*promote
A little usual suspects vibe for me.

Couldn't agree more! The writer is pretty fresh and the director(s) are stunt guys. Beyond that, I don't know much about the production, but both John Wick and John Wick 2 are precise and well choreographed gunfu with elements of the Matrix/Indigo Prophecy, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, Bruce Lee movies, and on and on. Star power, as well.

I have Jack Reacher (same writer as Usual Suspects), John Wick, Collateral (Michael Mann), and Jason Bourne in the same stack.

In 2002, when I was studying film I had a chance to listen to Doug Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity talk about the making of the film. He hadn't really done much at the time, but now he's in the thick of these highly stylized, star powered, accurate (bullet count, stunts, etc.) Action flicks.

Unclear.

A straight-up haircut is not an option. An extension of maturities, a stretching of repayments and waving of interest could have worked quite handily as late as two months ago. But ever since this idea was picked up by others, ever since it was explained in some detail how small of an effect it would have on our national budget, the usual suspects went into overdrive to hammer in the notion that it's still a loss to the tune of €XXb. The argument that it would be a measily €1-€1.5b a year, with a slight uptick to €3b in 2026 or something was burried under a huge pile of fear mongering.

Not sure if you can put enough make-up on this pig. Lots of folks went all-in with their demonisation of any form of debt restructuring. Especially when it's a "solution" Varoufakis has also argued for.

The reports I have seen say that the usual suspects are still demanding a complete surrender. Pierre Moscovici is quoted as saying "They know what they have to do, they know what we expect".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33437797

Regeln sind Regeln. Schulden müssen bezahlt werden. Keine Tricks.

At some point, yes. But for the time being, increases in productivity (automation) are less of a job killer than your everyday policies and ideologies.

Speaking of my own country, the amount of work not being done is enormous, and the aggregate of work not having been done over the last decades is absolutely staggering. The current economic system not only unloaded a great number of burdens onto society, it also never found a way to come up with a way to integrate the aforementioned work. No one is willing to pay for it, so it doesn't get done, period. The most prominent examples would be infrastructure works of all kinds (energy, most of all), ecological restauration and care for the elderly. Our national railroad alone could hire 100,000 people and still be understaffed.

You can have full employment next year, but not if you expect the private sector to provide the jobs within the current system. The public sector could create them, if you use a sovereign, free-floating currency, but ideology doesn't allow for it.

As long as we focus on finding people for a given job, there'll be mass unemployment, no matter what. Reverse the process, create/find jobs for a given people and we might make some headway.

Again, ideology doesn't allow for it. And that's also what made me stop advocating for an unconditional basic income (UBI). The financial details of it can be a nightmare, yes, and it would be a break with a social welfare system that survived two world wars. But the deal breaker for me was politics.

A UBI would mean taking the boot of the peasants' necks. Liberty and (some) equality made real. Love it.
But look at how vicious the Greeks are attacked these days, not just by the elite, but by our fellow worker bees. They're not just burying the last bit of European solidarity in Greece, they're unloading all their frustrations onto the schmucks who had very little to begin with. It's despicable. And it indicates to me that any attempt to introduce a system that would take from people the need to work would unleash unimaginable hatred from the usual suspects. And significant portions of the public would go along with it, given how easy it already is to channel their frustrations towards "welfare queens" and "moochers".

So yeah, a UBI would be lovely. Finally some liberty, finally more negotiating power for the worker (can decline any job offer without repression). But the shit would need to hit the fan hard before there can be any room within the political sphere for it.

It's not possible for 1 cop per 1000 citizens to protect them.

(stand by for hyperbole from the usual suspects)

I don't care who blocks me here...my comments are not meant for the person I'm addressing so much as they are for reasonable people who come here and can sift through the hateful comments of the usual suspects.

I liked the way the Reuters article closed:

It was not clear what support the German position, which appeared to take no account of the political change in Greece, will have in the wider euro zone talks.

I went against your advice and had a look at a DW article on the subject, and I see what you mean, there is quite a big disparity between the accepted position in the article and anything else I've read from outside Germany. I am now also left wondering how on earth any compromise could be made acceptable to German politicians, and then sold to the public. Since Ireland and Portugal are starting to recover despite The Austerity, it's entirely possible that the usual suspects will say "Look! It works!". They do have much more debt now though...

I can understand a certain aversion to excessive inflation, after the chaos caused by hyperinflation in 1923, but you'd think that if they remember that then they'd also remember where that led (and particularly with the rise of Golden Dawn).

As for Italy, it has somehow managed to muddle along on the edge of disaster for so long that I'm starting to think it can keep doing so forever.

OK, had a chance to watch the start of the video again to remind me of the context, and thought of some other ways to look at it.

1. You could, if you were particularly heartless, look at it as the individual failures of the people who borrowed money they had no hope of repaying. That I consider this a rather unfair way of looking at it is unlikely to stop the usual suspects from actually voicing this opinion.

2. You could look at it as a failure of risk management. Each individual player understood that there were risks involved, but each thought that passing the risk along to the next person would avoid the risk being their own! Nobody understood that they were creating a risk to the entire system.

3. You could also look at it as a failure of regulation. I am quite astounded that, amidst the sea of fraudulent activity by banks and their agents, there were no charges laid against anybody for the activities that brought about the GFC. The regulations also, in some cases, prevented banks from taking sensible steps to avoid default. Once the loans were bundled together, rules 'protecting' investors by preventing discounting were actually what caused the investors to lose their shirts.

4. You could look at it as a failure of business: In many cases, the folks who had been encouraged to take out these dodgy loans were actually going along just fine until the banks increased the interest rates. There was, therefore, a huge missed opportunity for someone to buy these loans in default at a discount, and let the homeowners keep paying the introductory rates that they quite clearly had been managing quite well.

At least Obama put a stop to it. Except for the CIA facility at Mogadishu's airport where they held people in an underground dungeon and comforted them with some electric current through the genitals. Yeah, except for that.

Also, let's not talk about the torture camps run by the military, by contractors or by the Iraqi forces trained and instructed by folks like Colonels James Steele, who had already run Salvadoran death squads. And while we're at it, let's not talk about the outsourcing of torture to the goons of Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak.

By the way, Brazil just published documents about 20 years of torture. Who trained the torturers? The usual suspects...

I've said my peace. I guess some people will never be satisfied with reason in any dose, big or small. In any event, this site needs a better class of liberal. The usual suspects on this site these days are pale comparisons of the insightful groups we had not just three or four years ago. What a shame. I miss them. They at least knew what the term "straw man" meant. Ah well.

I'd love to see the same techniques used around Pacific Place, BOC, Hopewell, Star Ferry---all the usual suspects...

Here's a list of the movies for those who don't want to watch the entire 9 minutes:

[spoiler]
10. identity
9. one flew over the cuckoo's nest
8. no country for old men
7. saw
6. rosemary's baby
5. the silence of the lambs
4. primal fear
3. the empire strikes back
2. se7en
1. the usual suspects
[/spoiler]

I saw this just a few days ago. Decided not to post it here because prog rock is so hard to get sifted; I've submitted my share (including a lesser quality copy of "Supper's Ready" from this very show), and recognize a few of the usual suspects in the voted-for list. Regardless, this is a great quality copy of a rarely captured and unique performing group. Maybe I can help with a *promote.

Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight will always win for me.

Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects doesn't belong here because that ending made no sense.

Bane doesn't belong here. Yeah I said it.