He's got that same fucked up Euro-grill at :20. Brits always have bad teeth. The result of centuries of royal in-breeding. >_<

oh, I'm a collector's item, rarest of my kind, pokemon kulpims
if I win the Euro loto jackpot, I'll fly over for the inauguration

A million billion times more entertaining than the Euro 2016 final!

If the gang is smart enough to make such sophisticated skimmers, I'm sure they're smart enough to evade the police.

"Hey kid, here's $10 Euros, go put this on that ATM."

"Hey kid, here's $10 Euros, go get the card skimmer."

"Hey kid, if you finger me, your whole family is going to die."

Cops pick up one kid, there's 100 more willing to take his place.

There just doesnt seem to be enough to be gained either by leaving or by staying in at this stage. A lose-lose situation.

Britain has avoided adopting Schengen rules and the Euro, so there is little it can complain about regarding the EU, really.

There is also little to cheer for, the Euro and Schengen area are not working as intended, rules are bent and broken at will, the "democratic" political process is at best incomprehensible, but apparently skewed toward unelected clerks applying social engineering solutions to imaginary problems.

Really leaving (not bindingly decided in this referendum) would lead to short term chaos and economic loss for both the EU and Britain. With what long term gains, exactly?

Democracy should be used to pick representatives who make responsible decisions, not to vote about what mood people are in on a given day.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the referendum is not legally binding, is it?

So what happens if the plebs vote in favor of Brexit?

Brussels dispatches men in finely-tailored suits to London, with goodies in their suitcases. Politicians become supremely motivated to convince the plebs of the wrongness of their views -- or they take their continental brethren as an example and just ignore the plebs altogether.

Jokes aside, it might very well be a vote to leave a sinking ship.

Anyone here really think the EU can survive the groupthink-induced fixation on austerity? Anyone seen the economics data coming from Italy lately? Greece? Spain? France? Anyone think Italy can be in a single currency with Germany under German control? Anyone think the EU can survive the fall of the Euro or the departure of significant member countries?

The way I see it, the EU cannot survive economic orthodoxy. Greece is dying, Italy is bleeding from every orifice. Even as a strong supporter of a unified Europe, including Russia(!), I cannot support the EU in its current form -- it's rotten to the core and dominated by groupthink.

And with all that in mind, the fact still remains that the EU kept the Tories somewhat in check in many regards. What a disheartening situation...

Slightly off-topic, but that's a pretty optimistic approach. Most of us wouldn't spend 10 euro to save the life of a faceless unknown person on another continent.

Some of us would do it, but only if we got personally thanked by that person.

It's not evil, it's just human nature that we care more about people to whom we have a closer connection.

"Remember, 27 euros budget for this video"

Unfortunately, it shows.

The riding was amazingly skillful, but it just wasn't edited or shot nearly as well as Ken Blocks stuff.

@greatgooglymoogly

Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

Like I said in my previous comment, this talk needs to take a lot of shortcuts, otherwise its length would surpass anyone's attention span.

So, point by point.

By "balanced budget", I suppose you refer to the federal budget. A balanced budget is not neccessarily a bad thing, but it is undesirable in most case. The key reason is sectoral balances. The economy can divided into three sectors: public, private, foreign. Since one person's spending is another person's income, the sum of all spending and income of these three sectors is zero by definition.

More precisely: if the public sector runs a surplus and the private sector runs a surplus, the foreign sector needs to run a deficit of a corresponding size.

Two examples:
- the government runs a balanced budget, no surplus, no deficit
- the private sector runs a surplus (savings) of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 2% of GDP (your country runs a current account surplus of 2% of GDP)

- the government runs a deficit of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector runs a surplus of 3% (your current account deficit of 3%)
- your private sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 1% of GDP, aka burn through savings or run up debt

If you intend to allow the private sector to net save, you need to run either a current account surplus or a public sector deficit, or both. Since we don't export goods to Mars just yet, not all countries can run current account surpluses, so you need to run a public sector deficit if you want your private sector to net save. No two ways about it.

Germany runs a balanced public budget, sort of, and its private sector net saves. But that comes at the cost of a current account surplus to the tune of €250B. That's 250 billion Euros worth of debt other countries have to accumulate so that both the private and public sector in Germany can avoid deficits. Parasitic is what I'd call this behaviour, and I'm German.

If you feel ambitious, you could try to have both surplus and deficit within the private sector by allowing households to net save while "forcing" corporations to run the corresponding deficits. But to any politician trying that, I'd advise to avoid air travel.

As for the "devaluation of the currency", see my previous comment.

Also, she didn't use real numbers, because a) the talk is short and numbers kill people's attention rather quickly, and b) it's a policy decision to use debt to finance a deficit. One might just as well monetise it, like I explained in my previous comment.

Helicopter money would be quite helpful these days, actually. Even monetarists like AEP say so. If fiscal policy is off the table (deficit hawkery), what else are you left with...

As for your question related to the Fed, let me quote Eric Tymoigne on why MMT views both central bank and Treasury as part of the consolidated government:

"MMT authors tend to like to work with a consolidated government because they see it as an effective strategy for policy purpose (see next section), but also because the unconsolidated case just hides under layers of institutional complexity the main point: one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always. This monetary financing is not an option and is not by itself inflationary."

MMT principle: the central bank needs to be under democratic control, aka be part of government. The Fed in particular can pride itself on its independance all it wants, it still cannot fulfill any of its goals without the Treasury's help. It cannot diverge from government policies too long. Unlike the ECB, which is a nightmare in its construction.

