World today (Ni Srbija ni zemlje u okruženju)

[Albedo 0]

da, to je već grudva snijega, al sama Grčka teško može išta

vidiš, to je već za prs' na čelo, samo dugoročno gledano svi bi ispušili kad bi to uradili

a ako se EU raspadne mi bi dodatno najebali

[mac]

Propasti ne možemo, jer cvet naše mladosti radi svuda po svetu, i šalje pare ovamo. Da nije tako odavno bismo se uozbiljili.

[Ygg]

Prigodna pjesmica na temu...

http://youtu.be/J5CyyUFAbCE

[scallop]

Mnogo buke oko nepostojećih para. Sve je to proliv preliv iz SAD hipotekarne krize 2007.

[Albedo 0]

pa mi bi duplo najebali, prvo bi tamo taj cvet prso ako EU počne da se rašiva, treba i domorocima poslova, a kad bi zagustilo opet bi prali suđe, čistili i vozili kamione za platu, a Srbi marš nazad

a čak i da se to ne desi, pašće im prihodi

uz sve to, za Srbiju mrka kapa, nula investicija, sve gori raspad privrede

sad ako dolivaju gastarbajteri, oni dolivaju u polupunu ćasu

al kad počne da odzvanja dno džaba im, dolivanje više ne pomaže

sve je umreženo, od Urala do Pekinga

Srbima bi se ponovio Kosovski boj, samo ovaj put do Tokija, kako su i inače sanjali da će biti

[džin tonik]

eto nama grka s novim prijedlozima, bit ce cuda. a uopce nisu krenuli lose; prekrasno sto se sve danas predstavlja kao nepotkupljiva ljevica u sluzbi naroda. ili elementarno ne znaju kako funkcioniraju mehanizmi s kojima barataju ili nisu to za sta se predstavljaju. trece jos ne sretoh.

[scallop]

Prvo treba obesiti one koji su uspeli da ih zaduže za 250 milijardi €.

[džin tonik]

to se podrazumijeva; utoliko je ljepse sto ih isti iz svih tabora (znaci i njihovi) "izvlace iz krize" stvorene pljevom bezvrijednih papirica do potpune privatizacije stvarnih dobara i rusenja socijalnog sistema.

[scallop]

Pa, tako će se postići da niko nema ništa, a svi da budu doživotno dužni.

[džin tonik]

najpreciznije: dozivotno i nasljedno-prenosivo na desetak generacija, sve uz opciju prolongacije do trajnog praznog hoda. jedino nisam siguran jesu li se nekako osigurali i za potencijalni zagrobni zivot, na tom podrucju jos uvijek imamo zdravu konkurenciju kvalitetnih obecanja, pa tako i realan izbor.

[scallop]

Ne verujem da te zanima. ali zanima mene. Dužničkim ropstvom nacija bavio sam se u kratkoj priči "Robotska posla na Kanarevom brdu" (Ima u mojoj novoj zbirci kratkih priča), a dužničkim ropstvom planetarnih sistema u romanu "Legija Ida", Tardis.

[džin tonik]

zanima me, u biti pratim razvoj duznickog ropstva nacija od druge polovice devedesetih, kad u nj krenule price ceka nas "sedam gladnih godina". moze se reci kuknjava na visokom nivou, no gledam relativno, pa je reakcija na pricu ubrzo presla iz "kud bas sad, zar toliko" u "kamo li srece da samo".

[Meho Krljic]

Danci emuliraju Mađare:


Denmark to impose controls on border, risking EU ire

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will impose controls on its border to stop smugglers and illegal migrants, its new foreign minister said on Tuesday, in a move likely to worry the European Union but please a right-wing party on whose support the government now depends.
              More police, machines screening number plates and other measures would increase security without breaking EU rules guaranteeing freedom of movement through the bloc, Kristian Jensen told Reuters.
              The EU is grappling with an unprecedented flow of refugees from the Middle East and Africa which is testing its asylum rules and the Schengen agreement - its core agreement on unrestricted travel.
              Anti-immigration parties have shown signs of gaining support across the continent and Hungary last week said it would fence of its border with Serbia, drawing EU criticism.
              The EU Commission said it would not comment on the Danish plan until it saw details, but it complained when Denmark briefly started checking cars at the border in 2011.
              Jensen said he had mentioned the new measures in a meeting with his counterpart in neighbouring Germany on Tuesday, adding that Frank-Walter Steinmeier "took it positively".
              "The strengthened border control will be within the framework of Schengen, in dialogue with relevant authorities and in accordance with neighbouring countries," Jensen told Reuters, speaking from Berlin by phone. "We want to make it tough on criminals to pass, but still easy for companies to come through."
              The foreign ministry said the new measures would not include regular stops or passport checks.
              Steinmeier later told journalists he was grateful for "the announcement that the Schengen agreement will not be touched," and would keep in contact with Denmark over the issue.
              Analysts said any new controls would be largely symbolic and difficult to impose on the free-flowing, multi-lane traffic through Jutland, the only part of Denmark connected to the rest of mainland Europe.
              Denmark's centre-right Liberals party formed a minority government after winning just 34 out of 179 seats in parliamentary elections this month.
              Coalition talks with other parties failed, but the Liberals will still need the votes of other parties including the right-wing Danish People's Party (DF), which has called for even tighter border controls than those announced.
              "It (the border controls) is naturally a wholly symbolic initiative, but it has an important political function," said Derek Beach, an associate professor at Aarhus University Department of Political Science.
              DF is also pushing for curbs on immigration and a referendum on whether Denmark should stay in the EU.

[Meho Krljic]

I da notiramo grčko difoltovanje:


Greece defaults on the International Monetary Fund after launching 11th hour attempt to agree new rescue deal

Debtor nation makes history in becoming first ever developed economy not to pay back the IMF five days ahead of vital referendum
Greece has become the first developed country in history to default to the International Monetary Fund.
The cash-strapped nation failed to make a €1.5bn payment to the IMF by an 11pm deadline on Tuesday, triggering an arrears process which was last suffered by Zimbabwe in 2001.
In a statement, the IMF said: "We have informed our Executive Board that Greece is now in arrears and can only receive IMF financing once the arrears are cleared."
Greece now joins an ignominious list of states including Sudan, Zambia and Peru who have failed to make their commitments to the world's "lender of last resort".
• Greece defaults - as it happened 
The default comes after the country lodged a desperate last-minute plea for a reprieve to the IMF, according the Greek deputy prime minister Yannis Dragasakis.
Spokesman Gerry Rice confirmed the IMF had "received a request from the Greek authorities for an extension of Greece's repayment obligation that fell today, which will go to the IMF's Executive Board in due course."
In a sign of the total collapse in trust between its partners, it is unlikely Greece will now be given the traditional 30-day grace period afforded to other debtor nations who have missed repayment in the IMF's 71-year-history. IMF chief Christine Lagarde has said she will notify her Executive Board "promptly" should no payment be forthcoming.
Before the non-payment, rating's agency Fitch downgraded the Greek sovereign to 'CC' from 'CCC' citing the country's breakdown in talks and threat of "a disorderly and more permanent break from the Eurozone's payment system".
Default to the IMF does not however constitute a sovereign default in the eyes of rating agencies. It is also not guaranteed to trigger a series of cross-default clauses on the country's other outstanding debt. Any decision to do so would come at the discretion of its paymasters.
Greece's current rescue deal also expired at midnight on Tuesday, locking it out of access to €15bn in emergency funds. Creditors rebuffed three separate pleas from Mr Tsipras to extend the programme for at least a month, allowing the nation to go to the polls in a referendum on July 5.
With just hours left before both deadlines expired, Athens made an ambitious bid for new a European rescue loan worth €29.1bn to keep the country afloat until 2017.
•  What will happen if Greece defaults on the IMF? •   How do you change a currency   fast?   
The funds would come entirely from the eurozone's permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which is guaranteed by the bloc's 19 member states. European finance ministers convened for a telephone conference on Tuesday and are due to do so again today to mull over the plans.
The Leftist government of Syriza is thought to be willing to suspend its plans to hold a Yes/No referendum on its bail-out terms in return for securing some form of debt relief from its paymasters.
"From the first moment, we made clear that the decision to hold a referendum is not the end but the continuation of negotiations for better terms for the Greek people," said a Greek government statement.
"The Greek government will until the end seek a viable agreement within the euro."
Debt alleviation, in the form of modest bond swaps or more ambitious write-offs, have been fiercely resisted by Europe's governments who are determined their taxpayers take no more losses bailing out Greece.
Greece's fellow eurozone members have widely rounded on Mr Tsipras for backing a 'No' vote, warning that he must choose between keeping the euro or returning to the drachma.
Germany's Angela Merkel told her parliamentarians Berlin would not get back to the negotiating table until after the referendum was held. Her coalition partner and Socialist deputy, Sigmar Gabriel, said Athens had to first "kill" their plebiscite if they wanted to resume negotiations.
Angela Merkel calls out 'No' to Greece 
Spain's Mariano Rajoy also seemed to openly call for a change of government in Greece.
Mr Rajoy, who is facing electoral ruin from the insurgent anti-austerity Leftist Podemos party, said a 'Yes' would be a welcome development in the country.
"If Tsipras loses the referendum, this will be good for Greece. If he wins the referendum, Greece has no alternative other than to leave the euro."
Moderate voices in the Syriza government, such as deputy PM Mr Dragasakis are now calling on Mr Tsipras to finally strike an agreement that will stop the bankrupt country from crashing out of the euro.
However, should Greece be granted an ESM loan, it is likely to come with much "tougher" demands to cut spending and raise taxes, warned Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the eurogroup of finance ministers.
Approving the two-year loan is also likely to be a cumbersome and protracted process, even if the Greeks agree to sign up to the terms. The rescue would require ratification and assent from the Bundestag as the German government is the single biggest guarantor of the fund.
July 1 marks the first day the country has not been subject to a formal bail-out programme since its first financial rescue at the height of its debt crisis in 2010.
Greek pensioners have struggled to get access to their income after enforced bank holiday 
Without any further aid, Greece is all but bankrupt and will struggle to make payments to its public sector workers and pensioners.
All eyes are now likely to turn to the European Central Bank which has threatened to cut off the €88bn in emergency funds it has used to prop up the banking system. Should the ECB decide today to pull the plug, Greek banks will not be able to open after their mandated bank holiday which ends on July 7.
Greece owes the European Central Bank €27bn and faces an unprecedented default to the central bank on July 20. The government has pleaded for a debt swap to alleviate this burden. But with creditor powers showing no signs of relenting, a failure to repay €3.5bn is likely to result in a disorderly exit from the eurozone and put Greece on the path towards an alternative currency.
In a sign of the polarising effects the referendum call has had on Greek society, more than 20,000 people supporting a 'Yes' vote took to the streets of Athens last night.
This follows around 12,000 protesters who amassed on Monday night backing a 'No' vote.

