Fuck, man. Greece.

[Torniojaws]

And the northern Europeans and nordic countries are obviously entitled to think what they want, but their political parties have made a sport of bashing the Euro to win votes, so they have a vested interest in making things look terrible and blaming the Greeks rather than the Germans or themselves for not doing anything to improve the situation.

Actually it is the opposite. Most of the regular people here are against the Euro, while the political parties are the ones that praise it.

The most sore example of the failure of Euro is that prices of food have increased 5-fold compared to the time before Euro. But unfortunately for the people, the salaries did not increase 5-fold... Even when you take deflation into account, the prices are still more than double from what they used to be, and you can see it in not the cash flow of food retailers, but in the stoppage of spending across the board in everything else.

That in turn has led to the current situation where just this year, 10 % of the workforce have been laid off, and others are unable to get fulltime jobs anymore - regardless of education level or experience. In fact, more experienced people are first in line for lay-offs due to their higher salaries, which the companies cannot afford. Of course, the other side of the coin is that companies cannot reduce salaries, due to the extremely strong labour unions of Finland. So the only way is to lay-off people, citing "productional and financial reasons".

The reason why companies cannot afford them anymore? The people that have cut back their spending to bare necessities, due to increased prices that the Euro brought along. Another sore thing is, that the government is *actively* preventing external competition to the food sector. In Finland, there are practically only two food chains! And those two are getting the high-status lots in the city plan, with the help of the "brothers in arms" in the government, who get nice little bonuses from the retail cooperatives... That is the widely known form of corruption that Finland has had for decades, and they are not really even trying to hide it.

The general public is also well aware that the 10 % (!) of our national budget that we sent to aid Greece, is not helping the Greek people. It goes to the pockets of German bankers, who are acting innocent to the fraud, which they orchestrated in co-operation. Btw, if United States would have sent the same percentage in aid, the sum would have been around 200,000,000,000 USD (that's 200 billion!).

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

Actually it is the opposite. Most of the regular people here are against the Euro, while the political parties are the ones that praise it.

The most sore example of the failure of Euro is that prices of food have increased 5-fold compared to the time before Euro. But unfortunately for the people, the salaries did not increase 5-fold... Even when you take deflation into account, the prices are still more than double from what they used to be, and you can see it in not the cash flow of food retailers, but in the stoppage of spending across the board in everything else.

That in turn has led to the current situation where just this year, 10 % of the workforce have been laid off, and others are unable to get fulltime jobs anymore - regardless of education level or experience. In fact, more experienced people are first in line for lay-offs due to their higher salaries, which the companies cannot afford. Of course, the other side of the coin is that companies cannot reduce salaries, due to the extremely strong labour unions of Finland. So the only way is to lay-off people, citing "productional and financial reasons".

The reason why companies cannot afford them anymore? The people that have cut back their spending to bare necessities, due to increased prices that the Euro brought along. Another sore thing is, that the government is *actively* preventing external competition to the food sector. In Finland, there are practically only two food chains! And those two are getting the high-status lots in the city plan, with the help of the "brothers in arms" in the government, who get nice little bonuses from the retail cooperatives... That is the widely known form of corruption that Finland has had for decades, and they are not really even trying to hide it.

The general public is also well aware that the 10 % (!) of our national budget that we sent to aid Greece, is not helping the Greek people. It goes to the pockets of German bankers, who are acting innocent to the fraud, which they orchestrated in co-operation. Btw, if United States would have sent the same percentage in aid, the sum would have been around 200,000,000,000 USD (that's 200 billion!).

All completely valid points. Sucks : / One of the reasons the U.S. has low unemployment relative to Europe is because unions play such a small role in most sectors. That results in some bad things too, but I still think overall Europe would have been better equipped to deal with the crisis if governments hadn't promised so much and been forced to deliver it even in the face of economic catastrophe. These regulations are great at fostering equality when times are good, but when things go downhill they become a nightmare to deal with.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Actually it is the opposite. Most of the regular people here are against the Euro, while the political parties are the ones that praise it.

The most sore example of the failure of Euro is that prices of food have increased 5-fold compared to the time before Euro. But unfortunately for the people, the salaries did not increase 5-fold... Even when you take deflation into account, the prices are still more than double from what they used to be, and you can see it in not the cash flow of food retailers, but in the stoppage of spending across the board in everything else.

That in turn has led to the current situation where just this year, 10 % of the workforce have been laid off, and others are unable to get fulltime jobs anymore - regardless of education level or experience. In fact, more experienced people are first in line for lay-offs due to their higher salaries, which the companies cannot afford. Of course, the other side of the coin is that companies cannot reduce salaries, due to the extremely strong labour unions of Finland. So the only way is to lay-off people, citing "productional and financial reasons".