Anyway, what does he mean by "one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always"? Well, the simple case is debt monetisation, direct financing. However, the Fed also participates by ensuring that Primary Dealers have enough reserves to make a reasonable bid on treasuries. The Fed makes sure that auctions of treasuries will always succeed. Always. Either by providing reserves to ensure buyers can afford the treasuries, by replacing maturing treasuries or buying them outright. No chance whatsoever for bond vigilantes. Betting against treasuries is pointless, you will always lose.

But what about taxation as a means to finance the Treasury? Well, the video's Monopoly example illustrated quite nicely, you cannot collect taxes until you have spent currency into circulation. Spending comes before taxation, it does not depend on it. Until reserves are injected into the banking system, either by the Fed through asset purchases or the Treasury through spending, taxes cannot be paid. Again, monetary financing is not optional. If the Treasury borrows money from the public, it borrows back money it previously spent.

Yes, I ignored the distribution of wealth, taxation, the fixation on growth and a million other things. That's a different discussion.

At least near the centre of London it can also be quicker to just walk instead of taking the tube for a few stops. The density of stations must be part of the slowness.

In Melbourne the fare for travelling anywhere as far as the end of zone 2 (about 30 kms out of the city) is $A3.90 (£1.94/€2.55 today) although there is also a one off $A6 charge for our inferior oyster card equivalent (called Myki)... but even that $A9.90/€6.46 euros/£4.92 is closer to German prices than London.

This is a fair and accurate example of how reasonably priced trains are in England.

By way of another example, a U-Bahn (subway) ticket in Berlin is around 1 euro to go anywhere in the city (perhaps it's gone up since but still). To do the same for a few stops in London can often be in the region of £20+.

They are also slow as shit due to the generally low speed limits across most of the network. If you are lucky enough to be on one and not a hastily co-opted bus.

We might possibly have the worst (or least least value for money) rail service in the 1st world, though I'm prepared to consider counter examples.

The mixture of valid points, exaggerations, ignorance of context and completely false information makes it a bit... difficult to digest.

Generally speaking, a lot of errors were made regarding Cologne.

The police fucked up entirely and basically was unable to maintain control of the square in front of the central train station where shitloads of theft, sexual harassment and even a few rapes were committed.

The public media did not report on it properly. They did, in fact, refuse to report it at all at first. But that doesn't stem from an obession with PC nor is it special treatment for refugees/immigrants -- it's good old-fashioned pro-government bias. A few days later, they were all playing the same tune again: bad immigrants, bad muslims, need more law-and-order, close the borders, need new laws, etc. Same shit as always.

And yes, you cannot expect all these refugees to be model citizens from the get-go. Different culture, different language, segregation, no work permit, no familiy, maybe first-hand experience with war -- they are bound to commit crimes, assuming otherwise would be naive.

And accepting a million refugees might have been a bad idea after cutting down public personnel and services for two decades straight. But what's done is done. The question now is what can be done to improve the situation for everyone involved. What doesn't help is further segregation (refugee camps), private security (aka mobs hunting brown people, happened in Cologne already) or downplaying the massive problems.

As for that wierd tirade from 1:07 onwards about true Germans: except for all the people from Bohemia, Prussia and Silesia, aka Poland; or the millions of immigrants from Italy and Turkey; or the folks from former Yugoslavia; etc. Two thirds of the bloody country has family names that mark them as n-th generation immigrant. Half of my extended family is from what is now Russia (Kaliningrad) while my family name is distinctively Dutch. "Paid German taxes" gives a hint to his motivations. Folks in East Germany didn't pay German taxes: do they count? Refugees from former German enclaves ("Russlanddeutsche") didn't pay German taxes, nor did they speak proper German: do they count?

All in all a very misguided rant, too eager to abuse real fuck-ups for his own ideology. Rape culture, SJW, PC -- doesn't apply in this case. It's small government, media with establishment bias, a general inability for open discussion of problems, and a shitload of incompetent arseholes in positions of power (e.g.: chief of police in Cologne, gone now).

By the way, he forgot to mention the hundreds(!) of refugee shelters that were set on fire during the last few months. Bands of immigrants committing crimes are a problem, bands of Germans committing crimes are a problem.

We had a six digit number of prime suspects for trouble already: young, male, unemployed, un(der)educated, no fucking hope. It's the main cause for the persisting problems with Nazis in East Germany: no hope. Adding a million additional people, lots of them with equally bad prospects, without any serious effort to integrate them is bound to blow up in our faces eventually.

The best thing that can happen for the entire Eurozone would be a massive integration program in Germany. And by massive I don't mean a meagre billion Euros. We're talking 15-20 billion a year, for at least five years. The more the better. Even in the current economic regime, it would be much cheaper than the repercussions from staying the current course: doing fuck all.

Oh! And of course: Demoscene!

Demoscene is similar to chiptunes, but spawned about a decade (?) before the NES really popularized game tunes, and came out of Europe's, uh, "demo scene" (computer programming demos usually focused around visuals with accompanying soundtracks).
If you're ever into that kind of thing, I can recommend Nectarine Radio (scenemusic.net), though they occasionally drift into euro-crap disco-pop, they're essentially a searchable/playable database of the history of European (primarily) computer game soundtracks and demo music. Also a very strange, unique genre that shares a significant amount with the game medium!

There was an interesting comment on NC's list of links yesterday, comparing Trump to Berlusconi.

This part, for instance, is quite poignant:

The exquisite thing about the modern reality show campaign/administration is that you get to keep your vices and actually leverage them. No need to hide your underage prostitutes (or worse not have any) when you can make them part of the Grand Show. This weeks episode is “Virility. Got caught buying a parliamentarian with 1 mil euros in a paper bag? This weeks episode is “Cunning”.

Always worth spending a few minutes on alternative perspectives before the major consensus narrative has been established:

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/15/the-euro-summit-agreement-on-greece-annotated-by-yanis-varoufakis/