Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[mainiac]

No one want to talk about Krugman's post and the perspective of a ong term recession in Europe?

I've been wondering, what are the options for depreciating the currency as Krugman suggests?

The currency has been artificially held down for the past five years.  Just have the ECB president say "Yeah we are going to treat 1.5% as a target instead of a minimum" and then have Merkel say something accepting and there'd be a huge jump in minutes.

Oh course that wouldn't get you all the way.  Broadly speaking Germany needs to pursue policies that encourage demand in Germany rather then trying to get more and more money abroad.  So just think of socially worthwhile projects and do them.  Raise wages for low end workers even more over the course of five years.  Invest hundreds of billions of euros in solar and rail.  Pick some disease in Africa and eradicate it.  Rebuild Ukraine.  Anything that makes the German government or German people spend a larger quantity of Euros in nominal terms is what we need.  Too many Euros would chase too few German goods and services, lowering the value of the Euro in Germany and sparking imports or other spending on goods and services in the rest of Europe.

Of course it would have been better if this was done when the German economy was going strong instead of waiting until recession loomed but better late then never.

Spoiler: This is basically the standard of British newspapers today. (click to show/hide)

I don't get it, you said "newspapers" but all I see is the Daily Mail.

Have I posted this yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

[Ukrainian Ranger]

The first signs of division within the Ukrainian society appeared in the 1990s, when Crimea unsuccessfully tried to secede. The so-called "Orange Revolution" of 2004 revealed the cracks in the seemingly united Ukrainian nation - it suddenly turned out that the West and the East have completely opposite political values, and to make matters worse, they despise each other for it. After Euromaidan, the animosity between the two parts of the country became absolutely clear. Even if there was no Putin and no Crimea, a country where one part of the country thinks that the other one is either subhuman cattle or Nazis wouldn't stay in peace for too long.

Look, who are the combatants:

a) Some ideological local pro-Russians.
b) Pro-Russians  from all Ukraine who went there instead of triying to do some
c) Local criminals who enjoy the power of an assault rifle in their hands
d) Para-military Russian cossacks units
e) Various Russian mercs making money(Most of which are North Caucasians)
f) Russian soldiers

If that was a civil war in a divided society then we would see hundreds of thousands locals taking arms. I think Putin hoped for that, but that never happened. He failed to ignite a civil war in Ukraine even with all that poured gasoline.

Are there ideological division in Ukraine? Sure. And it is somewhat dependent  on geography. That isn't a ground for a civil war. Look at Scotland. They have society divided over the independence issue. It is somewhat dependent on geography, too. But Scottish nation is nowhere close to starting a civil war. It is same for Ukraine.

[Owlbread]

I don't get it, you said "newspapers" but all I see is the Daily Mail.

Come on Mainiac, are you going to make me dig up evidence? Anecdotally I can tell you all or some those headlines could have been on the Daily Express, Sun, even broadsheets like the Telegraph and Scotsman but expressed in a more formal register. The only half decent papers left in Scotland/England are the Herald, Financial Times and Guardian, though they're going downhill in quality too.

The Daily Mail is like the most extreme example of the problem. At least, it is now, given that NOTW is no longer with us.  If this problem is like a virus, the Daily Mail is the worst affected; but they revel in it because it's their selling point. Perhaps it's because the only people still buying newspapers in general and reading them regularly are a shrinking demographic of older people who respond best to headlines like those. The younger generation get their news online.

[TD1]

Probably best not to describe a sizable number of the population as believing in virus-news. Age shouldn't really come into it, as Scotland proved with its lowering of the voting age.

[Loud Whispers]

British training Kurdistan fighters.
Labour wants teachers to have a hippocratic oath. Public reaction is confused mockery.
Labour wants to curb benefits for dem gorram benefit scroungin' immigrants to try and appeal with its lost working class voters.
Is Labour's Austin Mitchell the next UKIP defector?
Scottish Greens ready set to hold what could be their largest conference to date.
Lib Dems confident in spite of losing ground everywhere.
Nick Clegg valiantly trying to keep the Lib Dems together in one of their toughest moments in history.

David Cameron pledges tax cuts 'for 30m people.'
UKIP conference: Income tax cuts plan unveiled.
Ed Miliband promises £2.5bn funding boost 'to save NHS.'
Green Party calls for £10 hourly minimum wage by 2020.

Nigel Farage says UKIP is targeting all voters in Rochester.

[Sheb]

So apparently the recent fall in oil price would be partly due to a US-Saudi deal. Interestingly, Suadi Arabia needs a oil price of about 90$ a barrel to break even, so they're probably not going to pump out that much more oil.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

I have heard a very different theory:  Saudi Arabia is lowering price to knock shale oil competitors out. Shale oil stops to be profitable with real low prices

[10ebbor10]

Saudi doesn't need a 90 barrel oil price to break even. They need that price to maintain their social security and government.

Basically, their government budget assumes a 90 dollar/ barrel price.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Can't they just sell more oil? Isn't it how they survived the last time when oil went down?

[10ebbor10]

More oil drives the price even further down. So, not sure if that still works.

[Sheb]

Also, Russia's budget assume 100$/barrel.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Also, Russia's budget assume 100$/barrel.

Source?

I heard about $93 this year and $95 next year

[Sheb]

That link I posted earlier.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

So. Asian markets opened.  Oil is -1% in less than 15 minutes.  Ukrainian Ranger is grinning

Fakedit: -1.2%

[mainiac]

Come on Mainiac, are you going to make me dig up evidence? Anecdotally I can tell you all or some those headlines could have been on the Daily Express, Sun, even broadsheets like the Telegraph and Scotsman but expressed in a more formal register. The only half decent papers left in Scotland/England are the Herald, Financial Times and Guardian, though they're going downhill in quality too.

Apologies, I was attempting to comedicly imply that the Daily Mail is not a newspaper but appear to have missed the mark.