlee knew very well why he had to nationalize the Bank of England in '46.

Back to the issue of inflation, I'd like to make two points. First, how big a role should inflation really play when talking policy. Second, what's the influence of a central bank on inflation.

Where does it come from, this focus on inflation. People usually talk about government spending when discussing inflation. Private spending is rarely brought up, even though it can be just as inflationary. So let's ignore private spending for a moment and talk purely government spending: should a deficit/surplus not be judged primarily by how well it helps us achieve our macroeconomic goals? Or more clearly, why should we sacrifice full employment or our general welfare on the altar of inflation? Yes, that's over the top. But so is the angst of inflation.

I'd say let's stick with Abba Lerner's concept of functional finance and judge deficits/surpluses purely by how well they help us achieve our macroeconomic goals. Besides, the US has run massive deficits during the GFC, so much in fact, that a great number of monetarists saw hyperinflation just around the corner. Still waiting for it. Same for Japan. Massive deficits... and deflation.

As long as spending, both private and government, doesn't push the economy beyond its limits (full employment, real resources, production capacity), out-of-control inflation just doesn't materialize. Plus, suppressing inflation is actually one thing central banks can do quite well. Unlike causing inflation, which both Japan and the EU are showcases off. Draghi can dance naked on the table, monetary policy (QE, mainly) won't push inflation upwards.

Which brings me to the second point: what's inflation, what's the cause of inflation, how can central banks manipulate it.

CPI is often used as a measure of inflation, but I prefer the GDP deflator. CPI doesn't account for externalities that you cannot influence, whatever you do. Prime case: the price of oil. Monetary policy of the Bank of Sweden has no influence on the price of oil. The GDP inflator, however, accounts for every economic activity within your currency zone -- much more useful.

General theory says, this measure of inflation goes up when demand surpasses supply. And vice versa. The primary factor of demand is domestic purchasing power, therefore wages. If you suppress wages, you suppress inflation. If you push wages, you push inflation. More specifically, you can see a direct correlation between unit labour costs and the GDP deflator in every country at any time. Here's a general graph for multiple countries, and the St. Louis FED provides a beauty for the US.

That's why it's easy for central banks to combat inflation, but almost impossible to fight deflation.

If you're in the mood for some economic common sense, Michal Kalecki's insightful paper on the political aspects of full employment (what would it take, what stands in opposition) is always worth a few minutes.

That's MMT/post-Keynesian economics, published in 1943. The fact that it took close to seven decades before the likes of Adair Turner pushed this back into the mainstream makes me want to sent whole economics departments at universities into the bogs to cut peat with nothing but a spade.

Be fair: I would have acted the same way if my local wine bar had run out of 2010 Grand Cru Bordeaux.

A little self-promotion never hurt anyone.

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And previous years, which you have to read with your brain like a sucker:
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