[Meho Krljic]

Iz dana u dan se žderem što nismo na vreme otvorili temu "Užasi libertarijanstva", al sad kad nema Borisa  već tako dugo onda ni ne mora 

Elem u nastavku borbe starog protiv novog, posle protesta taksista u Parizu protiv fare-sharing firme/ servisa Uber, Uberovi menadžeri u Francuskoj su i uhapšeni pod optužbom da vode nelicenciranu taksi-službu. Baš me zanima kako će ovo dalje dide. Američki pogled na stvari je "pusti ljude da zarađuju kako umeju u slobodno vreme, nek tržište kaže svoje". Evropski je, za sada "neregulisani privatni prevoz nije u skladu sa našim vrednostima", pa je Uber proterivan iz nemačkih gradova a evo sada i ovog u Francuskoj... Videćemo.


Uber France Leaders Arrested For Running Illegal Taxi Company

Uber France CEO Thibaud Simphal and Uber Europe GM Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty were both taken into custody today in Paris. The AFP first broke the news. The police started investigating Uber in November 2014 and raided its office in Paris in March 2015.
The two executives were charged with two different allegations. First, according to them, Uber is running illegal taxi operations. Uber has been struggling with this charge in many countries, starting with the U.S. In 2010, the company had to change its original name from UberCab to Uber as taxi companies didn't want to create any confusion.
Second, the police said that Uber France is concealing digital documents. It's hard to tell what the police was looking for when they raided the French office in March. But apparently, some documents are missing and slowing down the investigation.
The transportation company executives weren't taken into custody because of the violent protests that occurred last Thursday — taxi drivers want Uber to stop its cheapest service, UberPOP. But it's hard to rule out a link between the two events. The police might have sped up its investigation following last week's incidents. Cabbies damaged 70 cars — some of them were even flipped over and burnt.
As a reminder UberPOP was launched in February 2014 and is the confusingly named equivalent of UberX in France (UberX in France is the equivalent of Uber in the U.S.). With UberPOP, anyone can become a driver without any special professional license.
Many taxi drivers saw the new service as unfair competition. UberPOP was banned in Brussels, the Netherlands and, yes, France.  The French police has been issuing fines for a few months now, but when an UberPOP driver gets fined, Uber pays for the fine. Recently, Uber rolled out UberPOP in a few smaller French cities, making it available to many more potential customers.
That's why taxi drivers protested against UberPOP last week, asking for a real unequivocal ban. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve talked with taxi unions, told the police to stop UberPOP drivers and fine them — 200 additional police officers are now in charge of this task. France President François Hollande also reminded that UberPOP cars could get seized by the police, but it's unclear whether it will become a widespread practice.
Yet, as long as there is no justice court order, the Government can't do much more than that. On Thursday, Uber France director Thibaud Simphal said to BFM TV that as long as a justice court didn't order Uber to stop UberPOP, the service would continue — as of today, you can still find UberPOP cars when you open the app.
Update: We've reached out to Uber, a spokesperson sent us the following statement (translated from French):

Our CEO for France and General Manager for Western Europe were invited to a police hearing this afternoon; following this interview, they were taken into custody. We are always available to answer all the questions on our service, and available to the authorities to solve any problem that could come up. Talks are in progress. In the meantime, we keep working in order to make sure that both our customers and drivers are safe following last week's turmoils.

[Meho Krljic]

A onda u nastavku i bez gubljenja koraka evo Blumbergovog teksta o tome kako Uber lobira za svoje usluge. Tekst je pogolem al nek stoji kao zanimljiva studija slučaja:


This Is How Uber Takes Over a City

To conquer America's quirkiest city, the company unleashed its biggest weapon


Charlie Hales, the mayor of Portland, Ore., was running a zoning hearing last December when he missed a call on his cell from David Plouffe, the campaign mastermind behind Barack Obama's ascent. Although Hales had never met him, Plouffe left a voice mail that had an air of charming familiarity, reminiscing about the 2008 rally when 75,000 Obama supporters thronged Portland's waterfront. "Sure love your city," Plouffe gushed. "I'm now working for Uber and would love to talk."
Hales, like many mayors in America, could probably guess why Plouffe was trying to reach him. Uber's made a name for itself by barging into cities and forcing politicians to respond. It started in 2010, providing swanky rides at the tap of an app in San Francisco. "I pushed a button, and a car showed up, and now I'm a pimp," Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick said four years ago. The company has since expanded to take on lower-cost taxi service in more than 300 cities across six continents, ballooning to a $40 billion valuation. At the time of Plouffe's call, Uber already operated in several Portland suburbs, and over the previous few months Hales's staff had asked the company to please hold off on a Portland launch until the city could update taxi regulations. Plouffe may be a big name, but Hales didn't immediately call him back.
The next day, City Hall heard from a local reporter that Uber cars would hit the streets that very evening. The company's unauthorized kickoff put Hales in a bit of an artisanal pickle. Portland had just become the first city to explicitly allow short-term rentals through Airbnb and other sites, and welcoming Uber could help build the city's sharing-economy brand, a logical extension of its communitarian roots. On the other hand, aggression is so not the Portland way.
Hales gathered Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick and three aides to call Plouffe. Hales would play the good cop to Novick's bad cop. The roles were fitting: Hales comes off like the thoughtful baby boomer dad on Family Ties, while Novick's known around town for his fiery wit. (In a campaign ad mocking the idea that voters should elect politicians who are relatable drinking buddies, Novick, who was born without a left hand, pops open a bottle of beer with his prosthetic metal hook. "Steve Novick," the voice-over said. "He's always found a way to get things done.") The group huddled around Hales's cell phone on speaker mode as the mayor dialed Plouffe.
A year ago, Colorado passed the first ride-sharing legislation in the country. Since then, about 50 U.S. jurisdictions have adopted ordinances recognizing Uber and Lyft as a new type of transit provider called "transportation network companies." Each government, whether municipal or state, goes through its own process to craft rules, but in the end, officials generally codify the insurance coverage, background-check policies, and inspection protocols Uber already has in place. Uber makes the rules; cities fall in line. There are some small differences between their regulations, but, as Plouffe says, "the core is remarkably similar."
The success, says Justin Kintz, Uber's head of public policy for North America, is "a tale as old as time—it's the power of the people." It's also a tale about the power of backroom lobbying. Although Uber promotes itself as a great disrupter, it's quickly mastered the old art of political influence. Over the past year, Uber built one of the largest and most successful lobbying forces in the country, with a presence in almost every statehouse. It has 250 lobbyists and 29 lobbying firms registered in capitols around the nation, at least a third more than Wal-Mart Stores. That doesn't count municipal lobbyists. In Portland, the 28th-largest city in the U.S., 10 people would ultimately register to lobby on Uber's behalf. They'd become a constant force in City Hall. City officials say they'd never seen anything on this scale.
When Hales got through to Plouffe, he said he'd heard a "disturbing rumor" that Uber planned to start operations. "That," he said, "would be a bad way to start." Plouffe responded with a drawn-out silence. Before Plouffe mustered a reply, Novick erupted: "Mr. Plouffe, if you come to Portland without following our rules, we're going to throw the book at you!" But as Portland would learn, a city of 600,000 can play tough with a $40 billion company, particularly one that is used to getting its way, for only so long.


