Fat Samurai posted:No, no, no, when other politicians buy 600k houses they are trying to speculate, when Podemos does it is to form a family, it's a completely different thing. Didn't Podemos make a big deal when a PP politician bought a 600k house? But then again, SYRIZA is schooling all other Greek parties in how brazenly nepotistic you can be and the left seems to like it.
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May 28, 2018 10:11
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mobby_6kl posted:Is 600k a lot for a house in Spain or something? In Prague that'll get you a decent older house but not at all a luxury villa or anything. This guy seems to think so https://twitter.com/Pablo_Iglesias_...luxury-villa%2F
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May 28, 2018 12:13
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DXH posted:Fake edit: the most interesting thing about all of this imo is that when Albert Rivera (head of Ciudadanos) bought a million euro house in a fancy-rear end neighborhood in Madrid (Pozuelo de Alarcón), acquiring neighbors such as Cristiano Ronaldo and the leader of the Spanish Socialist Party Pedro Sanchez, there was nary a peep from the Spanish media, because conservatives can do whatever the hell they want here. http://www.diariodepozuelo.es/2017113094595/el-lider-de-ciudadanos-albert-rivera-nuevo-vecino-de-pozuelo-de-alarcon It is not the act itself but the fact that he attacked other politicians over the same behavior. If I want to prohibit guns I should not be caught running around with an AR15, as it would damage my credibility.
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May 28, 2018 19:47
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https://twitter.com/riegertbernd/status/1001455537240858625?s=21 Mein Kommissar GaussianCopula fucked around with this message at 15:03 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 13:14
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You can't respect people voting for M5S, Podemos, AfD, Lega Nord, FN, AfD, SYRIZA, Die Linke
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May 29, 2018 16:18
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You know who is telling his voters that markets are wrong and electing him will show them who is boss? recep tayyip erdogan It’s absurd that the EU figureheads don’t have the balls to tell the truth to the Italien electorate. You can’t vote that water is not wet.
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May 29, 2018 18:12
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Pluskut Tukker posted:Nice try, but the thing is that, incredibly, occasionally voters may make decisions for other reasons than what the market might say. But it is still the truth. Voters might ignore it but you can’t fault a man for telling it like it is - or do you want politicians to lie?
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May 29, 2018 18:22
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Junior G-man posted:Meanwhile, the European Parliament is throwing a big rager to get young'uns interested in what's going on in Brussels: They should just play the best economic rap out there Part I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk Part II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
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May 30, 2018 09:06
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Pluskut Tukker posted:Also, closet fascist Salvini in charge of police and immigration. They may not end up blowing up the EU, but they'll sure make people suffer. I wonder if they are going to sell a very hard stance on immigration as standing up to Merkel/Berlin even though Berlin would be very happy about it by staying true to the idiotic narrative that Mrs. Merkel wants lots of Muslim immigrants in Europe because reason?
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Jun 1, 2018 19:10
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Pluskut Tukker posted:It occurs to me that it is also exactly what the Republicans in the US did from Obama's election onwards. When you pay no price for political obstruction but the governing party is punished by voters for failing to get results, mindless opposition becomes the dominant strategy for opposition parties everywhere. I don't see a good way to address it though. Only let well adjusted, smart people vote - or at least have something like the Prussian three-class franchise that reduces the impact of stupid people.
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Jun 1, 2018 20:45
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Einbauschrank posted:Italy was running a deficit in the 90ies, today has about the same debt level (relative to GDP) as in the 90ies and pays less in interest rates (relative to GDP) than during the 90ies. Italians own more on average than Germans (once again relative to GDP, but also in absolute terms). It's this great conspiracy theory that Germany forced the Euro on the EU to subjugate all of Europe economically, because as everyone knows, having a weak currency is what everyone wants... It has nothing to do with the fact that the Club Med binged on cheap credit and is unable to fix it's problems of corruption, clientelism and inefficient administration.
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Jun 2, 2018 11:36
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Pluskut Tukker posted:Of course people binged on cheap credit, that's the whole point of making credit cheap. People respond to incentives, whether it's Dutch, Irish, Spanish or American homebuyers taking advantage of cheap financing for their mortgages, banks, or local or national governments finding ways to buy the favour of voters with borrowed money. Make money cheap and people will borrow more money. You can yell at them for doing so but that's about as useful as yelling at the sun for coming up in the East. If only there was a country that had a finance minister that was able to say "nein" to cheap new debt and instead presented a balanced budget, but I guess that is just an utopian fantasy because surely, no politician could be principled enough to be the rock on which an entire countries fiscal policy is build. Pluskut Tukker posted:So, as the cliché goes, it's the job of the central bank to take away the punch bowl when the party's really getting started. But the ECB never did (probaby because exporting countries need people binging on credit abroad to sell stuff to when they fail to sufficiently stimulate domestic demand. And obviously, these exporting countries making a lot of money then better hope that its financial institutions are smart enough to lend the money coming in responsibly.....). Looking at the GFC this is exactly what happened. Interest rates rose, which revealed shitloads of bad investments, mostly in housing, and everyone got a really bad headache. Now the difference was that the Club Med's business model was to take cheap credit to fuel a housing bubble, but they never had the efficient 21st century administration and economy to thrive without it, which is why their headache turned into cancer while Northern European countries recovered relatively fast. Now the Euro is designed to simply be a hard currency. You have to adapt your fiscal/economic policy to that fact, but it is not by itself something evil or malicious, it just means that a certain set of tools is not available to your country in turn for certain other benefits (e.g. cheaper credit). As for the paper you linked: I totally agree that we need improved monitoring and sanctioning for the Euro to work - the EC under Juncker failed.
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Jun 2, 2018 12:51
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Orange Devil posted:GC, what do you think happens to the Schwarze Null if other countries stopped borrowing money to pay for German products? It might shock you but export surpluses mean that there is less money in Germany, because the surplus has to be balanced by capital outflows.
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Jun 2, 2018 13:05
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Pluskut Tukker posted:In which case, a wise and principled finance minister might take steps to reduce that surplus by increasing government spending and trying to find ways to cause wages to rise. This way, a country's financial system, its banks, mortgage banks and Landesbanken, might do less stupid lending in US subprime CDOs, Irish banks, Spanish cajas andGreek government bonds, and not have to be rescued from their blunders by imposing the losses that would have resulted from their stupidity and incompetence on the debtors instead. I totally agree that the German finance ministers between 1998 and 2009 were incompetent fools.
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Jun 2, 2018 13:34
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tekz posted:Italy has always had corruption but budget deficits to fund your welfare state is fine. Less fine when you don't control your own currency and the people who do prescribe austerity. The fact that austerity not only does not work, but makes your economic situation even worse and leads to malaise, unemployment, less money in the hands of people to jumpstart your economy again is the fundamental reason why anti-EU parties are currently in power in Italy and will rise to dominance in other places. Blinkered German morons want a common market and currency but are unwilling to make fiscal concessions to the reality that some countries are going to run deficits due trade imbalance; this is going to be the end result. The trade imbalances are a symptom of some economies being mich stronger not the cause. To use a dark soul phrase as advice to the Club Med: Git gud
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Jun 2, 2018 19:12
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