Fortunately the rest of the world has more consistent guidelines. The EU for instance requires labelling for any food or drink with caffeine (except tea and coffee) - https://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/energydrinks and down under there are limits on the maximum caffeine content of drinks - http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/generalissues/Pages/Caffeine.aspx (maximum is 320 mg per litre for energy drinks, which is why the local Jolt cola has less caffeine than the US version).

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Barseps.

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/

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/14/on-the-euro-summits-statement-on-greece-first-thoughts/

An interview with Varoufakis about the actions of Schäuble will be published on Thursday. With every additional interview, he seems to be less inclined to pull any punches, so it ought to be interesting.

Varoufakis' Op-Ed in the Guardian closes with a remark that should be featured much more prominently in any discussion about the EU or the EZ:

"Based on months of negotiation, my conviction is that the German finance minister wants Greece to be pushed out of the single currency to put the fear of God into the French and have them accept his model of a disciplinarian eurozone."

It is about the Franco-German dynamic within the EU and whether or not the monetarists in Germany -- the recession cult, as Bill Mitchell put it -- get to keep the rest of the EU in a permanent chokehold.

Not sure what you mean by demand. Printing money is supplying demand out of nothing, or could be but usually backed by something tangible like gold. I think Greece has a great case for making there our own way. To start with, walking away from all that debt would balance the country for a short time to print. The country has oil for the people so the currency can be backed by that somewhat. Agree to farm and fish for new currency and people eat. The country is in a perfect climate zone so shelter is doable... in fact, I think most of the world would spend money to sleep on the beach of Greece for a vacation. Speaking of vacations, Greece could take all the Euro and Dollars in from tourism and back the new currency. The Gov would need to work extremely hard to pull it off but I think it could do it better then most of the rest of the EU.

If the current Greek proposal is actually the one being published just about everywhere, they might as well sign it in the replica of Marshal Foch's carriage in Compiègne. It's even worse than the one they had their referendum on.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Jamie Galbraith substantiated AEP's claim that the referendum was horseshit to begin with.

They screwed the pooch, even I'd agree to that if they were to accept this unconditional surrender. The anti-austerity movement on the left would be compromised to such a degree, leaving only the anti-EU forces of the right credible in their opposition to austerity. The recession cult will have their permanent austerity -- and the bigots will have their revival of nationalism.

In my non-expert opinion the only way to really help Greece at this point is to release a significant amout of debt and set the interest of the rest to zero. (Instead of trying to keep on profiting on their misfortune)

And I fear a Grexit will inevitably lead to the worst case scenario for both Greece and the EU, hyperinflation in an european country.

Edit:
After having read some more stuff about Greece and monetary shell games aka economics I've come to the conclusion that zero interest debt would not actually help. Interest for goverment bonds has been declining worldwide over the last decades, yet government debt has increased proportionally.
Why is that? Well, if you, as a politician, can borrow more money for the same amount of effective interest to fulfill your election promises in order to stay in office for as long as possible then why the hell not? Some day you won't be in office anymore and the higher government debt isn't your problem anymore.
So in the end, lower interest rates may not be 'helpful' for the greek government to balance their budget.

The unions sent an open letter as well:

https://www.etuc.org/press/etuc-open-letter-eu-heads-states-and-governments-and-eu-leaders

Pure quality by John, as usual.

There are a few points I'd like to add, in order of appearance.

5:10 – Greek default or Grexit could be manageable by the rest of the EZ, economically. Italy looks a bit shaky and Spain still looks like shit, so things could spiral out of control, but chances would be better now than they were in, say, 2010.

However, Grexit would be a political nightmare. EZ membership is supposed to be irreversible, so Grexit would reduce the Euro from a common currency to a peg when viewed from the outside. That's open season on the rest of the PIIGS. If Greek then rebounds, other people might very well decide to give Germany the finger and leave as well. If Greece fails, you have a NATO member turn into a failed state, which not only gives NATO the shivers, but also buries any notion of solidarity within the EU. This union survives because of the promises it makes, which include increasing standards of living and solidarity among different peoples. Without it, we're left with... what exactly?