Kicking off the pilot episode of the TV show Portlandia, actors Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein set the scene for the show's satirical wet kiss to the city. Portland, they sing, is a magical place of awesome weirdness. "It's like Portland's almost an alternative universe," Brownstein swoons. "In Portland, it's almost like cars don't exist. People ride bikes or double-decker bikes, they ride unicycles. They ride trams. They ride skateboards!"
The parody could double as an ad for the city's transportation department. Among urbanists, Portland's a transit darling. People can bike in protected lanes, ride the bus or MAX trains (one of the nation's busiest light-rail systems), or tool around in Smart cars from car-sharing company Car2Go. But there are holes, especially for residents living far from downtown, the disabled, and late-night partyers. The city's taxis have been known to fall short of demand. Portland has fewer cabs per resident than most comparable cities, and drivers take home just $6.22 an hour, according to a 2012 survey. The taxi companies didn't hold traditional political power as major campaign donors or lobbying forces, but their furor succeeded in resisting, or at least delaying, change. It took a nasty four-year battle for a group of largely immigrant drivers to get permits in 2012 to start Union Cab, a driver-owned cooperative.
Uber first targeted Portland in 2013, when it wanted to introduce its luxury car service, UberBlack. It couldn't legally operate because a city ordinance required black-car trips to be reserved an hour in advance, the legacy of a 2009 agreement that carved out separate markets for hire cars and taxis. When Uber showed up, Hales had recently been elected, and his director of strategic initiatives, Josh Alpert, says overhauling the taxi rules was something on Hales's first-term to-do list.
In a town Portland's size, City Hall can juggle only so many issues. Alpert told Uber that before the city could deal with a taxi battle, it had to address more pressing matters, starting with the $21.5 million budget shortfall Hales inherited. "I explained to them that there was going to be a process, and we were nowhere near starting that process," he says.
That didn't sit well with Uber. "Portland has some of the most extreme protectionist laws that we've seen around the country," Kalanick told a local TV station. A few days later, Uber defiantly said on its blog that "outdated local regulations" didn't prevent it from making deliveries, so it ran a one-day promotion serving ice cream around town. It was like when the company shuttled puppies from shelters to offices in 10 cities before the Super Bowl. In City Hall, the ice cream tasted like belligerence. "It was like, 'Whoaaaa,' " Alpert says. "I know every city says this, but we are not used to that in Portland. It was just all about Uber."
Uber soon asked the city's Private For-Hire Transportation Board—made up of industry reps, drivers, and community members—to remove the one-hour requirement. It also deployed some classic political strategies.
Plouffe likens customers to campaign volunteers, and the ice cream stunt provided the company with a database of consumers it could turn into advocates. In an era of low voter turnout, Uber has managed to get almost a million people to sign its petitions in the past year. "Not many private-sector companies have that kind of passionate set of consumers that will go the extra mile," Plouffe says. In Portland, almost 1,700 people signed a change.org petition to "tell Uber to bring their stylish rides to Oregon." The company also solicited supportive letters from local business leaders.
Uber stopped pushing, as the company's focus across the country was shifting from black cars to the low-cost uberX service, which fell under a different set of regulations. "Uber, to their credit, did go away for a while," Alpert says.
When the company came back almost a year later, both the city and Uber had reason to think the negotiations would be fruitful. Uber had a new local face, General Manager for the Pacific Northwest Brooke Steger, whom Alpert calls "a much easier person to work with." And Portland had just crafted the Airbnb rules, which established that the city wasn't necessarily hostile to sharing-economy services.
Yet Uber was still Uber, and it began strangling Portland. It launched just to the north, in Vancouver, Wash. "Hey Portland," Uber taunted on its blog. "We are just across the river." Soon Uber started operating in several adjacent suburbs. "They basically forced their way into the market and surrounded us, then put the pressure on for us to do likewise," Hales later told a conference of mayors.
The city told Uber that updating the taxi regulations could, finally, happen soon, but first the transportation department had to fix Portland's pothole problem, which required finding millions of dollars in new revenue for the street maintenance budget. Around Thanksgiving, Uber was next in the queue. Uber wanted a firm time frame, which Alpert couldn't give. "I kept telling them: 'A little bit longer,' " Alpert says. "Strangely, at the last minute, when it was in sight, they were like, 'Well, we're done.' "


After Plouffe's call to Hales, Uber went ahead with its unsanctioned Portland launch, throwing a party in a loft to show, the invite said, how Uber was "proud to call Portland (and all of its rain, quirks, and bridges) home." Partygoers could take photos with protest signs or stop by a postcard station to "drop a note to Mayor Hales." Uber canned the kinder motto, #WeWantUberPDX. In the first four hours, more than 7,000 people signed a petition now asserting #PDXNeedsUber.
The company released a video with the most Portlandish introduction it could muster, featuring an Uber driver dramatically navigating in the rain, crossing a bridge over the Willamette River, and giving a ride to the Unipiper, a well-known local who rides a unicycle while wearing a Darth Vader mask and playing a fire-breathing bagpipe.
After a weekend of scrambling, the city sued Uber on Monday. Although Uber's fines would eventually total $67,750, the city's enforcement efforts evoked the Keystone Cops. Agents conducted stings, but Uber turned off the accounts of city staff so they couldn't use the app. And at the time, the city believed it lacked the authority to impound cars. Still, the lawsuit captured attention. Portland residents on social media said the law-breaking felt "icky."
Even the Unipiper backpedaled. "Wow, this whole #Uberpdx thing is really getting crazy," he tweeted. "No they did not explain to me that they were going to launch illegally," he wrote. "I do think Portland has been slow to act." (About the legality of the launch, an Uber spokeswoman now says: "Often regulations fail to keep pace with innovation. When Uber launched, no regulations existed for ride-sharing.")
Uber's rules-be-damned approach had served the company fairly well around the country, but the Portland showdown came at a time of particularly intense scrutiny. An executive had mused aloud about spying on journalists, an alleged rape by a driver in India made headlines worldwide, and two California district attorneys sued Uber, claiming it misled consumers about driver background checks. And there was Novick, the transportation commissioner in a city known—even mocked—for being progressive, telling the New York Times that "Uber seems like a bunch of thugs."
Uber hired a new team of local lobbyists headed by Dan Bates, who used to work as Portland's own lobbyist in the state capitol. Across the country, Uber's lobbyists have similarly intimate connections. In Kansas, it hired Governor Sam Brownback's former campaign manager and another lobbyist who also works for Koch Industries. In Connecticut, it contracted with a former House speaker's firm, and in Illinois it brought on the former governor's chief of staff.
Soon, Alpert's phone rang. It was Mark Wiener, whom one local alt-weekly dubbed "The Man in the Shadows" and the "most powerful political consultant" in Portland. Wiener helped both Hales and Novick get elected and is known to work only with clients he thinks will win. Wiener said Uber wanted to know if Hales and Novick would consider a détente. Would they be open to a "conversation about a conversation?"
On a Saturday in mid-December, the two sides met at Wiener's house. The mayor started by saying the conversation would go nowhere unless Uber stopped breaking the law. "He said it probably five times," Alpert says. Uber's Steger and Caitlin O'Neill, an in-house lobbyist who used to work as an organizer for criminal justice reform at the American Civil Liberties Union, apologized. "That was a huge point for the mayor and commissioner to hear," Alpert says.


Soon they sketched out a compromise. Uber would temporarily cease operations in Portland—a first for the company—and the city would put the lawsuit on hold and give Uber the deadline it wanted, promising to have a community task force figure out rules to get Uber back on the street by early April. It was a brilliant agreement. The city could look like it tamed Uber without costly litigation, and Uber cut in line and became a top political priority. It had a firm timeline, and if for some reason the process fell apart, Uber could say it tried to cooperate. The Wall Street Journal cited the agreement to show "How Sharp-Elbowed Uber Is Trying to Make Nice."
And so Steger and O'Neill found themselves in a packed, fluorescent-lit city conference room in mid-January listening to a gray-haired facilitator kick off the task force with a long-winded joke about parrots and magicians. Over the coming weeks, the task force would hear a host of presentations, from the history of transportation in the city, starting with jitneys and the horse-drawn carriage, to testimony from taxi companies, drivers, and the public. Before various sessions, Uber mobilized its supporters. It hosted breakfast for drivers at a Nuevo Latino restaurant on the morning of their "listening session," then drinks at an old-timey cocktail bar, Raven & Rose, before the public hearing.
In mid-February, O'Neill and Steger sat before the task force to formally pitch their case. Lyft, a competing company that has also been trying to enter the Portland market, was there, too. Again, Uber seemed firmly in control. "I've gone through this regulatory process that you all are going through now in several other counties," O'Neill said leaning into the microphone. "We want to be a resource to you." She and Steger then ticked through points designed to position Uber as a rule-abiding company that saves lives.
Uber's policy group has its own team of data scientists, and its presentation included slide after slide of rosy graphics and numbers. To address Portland's environmental bent, it showed how in San Diego, 30 percent of uberX rides start or end near a transit station. To show equitable service, it explained that Uber's study in Chicago found wait times were consistent across the city, regardless of area income. To show drivers make livable wages, it introduced data from Princeton economist Alan Krueger, who served with Plouffe in the Obama administration, that found uberX drivers made more than $16 an hour (PDF).
The inundation of data made it hard to spot holes. The Chicago study was just for people who had the Uber app, so it didn't address poorer riders who can't use Uber because they don't have smartphones, and Krueger's big pay analysis didn't ask about how much drivers spend on expenses such as gas and insurance, making it an incomplete earnings picture.
Before a late-February task force meeting, a weary-looking Alpert said there were so many issues to consider that he was trying to keep everyone focused on safety so Uber could still get provisional permits in early April. Other issues, he said, could be dealt with later. "We weren't having luck stopping them," Alpert said. "We won't be able to keep them off the streets much longer."


On April 9 the task force suggested a 120-day trial period for Uber. It recommended that the City Council accept the insurance Uber provides and let both taxis and ride-hailing apps choose their own background-check providers. The task force also allowed auto shops with fewer credentials to inspect both taxis and the ride-hailing vehicles. Yet there were inequities. Taxis had to carry more insurance, and their rates were capped, while Uber could jack up fares during foul weather or other peak times—a policy the company calls surge pricing. At least 10 percent of the taxi fleet had to be wheelchair-accessible, while Uber could direct wheelchair-bound passengers to transit companies that serve the disabled.
The taxi industry and its supporters cried foul. One driver compared Uber to Enron because it "doesn't play by the rules." A man who regularly attends council meetings and calls himself Lightning said that Uber was already worth billions. "That is what you value the most," he said, arguing that Uber should make a "reasonable offer" to Portland taxi drivers who lose business.
The proposal needed support from at least three commissioners to pass. The whole process was Hales's and Novick's baby, so they provided two likely votes. Amanda Fritz would be a long shot. She was particularly progressive, and her husband had recently died in a car crash, making her vigilant about drivers carrying adequate insurance. Nick Fish wasn't buying the whole sharing-economy concept—he was the sole commissioner who didn't vote to allow Airbnb. That left Dan Saltzman, the long-serving council member who championed wide-ranging rules for Airbnb. One City Hall staffer describes Saltzman as the closest thing Portland has to a free-market conservative.
Uber had been working on the council members for months. "They kinda run this," Alpert said in February. "I keep feeling they will just wear you down. If we end up in court, we will have to lose just based on resources."
Records show the company had 19 in-person meetings with city officials in the first three months of the year, including one at the end of March, when Uber brought back the big gun, Wiener, to meet with Saltzman, the likely swing vote. Wiener had consulted on Saltzman's past campaigns. All the meetings, combined with phone calls, meant Uber spoke with City Hall on average almost every other workday. E-mail traffic was even heavier. The city hasn't released the correspondence, which Bloomberg Businessweek requested in early April, saying it's taken longer than expected because Uber and city staffers exchanged about 300 e-mails that may fall under the request.


