Your video, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - Teaser Trailer (HD), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Eh, why?

The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Seven Samurai... ok, cool. Take a foreign language film and transpose it to a different place and time. Samurai is still a better movie (because Kurosawa), but at least the original Magnificent Seven attempted to do an interesting cover.

Why should I watch this instead of the original, which might I remind you had STEVE FUCKING MCQUEEN in it (the coolest human ever to walk this earth)?

This has a decent cast, but I just don't see the point.

Am I the only only one who thinks this sad? Why did they cut down such a magnificent tree?

Oh my god, Bob, you're hilarious. Your favourite party is going to make Trump their presidential candidate and you say that? That? Seriously?!

You magnificent clown, I love you.

@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

*promote (drunk with power points!)

The magnificent mad rambling Slovenian bastard nailed it again!

The e-cig thing in particular is a hot topic for me at the moment due to the moronic new EU legislation & combined media shitstorm.

As we shoot down the layers of poorly researched bullshit the anti crowd throw at us in arguments it generally seems come down to something along the lines of "you are setting a bad example", or "you'd still be better off not smoking".

At that point "mind your own fucking business you self righteous prude" starts to seem like a perfectly mature response.

This is magnificent.

Throwing a disc all day (more like days) actually sounds like an awesome time.

No sarcasm tag.

Also, I can attest that by the way those discs fly he's got magnificent technique. Tons of effortless wrist snap.

Man, indie games sure are saving the business. This was magnificent

Cunt is a precious word that I never use. A word that I vintage and and save for moments like this one. This woman here is a one magnificent cunt!

Mad as a snake, but what magnificent fellow.

Wow, she is a big fat one, probably pregnant too. Look at all the battle-scars on her, magnificent.


Well, now I'm gonna jam my thumb up her butthole, that'll really piss her off!

8:18 – "Germany is very financially responsible".

The clip makes a few good points, twists others and omits some central issues. But I want to comment on the quote above most of all, because it forms the basis for all kinds of arguments and recommendations.

The claim that Germany is financially responsible stems from what has been paraded around domestically as the "schwarze Null" (black zero), meaning a balanced budget. Given how focused most economic debates are around the national debt or the current budget deficit, it shouldn't come as a surprise that not running a deficit evokes positive responses in the public. If there has ever been an easy sell, politically, it's this.

However, it's not that simple.

For instance, the sectoral balance rule dictates, by pure accounting identity, that the sum of public balance, private balance and external balance is 0 at all times. In case of Germany, this means that the balanced public budget (no surplus, just a fat zero) requires a current account surplus of the same size as private savings – or an accumulation of private debt. For someone to run a surplus, someone else has to run a deficit. In this case, foreign economies have to run a deficit vis-á-vis Germany, so that neither the German government nor the German private sector have to run a deficit.

The composition of each sector is another topic entirely, but the point remains: no surplus in Germany without a deficit in the periphery. If everyone is to be like Germany, Klingons have to run the respective deficit.

My question: is it financially responsible to depend on other economies' deficits to keep your own house in order? Is it responsible to engage in this kind of behaviour after having locked yourself into a monetary union with less competitive economies who have no way of defending themselves through currency devaluation?

Second point: capital accounts and current accounts are two sides of the same coin. If Germany runs a current account surplus of X%, it also runs a capital account deficit of X%. Doesn't explain anything, but it's the same for the countries at the other side of these trade imbalances. Spain's current account deficit with Germany meant a capital inflow of the same size.

Let's look at EuroStat's dataset for current accounts. Germany had run a minor current account deficit during the late '90s and a small surplus up to 2003. From then on, it went up, up, up. Given the size of Germany's economy within Europe, that jump from 2% to 7.5% is enormous. Pre-GFC, the majority of this surplus went to... yap, PIIGS. Their deficits multiplied.

Subsequently, capital of equals size flowed into these countries, looking for investments. No nation, none, can absorb this amount of capital without it resulting in a massive misallocation, be it stock bubbles, housing bubbles, highways to nowhere or lavish consumption. Michael Pettis wrote a magnificent account (Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73) of this and explains how Germany handled a similar inflow of capital after the Franco-Prussian war: it crashed their economy.

As Pettis correctly points out, the question of causality remains. Was the capital flow a pull or a push?

The dataset linked above says it all happened at just about the same time, in all countries. It also happened at the same time as Germany's parliament signed of on "Agenda 2010", which is the cause of massive wage suppression in Germany. Germany intentionally lowered its unit labour costs and undercut the agreed upon inflation target (2%). German employees and retirees were forced to live below their means, so the export sector could gain competitiveness against all the other nations, including those in the same currency union. Beggar-thy-neighbour on steroids.

Greece overshot the inflation target. They lived beyond their means. But due to their size, it's economically negligable. France stayed on point the entire time, has higher productivity than Germany and still gets defamed as the lame duck of Europe. Yet Germany, after more than a decade of financial warfare against its fellow members of the EU/EZ, is hailed as the beacon of financial responsibility.

Mercantilism always comes at the cost of others. And the EU is living proof.

Brother, if you haven't had your daily dose of rage-inducing madness, check out this magnificent rant: The Asshole Factory

"The Great Enterprise of the Age of Stagnation is the wholesale manufacture not of great, world-shaking, ground-breaking ideas, inventions, concerns…but of bigger and bigger assholes."

Soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop, the original...cool

Eddie Murphy was magnificent...

Also---Boys of Summer by Don Henley has such beautiful cinematography...