The reason why companies cannot afford them anymore? The people that have cut back their spending to bare necessities, due to increased prices that the Euro brought along. Another sore thing is, that the government is *actively* preventing external competition to the food sector. In Finland, there are practically only two food chains! And those two are getting the high-status lots in the city plan, with the help of the "brothers in arms" in the government, who get nice little bonuses from the retail cooperatives... That is the widely known form of corruption that Finland has had for decades, and they are not really even trying to hide it.

The general public is also well aware that the 10 % (!) of our national budget that we sent to aid Greece, is not helping the Greek people. It goes to the pockets of German bankers, who are acting innocent to the fraud, which they orchestrated in co-operation. Btw, if United States would have sent the same percentage in aid, the sum would have been around 200,000,000,000 USD (that's 200 billion!).

All completely valid points. Sucks : / One of the reasons the U.S. has low unemployment relative to Europe is because unions play such a small role in most sectors. That results in some bad things too, but I still think overall Europe would have been better equipped to deal with the crisis if governments hadn't promised so much and been forced to deliver it even in the face of economic catastrophe. These regulations are great at fostering equality when times are good, but when things go downhill they become a nightmare to deal with.

It is really good to see that some people are beginning to realize that liberal/socialist or central economic planning and government intervention is a very bad thing. The whole issue on both sides of the the pond all boils down to the artificial decrease in interest rates, from the expansion of credit to centralized banks and governments who think that getting people to spend by inflating the currency and thus lowering interest rates will get people spending. At the end of the day all it does is give false signal to companies to invest in the long term, misallocate scarce resources which bring prices of goods now two fold from both supply and inflation and through the price increase of scarce goods makes those investments unstable and unprofitable, resulting in a bust. Sure up to that point, the employment goes down, credit is easy to get and everyone lives a good life, but that economy is unstable when the ultimate goal can never be reached because there is simply not enough GDP to supply the malinvestments. When the investments bust, we start seeing economies go bankrupt.

In the case of the EU, just like the US, we are inflating out currencies to bailout or rebuild other nations, the US nation building the middle east, the EU bailing out other EU countries. Where do you think that money comes from? It comes from your savings, your retirement your wages, being taken to give loans to future investments anything from giving a foreigner or citizen of your country a credit card, an unsustainable job and other governments money to do as they see fit. And it all goes bankrupt because of these distortions. Like I said, a lot of the signals in an economy are there for a reason and help everyone know what the desires of the consumer are, when government intervenes by taking your money to bailout other nations, it distorts the system and makes everyone more poor at the expense of the bankers who got to keep that money.

Unfortunately we have too many politicians and even Americans who think more government spending and bailouts are the answer, if both the EU and US keep up with this, there will be nothing left to save.

It really is a Ponzi scheme to take your wages and savings to give to bankers. We have a system where governments are too powerful and corporations have strong ties with politicians. We have to limit government powers and sever the political ties bankers and corporations have with politicians and remove government controlled credit expansion, if we don't we will see a worldwide bankruptcy, which as of now is probably for the better, maybe...at that point is all speculation how that would go down.

 

[John_C]

We have a system where governments are too powerful and corporations have strong ties with politicians. We have to limit government powers and sever the political ties bankers and corporations have with politicians and remove government controlled credit expansion, if we don't we will see a worldwide bankruptcy, which as of now is probably for the better, maybe...at that point is all speculation how that would go down.

Corporate influence on government = bad. Everyone agrees on that.

But (and it's a big but):
I believe government has an important role to play in an economic system, as the *elected* counterweight to the unelected meta-corporations who would otherwise entirely dominate the worlds economics (and thus almost everything else).

A democratic government has a responsibility to it's citizens, enforced by voting, making some attempt at representing the wants and needs of the population. A large publicly traded (especially holding )company has no responsibilities to anyone other than the interests of it's shareholders. It is entirely amoral by design*.

Put simply, I don't really trust the government to act in my best interests, but I trust them a *LOT* more than the alternative people.

*note amoral, not immoral. To say a large company is evil is almost always missing the point: they just don't deal in terms of morality at all, good or bad.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Corporate influence on government = bad. Everyone agrees on that.

But (and it's a big but):
I believe government has an important role to play in an economic system, as the *elected* counterweight to the unelected meta-corporations who would otherwise entirely dominate the worlds economics (and thus almost everything else).

A democratic government has a responsibility to it's citizens, enforced by voting, making some attempt at representing the wants and needs of the population. A large publicly traded (especially holding )company has no responsibilities to anyone other than the interests of it's shareholders. It is entirely amoral by design*.

Put simply, I don't really trust the government to act in my best interests, but I trust them a *LOT* more than the alternative people.

*note amoral, not immoral. To say a large company is evil is almost always missing the point: they just don't deal in terms of morality at all, good or bad.