As a gesture of good faith, Uber paid its outstanding fines, and the council scheduled the vote on a proposal Novick and Hales submitted in mid-April that echoed the task force's suggestions with a few tweaks, notably removing the rate cap for taxis. The morning of the vote, Uber hosted a breakfast for about a dozen drivers at a downtown restaurant, then marched the group to City Hall, with TV news cameras in tow. City Council was in session, so an Uber communications manager instructed them to leave a note in the council office. That evening, they returned for official testimony. Both Uber and taxi reps were out in force, with three hours of public comments. "#PDXRides hearing in nutshell," tweeted Oregonian transportation reporter Joseph Rose. "Uber drivers: Portland taxis never show up. Cabbies: Uber drivers are rapists, burglars, criminals."
In the end, the council approved the 120-day trial period. Saltzman cinched the vote. That Friday, Uber started operating again. The council is slated to take up permanent regulations, with updated requirements for serving passengers in wheelchairs, in late summer.
On April 29, Uber threw a second launch party, this time at a hand-harvested sea salt factory. Duck breasts with pistachio butter and huckleberry sauce were served; the photo booth no longer had protest signs. Three City Hall aides attended.
The next day, Plouffe and Hales shared the stage at an event organized by TechFestNW. Back in December, Alpert had said he wasn't having luck getting Plouffe to attend the conference, which is Portland's answer to Austin's South by Southwest. Now on stage, Plouffe and Hales were all smiles. Hales teasingly tossed a copy of the negotiating bible Getting to Yes to Plouffe, a nod to Novick's "we'll throw the book at you!" threat.
Plouffe told the audience that playing nice in Portland isn't necessarily a model elsewhere. "Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't," he said. Despite its wins, Uber still has plenty of battles left in the U.S., not to mention abroad. It's recently backed out of places like San Antonio, where it says new rules are too onerous.
It's nearly impossible to calculate Uber's ground war costs because many cities and states don't require the disclosure of lobbying costs. Those that do show that influencing policy doesn't come cheap. Take Texas. In 2013, Uber had no registered lobbyists in the state. Last year, it reported 14, and so far this year, that's grown to 28 who have registered to work on Uber's behalf, with contracts that could total $420,000 to $945,000, according to the filings, more than Philip Morris and Pfizer. In the past year, Uber spent $208,000 in Maryland and $684,000 in California.
City-level battles can be costly, too. Last year, Uber put more than $600,000 into a voter referendum in Seattle and spent $314,000 lobbying in Washington, D.C. The Portland campaign looks quaint by comparison. Uber reported spending about $68,000 on outside lobbyists in Portland and Oregon in the last two quarters.
Just days after the festival, Uber sent an urgent message to Portland users through its app. A bill the taxi industry supported in the Oregon statehouse would require higher insurance coverage. "Portland spent months creating thoughtful regs to welcome ridesharing!" Uber wrote. "Now that's in jeopardy. Help keep it around." Attached was a link to a petition, addressed to every member of the legislature.

[Meho Krljic]

Već sam kačio na drugi topik Krugmanove reakcije na ishod grčog referenduma, al da ih sakupim na jednom mestu sa sve njegovim tekstom od pre neki dan koji je vrlo ilustrativan i z anjegovo razmišljanje a, bogami, i za evropske prilike:


Europe Wins

Tsipras and Syriza have won big in the referendum, strengthening their hand for whatever comes next. But they're not the only winners: I would argue that Europe, and the European idea, just won big — at least in the sense of dodging a bullet.

I know that's not how most people see it. But think of it this way: we have just witnessed Greece stand up to a truly vile campaign of bullying and intimidation, an attempt to scare the Greek public, not just into accepting creditor demands, but into getting rid of their government. It was a shameful moment in modern European history, and would have set a truly ugly precedent if it had succeeded.

But it didn't. You don't have to love Syriza, or believe that they know what they're doing — it's not clear that they do, although the troika has been even worse — to believe that European institutions have just been saved from their own worst instincts. If Greece had been forced into line by financial fear mongering, Europe would have sinned in a way that would sully its reputation for generations. Instead, it's something we can, perhaps, eventually regard as an aberration.

And if Greece ends up exiting the euro? There's actually a pretty good case for Grexit now — and in any case, democracy matters more than any currency arrangement.

The related column was published a few hours after this post.

Ending Greece's Bleeding

Europe dodged a bullet on Sunday. Confounding many predictions, Greek voters strongly supported their government's rejection of creditor demands. And even the most ardent supporters of European union should be breathing a sigh of relief.
Of course, that's not the way the creditors would have you see it. Their story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.
But the campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense.

What's more, they weren't. The truth is that Europe's self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding. A "yes" vote in Greece would have condemned the country to years more of suffering under policies that haven't worked and in fact, given the arithmetic, can't work: austerity probably shrinks the economy faster than it reduces debt, so that all the suffering serves no purpose. The landslide victory of the "no" side offers at least a chance for an escape from this trap.
But how can such an escape be managed? Is there any way for Greece to remain in the euro? And is this desirable in any case?
Imagine, for a moment, that Greece had never adopted the euro, that it had merely fixed the value of the drachma in terms of euros. What would basic economic analysis say it should do now? The answer, overwhelmingly, would be that it should devalue — let the drachma's value drop, both to encourage exports and to break out of the cycle of deflation.
Of course, Greece no longer has its own currency, and many analysts used to claim that adopting the euro was an irreversible move — after all, any hint of euro exit would set off devastating bank runs and a financial crisis. But at this point that financial crisis has already happened, so that the biggest costs of euro exit have been paid. Why, then, not go for the benefits?
Would Greek exit from the euro work as well as Iceland's highly successful devaluation in 2008-09, or Argentina's abandonment of its one-peso-one-dollar policy in 2001-02? Maybe not — but consider the alternatives. Unless Greece receives really major debt relief, and possibly even then, leaving the euro offers the only plausible escape route from its endless economic nightmare.
And let's be clear: if Greece ends up leaving the euro, it won't mean that the Greeks are bad Europeans. Greece's debt problem reflected irresponsible lending as well as irresponsible borrowing, and in any case the Greeks have paid for their government's sins many times over. If they can't make a go of Europe's common currency, it's because that common currency offers no respite for countries in trouble. The important thing now is to do whatever it takes to end the bleeding.

Europe's Many Economic Disasters

It's depressing thinking about Greece these days, so let's talk about something else, O.K.? Let's talk, for starters, about Finland, which couldn't be more different from that corrupt, irresponsible country to the south. Finland is a model European citizen; it has honest government, sound finances and a solid credit rating, which lets it borrow money at incredibly low interest rates.
It's also in the eighth year of a slump that has cut real gross domestic product per capita by 10 percent and shows no sign of ending. In fact, if it weren't for the nightmare in southern Europe, the troubles facing the Finnish economy might well be seen as an epic disaster.


And Finland isn't alone. It's part of an arc of economic decline that extends across northern Europe through Denmark — which isn't on the euro, but is managing its money as if it were — to the Netherlands. All of these countries are, by the way, doing much worse than France, whose economy gets terrible press from journalists who hate its strong social safety net, but it has actually held up better than almost every other European nation except Germany.
And what about southern Europe outside Greece? European officials have been hyping the recovery in Spain, which did everything it was supposed to do and whose economy has finally started to grow again and even to create jobs. But success, European-style, means an unemployment rate that is still almost 23 percent and real income per capita that is still down 7 percent from its pre-crisis level. Portugal has also obediently implemented harsh austerity — and is 6 percent poorer than it used to be.
Why are there so many economic disasters in Europe? Actually, what's striking at this point is how much the origin stories of European crises differ. Yes, the Greek government borrowed too much. But the Spanish government didn't — Spain's story is all about private lending and a housing bubble. And Finland's story doesn't involve debt at all. It is, instead, about weak demand for forest products, still a major national export, and the stumbles of Finnish manufacturing, in particular of its erstwhile national champion Nokia.
What all of these economies have in common, however, is that by joining the eurozone they put themselves into an economic straitjacket. Finland had a very severe economic crisis at the end of the 1980s — much worse, at the beginning, than what it's going through now. But it was able to engineer a fairly quick recovery in large part by sharply devaluing its currency, making its exports more competitive. This time, unfortunately, it had no currency to devalue. And the same goes for Europe's other trouble spots.
Does this mean that creating the euro was a mistake? Well, yes. But that's not the same as saying that it should be eliminated now that it exists. The urgent thing now is to loosen that straitjacket. This would involve action on multiple fronts, from a unified system of bank guarantees to a willingness to offer debt relief for countries where debt is the problem. It would also involve creating a more favorable overall environment for countries trying to adjust to bad luck by renouncing excessive austerity and doing everything possible to raise Europe's underlying inflation rate — currently below 1 percent — at least back up to the official target of 2 percent.
But there are many European officials and politicians who are opposed to anything and everything that might make the euro workable, who still believe that all would be well if everyone exhibited sufficient discipline. And that's why there is even more at stake in Sunday's Greek referendum than most observers realize.
One of the great risks if the Greek public votes yes — that is, votes to accept the demands of the creditors, and hence repudiates the Greek government's position and probably brings the government down — is that it will empower and encourage the architects of European failure. The creditors will have demonstrated their strength, their ability to humiliate anyone who challenges demands for austerity without end. And they will continue to claim that imposing mass unemployment is the only responsible course of action.
What if Greece votes no? This will lead to scary, unknown terrain. Greece might well leave the euro, which would be hugely disruptive in the short run. But it will also offer Greece itself a chance for real recovery. And it will serve as a salutary shock to the complacency of Europe's elites.
Or to put it a bit differently, it's reasonable to fear the consequences of a "no" vote, because nobody knows what would come next. But you should be even more afraid of the consequences of a "yes," because in that case we do know what comes next — more austerity, more disasters and eventually a crisis much worse than anything we've seen so far.

