I don't think you can copyright the title of a work, just the work itself.

It's funny to see what these guys think is difficult. Tempo and time signature changes are really common in metal (especially thrash) and almost any metal player has to get used to them right from the start. The rhythm playing for this song would be about intermediate difficulty, but the solos are ridiculous because, well... Marty Friedman.

Did you follow any of that wierd Krugman/Friedman/CEA feud over the last few days?

If not, nevermind.

But if you did, take a look at Bill Black's latest on the matter. Both Bill Black and Jamie Galbraith had already torn Operative K a new one over this, yet Bill just keeps on pounding. It's quite brutal, and supremely entertaining.

I just love open conflict between heterodox economists and defenders of the orthodoxy.

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

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Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
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Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.

Who did you see on the list?

Kareem Abdul-Jabar
JJ Abrams
Alan Alda
Christiane Amanpour
Jon Batiste
Big Bird
Cory Booker
Tom Brokaw
Ken Burns
Bill Clinton
Andy Cohen
Francis Collins
Cookie Monster
Bob Costas
Katie Couric
Bryan Cranston
Mark Cuban
Jeff Daniels
Bill DeBlasio
Maureen Dowd
James Franco
Thomas Friedman
Vince Gilligan
Doris Kearns Goodwin
David Gregory
Terry Gross
Mike Huckabee
Arianna Huffington
Dean Kamen
Toby Keith
Henry Kissinger
Nicholas Kristof
Paul Krugman
Alexi Lalas
Cyndi Lauper
David Leonhardt
George Lucas
Yo Yo Ma
Barry Manilow
Senator Claire McCaskill
Tim Meadows
Willie Nelson
Randy Newman
Grover Norquist
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Ric Ocasek
Keith Olbermann
Mandy Patinkin
Stone Phillips
Samantha Power
Pussy Riot
Charlie Rose
Dan Savage
Smaug
Shane Smith
Eliot Spitzer
Gloria Steinem
Jon Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Michael Stipe
Andrew Sullivan
Matt Taibbi
Jeff Tweedy
Neil Degrasse Tyson
Sam Waterston
Elijah Wood

(http://www.vox.com/2014/12/19/7419893/colbert-finale-song)

@radx
this is why friedman will,and always shall be in my mind....an inhuman cunt.

and thanks for the promote buddy!

"You can't do it alone, you have to do it collectively..."

Remember the way they tried to eradicate any sense of collectivity from the cultures in the Southern Cone? How even group presentations in schools were outlawed as a danger to individual freedom?

Who are "they"? The Chicago Boys, of course.

Everything Giroux mentions can be read about in the truth commission reports from all those South American countries that had their culture upended in order to enforce the economic ideology as taught by Friedman in Chicago. Same thing, just imposed by external players and condensed into a rapid series of shocks.

Same ideology.

It's a good segment. Socialists (many videosifters included, such as @ChaosEngine & @enoch) seem to be convinced that either they themselves know all the facts (i.e., narcissism?) or that the "rulers" know all the facts, or that the "majority of the people" know all the facts.

While it may be true that the masses, as a collective of course, are even more intelligent than any individual on his or her own, it is true only when individuals among the masses are acting and thinking independently of one another (i.e., pursuing their own interests as best that they themselves know how to do) and not when they are under the sway of one form of demagoguery or central planning or another.

Political democracy shows the masses in all their foolishness, while market democracy (i.e., anarchy) shows them in all their wisdom. I think it is this distinction that illuminates the discrepancy between the theory of democracy and the practice of democracy.

(Moreover, it seems that, when listening to Hayek -- or Milton Friedman or Rory Sutherland -- one gets the impression that one is listening to a highly intelligent individual. This is quite different from listening to someone like, say, Paul Krugman and other so-called "economists," who are in truth would-be pundits and polemicists and not at all cognizant of the underlying postulates that support their arguments.)

@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

Not that I come here much for the discussion these days, but describing all economists as charlatan snake oil salesmen, followed by describing Friedman is an 'insufferable cunt', does not exactly fan the flames of reasoned debate.

@RedSky
that is not entirely accurate to state that it was friedmans economic policies that gave rise to chile.

i will agree to an extant that the original groundwork could be attributed to friedman and his economic plans but those plans were not all sunshine and rainbows.it was the chilean government who began to enact and implement solid policies to turn that state around after pinochet.dismantling much of what friedman had started.i.e: private pensions,schools,water etc etc.

and @Yogi does have a point.friedman is quoted often as saying that in times of crisis,it is a perfect opportunity to exploit that crisis in order to implement a policy that otherwise would have been rejected.

now we can argue just how responsible friedmen is in regards to a government who uses/abuses this tactic,but it does not change that fact that friedman was the author of "shock doctrine".

just as in this video,and one of those rare times i agree with friedman.the information should be public and governments only role in business should be that of "fraud police".it comes down to who is responsible.

which brings me to my final point.
economists are the charlatan snake oil salesmen.they consistently get it wrong,almost always.

economies are creations by and for people.
the human element seems to confound these intellectuals.
what plays out brilliantly on paper almost never does in real life..or at least for any protracted period of time.

which is also why i find friedman to be an insufferable cunt.
if there ever was a spark of humanity in that man,i have yet to see it.

No doubt, Milton Friedman was a genius. With his brilliant command of Neo-Liberal policies his "Chicago Boys" basically destroyed Chile. There's a reason why places that are under American control are set way further back than countries in the same region with about the same resources. Milton Friedman has many great ideas that have been used to destroy countries, knowingly to enrich those who invested in the country and not the people of that country who should actually benefit from it's resources.

Anyone want to read something enlightening about Friedman's ideas and policies and the mark they've left on the world can check out "The Shock Doctrine". It's an excellent book by Naomi Klein.

Friedman was an extremely smart man in absolute mastery of his area of expertise. Seeing Moore try to take him on at his own game reminded me of my uni days.

Great sift.

Congratulations! Your comment on Milton Friedman puts a young Michael Moore in his place has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Friedman is saying precisely nothing about your tangent on wealth disparity. What is more, he makes that clear too. He insists that the individual should have the freedom to save $5 or $100 or $5000 by buying a car with less safety features. He makes the additional comment that he fully supports government interference to ensure the consumer has access to the information required to make that an informed decision.

Friedmen's counter point is simple and clear, that Moore's main criticism is the price to safety choice Ford made with the Pinto. Friedmen points out that is not arguing on principle, but over price instead. He states a principled question would be more like how informed should the consumer be when paying for a Pinto.

Moore just comes off as childish in refusing to hear or understand the point, most likely because it injects grey into his black and white preexisting view.

Why am I reminded of the Chewbacca defense, when I hear Friedman trying to talk his ass out of this?
It only felt for some people like he is "winning" because Moore is very insecure and as I would have been, was overwhelmed by such unbelievable audacity and stupidity.