I don't believe this was ever about taking Ukraine with the Russian military. I believe this is about destroying Ukraine and squeezing Europe's energy-dependent balls until the EU cracks under the economic pressure caused by the sanctions. This is already happening with Germany whimpering to Daddy Vladdy for all that precious, precious oil and gas. "Oh, we gave Zelensky a billion euros!"; yeah, and you gave Putin 25x that in oil/gas purchases.

The mealy-mouthing and dissembling has already begun, most shamefully from the New York Times, who is calling for Ukraine to make "hard choices". "This isn't capitulation" -- fuck you NYT, yes it is.

I had honest hopes that the western powers would show some spine and resolve, but as soon at their economies started to feel a little pain, the number of fucks given for Ukrainian lives went to zero. Russian is going to rape and murder its way from Odessa to the Belarus border until the western powers figure out some way to make it all Zelensky's fault or force him to cede massive amounts of Ukrainian territory before any real economic pain felt.

The worst part is that Finland and Sweden are going to be granted NATO membership, but Ukraine still is denied. Why are these two the hills NATO is willing to die on and Ukraine not? If NATO isn't willing to risk nuclear war over Ukraine, what happens when the tip of a single Russian boot touches Finnish soil? What happens when Finland then calls for Article 5 and the rest of NATO suddenly realizes shit just got real? What happens when it's time to shit or get off the pot; put up or shut up? Either NATO charges into the teeth of a potential nuclear war, or NATO is shown to be a paper tiger. If someone sees a middle ground, I'm interested in hearing it.

(Incidentally, NATO's Article 5 is pretty porous. A-5 doesn't say every NATO nation commits whatever forces are deemed necessary by the whole to defend against an aggressor. Instead, it says that in the event of A-5 coming into play, each member will take "such action as [the member state] deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

Notice the whole 'each member' and 'deems necessary'? Yeah, to quote a popular movie 'I don't think this mutual defense pact means what you think it does'.)

Hate to see the oil burning.
Love to see Russia get a little blowback.
I fully support expanding Ukraine’s border 100 miles into Russia to create the kind of “buffer zone” Russia tried to turn Ukraine into. 100 miles of no man’s land, all Russians must move. Ukrainians may settle there. Turnabout is fair play, and they deserve every inch of lost territory.
Then they should retake Crimea.

In a second story today, Russian troops are evacuating the Chernobyl area after poisoning themselves with radiation sickness by digging trenches, driving tanks, and generally disturbing the highly radioactive soil there. Those soldiers are in for a gruesome death, Russia can’t afford to treat thousands of cases of acute radiation poisoning.

In a third report, Putin’s ploy to demand rubles for Russian oil has already fallen apart on day one. They continue to accept euros…euros they can’t transfer to Russia because of banking sanctions!

If youre a normal country you are always living on credit, if for no other reason, then because it is super easy and cheap to borrow. Also you have to, to make it to the next pay check (tax collection). First your subjects have to produce and sell, then you can collect taxes.

You dont base the value of the dollar on anything. You offer it as a commodity to the market. If your economy sucks or you print too much money the dollar goes down, which can help the economy. Printing money doesnt automatically help the economy though, it just creates space and time to make it possible for the economy to improve.

Improving the economy means creating more or better products and services that are in demand at a competitive cost. Governments in non-dictatorial countries cant really do that directly, they can only create the conditions for this to happen.

Moderate inflation hardly plays a part, except as a moderator (is that a pun?) of shocks. Deflation (and a strong gold standard in a developing economy IS deflation) is deadly, it makes the economy less flexible, less able to adjust.

If you never improve your ecomomy, all you will have left will be to bitch about inflation.

What is too much debt, too much inflation, too much intervention? I wish economics was a science.

Theoretically the economy can get to be so bad that the structure collapses, there are countries which have notoriously bad historical records, and yet every time they restart they have to borrow money to get things going again. Reserves in general are useless. Production, services and a functioning market, recursive production of valuable goods and services which freely and easily find customers is the only thing you can consider a reliable pillar of civilization. Currency is one of those goods and services.

If for any reason yor currency cant freely circulate (see China or the USSR errr... Russia) you can hardly be a superpower, at least not in the economic sense.

Adopting a gold standard so strong that it would destroy the international dollar standard has no advantage for the USofA or for any developed first world country. Even just having the Euro wreaks havoc in weaker European countries economies, but that is another can of worms.

A lot of what is wrong about the gold standard would apply if a country decided to adopt bitcoin as its sole currency btw.

One of the most beloved Footballers letting the youth and everyone else know what he thinks of Euro 2020 sponsors product.

That's gotta be a marketing nightmare for coke.