Ovaj poslednji ima i na srbskom, na pješčaniku:


Ta nesrećna Evropa

Hajde da ne razgovaramo o Grčkoj – to je jako depresivno, nego o nečem drugom, okej? Na primer o Finskoj, koja je sušta suprotnost toj ,,korumpiranoj" i ,,neodgovornoj" zemlji sa juga. Finska je pravi uzor Evrope: ima poštenu vladu, zdrave finansije i solidan kreditni rejting, što joj omogućava pozajmice sa niskim kamatama. Istovremeno, ona je već 8 godina u recesiji koja je dovela do pada BDP-a za 10%. Da nema noćne more sa juga, o nevoljama finske ekonomije bi se govorilo kao o katastrofi epskih razmera.
I Finska nije jedina. Ona je samo jedna tačka na recesionom luku koji se proteže nad severnom Evropom od Danske, koja nije članica evrozone ali se ponaša kao da jeste, do Holandije. Sve te zemlje su u daleko gorem položaju od Francuske, koja je stalna meta napada medija koji se protive konceptu socijalne države, i koja po ekonomskim rezultatima zaostaje jedino za Nemačkom.
A šta je sa ostatkom južne Evrope? Evropski zvaničnici su oduševljeni oporavkom Španije, koja je ispunila sve zahteve poverilaca i čija ekonomija opet raste i stvara radna mesta. Problem je u tome što uspeh na evropski način podrazumeva nezaposlenost u Španiji od 23% i pad njenog BDP-a od 7% u poslednjih 7 godina. Portugalija je takođe poslušno primenila politiku štednje i 6 odsto je siromašnija nego ranije.
Otkud sve ove ekonomske katastrofe širom Evrope? Zanimljivo je koliko su različiti uzroci svake od njih. Da, grčka vlada se prezadužila. Međutim, to ne važi za špansku vladu. Kriza u Španiji je posledica prezaduženosti u privatnom sektoru i pucanja balona na tržištu nekretnina. U Finskoj uopšte nije reč o dugu, već o nedovoljnoj tražnji u drvnoj industriji i padu proizvodnje, naročito nekadašnjeg nacionalnog šampiona Nokie.
Zajedničko svim ovim zemljama je to što im je ulaskom u evrozonu navučena ekonomska ludačka košulja. Finska je prošla kroz tešku ekonomsku krizu krajem 1980-ih, daleko goru od ove sada. Ali je iz nje izašla i brzo se oporavila tako što je devalvirala valutu i učinila konkurentnijim svoj izvoz. Sada devalvacija nije moguća. Isto važi i za ostale zemlje u krizi.
Da li to znači da je uvođenje evra bilo greška? Znači. Ali to ne znači da ga treba ukinuti. Sada je najvažnije da sve te zemlje sa sebe skinu ludačku košulju. To podrazumeva akciju na više frontova, od zajedničkog sistema bankarskih garancija, do otpisa neodrživih dugova, stvaranje povoljnije ekonomske klime za zemlje koje prekidaju politiku štednje i povećanje inflacije u Evropi sa trenutnih ispod 1% na barem zacrtani cilj ECB-a od 2%.
Ali brojni evropski zvaničnici se protive svemu što bi evro učinilo funkcionalnijim i još uvek veruju da je tajna uspeha u strožijem disciplinovanju zemalja članica. Zato je grčki referendum važan.
Jedan od najvećih rizika grčkog Da, kojim bi se prihvatili zahtevi proverilaca i srušila sadašnja vlada, jeste da bi se time ohrabrili arhitekti evropskog neuspeha. Poverioci bi stekli moć da ponize svakoga ko se usprotivi štednji bez kraja, a nametnuta masovna nezaposlenost bi opstala kao odgovoran pristup problemima.
Grčko Ne nas vodi na zastrašujuće nepoznatu teritoriju. Grčka može da napusti evrozonu, što bi joj kratkoročno nanelo veliku štetu, ali i otvorilo šansu za stvarni oporavak, što bi bila najbolja lekcija nadmenim evropskim elitama.
Strah od Ne je opravdan jer vodi u neizvesnost, ali se više treba bojati predvidivih ishoda Da – još štednje i nesreće, i kriza gora od svih koje smo do sada iskusili.
The New York Times, 03.07.2015.
Preveo Miroslav Marković
Peščanik.net, 05.07.2015.

[Meho Krljic]

Kao adendum, evo Štiglica od pre neki dan u Gardijanu. Tekst pisan pre referenduma, očigledno, ali vredi čitati i danas:



Joseph Stiglitz: how I would vote in the Greek referendum

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.
Of course, the economics behind the programme that the "troika" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25% decline in the country's GDP. I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece's rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60%.
It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe's leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.


Economists around the world have condemned that target as punitive, because aiming for it will inevitably result in a deeper downturn. Indeed, even if Greece's debt is restructured beyond anything imaginable, the country will remain in depression if voters there commit to the troika's target in the snap referendum to be held this weekend.
In terms of transforming a large primary deficit into a surplus, few countries have accomplished anything like what the Greeks have achieved in the last five years. And, though the cost in terms of human suffering has been extremely high, the Greek government's recent proposals went a long way toward meeting its creditors' demands.
We should be clear: almost none of the huge amount of money loaned to Greece has actually gone there. It has gone to pay out private-sector creditors – including German and French banks. Greece has gotten but a pittance, but it has paid a high price to preserve these countries' banking systems. The IMF and the other "official" creditors do not need the money that is being demanded. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the money received would most likely just be lent out again to Greece.
But, again, it's not about the money. It's about using "deadlines" to force Greece to knuckle under, and to accept the unacceptable – not only austerity measures, but other regressive and punitive policies.
But why would Europe do this? Why are European Union leaders resisting the referendum and refusing even to extend by a few days the June 30 deadline for Greece's next payment to the IMF? Isn't Europe all about democracy?
In January, Greece's citizens voted for a government committed to ending austerity. If the government were simply fulfilling its campaign promises, it would already have rejected the proposal. But it wanted to give Greeks a chance to weigh in on this issue, so critical for their country's future wellbeing.
That concern for popular legitimacy is incompatible with the politics of the eurozone, which was never a very democratic project. Most of its members' governments did not seek their people's approval to turn over their monetary sovereignty to the ECB. When Sweden's did, Swedes said no. They understood that unemployment would rise if the country's monetary policy were set by a central bank that focused single-mindedly on inflation (and also that there would be insufficient attention to financial stability). The economy would suffer, because the economic model underlying the eurozone was predicated on power relationships that disadvantaged workers.


And, sure enough, what we are seeing now, 16 years after the eurozone institutionalised those relationships, is the antithesis of democracy: many European leaders want to see the end of prime minister Alexis Tsipras' leftist government. After all, it is extremely inconvenient to have in Greece a government that is so opposed to the types of policies that have done so much to increase inequality in so many advanced countries, and that is so committed to curbing the unbridled power of wealth. They seem to believe that they can eventually bring down the Greek government by bullying it into accepting an agreement that contravenes its mandate.
It is hard to advise Greeks how to vote on 5 July. Neither alternative – approval or rejection of the troika's terms – will be easy, and both carry huge risks. A yes vote would mean depression almost without end. Perhaps a depleted country – one that has sold off all of its assets, and whose bright young people have emigrated – might finally get debt forgiveness; perhaps, having shrivelled into a middle-income economy, Greece might finally be able to get assistance from the World Bank. All of this might happen in the next decade, or perhaps in the decade after that.
By contrast, a no vote would at least open the possibility that Greece, with its strong democratic tradition, might grasp its destiny in its own hands. Greeks might gain the opportunity to shape a future that, though perhaps not as prosperous as the past, is far more hopeful than the unconscionable torture of the present.
I know how I would vote.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce Greenwald, is Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015.

[Meho Krljic]

Još malo o Grčkoj pošto je to danas tema dana, jelte. Frensis Kopola o "Greksitu" i kao se tumače opcije za dalje:



The Road To Grexit

Ever since the Greek government called a referendum on the June 25^th proposal from the Eurogroup, the Troika and representatives of other EU governments have insisted that the referendum is a vote on whether or not Greece stays in the Euro. Despite Greek objections, the media has generally echoed their view. Here, for example, is the BBC's Robert Peston in a very good blogpost explaining why a No vote in the referendum could mean Grexit:

So whether the Greek government likes it or not, and apparently it doesn't, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker has said that Sunday's referendum is a vote on whether Greece will stay in the euro.....
A no vote would presumably see Greek banks subject to economy-crushingrestrictions on cash withdrawals and international transfers for the indefinite future.
Greece would be careering towards the euro door marked exit, even though such a door was never supposed to exist, let alone be opened.

Robert Peston goes on to explain why this would be terrible for the whole Eurozone, not just for Greece. I have covered similar ground previously.
But what does Grexit actually mean? Most commentary on this quickly gets bogged down in whether or not there is any legal means for Greece to leave the monetary union. The legal position is actually unclear, since leaving the Euro was never intended to be a possibility. But the consensus appears to be as follows:

   
• Greece cannot be ejected from the Euro by a coalition of the other Eurozone member states
• Greece cannot be ejected from the Euro by Eurozone institutions
• Greece cannot choose to leave the Euro while remaining within the EU (though this is disputed)
• Greece can choose to leave the EU, which would of course mean relinquishing Euro membership
• If Greece were to leave the EU, it could still continue to use the Euro, just as Panama uses the US dollar. The EU cannot prevent this.