I can completely agree that the people that pull the "corporations are evil" don't get it at a deeper level.

One of the greatest quotes that I heard recently stating the role of government is to paraphrase "Government is the guardian of Natural Law". And ultimately governments only true job is to ensure that we live in an environment where we are free to do as well please as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others, that all interactions both socially and economically are mutual because all parties feel such exchange would lead them better of than before. Government should never be a force of coercion by a few at the expense of the many.

In the economic world government or regulating agencies are there to ensure a true free and voluntary market exist full of competition, where if a company makes mad decisions it fails and becomes replaced by another new company. The big issue that we are in now is due to the fact that governments being in bed with large companies who have made bad choices and are wasting money, donate campaign contributions to keep certain politicians in office to enforce a monetary policy that will keep them afloat at the cost of tax payers. And when I say corporations, I mean banks to because after all, they do sell loans, which is a good/service and the result of the housing bubble here in the states beginning about 10 years ago.

Monetary policy isn't something that should be enforced by any agency or group or company or government, it just is. Artificially altering or distorting it, time and time again as history has shown, causes depressions and bankruptcies of whole nations. It is in itself forced monetary policy that causes the corruption of businesses to buy out the politicians as a "security fund", because if they didn't have that, they would be forced to adjust and adhere to what the market wants.

Now something you mentioned and something I have commonly heard is that if governments didn't enforce policy then corporations would dominate the world. To some extent that is true, however as you did mention, corporations are only concerned about one thing, long term success. Even if a group of companies did have a monopoly and were adjusting prices with each other they still can't raise their prices higher than people are willing to pay. If it is a needed commodity that has little change in demand based on supply or price like crude oil, there will come a point where such high price would cause a total collapse in the market. Companies don't want this, since they desire long term profits, being extremely rich at one point of time only to kill or sever off their major source of revenue, they cease to exist. So even if you think that a certain commodity is overpriced, if it truly was, you would see a complete meltdown.

Likewise what I said earlier is that since all companies look at long term success and revenue, they use signals in the market to determine what would be in their best financial interest. When government comes in with a forced monetary policy you get bad investments and companies all making bad decisions. Of course I full heatedly agree that if a groups of companies were manipulating the market so that it wasn't abiding to the rules of free enterprise, then the government steps in and does something about it, it should be a regulating body to ensure the rules of the free market are being followed and that everyone is interacting peacefully and if there are individuals or companies who break those rules, well there are consequences.

 

[Mago]

I find the "before the euro everyhing was cheaper" argument pretty senseless. There's no way to predict how things would have gone for a country if they didn't join in.
IIRC I read an article quite a few months ago, where it was explained that without the euro life would even be more expenive now in most countries. Don't pin me down to find it now tho, or what the exact reason was.
All I know was that it made a lot of sense when I read it.

 

[Ermz]

Something along these lines?

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Something along these lines?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ayg3hbhoM

I would warn not to directly follow the words of Peter Joseph as he is a crackpot conspiracy theorist that has a tendency to slightly manipulate information to justify his agenda which is "The Venus Project".

However, about 75%-80% of what is mentioned in the video is correct, with enough twists in the real logic to purposely get you into his agenda.

He is another Alex Jones if you will, some truth, a lot of manipulation and fear mongering.

I just watched these the other day, a reiteration of speeches this guy has made in the past that I have seen years ago, so it was nice to retouch on them again. His analysis of the stock market crash in 1920-1921 and in other videos the crash of 1907 are very good at painting the story. Long videos but worth the time.

Of course there are many other individuals who can paint the picture too, I figured I would start here. For those who love quick minute or so videos and would like to dig in more, check out these guys: http://www.youtube.com/user/LearnLiberty

Good Primer:



If you want to dig deeper and have the time:

 

[Ermz]

I would warn not to directly follow the words of Peter Joseph as he is a crackpot conspiracy theorist that has a tendency to slightly manipulate information to justify his agenda which is "The Venus Project".

However, about 75%-80% of what is mentioned in the video is correct, with enough twists in the real logic to purposely get you into his agenda.

He is another Alex Jones if you will, some truth, a lot of manipulation and fear mongering.

'The Venus Project' is the brainchild of Jacque Fresco, not Joseph. Regardless, the 'Venus Project' isn't so much an agenda as it is a vision for social redesign. Peter Joseph's affiliation is to 'The Zeitgeist Movement', which could be described as an institution looking to enact sweeping social change at a fundamental level. It's all underpinned by the desire to convert from the market economy to a resource-based economy. The two had enough crossover to initially form a somewhat loose alliance, which was dissolved when they experienced a schism some years back.

That being said, Peter Joseph is about as much another Alex Jones as Behemoth is another Milli Vanilli. It's obvious through how you paint him, that you don't actually understand the motivation behind TZM. I would urge you to look into his motivations a bit more thoroughly before continuing to spread misinformation of your own.