Your video, The Billion-Euro Nuclear Reactor That Was Never Switched On, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Your video, Euro NCAP Crash Test of Tesla Model 3, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Holy crap. My family and I did a Euro vacation a few years ago and we stayed in the town of Grindelwald while we were in Switzerland. I think we rode the same trail as in the video in the summer, just on what were called trottibikes; basically giant scooters. It was scary and fun as hell.

https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/grindelwaldfirst/trottibike-scooter/

I'd throw a euro or two in his bucket. For some reason, street musicians are far more charming in Europe than they are in my own city (Seattle).

"On Feb 20th 2017 Air Navigation Services Czech Republic reported, that the actual communication for the hand off from Bratislava to Prague at 15:53Z had been correct (frequency 132.890MHz transmitted and acknowledged), however, the crew subsequently tuned frequency 132.980MHz, the crew did not monitor the emergency frequency. Prague Center spotted another Jet Airways aircraft, flight 9W-122 from Delhi (India) to London Heathrow, flying under control of Rhein Control (Germany) south of the Czech Republic, via Rhein Control and 9W-122 an ACARS message was transmitted to 9W-118 asking them to contact (Prague Center) frequency 132.065MHz. When 9W-118 reported on that frequency at 16:26Z (loss of communication thus lasted for 33 minutes), the aircraft was already in German Airspace and was instructed to contact Rhein Control. Czech ATC immediately informed their military counterpart (Czech control and reporting center) that contact had been re-established."

https://www.aeroinside.com/item/9114/jet-airways-b773-near-cologne-on-feb-16th-2017-loss-of-communication-leads-to-intercept

The crew swapped some digits on channel handover that lead to a comms blackout of 33 minutes. Euro jets already in the air intercepted the passenger jet over Germany and escorted to England.

Those boys and girls don't mess around.

ECB Research Bulletin:

In an economy with its own fiat currency, the monetary authority and the fiscal authority can ensure that public debt denominated in the national fiat currency is non-defaultable, i.e. maturing government bonds are convertible into currency at par. With this arrangement in place, fiscal policy can focus on business cycle stabilisation when monetary policy hits the lower bound constraint. However, the fiscal authorities of the euro area countries have given up the ability to issue non-defaultable debt. As a consequence, effective macroeconomic stabilisation has been difficult to achieve.

Translation:
- all members of the eurozone effectively use a foreign currency
- they can default, because they do not and cannot issue debt in their currency
- fiscal policy has thus been completely neutered

Ergo, national parliaments have a significantly smaller policy space compared to countries with their own currency. Our parliaments intentionally surrender power to unelected technocrats, even control of the national budget, which is the primary power available to any parliament anywhere.

"Sorry, lad. We cannot pay for healthcare/pension/infrastructure/education/wages/X, we have to maintain a balanced budget to appease the market." Yet it is still illegal to call for the guillotine...

Meanwhile, Japan doesn't give a fuck. The BoJ has been vacuuming up outstanding debt like there's no tomorrow. It currently holds in excess of 40% of all government debt, effectively canceling it. It's just book-keeping. The Treasury issues the debt, the CB buys the debt. Both are part of the consolidated government sector, ergo no debt. "Hyperinflation!", they scream. Can you hear them? Except Japan has been fighting deflation for two decades, with no end in sight.

Yet the inflation-hawks are still treated as persons of authority. Flat-earthers, the lot of 'em.

And my country wants the rest of Europe to sign on to the most moronic law in German history: the "Schuldenbremse", which makes running a deficit illegal at the constitutional level (except for undefined "emergencies"). They are either a) brainwashed, b) idiots, or c) straight up evil. And I'm not sure which one I prefer.

Pretty sure that's called a "Siftup"

Some examples...
https://videosift.com/video/Youdiejoe-s-vid-of-the-2009-SoCal-siftup
https://videosift.com/video/Spocos-2011-Melbourne-Siftup-Footage
https://videosift.com/video/EURO-SIFTUP-2009
https://videosift.com/video/Copenhagen-Siftfup-Crake-jessefromthenorth-and-gwiz665

The problem isn't me eating bacon, the problem is that my bacon is produced intertnationally. It's the industrial globalisation of of our food that's causing the biggest problems. Why do I see south african strawberries and argentinian beef in my supermarket? I live in middle europe, strawberries and cows have an awesome time here. Because it's cheaper, it costs the corporations less money to ship their product around the globe than producing it locally. There are less regulastions to follow. The local farmer takes too much money for his cow and strawberries don't grow here in January. We can't have the customer pay a Euro or two more for for his steak. We can't have the customers wait until April for strawberries. We want it now and as cheaply as possible. That's why we eat more meat than ever, that's why my steak damages the environment more than ever.
Globalisation is a wonderful thing but it isn't without consequences.

That's an amazing arrangement. Is it possible to buy it from the US? I saw the price is in euros.

I had to buy an Epipen in Paris last year and I was able to buy it over-the-counter for ~$70 (65 euro).

Gimme that socialized medicine any day of the week.