Furthermore, sovereign default does not imply Euro or EU exit. The two are quite separate. Greece can default while remaining legally a member of the Euro – though there would be economic and political consequences.
So on the face of it, all this talk of Grexit appears to be so much hot air. But as usual with anything involving the Eurozone, it is not so simple.
Point 5 is key. Any country can use the Euro as its currency, whether or not it is a member of the Euro. And some do: Montenegro, for example, and Kosovo are both Euro users though they are very far from being accepted into the EU, let alone becoming Euro members.  So what distinguishes a Euro member from a Euro user?
Normally, the distinction between a sovereign currency issuer and the (foreign) user of a currency is that the sovereign currency issuer has complete control of the money supply, whereas the user must earn, borrow or buy its currency from external sources. But Greece cannot be considered a sovereign currency issuer. Its central bank can only issue the amount of Euros that the ECB allows it to. That amount has just been frozen by the ECB. Greece must now borrow, buy or earn additional Euros from external sources. That is what currency users have to do, not currency issuers. So Greece has no control of its money supply. It is as if it were using a foreign currency as its domestic currency.
Bloomberg  reports that Bulgaria, which is not a Euro member but backs its currency with Euro reserves, has just been allowed to borrow from the ECB at the same rate as Euro members, thus enabling it to firewall its banks from Greek contagion. This is a privilege normally only accorded to Euro members – and it has been WITHDRAWN from Greece. If this is true, then Bulgaria (non-Euro member) can obtain Euros from the ECB while Greece (Euro member) cannot. It is hard to see what benefit Greece's Euro membership confers, apart from redistribution of seigniorage receipts.


Really, Greece is a "dollarized" (or "Euroized") economy whose fiscal and trade position is so dire that it is not able to borrow, buy or earn the currency that it needs. It has a foreign exchange crisis.
Greece has imposed draconian measures to preserve its Euro reserves. It has closed its banks indefinitely and limited cash withdrawals from ATMs by Greek residents. And it has introduced capital controls: money is only allowed into Greece, not out of it. This is partial suspension of Greece's use of the Target2 settlement system. Deposit flight has stopped, but so have payments for imports. The benefit of this is of course that there will now be a sharp correction to Greece's trade balance. But this is far outweighed by the disastrous consequences for the economy of such a drastic tightening of monetary policy.
Two things should by now be apparent. Firstly, that the Euro is not in any sense "Greece's" currency. And secondly, that this is true of all Euro members, not just Greece. None of the Euro members are sovereign currency issuers. All of them are using a foreign currency. But if none of them are sovereign currency issuers, who is the issuer of the Euro?


The issuer of the Euro is, of course, the ECB. It decides how much money each of the member states can have. This is not unique to Greece: money creation in all the member states is limited by the ECB. So we have supposedly sovereign states allowing their money supply to be determined by an unelected supranational body that is above the law and accountable to nobody. And that body can freeze or withdraw money from member states' banks at any time and for any reason.
For the central bank of a currency union to deliberately restrict the money supply in regions within the currency union is bizarre. No other currency union central bank on earth does this. It would, for example, be unthinkable for the Bank of England to deny liquidity to Scotland's banks. But the ECB has denied liquidity to Greece's banks, not because they are insolvent (which is a reasonable reason to deny liquidity to banks) but because the sovereign won't toe the fiscal line. It has taken on a political role that it should not have.
Of course, the ECB's shareholders are the member state governments. But those governments have bound themselves by laws and treaties that prevent them interfering with or in any way controlling the ECB. So the Eurozone is in reality a financial dictatorship run by bankers. I struggle to see why anyone would voluntarily join it, let alone want to stay in it. But that's democracy for you.
Grexit is a process, not an event. And it is a process that has already begun. Greece's membership of the Eurozone was partially suspended when the ECB capped ELA. Whether that suspension becomes permanent depends on the response of the ECB to forthcoming events.


If the ECB responds to a No vote in the referendum by increasing collateral haircuts for bank funding – in effect making cash margin calls on Greece's banks – Greece's money supply will dwindle still further and its banks may fail altogether, leaving it with little choice but to introduce a parallel currency. Greece may remain a Euro member in name, but using the Euro as its domestic currency may become impossible. Grexit, de facto if not de jure.
Greece's Euro reserves would then slowly dry up, making it impossible to purchase essential imports such as oil. Redenominating deposits and bonds in the parallel currency would help preserve reserves, though that would be yet another step down the Grexit road. So would outright default. Why pay out scarce Euros to the very creditors who have made them scarce?
As Greece's foreign exchange crisis intensified, mortgaging ports to China in return for US dollars, and hosting military bases for Russia, would suddenly make complete sense. Faced with a serious shortage of hard currency, it would be hard to blame Greece for looking east. No wonder the US is increasingly worried about the Eurozone's handling of the Greek crisis.

I mada je ovo "samo" blogpost, vredi pročitati i pogledati grafikone:


http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html?utm_source=dlvr.it


I, da odemo još nekoliko dana u prošlost:


Europe is destroying Greece's economy for no reason at all

[scallop]

Čekam da neko primeti šta ja godinama pričam u neoliberalizmu i podlosti svetskog bankarskog sistema.

[Ghoul]

ovaj text daleko jasnije i konkretnije od skalopa objašnjava ŠTA se desilo i dešava, KAKO i ZAŠTO...

GREECE — THE ONE BIGGEST LIE YOU ARE BEING TOLD BY THE MEDIA

Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can't pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Except that it is a big fat lie ... not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

In summary, the banks wrecked the Greek government, and then deliberately pushed it into unsustainable debt ... while revenue-generating public assets were sold off to oligarchs and international corporations. The rest of the article is about how and why.

If you are a fan of mafia movies, you know how the mafia would take over a popular restaurant. First, they would do something to disrupt the business – stage a murder at the restaurant or start a fire. When the business starts to suffer, the Godfather would generously offer some money as a token of friendship. In return, Greasy Thumb takes over the restaurant's accounting, Big Joey is put in charge of procurement, and so on. Needless to say, it's a journey down a spiral of misery for the owner who will soon be broke and, if lucky, alive.

Now, let's map the mafia story to international finance in four stages.

Stage 1: The first and foremost reason that Greece got into trouble was the "Great Financial Crisis" of 2008 that was the brainchild of Wall Street and international bankers. If you remember, banks came up with an awesome idea of giving subprime mortgages to anyone who can fog a mirror. They then packaged up all these ticking financial bombs and sold them as "mortgage-backed securities" for a huge profit to various financial entities in countries around the world.

A big enabler of this criminal activity was another branch of the banking system, the group of rating agencies – S&P, Fitch and Moody's – who gave stellar ratings to these destined-to-fail financial products. Unscrupulous politicians such as Tony Blair joined Goldman Sachs and peddled these dangerous securities to pension funds and municipalities and countries around Europe. Banks and Wall Street gurus made hundreds of billions of dollars in this scheme.

But this was just Stage 1 of their enormous scam. There was much more profit to be made in the next three stages!

Stage 2 is when the financial time bombs exploded. Commercial and investment banks around the world started collapsing in a matter of weeks. Governments at local and regional level saw their investments and assets evaporate. Chaos everywhere!

Vultures like Goldman Sachs and other big banks profited enormously in three ways: one, they could buy other banks such as Lehman brothers and Washington Mutual for pennies on the dollar. Second, more heinously, Goldman Sachs and insiders such as John Paulson (who recently donated $400 million to Harvard) had made bets that these securities would blow up. Paulson made billions, and the media celebrated his acumen. (For an analogy, imagine the terrorists betting on 9/11 and profiting from it.) Third, to scrub salt in the wound, the big banks demanded a bailout from the very citizens whose lives the bankers had ruined! Bankers have chutzpah. In the U.S., they got hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers and trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank which is nothing but a front group for the bankers.

In Greece, the domestic banks got more than $30 billion of bailout from the Greek people. Let that sink in for a moment – the supposedly irresponsible Greek government had to bail out the hardcore capitalist bankers.

Stage 3 is when the banks force the government to accept massive debts. For a biology metaphor, consider a virus or a bacteria. All of them have unique strategies to weaken the immune system of the host. One of the proven techniques used by the parasitic international bankers is to downgrade the bonds of a country. And that's exactly what the bankers did, starting at the end of 2009. This immediately makes the interest rates ("yields") on the bonds go up, making it more and more expensive for the country to borrow money or even just roll over the existing bonds.

From 2009 to mid 2010, the yields on 10-year Greek bonds almost tripled! This cruel financial assault brought the Greek government to its knees, and the banksters won their first debt deal of a whopping 110 billion Euros.

The banks also control the politics of nations. In 2011, when the Greek prime minister refused to accept a second massive bailout, the banks forced him out of the office and immediately replaced him with the Vice President of ECB (European Central Bank)! No elections needed. Screw democracy. And what would this new guy do? Sign on the dotted line of every paperwork that the bankers bring in.

(By the way, the very next day, the exact same thing happened in Italy where the Prime Minister resigned, only to be replaced by a banker/economist puppet. Ten days later, Spain had a premature election where a "technocrat" banker puppet won the election).

The puppet masters had the best month ever in November 2011.

Few months later, in 2012, the exact bond market manipulation was used when the banksters turned up the Greek bonds' yields to 50%!!! This financial terrorism immediately had the desired effect: The Greek parliament agreed to a second massive bailout, even larger than the first one.

Now, here is another fact that most people don't understand. The loans are not just simple loans like you would get from a credit card or a bank. These loans come with very special strings attached that demand privatization of a country's assets. If you have seen Godfather III, you would remember Hyman Roth, the investor who was carving up Cuba among his friends. Replace Hyman Roth with Goldman Sachs or IMF (International Monetary Fund) or ECB, and you get the picture.

Stage 4: Now, the rape and humiliation of a nation begin. For the debt that was forced upon them, Greece had to sell many of its profitable assets to oligarchs and international corporations. And privatizations are ruthless, involving everything and anything that is profitable. In Greece, privatization included water, electricity, post offices, airport services, national banks, telecommunication, port authorities (which is huge in a country that is a world leader in shipping) etc.