And nevermind the humanitarian catastrophe taking part in Greece. We've conditioned ourselves to block out the pain and suffering of people in Africa. We even manage to shrug at the cesspool of corruption that is Kosovo. But if we do that to Greece as well, what little moral authority Europe might still have left would be gone then.

5:32 – The last payment Greece received was in August, long before Syriza took over. The previous government was in disagreement with the Troika and therefore transfers were frozen.

5:57 – Troika payments are required to service previous debt obligations. They are separate from what the Greek banks require to maintain their liquidity. That would be Emergency Liquidiy Assistance (ELA) from the ECB, which is a different thing entirely, even though it comes from a member of the Troika.

The ECB is bound by law to maintain and ensure the stability of the banking system(s) within the EZ. If a bank runs into liquidity problems, support is provided by the national bank of the respective country, which funnels funds from the ECB to the troubled bank. That's ELA, and a limit on ELA is a limit on the amount of funds that banks can draw from through this process. If an illiquid bank is cut off from ELA, it goes belly up. Bad idea.

Some argue that the ECB should not provide ELA to those Greek banks anymore, since they are insolvent, and ECB rules forbid ELA to insolvent banks. But as Varoufakis said, even the ECB's own Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) department, which is the new banking oversight, declares the four large Greek banks to be solvent. So there is no reason for the ECB to cut ELA to Greek banks. It's all political, and the ECB is designed to be outside of politics. That's also a reason why its membership in the Troika is so controversial.

The political argument for cutting off ELA is that Germany et al. are on the hook for the total amount should Greece itself go belly up. Somewhere along the line, someone made the glorious decision to install the ECB as a currency issuer without providing it with the attributes of a regular currency issuer. If the Bank of Japan or the Bank of England racks up losses, noone cares. They issue their own currency, they cannot go bankrupt, whatever debt they have in their books is irrelevant, for this discussion anyways. But the ECB has to balance its books, it has to receive funds from its members to balance losses, and in proportion to their economic size.

They made sure that politicians can scare the demos by pointing out how they have to foot the bill for this shit, even though it's the one entity where debt truly doesn't matter at all.

By the way, the funds that Greece is hoping to acquire are meant, primarily, for two purposes: making debt payments and to provide financial room to convert ECB(?) debt into EFSF debt (4% interest down to 1%). That's all. No spending.

6:54 – "Printing" money is generating demand out of thin air. There is a shortage of demand throughout the entire continent. So yeah, if the folks at the ECB could type in a few numbers, that would be swell.

Even Germany has a shortage of demand. We are merely hiding it behind the €200b+ of demand that we steal from other countries, i.e. our current account surplus. But the infrastructure and investment spending over here is at all time lows. We'd need an additional €200b+ just to get the infrastructure back to the state it was in a decade ago.

There is no productivity growth in Europe. The UK actually lost a lot of productivity by its introduction of zero hour jobs and other forms of slavery. Without sufficient demand, there is no need to improve production capacities – they can't even sell what they could produce right now.

@radx for EU president!

Haha, I totally thought of that "I welcome their hatred" quote as well. FDR went on to crush the following election and Varoufakis... err, resigns despite what I assume to be similar levels of support from the electorate? Maybe his opponents found his disdain for ties a bridge too far.

I came here to say thank you for taking the time to write such golden comments re. the economic situation in the EU. Your perspective has been very enlightening.

There are 100 issues to this EU mess, and 100 different angles to each issue. To stay on top of things or even just to keep a somewhat comprehensive overview is impossible at this point.

It's too complicated, charged with too much emotion, too blurred with power politics. A clusterfuck if there has ever been one.

And you can't even counter any single argument in a meaningful manner, because it would take a deconstruction of the whole thing to present a pursuasive case. The helplessness is infuriating.