Comply is the option to take for the best outcome if you are playing the numbers. It's worked for me up to this point. Of course if things are going south for you than i guess you have to do what makes most sense to survive a situation.

I got three minutes in and this cop is blathering on about parenting. Fuck off, as if you have some special knowledge of proper parenting. He's annoying, and whats up with that ridiculous haircut. Tell me you wouldn't be suspicious of the wisdom/intelligence of a cop that wants to project that image/look.

That's what a new haircut can do for you *promote

He's not actually serious in this monologue, is he? He just comes across as an old man screaming "Get a haircut, you hippie!" before throwing some teenagers off his front lawn.

Dude, it's the 21st century. Social dancing in public has been a thing since my grandmother was a teenager back in the "roaring 20s." Only an idiot can't understand the idea of expressing your emotions with your body (rather than say a pen, paintbrush, or your voice). And Stephen Fry has never struck me as an idiot, so I'm not sure where this monologue is coming from.

Jesus fucking christ, how did this abortion ever get green lit?

Way to completely and utterly miss the point of a franchise.

What's next? The next Raid to be a slow-paced, dialogue heavy introspection into the nuances of Indonesian geopolitics?
Does the drummer in Whiplash 2 join a metal band?

Every single thing about this is just stupid, from the soundtrack* to the lame attempt to give Chris Pine Kirks haircut. Fuck, I haven't even mentioned anything about the direction or the story yet.

@CrushBug, don't take this personally, but if there was a way to unpromote or anti-quality I would use every single point I earned on this abomination.

Look, if you want to make an awesome action movie in space with a kick arse soundtrack, great! Sign me the fuck up for that one. In fact, I watched it last year, it was called Guardians of the Galaxy and I loved it.

But that's not what Star Trek is about. Why would you even bother spending money on the licence? It's not that you can't even make a great Trek movie with decent action beats (First Contact nailed both), but Star Trek is supposed to be a tiny bit more thoughtful.

Fuck everything about this.


* I love the Beastie Boys and Sabotage is a great song, but it fits Star Trek about as well as smooth jazz would fit the next Avengers.

*related(same wonderful yt channel) http://videosift.com/video/Bob-needs-a-haircut

Bob needs a haircut has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

The scary thing is, if he promised to get a decent haircut if America made him president...

Yeah. Pretty horrible way to get a haircut.

Regardless, there's no way that concentration of aerosol in the car wouldn't have driven them out of there unless they were doing something deliberate. I don't buy the original poster's comments. That anti-static stuff, at least the stuff I've encountered - smells nasty.

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.

Something I meant to write the other day: the IMF dilemma has become quite intriguing over the last couple of days.

The latest IMF report, though still based on outlandish assumptions, marks a sizeable debt restructuring as a requisite for further involvement of the IMF in Greece. Germany, on the other hand, rules out debt restructuring of any kind, and haircuts in particular. However, Germany also insists on the IMF's continuing participating in the Troika, because a) noone else has the capacity to provide Orwellian monitoring of a countries' financial actions and b) to provide economic credibility. Of course, having a non-European patsy is always a good idea.

Nevermind the fact that the report was available prior to the last deal and held back intentionally -- I'm curious who's going to give way in this matter.

The IMF cannot back down much further without its members going apeshit at this disaster. They want no share of the blame that will inevitably be thrown around in good amounts once Greek reaches the end of the road. And Germany... well, constant propaganda has pretty much made sure that neither public nor parliament will accept any restructuring, unless it is plastered with a whole lot of make-up and maybe a Sideshow Bob hairpiece.

"Shave and a haircut" at 1:29 haha

Hmmm... shouldn't the perm that's sported by almost literally every woman over 50 in Korea be one of the haircuts in this video?

http://www.earthcircuit.org/wp-content/gallery/ajumma-fashion/womenvisor6.jpg

Wall of text incoming. Again.

Sorry. Again.

tl;dr:

Debt relief right away was proposed, was neccessary, and was skipped to protect the European financial system.



You are 100% correct, we both are as convinced as one can be that a disorderly collapse would have been much worse for Greece. Might have turned it into a failed state, if things went really bad.

But the situation in Greece at the time the Troika got involved suggested a textbook approach would work just fine. Greece was insolvent, no two ways about it. A debt restructuring, including a haircut, was required to stabilise the system. Yet it was decided against it, thereby creating an enormous debt bubble that keeps growing to this day, destabilising everything.