In addition to that, the banker tyrants also get to dictate every single line item in the government's budget. Want to cut military spending? NO! Want to raise tax on the oligarchs or big corporations? NO! Such micro-management is non-existent in any other creditor-debtor relationship.

So what happens after privatization and despotism under bankers? Of course, the government's revenue goes down and the debt increases further. How do you "fix" that? Of course, cut spending! Lay off public workers, cut minimum wage, cut pensions (same as our social security), cut public services, and raise taxes on things that would affect the 99% but not the 1%. For example, pension has been cut in half and sales tax increase to more than 20%. All these measures have resulted in Greece going through a financial calamity that is worse than the Great Depression of the U.S. in the 1930s.

Of course, the ever-manipulative bankers demand immediate privatization of all media which means that the country now gets photogenic TV anchors who spew propaganda every day and tell the people that crooked and greedy banksters are saviors; and slavery under austerity is so much better than the alternative.

If every Greek person had known the truth about austerity, they wouldn't have fallen for this. Same goes for Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and other countries going through austerity.The sad aspect of all this is that these are not unique strategies. Since World War II, these predatory practices have been used countless times by the IMF and the World Bank in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

This is the essence of the New World Order — a world owned by a handful of corporations and banks.

So, it's time for the wonderful people of Greece to rise up like Zeus and say NO ("OXI" in Greece) to the greedy puppet masters, unpatriotic oligarchs, parasitic bankers and corrupt politicians.

Dear Greece, know that the world is praying for you. Vote NO to austerity. Say YES to freedom, independence, self-government, and democracy. Yes, democracy, the word that was invented by YOU!

P.S. You can also watch this video where John Perkins – author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" – talks about exploitation of Latin American and Asian countries using the same tools of debt-austerity-privatization. He used to do this for a living!   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsB07CcSNw


https://truthandsatire.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/greece-the-one-biggest-lie-you-are-being-told-by-the-media/

[Meho Krljic]

Nemojte da se svađamo čiji je veći (bitnije je da ste dobar čovek, kažem ja uvek) nego da dobro ovo zapamtimo sve jer, kako ja to često kažem,  njihovo danas je naše sutra ili, u ovom slučaju, naše danas popodne 

[varvarin]

http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2015&mm=07&dd=06&nav_category=78&nav_id=1012258

Mediji: Šta sad, kancelarko?

[Meho Krljic]

Ne znam da li će Varufakis sad, kada je podneo ostavku na položaj ministra finansija u Grčkoj vladi, da se vrati u sigurno okrilje Gabea Newella, ali evo njegovog blog posta od noćas:


Minister No More!

The referendum of 5^th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage.
Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup's 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my... 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday's referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride.
We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government.
The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.

[scallop]

Kako prolazi vreme imam sve snažniji osećaj da je moj SF bio angažovaniji nego što sam mislio da se da primetiti. Pročitati moju priču "Bez crvene". Mislim da ima na internetu.

[Meho Krljic]

Uzgred, Gardijan podseća da je ne baš tako davne 1953. godine na londonskoj konferenciji baš grčki ministar finansija potpisao oprost od 50% duga - Nemačkoj.



What was good for Germany in 1953 is good for Greece in 2015

Economic assistance under the Marshall plan was important to both countries, but it was the granting of debt relief that made a difference to the Germans


The arguments being used by the Greek government to secure debt relief can be traced back to a little-reported speech made to the students of Harvard University on 5 June 1947.
It was there that George Marshall, the then US secretary of state, floated the idea of a European programme of economic reconstruction. The Americans saw that Europe was on the brink of economic collapse. Industrial capacity had been wiped out. Trade had ceased. People were going hungry and, in Marshall's view, at risk of turning to communism.
Despite being the turning point for Europe's economies after the second world war, Marshall's speech was not considered as especially important at the time. The State Department did not bother to tell anybody in Europe about what he was about to say and the British embassy in Washington did not think it worth the cost to send a cable with an advance copy of the speech to London.


But the speech was covered by the BBC's Washington correspondent and, by luck, his report was heard by the then UK foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, in a wireless set he kept by his bedside. Bevin seized on the opportunity provided by the Americans, who said the Europeans had to organise their own plan for disbursing the money. "It was like a life line to sinking men," he said later. "It seemed to bring hope where there was none."
Lessons had been learned from the mistakes made after the first world war. Then, the victorious Allied powers had imposed a punitive peace on Germany, demanding heavy reparations that bred resentment.


Marshall tried a different approach. Over four years, the US pumped $13bn into Europe (the equivalent of more than $150bn today) in the hope that it would rebuild economic capacity, enable countries to trade with each other, and rebuff the threat from Stalin's Soviet Union. It was not an entirely selfless act. The US at the time accounted for 50% of the world's output, and needed to find markets for its exports. The lack of demand in countries such as France, Italy and Germany in 1947 meant this was not possible.


Britain was the single biggest beneficiary of Marshall aid, receiving more than a quarter of the total. Germany took $1.4bn (11% of the total), four times as much as Greece received.
Hans Werner-Sinn, the president of the IFO thinktank in Munich, noted three years ago that Marshall aid accounted for 4% of German GDP at the time, while Greece had, even then, received economic assistance worth 200% of its national output.
This, though, overlooks two points. The first is Greek resentment at the German occupation during the second world war. As Bevin's biographer Alan Bullock put it: "Greece was a poor country at the best of times and her economy had been wrecked by the sequence of invasion, occupation, resistance, reprisals and civil war. Eight per cent of the population of seven million had been killed, 10 times the death rate for the UK during the war. The Germans stripped the country of livestock and everything else that could be moved; railways, roads, bridges, ports, had been destroyed."


The second is that direct transfers of money were only part of the help Germany received through the Marshall plan. Far more important than the $1.4bn was the granting of debt relief at the London conference of 1953.
Writing in the Economist magazine in 2012, Albrecht Ritschl, a professor of economic history at LSE, said: "The Marshall plan had an outer shell, the European recovery programme, and an inner core, the economic reconstruction of Europe on the basis of debt forgiveness to and trade integration with Germany. The effects of its implementation were huge. While western Europe in the 1950s struggled with debt/GDP ratios close to 200%, the new West German state enjoyed debt/GDP ratios of less than 20%. This and its forced re-entry into Europe's markets was Germany's true benefit from the Marshall plan."
In the days to come, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, will be arguing that was good for Germany in 1953 would be good for Greece in 2015.

Ima i ovaj tekst od pre dve godine koji podseća da je nemački dug u ono vreme bio svega četvrtina njihovog BDP-a ali se računalo da je to dovoljno da im osakati ekonomiju na duge staze, pa su im Španci, Grci i još neki drugi velikodušno opraštali dugove. Izgleda da se tada malko više verovalo u evropsku solidarnost nego danas 


Oglasio se i Piketi, svačiji omiljeni ekonomista od prošle godine (well, osim Borisu Begoviću i možda njegovoj ženi, ne sećam se da li se ona oglašavala povodom Piketijeve knjige):

Thomas Piketty: Germany Shouldn't Be Telling Greece To Repay Debt

Thomas Piketty isn't mincing words when it comes to the Greek debt crisis.
In an interview with German newspaper Die Ziet last month (and translated recently by business analyst Gavin Schalliol), the leading French economist pummeled Germany for its hypocrisy in demanding debt repayment from Greece.

Greece on Sunday voted a resounding "no" on a bailout plan proposed by its creditors, making its continued membership in the eurozone more tenuous. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande will hold an emergency summit on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
But Piketty, who penned the blockbuster 2013 book on income inequality Capital in the Twenty-First Century, slammed conservatives who favor the economic austerity measures Germany and France are demanding of Greece, saying they demonstrate a "shocking ignorance" of European history.
"Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today's Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted," Piketty said. "The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem."

Germany, Piketty continued, has "no standing" to lecture other nations about debt repayment, having never paid back its own debts after both World Wars.
"However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them," Piketty said. "The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice."
Piketty criticized the "infantile" moral uprightness of Germany, whose economic success upon reunification has led it to rebuke nations like Greece for being in similarly weakened financial states as Germany itself was in decades ago.
Piketty argued that the same debt relief accorded to Germany after World War II should be granted to Greece today.
"After large crises that created huge debt loads, at some point people need to look toward the future. We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents," Piketty said. "The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this."
Booting Greece out of the eurozone would splinter European unity and push markets to "turn on" the next struggling nation, he added. Instead, Piketty called for a conference to restructure all European debt. A committee in the European Parliament, for example, could be created to set a maximum budget deficit that would prevent debt from ballooning.

"Those who want to chase Greece out of the Eurozone today will end up on the trash heap of history," Piketty said.

[Father Jape]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/?fb_ref=Default

[scallop]

Mislim da je ovo bolje:

Moses:
"The Law is everything."

Jesus:
"Love is everything."

Marx:
"Money is everything."

Freud:
"Sex is everything."

Einstein:
"Everything is relative."

[Meho Krljic]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/?fb_ref=Default

Da, zanimljiv članak, koji, iznenađujuće, ne pominje Thomasa Poggea, kao još jednog prominentnog filozofa koji operiše na isotm polju (i jedan je od poznatijih pripadnika Giving What We Can inicijative). Ono što je uvek ovde pitanje koje se mora postavljati, koje bi Žižek, recimo, postavio da je među nama: da li je efikasnije energiju/ novac usmeriti na dobrotvornu inicijativu koja probleme rešava u ovoj ili onoj meri ili na promenu sistema koji počiva na nepravičnoj redistribuciji i koji problem izaziva u ovoj ili onoj meri? Tekst donekle tretira ovo pitanje u trećem činu.