Thanks for the videos. As dreary and self-defeating as I find economics, I'll set some time aside and give them a good watch after work.

 

[AD Chaos]

if we don't we will see a worldwide bankruptcy

The 'world' isn't going bankrupt.
It's only the petrodollar (and the currencies that it drags along with it) that are on their last legs.

Ironically (and in a stark contrast) China continues working tirelessly to convert their yuan into a powerful, gold-backed currency... whilst at the same time, aiding in the destruction of the dollar.


What's scary it's what the dollar-trading bankers (read, the Federal Reserve) may be willing to put the world through, in order to try and keep enforcing their fraud upon the world:

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

The 'world' isn't going bankrupt.
It's only the petrodollar (and the currencies that it drags along with it) that are on their last legs.

Isn't that pretty much the world economy?

 

[drew_drummer]

'The Zeitgeist Movement' is crackpot bullshittery of the highest order. This is demonstrably true.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

'The Zeitgeist Movement' is crackpot bullshittery of the highest order. This is demonstrably true.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/

"...Actually, this claim is completely wrong. Silverstein only stands to make $4.6 billion in insurance, and it is only being provided to rebuild the site, which is going to cost $6.3 billion"
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/part-two/

^This website needs to be updated. Silverstein got the 4 billion in insurance. Now he is on his civil suit for another 3-4 billion or so from the airlines. Which means that he stands to make a large profit from the World Trade Center building 7 "collapse".

For those of you unaware, please consider that the World Trade Center was always publicly owned. Then Silverstein became the first private owner in a dogfight bidding process. Two months later, the 9/11 incident happened. That in itself is extraordinary coincidence, among many, many other "conspiracy" coincidences.

Drewdrummer, I know you are a skeptic, and that is fine. But you should at least be able to acknowledge that there is a lot of coincidence around 9/11. And there is an enormous amount of evidence that building 7 was imploded. And if it was imploded, and the public discovered that it was imploded, the United States could possibly go into civil war. For this reason I hope you are right and I am wrong.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

As dreary and self-defeating as I find economics

Yes, proven facts and accurate predictive models are dreary and self-defeating things I suppose. They lack the whiz-bang excitement of unsubstantiated inference, unfortunately.

 

[drew_drummer]

"...Actually, this claim is completely wrong. Silverstein only stands to make $4.6 billion in insurance, and it is only being provided to rebuild the site, which is going to cost $6.3 billion"
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/part-two/

^This website needs to be updated. Silverstein got the 4 billion in insurance. Now he is on his civil suit for another 3-4 billion or so from the airlines. Which means that he stands to make a large profit from the World Trade Center building 7 "collapse".

For those of you unaware, please consider that the World Trade Center was always publicly owned. Then Silverstein became the first private owner in a dogfight bidding process. Two months later, the 9/11 incident happened. That in itself is extraordinary coincidence, among many, many other "conspiracy" coincidences.

Drewdrummer, I know you are a skeptic, and that is fine. But you should at least be able to acknowledge that there is a lot of coincidence around 9/11. And there is an enormous amount of evidence that building 7 was imploded. And if it was imploded, and the public discovered that it was imploded, the United States could possibly go into civil war. For this reason I hope you are right and I am wrong.

I'm not a skeptic. I just believe in logic, science, and rationality. I know, crazy notions...

There is no reliable evidence that building 7 was imploded. The science does not backup your claim at all.

I wish Jbroll was around more. He's way better at pwning delusional idiots than I am. Oh wells...

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

There are 1500 engineers and architects that would disagree with you.

 

[egan.]

There are 1500 engineers and architects that would disagree with you.

Let me just point out that according to the NSPE there are more than 2 million practicing engineers in the US and according to NCARB there are over 200k practicing architects just in the US. Assuming all of those 1500 are domestic (an unsafe assumption about a suspiciously round number) that means that .07% of engineers and architects in the US believe building 7 was imploded.
In fact, even if all 1500 of those cited were NY based architects you'd still be talking about less than 10% of the total NY architect community (there are 16k architects in NY state alone).
This is funny to me b/c it's such a textbook example of lying with statistics being employed by the folks that claim we're all suckers. "1500" sounds infinitely more impressive than "less than 1%" even though it's the same stat.

 

[indecizo]

There are 1500 engineers and architects that would disagree with you.

Yeah but they are batshit crazy.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

There are also 33% of people in this country who swear to fucking god that Jesus rode atop a plume-laden velociraptor.

And another 40% who think climate change is being falsified by millions of scientists.

Does anybody know of a conspiracy theory that has ever been proven true?

 

[SocialNumb]

Not unless they decided a double edged cock is actually "God's" instrument of justice.