Hilarious how it quickly entered and exited the cameras view *promote

It comes across as fake from the get-go. The camera just happens to be in the best position for the entrance and exit. The subject directs their comments to people off-camera and not to the person with the camera standing there the whole time in plain view who is not offering to help.

C'mon people.

The BBC's Robert Peston has written an article that echoes your confusion (and mine). I don't always agree with what he says, but there's not much to argue in that article.

I think Galbraith is right on the money, the only choices for Greece are capitulation or exit.

I leave you with this - http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33346743 - the BBC Magazine advises Greece to follow the teachings of Zeno of Citium, the Stoic. I showed that article to my younger son actually, who's a bit prone to dwelling on past failures and would do well to follow the Stoic principle of only worrying about things that you can change and not those you can't.

Unknown.

If the ECB pulls ELA, the Greek banking system goes belly up. Again, consequences unknown, but Deutsche Bank for instance didn't seem particularly stable during the last months, so the denial of any contagion risk might have been premature. Additionally, Draghi is tasked with maintaining the stability of the Euro and taking away Greece's last lifeline might just be too far out of his mandate, even for him. Keeping ELA up without increasing the limit will achieve the same result within days though.

If Greece fails to make its payment to the IMF tomorrow, it's at the discretion of Lagarde whether she pulls the plug. Info has been somewhat contradictory, but there should be a 30 day window before the board has to call it a default.

If a default is triggered this week, it's up to the ECB and the EC again. They have shown unwillingness to let things go bust, all the recent months of muddling through should be testament to that.

They cannot have a failed state within Europe without feeding right into the anti-European parties on both ends of the spectrum; they cannot throw Greece out of the EZ; they cannot revitalise the Greek economy without doing a 180 against their own ideology; they cannot let Syriza pull Greece out of the shit without encouraging Podemos. It's an impasse alright.

Should the Greek people vote against the proposal, a proposal that is no longer on the table, it'll be back to negotiations. Should they vote in favour of it, and should it still be available to them at that time in the first place, Tsipras might even get a majority for it in parliament, but Syriza will blow apart right then and there. The left wing cannot agree to further enslavement.

If, however, everything goes sour and Greece does indeed exit the EZ, introduce a new Drachma, the whole shebang, then we're in uncharted terrorities. The situation in Greece would deteriorate even further, given how much they rely on imports, especially of fuel. And the EU, already shaky from the tens of thousands of bodies floating in the Med, the falling standard of living for tens of millions and the sustained unemployment of an entire generation; this fecking union cannot turn the cradle of democracy into a failed state and survive. The governments might be ok with it, but the French people would rip this shit to shreds one way or another, and rightfully so.

Seems like a setup to me. Notice how the driver drives completely around the roundabout then exits . If you have no set direction then there are 4 possible exits and they picked the one where someone gets hit... then there is the timing of it all.

I found an actual transcript, translated to English (and video with the original sound, instead of having it turned down):

00:01 Max: Do I have to put the seatbelt on? CameraMan: I would put it on
00:07 Max: Nice isn't it! 17years old, can't drive on the road but here in Moncaco you can!
00:15 Jos: Well Max, we're going to do a lap of Monaco. You're going to tell us how you're going to do it.
00:25 Jos:It's quite weird to get driving lessons from your son!
00:28 Jos:Are you going to keep the car in one piece?
00:30 Max: Yeah no problem
00:33 Jos: Jezus Max! ehhh Fuck!
00:40 Max: There is a bump here so you need to go around it.
00:42 Jos:It's not fun at all to drive along with him to be honest.
00:45 Max: Come of the brakes here, back on the throttle, as close as you can get to the wall.brake as late as you can.
00:53 Jos: Everything ok with Olav in the back? (dutch comentator)
00:58 Max: Try to get some curb here and get a good exit out of here.
01:06 Jos: This is were we enter the tunnel, how fast do you drive here with a F1 car? Max: At the end of the straight around 290kph.
01:16 Jos:Where do you brake? Max: at the 120m mark, but we're not going to do that in this car because I have to safe the brakes a little bit.
01:29 Jos: I don't like this at all!
01:34 Max: This is where you can safe a lot of time towards the chicane and that one is almost full throtle.
01:46 Jos: I'm so glad the lap is almost done! Oh jezus.
02:01 Max: Get a good exit onto the straight.
02:08 Jos: Ok just slow it down now, I'm done with this after one lap.
02:14 Max: What? It went alright didn't it? Jos: Yeah, it looked alright. Olav: HolyMoly!

This is why these folks drive in pairs. One for driving and one for nav + extra eyes on the sky. This guy got really lucky, he should have never been down that road if it was a dead end. One of the main rules is to have multiple exit routes, this guy only had one and he got trapped.

Pro Tip: put in $.25 then get a small-boned 3 year old to crawl in the exit drawer and toss out all the toys.

https://youtu.be/4cGwumNaccM

That's what's left on the table, isn't it? I'd divide the exit option into orderly and disorderly, but the core of it remains the same.

Yet we have to keep in mind, Syriza was elected on a program diametrically opposed to the troika demands. And an EZ exit is equally far outside its mandate. Not to mention that a significant portion of Syriza is made up of former PASOK supporters, who would need a whole lot of convincing to vote for an EZ exit.

A referendum sounds decent enough, but they should have a strategy in place for the post-EZ time. Merely getting rid of the Euro won't get them out of the shit. In fact, I'd argue that a clear strategy is an absolute neccessity to even get a "favorable" outcome from any referendum. The public needs to have a clear picture of what awaits them behind any choice they might be presented with.

For starters, they should be perfectly clear about what it would take to get the Greek economy started again. Greece has very little to offer at this time, so every effort must be made to improve the domestic market. Plans for rebuilding its productive base should be worked out prior to any referendum. Industrial policy spanning at least 5-10 years would be needed.

Question is: can a non-EZ Greece muster up enough political capital to run the vast fiscal programs required to pull the economy out of the shitter? Or would they be stuck with a recessionary focus on balanced budgets, just like the rest of us?

In any case, within the constraints of a monetary union with neo-mercantilist Germany, Greece will not get the fiscal expansion it needs and will remain a shithole, just shy of a failed state.

Once a situation has escalated to you planning a vehicle exit to punch a dude... I'm pretty sure your brain ain't working at that point.

Mr. @lucky760 may not have noticed that the camera is mounted on a bus, which the two people in question are exiting.

Edit: upon further consideration, the thought has struck me that lucky760 made the comment in jest.

Edit 2: even further consideration has all but confirmed that his comment was in jest. Color me surprised.

Not as much as you might think. Half-life levels have markers at the exit points that match up with markers on the map the exit point leads to so the transition from one map to another (other than the Loading freeze) is unnoticeable. It's straightforward to just place the maps based on those markers using code.

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.

I shall watch this later while I clean. I wonder if it has tachyons in it. OooOOo I am so exited.