For your daily entertainment -- or depression:

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece

Appetizer:

[But] Schäuble was consistent throughout. His view was “I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous government and we can’t possibly allow an election to change anything. Because we have elections all the time, there are 19 of us, if every time there was an election and something changed, the contracts between us wouldn’t mean anything.”

So at that point I had to get up and say “Well perhaps we should simply not hold elections anymore for indebted countries”, and there was no answer. The only interpretation I can give [of their view] is “Yes, that would be a good idea, but it would be difficult to do. So you either sign on the dotted line or you are out.”

Haven't seen this one in circulation yet:

Dear Chancellor Merkel,

The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.

As most of the world knew it would, austerity has crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175% of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.

The humanitarian impact has been colossal – 40% of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50%. Corruption, tax evasion and bad accounting by previous Greek governments helped create the debt problem. But the series of so-called adjustment programs has served only to make a Great Depression the likes of which have been unseen in Europe since 1929-1933. The medicine prescribed by the German Finance Ministry and Brussels has bled the patient, not cured the disease.

Together we urge you to lead Europe to a course correction before it is too late for Greece and for the Eurozone. Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, prosperity, and democracy, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.

In the 1950s Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth, peace, and democracy. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed programme of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.

We urge you to take this vital action of leadership for Greece and Germany, and also for the world. History will remember you for your actions this week. We expect and count on you to provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come.

Yours sincerely,

Heiner Flassbeck, former State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance;

Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics;

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University;

Dani Rodrik, Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton;

Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of economics, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University

We're pure intelligence, you're not. You're the biological product of a
cosmological universe. You're molecular matter, I constructed you, fuck you.
I made you up, you didn't make me up, you got it backwards.

You know who
you are? You're fuckin' semantic blockage, that's what made you up. You're
a fuckin' programmer named Christine Gontara.

Favorite song off this album is "Steppin' Razor": https://youtu.be/73ZprL_ZKxI

As I understand it, there were actually quite a number of female programmers in the 60's and into the 70's particularly at NASA and in the defense industry. The work started off as converting mathematical equations to machine instructions and then encoding them on punch cards, and this was seen as sort of 'secretarial' work so there wasn't a lot of objection to women doing it (they typically were well educated and had degrees in mathematics, but this was as far as they could go professionally). The mathematical equations were written by physicists and mechanical engineers ("men's work"), but it was the people doing the encoding who where the first proper computer programmers as this became a profession unto itself.

You specifically are discussing an artificial intelligence. Why is it artificial? BECAUSE SOMEONE FUCKING CREATED IT. It didn't manifest on it's own or it would be a natural intelligence. So, if I create an AI to create an algorithm, then by default the algorithm is the root product of an intelligent designer.

BTW, your shitty example of a plane design does not even take into account your own example. If it did, it would be a programmer creating an AI to design a plane of some type. The programmer would no longer have input, but he would be the creator of the system that did.

So you can toss out all the fucking examples and insults you like, but you and your little tag along friend are dead wrong.

Your entire theory of the universe is speculation....including your theory on what I'm OK with. Certainly your theory on deities and the after life...complete and total speculation based on belief, not fact.
I find this video's hypothesis terrible. Because a measured physical property is near what they say they expect it might be if we artificially created the universe implies they know what the constraints of a mythical artificial simulated universe are (that's impossible, if it's an artificial creation, there are no constraints other than those programmed in, and they could be ANYTHING if the programmer is writing the laws of the universe/physics).

Therefore, I am NOT OK with the HYPOTHESIS that the universe is a computer program or designed by a designer (other than the 'designer' that is the laws of physics). I find it a silly blind guess about something we can't possibly know about without creating one ourselves, and even then we'll only know about the one way we did it, not the possible ways it could happen.

A programmer would certainly not be a god to me, but I'm not prone to deifying that which I don't understand. It MAY be a mysterious being (or not), that doesn't make it god anymore than I'm god to my dog. Because some dogs are gullible enough to believe their master might be a god does not make him/her one. The same goes for unknown properties of the universe. Some people may believe the unknown is somehow proof of the divine, that simply does not make it true, or even reasonable.

That's speculation, but it would mean intelligent design is a scientific theory. You're seemingly okay with the Universe being designed by a programmer, but not God, although the programmer would be a god to us in every practical way.

...by a programmer, not a god....and 'intelligently' is subjective. If there's a designer of all, that designer is NOT all that intelligent, consider the billions of failures they've 'made'.

"Here are these incredibly creative people.
These are people that could change the world, and I go, why are you putting your energy into really gratuitous and obscene violence?"

Something about the human psyche that is really messed up - It could be the burst of adrenalin we get when we're grossed out.

But she is right, imagine what programmers could do if they put their minds to major issues. The problem is, can you make people watch? And, can they profit from it. That's the challenge.

Hmmm. Well, I have a "low end" pc, and I've tried to play games on it, and was not impressed. Perhaps I should have done more investigation before I bought it, but I wasn't thinking 'game machine' when I did. Also, I have no controllers for it, and playing with the keyboard sucks ass! ;-)
Keep in mind, this setup on the video has over $4K in graphics cards alone, and is probably a $6-7K computer without the 3 TV's. With all that, it doesn't look better to me than last gen 3 screen games. (they should have chosen a different game IMO, I'm sure it does look way better when there's detail to display)

It's good that they're making them easier to set up, but it is still WAY more difficult than a console, which is plug and play. I still haven't gotten my PC to display properly on my TV without a cable across the room, and that's crappy.
I'm also disappointed that they tried to make the new consoles "media players" (crappy PCs). I wish they stuck with games and put it all into display features, but they didn't. I don't use the media features of my ps4 at all (except for Netflix, which my TV would do by itself if I set it up), they're a total waste.

