Hi guys!

Life got in the way - in a very, very good way (I'll probably drop by the café at some point) - so please do excuse my absence :)

I haven't read an economics article in months and I even paused a really good book - Taibbi's Griftopia - halfway through. I'll probably be picking it back up soon...

Anywayz, one of my best friends suckered me back into economics insisting I really need to watch The Big Short (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/). And he was right. If you love awkward nerds as much as I do, you'll love this film. Christian Bale's got Asperger's, Steve Carell is the archetypical INTJ (and obviously my favorite LOL), and Brad Pitt a type of character I've only seen once in a doc that no-one's seen called Collapse (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/). If you think it's a movie that might interest you should go watch if for no other reason than to remind you of what kind of crazy got us in this mess. In fact, while we're on the subject, every Setizen in the politics forum should watch Inside Job (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/). IMHO one of the best documentaries of all time. Worth watching even if docs aren't your cup of tea.

OK so, here's what got me thinking of you guys. I tried my best to not rub it in that some of you are having trouble adding up to 30 on a psychopathy checklist and that only 2 points out a max of 40 are taken away for axe-murderers but I can't take it anymore :D BTW "Criminal versatility" does not an axe-murderer make! Even if it did, it should still be painfully obvious that the vast majority of psychos on the planet are not criminals at all. It's just statistically impossible. Claiming otherwise is probably just cognitive dissonance. And that's OK. We all do it - or have - for some reason or another (and will again).

Anyway I've digressed again.

Blood sells. I get it. So here's your pound of flesh, courtesy of Brad Pitt in The Big Short:

"If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs. People lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about f'ing banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number - every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?"

I have no idea how accurate that number is. I'm hoping it's a LOT lower and I'm also hoping you all agree it's still unacceptable no matter how much lower it may or may not be.

Now let me borrow an expression from Michiel (which BTW I personally think you overuse, and in many cases for trivial situations) and ask the million dollar question:

These deaths are on who exactly?

Now any of you are free to consider it a loaded question and throw a hissy fit. Go ahead. We all need to let the steam out from time to time. But please, after you have, without pride or prejudice and in all honesty:

Who's responsible?

Oh, and Happy New Year! ;)

----------------------------------------

On screen quotation from Mark Twain:
[On screen quote attributed to Mark Twain] It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/the-startling-accuracy-of-referring-to-politicians-as-psychopaths/260517/
Seti threads:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76609
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76569

The Big Short just won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay :)

Joins Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, The Godfather, All the President's Men, Midnight Express and a ton of others in the same category.

Apocalypse Now would've been on that list too had it not lost to Kramer vs. Kramer :(

TED Talks: Simon Anholt: Which country does the most good for the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Country_Index

TED Talks: Simon Anholt: Which country does the most good for the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Country_Index

Nice one Alex :-)

Some very good points raised on that talk.

Now for the good one...

Which country is No 1...

...wait for it...



IRELAND

I was hoping you'd see that :)

Didn't want to spoil it for you though, so I just threw out dry links.

I have no idea who this guy is but I really like the first 8 min. of his talk...

PS To Janne: this seams like a more trustworthy list than the one you posted a while back :)

PS To Janne: this seams like a more trustworthy list than the one you posted a while back :)

Perhaps:)
But statistics are a tricky thing.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/06/daily-chart-18

The idea is clever but the execution is tricky. The index often scales countries on a GDP basis to give poor countries a chance against rich ones. That's nice, but is Cyprus really a tech leader or Malta a cultural paragon? And the "peace and security" area is flawed: it penalises countries involved in armed conflicts abroad or that sell arms. Couldn't one argue that this fosters a stable world?

The best comment on it was "Cultural Pyschopaths"

Perhaps:)
But statistics are a tricky thing.

They are :) Cyprus, Malta are tiny countries so are bound to be outliers. Statistically this makes sense.

Posting the world's top 18 countries with regards to innovation however and South Korea (for example) NOT being on the list... Statistically does not make sense.

Politically however...

One list is probably an honest attempt at finding a pattern and the is probably paid propaganda for an extremely questionable agenda.