Why?

People in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin knew in May of 2010 that Greece cannot service its current debt, nevermind pay it back. I remember rather vividly how it was presented to us, as it stirred up a lot of dust in Germany. They pretended as if the problem was a shortage of liquidity, even though they knew it was in fact an insolvency. And to provide an insolvent nation with the largest credit in history (€110-130b) is... well, we can all pick our favorite in accordance to our own bias: madness, idiocy, incompetence, a mistake, intent. They threw Greece into permanent indebtedness(?), and also played one people against another. People in Germany were pissed, still are. Not at the decision makers, but the Greek people.

Again, why?

Every European government, pre-crisis, drank the Cool Aid of deregulation, particularly with regards to the financial sector. When the crisis hit, they had to bail out the banks, a very unpopular decision in Germany, given the scandalous way it was done (different story). Like I pointed out before, when Greece was done for, German banks were on the hook for €17b+, and the French for €20b+. So no haircut for Greek debt.

It gets even better. The entity most experienced in these matters is, of course, the IMF. But IMF couldn't get involved. Its own regulations demand debt to be sustainable for it to become involved in any debt restructuring. Strauss-Kahn had the rules changed in a very hush-hush manner (hidden in a 146 page document) to allow the IMF to lend vast sums to Greece, even though they knew it would not be payed back. Former EC members are on record saying the Strauss-Kahn decided to protect French banks this way as a part of his race for President in France. So they changed IMF rules and ignored European law to bail out German and French banks, using the insolvent Greek government as a proxy.

Several members of the IMF's board were in open opposition. The representatives of India, Russia, Brazil and Switzerland are on record, saying this would merely replace private with public financing, that it would be a rescue package for the private creditors rather than the Greek state. They spoke out in favor of negotiations of a debt relief.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's an IMF email, dated March 25th, 2010, that was published by Roumeliotis, formerly IMF. They put it very bluntly:

"Greece is a relatively closed economy, and the fiscal contraction implied by this adjustment path, will cause a sharp contraction in domestic demand and an attendant deep recession, severely stretching the social fabric."

Even the IMF, who chose parameters according to their own ideology, thought the European program to be too severe. That's saying something.

All that is just about the initial decision. The implementation is another story entirely, with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats telling a democratically elected government what to do. There are former Greek ministers on record, telling how Troika officials basically wrote legislation for them. Blackmail was common, bailout money held as leverage. The Memorandum of Understanding was to be followed to the letter, and the Troika program was as detailed as a government program, so they really had their hand in just about everything.

The specifics of the program are a discussion of their own, with all the corruption going on. The Lagarde list (2000+ Greek tax dodgers) was held in secret by order of an IMF official – that alone should trigger major investigations. The nationalisation and sell-off of the four largest Greek banks, or the no-bid sale of the Hellenikon area to a Greek oligarch – all enforced by Troika officials.

The haircut of 2012, ~€110b wiped out, came two years late. As a result, it didn't hit any German or French institutions in a serious way. Most of the debt was in the hands of these four largest Greek banks -- NBG, Piraeus, Euro, Alpha – who subsequently had to be recapitalised by Greece to the tune of €50b. Cut by 110, up by 50 right away. Banks were nationalised and shares later sold again, at 2/3 the price. Lost another €15b, because the Troika demanded the sale to appease the markets.

The legal aspects of all this are nightmare-inducing as well. They violated numerous European laws, side-tracked parliaments, used governmental decrees, etc.

Let me just say this: when they forced Cyprus to give away two banks' branches in Greece for a fraction of their worth, Cyprus lost €3.5b, at a GDP of €17b, and those two banks went belly-up. It was pure blackmail, do it or you're out. Piraeus Bank received those €3.5b, and its head honcho had €150m of personal bad credit wiped clean right then and there, all at the command of the Troika. Those €3.5b had to be taken from ordinary folks by "suspending" the deposit insurance, perhaps the most stupid decision they had made so far.

Why did they do it? Because Greece was more important than Cyprus, and Cypriot banks were involved in shady deals with Russian oligarchs. Still illegal, and massively so.

Edit: I cut my post in half and it's still too long.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.