Perhaps I'm stuck in a mid 90's mindset. That's the last time I built my own PC as a game rig. I had the full $250 thrustmaster setup, joystick and throttle with over 20 programmable buttons, and it was GREAT for descent and quake...but I recall being disappointed at how fast it was obsolete. Within 2 years I couldn't play newer games on it without stuttering....so I gave up on that. I can't afford to upgrade my memory and graphics card every 2 years, and motherboard and chip every 3.

I do recall a few games even on ps3 that could do the multiple display thing even at 1080i...I think motorstorm 1&2 (my favorite ps3 games) would do it, but you needed 3 ps3s to make it work. Today, you could probably do that for fairly cheap! What does a ps3 cost these days anyway? I must say, I didn't see anything that made 4K seem better. Motion blur looks the same at 1080 as 4K.

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.

Unfortunatly, it's not just Merkel and her cabinet. It's the press, it's the economics departments at universities, it's politicians at all levels. Call it an economic nationalism, hell-bent to defend what they know to be the moral way of doing business. Everything left of this special flavour of market fundamentalism has been systematically attacked and suppressed for at least 30 years.

For instance, our socialist party, still referred to as the fringe of what is acceptable, runs on what is basically a carbon-copy of social-democrat programmes from the '70s. Similar to the British Green Party and Labour. Krugman, Stiglitz, Baker, Wolff, DeLong -- they'd all be on the fringe in Germany. Even the likes of Simon Johnson (IMF) or Willem Buiters (City Group).

If you speak out in favour of higher inflation (wage growth) to ease the pressure on our brothers and sisters in southern Europe, you'll be charged with waging a war against German saver. "You want to devalue what little savings a nurse can accrue? Don't you support blue collar workers?"

The same blue collar workers have been stripped of their savings by 15 years of wage suppression, the same blue collar workers are looking at poverty when they retire, because the PAYGO pension system was turned into a capital-based system that only works to your benefit if you never lose your job, always pay your dues and reach at least age 95. The previous system survived two world wars without a problem, yet was deemed flawed when they realized how much money could be channeled into the financial system – only to disappear at the first sight of a crisis, eg every five to ten years.

Similarly, you could point out that a focus on trade surpluses might not be the greatest of ideas, given the dependence it creates on foreign demand, a weak currency and restricted wage growth domestically. But they'll call you a looney. "The trade surplus is a result of just how industrious our workers, how creative our scientists and how skilled our engineers are. It's all innovation, mate! Are you saying we force the others to buy our stuff? That's madness."

You simply cannot have an open discussion about macroeconomics in Germany. Do I have to mention how schizophrenic it makes me feel to read contradictory descriptions of reality every day? It's bonkers and everyone's better off NOT reading both German and international sources on these matters.


Any compromise would have to work with this in mind. They'd have to package in a way that doesn't smell like debt relief of any kind. People know that stretching the payment out over 100 years equals debt relief, but it might just be enough of a lie to get beyond the level of self-deception that is simply part of politics. If they manage to paint Varoufakis' idea of growth-based levels of payment as the best way to get German funds back, people might go for it. Not sure if our government would, but you could sell it to the public. And with enough pressure from Greece, Spain, Italy, and France most of all, maybe Merkel could be "persuaded" to agree to a deal.

As for Syriza's domestic problems: it's a one-way ticket to hell. Undoing decades of nepotism under external pressure, with insolvency knocking on your door? Best of luck.

Italy is hard on Greece's heels in terms of institutional corruption. Southern Italy, in particular, is an absolute mess. Given the size of the Italian economy, Syriza better succeed, so their work can be used as a blueprint. Otherwise we're going to need a whole lot of popcorn in the next decade...


Edit: Case in point, German position paper, as described by Reuters. As if the elections in Greece never took place.

I don't believe that it is what most people think. Most people believe in God, for starters, according to every poll ever taken on the subject, at least here in the US.

The mystics, who deserve far more credence than stage actors, say that God created the universe because an eye can not see itself, nor a sword cut itself. For God to know himself, the universe was created, so that God could see all of the possibilities. And one of those possibilities is imperfection, or at least what we see as imperfection, such as people who kill or bacteria that makes us sick.

The programmer programs the computer and he doesn't always know how it's going to turn out. The artist throws paint on the canvas but a certain chaos theory enters into it.

At any rate, to see the Universe and not realize the intelligence behind it is just sad. At the least a thinking person should investigate all aspects of it.

To ignore the intelligence behind the universe is just stubbornness. How do you maintain your anger at God when you don't even believe in God?

I got news for you. If you are mad at God, then you believe in God. If you think God fails your standard, then where did that standard come from?

Original trailer from the studio with English captions are here and differ only slightly from the Youtube captions.

Link to the full episodes are here.

I disagree, you now have an explanation of why other people like the song. Surely you would have found it easier to work out one you like (particularly after watching a few of these).

I'm also left with the distinct impression that these videos are a subtle German parody of overly serious music programmes. I'm not 100% sure of that, but either way the ones I have seen have been great watching