You asked me last time what I was trying to say... well that is what I was trying to say :)

Another way to look at it instead of countries spending money on good thing is to look at countries peacefulness.
Then it becomes very different for many countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index

Hmmm, nice see Ireland at 12 & Sweden at 13 :-) Poor Britain & the USA at 39 & 94 respectively.

Anyone remember Newsnight's (BBC UK) economics/business editor Paul Mason? One tough cookie.

IMF plots new “credit event” for Greece

"The International Monetary Fund has been caught, red handed, plotting to stage a “credit event” that forces Greece to the edge of bankruptcy, using the pretext of the Brexit referendum.

No, this is not the plot of the next Bond movie..."

You'll never guess in what context I found Greece sandwiched between Finland & Denmark:


http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/may/12/what-are-the-top-10-most-secretive-tax-havens-video

Source (Lower is better):
http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/introduction/fsi-2015-results

Strange days Jim... strange days.

These deaths are on who exactly?

Now any of you are free to consider it a loaded question and throw a hissy fit. Go ahead. We all need to let the steam out from time to time. But please, after you have, without pride or prejudice and in all honesty:

Who's responsible?

The human condition called greed.

---

Fakelaki system outcome, part of: Stournaras: Varoufakis’s strategy cost Greece 86 billion euros.

"Stournaras, also a former finance minister under New Democracy"

& his role during the Greece crisis?

Fakelaki system outcome, part of: Stournaras: Varoufakis’s strategy cost Greece 86 billion euros.

"Stournaras, also a former finance minister under New Democracy"

& his role during the Greece crisis?

Obediently sat in the sidelines letting Schoebbels do his thing and artificially drive up the debt up by another 50% for whatever reason his crazy head thinks is a good idea. To pull it off he had Angela go all racist against the Greeks on phony-baloney stats so people like Snark can vent their racism in an orderly fashion.

Greece isn't in the mess it's in because lawyers & doctors aren't paying their taxes. That's crazy.

It's because it borrowed a shit-ton of money from 2005 to 2009. [Edit: Stournaras knows this better than anyone. It was HIS party that blew the cash. But REAL politicians are always exempt from responsibility/accountability. Let's just shift the blame on whoever is the easy target-of-the-day. As a reward for his loyalty to the psychopaths actually running the EU he is now Governor of the Bank of Greece of course]. Enough to trigger an IMF response. But we've gone over all this many times. It's just the people that aren't paying attention that are struggling to see what's going on.

Varoufakis appears to have been not only one of the smartest people in Europe these past 8 years but certainly the only person with an engineer's view of how to actually fix this mess with solutions that could actually work. Or better, ideas that have been tried & tested & proven to actually work.

But of course when it became obvious that if you're in the Euro, you get your orders from Germany... weeeeell let's just say that was a revelation that put everybody's view of Europe into perspective.

Screw Greece btw. Just take a look at Finland's stats.

PS what happened with that fascist wannabe president in Austria? Did he win? Haven't been following the news...

PS what happened with that fascist wannabe president in Austria? Did he win?

No.
Alexander Van der Bellen managed to beat the odds to pip Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) by a paper-thin margin of 31,000 votes.


http://www.thelocal.at/20160524/austrias-new-president-the-green-professor-who-beat-the-far-right

These deaths are on who exactly?

The human condition called greed.

Like any human condition, there's nothing wrong with greed. You get what you get when you are born. It's not your fault.

What's criminal is letting greed run rampant and not held accountable.

There's no way to sugar-coat it really.

Or do you think Hillary would ever implement whatever's left of Dodd-Frank?

PS what happened with that fascist wannabe president in Austria? Did he win?

No.
Alexander Van der Bellen managed to beat the odds to pip Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) by a paper-thin margin of 31,000 votes.

Oh good. That's good.

A bit too close for comfort... but I guess we'll take what we can get these days :)

A bit too close for comfort... but I guess we'll take what we can get these days :)

Yes.
The rise of the far right in Europe is ominous...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/05/daily-chart-18

Just temporary. It will just get worse. Much worse.
The peoples reaction to the Deranged Left, will be...
Ah... Well... Hmmmm... The Deranged Right.
Nothing new.

Temporary? This trend has being going on since the 90's.
Both Right and Left parties in Europe are now concerned that the far-right parties have so much power even in the parlaments, both national and EU.