[Meho Krljic]

Malko o grčkoj krizi iz drugog ugla:



Тома Пикети и Сириза – Добрица Ћосић и СПС нашег времена

Економиста Тома Пикети пре неки дан дао је интервју за немачки лист ,,Цајт". У том интервјуу Пикети каже да је Немачка та држава која никада није исплатила своје дугове и да Немачка нема морално право да дели лекције другим нацијама. Овакав наступ Пикетија јасно указује да је он левичар тачно онолико колико је то био Слободан Милошевић. Овакав став није левичарски, већ популистичко-националистички. Зашто?
Стављати морално право на ниво нације и онда рангирати нације по томе која нација има право да каже ово или оно јесте есенцијанационализма. Све и да је тачно то што Пикети каже, да ли би то набило који начин променило исправност или неисправност ставоваАнгеле Меркел? Не би. Читаву изјаву чини још проблематичнијом и тошто је рангирање нација базирано на измишљеним подацима. Немачка јесте вратила део дуга – тачно половину, друга половина јој је опроштена. То Томас Пикети, као економски историчар, врло добро зна. Ову лаж износи свесно и са предумишљајем.
А шта је заиста истина? Истина је да је Немачка вратила половину дуга. Истина је и да је Грчкој од 2010. до данас директно отписано 46 одсто дуга, а 54одсто је репрограмирано. Камате на остатак дуга умањене су са седам одсто и више на близу нула одсто. Доспеће дуга је померено за неколико деценија. А дуг који никада не доспева и има камату нула одсто формално и није дуг. Што значи да је Грчкој до сада ефективно отписано више од 80 одсто свих дуговања – што је знатновише него Немачкој. Истина је и то да је Грчка прошлог петка, ни 48 сати пре позива на референдум – који је организован јер је грчки дуг неодрживо висок – узела нови зајам од 1,7 милијарди евра од зле Европске централне банке уз камате од нула одсто. Истина је и да је, док се референдум још није ни охладио, мање од 12 сати након завршетка тог референдума– понављам, организованог јер јегрчки дугнеодрживо висок – Грчка упутила захтев злој Европској централној банци за још две милијарде новог зајма и најавила потребу за новимзајмовима од око две милијарде евра сваког дана – не зна се до када.
Истина је и то да је Грчка економија од децембра до јуна расла први пут од 2008. И то је била једна од брже растућих економија унутар ЕУ у том периоду. Свако ко је руководио било којом компанијом зна да јефебруар грозан месец. Грозан је јер има два дана мање од осталих. И сваког фебруара компаније се боре да исплате плате запосленим због та два дана мањка. И онда је дошао Ципрас, организовао референдум и угасио грчку економију на осам дана (за сада, видећемо колико ће то још да потраје). Јулске бројке грчког БДП-а, без сумње, биће суморне.
Истина је и то да су Грчке пензије у просеку 883 евра, а Словачке 408 – док су трошкови живота у Словачкој и Грчкој слични. У Словенији, која је скупља од Грчке,просечна пензија износи 550 евра. А Словенија је земља којој, процентуално према њеном БДП-у, Грчка дугује највише новца. Али, Грчка је у преговорима одбијала да смањи пензије за два одсто, иако су пензије грчких пензионера двоструко веће него у барем половини Европске уније. Шта је са оним најсиромашнијим пензионерима, можда просек није добро мерило? Испод границе сиромаштва (мање од 550 евра месечно) уГрчкој живи 12,6 одсто пензионера,у Немачкој 15, у Словенији 50, у Словачкој више од 60 одсто, а у Србији сви. Али нема везе што је истина другачија. Истина је оно што Пикети каже јер је он то рекао. А мора да је истина када Пикети каже.
Истина је и то да Грчка има озбиљне системске проблеме. Али најлакше је хомогенизовати друштво и пронаћи виртуелног непријатеља – окривити неког другог. Те систематске проблеме уГрчкој лепо одсликава и то да је Василис Палаиокостас, грчки криминалац, два пута успешно побегао из најбезбеднијег грчког затвора изнајмљеним хеликоптером. И за то су ваљда криви Немачка, ,,тројка" или Голдман Сакс.
Како уопштено препознати популистичкинационализам? Само погледајте Слободана Милошевића и његову технику владања: хомогенизација и левог и десног спектра кроз стварање заједничког виртуелног непријатеља. Као што је Милошевић успео да мобилише првоборце споменичаре и четнике, тако су и Сириза и Пикети на своју страну придобили и Весну Пешић и ,,Пешчаник" и Жене у црном, на једној страни, и удружене фашисте Србије и Мари ле Пен и Путина, на другој страни. Сириза и Пикети, да се баве музиком, били би Мими Мерцедес. Тако јеи онауспела да хомогенизује и феминисткиње ивође ,,навијачких група" ангажоване од ДБ-а који продајунаркотике по београдским сплавовима.
Напишеш текст, у коме измишљеним подацима створиш заједничког непријатеља (Немачку, Голдман Сакс, ,,тројку"...), скупиш на једнугомилу и демократе и социјалдемократе и фашисте и нацисте и – банкрот и нови зајам. И Косово и Европа. И Газиместан, и узо, и сиртаки, све!
Професор Европске пословне школе, Визбаден
  Раша Карапанџа   објављено: 09.07.2015.

[scallop]

Odakle taj Karapandža? Zar on nije kuvar? Odakle mu pravo na drugi ugao? Jesu li ga takvog u Vizbadenu montirali ili je odavde stigao u delovima sa uputstvom za sastavljanje?

[Father Jape]

Сириза и Пикети, да се баве музиком, били би Мими Мерцедес. Тако јеи онауспела да хомогенизује и феминисткиње ивође ,,навијачких група" ангажоване од ДБ-а који продајунаркотике по београдским сплавовима.

[Mme Chauchat]

Свако ко је руководио било којом компанијом зна да јефебруар грозан месец. Грозан је јер има два дана мање од осталих. И сваког фебруара компаније се боре да исплате плате запосленим због та два дана мањка.
Profesor ekonomije (valjda...?) koji mrtav ladan izvaljuje ovakve rečenice.

Ok, ne znam, meni prosta činjenica da neko uredno piše "grčki" i "slovački" velikim slovom al se potpisuje kao profesor! poslovne! škole! nekako... eto.


Da se razumemo: sasvim je okej da se neko zalaže za zaštitu jadnog MMF-a i svetskih banki i jadnih Nemaca (odnosno EU koju poslednjih dana nekako svi izjednačavaju sa Nemačkom) od podmukle Grčke i zlikovca Ciprasa, ali onda očekujem a) ispravan pravopis* i b) da mi se ne potura jednačenje Ciprasa sa Miloševićem bez nekih debelih razloga. (Hej, Milošević je bio i bankar, narode, ako ništa drugo.)


*to zapravo očekujem uvek od nekog ko oseća potrebu da u potpisu navede gde predaje.

[eddie coyle]

Ma Sloba je opste mesto u ovakvim diskusijama, to ti je nasa verzija Godvinovog zakona.

Samo da nam je Karapandza jos objasnio zasto je grcki dug neodrziv uz sve silne otpise...

[Meho Krljic]

Nego, da notiramo ozbiljan pad na kineskoj berzi koji traje poslednjih nekoliko nedelja i kulminirao je početkom ove. Pričamo o za nas nezamislivim ciframa od čak 32 procenta za mesec dana ili, prevedeno u naše pare, gubitku od 3,2 biliona dolara (triliona ako se držite doslednijeg jezičkog sistema nego mi) - kako navode u donjem tekstu iz Politike (a po računici Fajnenšl tajmza), to je više od kompletnih finansijskih tržišta Španije i Francuske zajedno. I ranije su postojali finansijski i investicioni mehuri sa spektakularnim kolapsima u kratkom vremenskom roku ali ovaj je najveći/ najbrži od svih i zanimljivo će biti gledati kako se kineska država sa ovim bori ali i kakve će biti posledice za ostatak planete:


На кинеским берзама нестало 3,2 билиона долара

Готово неначета глобалном финансијском кризом 2008. године, Кина је јуче први пут признала панику на домаћим берзама, изазвану ,,абнормалном распродајом акција" у Шангају и Шенџену, а са драматичним последицама по вредност јуана, цену нафте и метала, а пре свега бакра.
,,У овом тренутку осећа се паника на тржиштима и експанзија абнормалних дампинг акција, што је довело до пада ликвидности на берзи ", објавио је Денг Ђе, портпарол Регулаторне комисије Кине, на свом твитер налогу.
Средином јуна акције на берзи у Шангају достигле су највишу вредност у последњих 18 месеци, више него удвостручивши своју вредност, упркос посустајању економије и паду профита.
Од тог 12. јуна на финансијским тржиштима Кине кренула је огромна распродаја акција, којом је избрисано 30 одсто њихове вредности.
Тај финансијски цунами одузео је кинеским акцијама 3,2 билиона долара вредности, то јест више новца него што је тржишна капитализација Шпаније и Француске заједно, наводи лондонски ,,Фајненшел тајмс".
Наизглед незаустављиво обарање вредности акција натерало је јуче више од 70 одсто компанија (2.078 фирми) регистрованих у Шангају и Шенџену да суспендују трговину. Тиме је обустављена трговина акцијама у вредности од око 2,6 билиона долара, чиме је на тамошњем тржишту изван промета око 40 одсто капитала.
,,Кина данас нема берзе", проценила је јуче америчка агенција Блумберг.
У међувремену, званични Пекинг забранио је директорима и менаџерима компанија који поседују више од пет одсто акција у својим фирмама да у следећих шест месеци продају дотичне хартије од вредности. Уплив државе на финансијско тржиште Кине покренуо је јуче нови талас повлачења страних инвеститора, преносе светске агенције.
Разлог ,,ирационалног понашања" актера на две берзе које се налазе међу најјачим у Азији и на свету, још је мистерија.
Силовити раст кинеске привреде од почетка миленијума и нови инвестициони циклус у Азији у посткризним годинама довели су велики број тамошњих и страних инвеститора на финансијска тржишта у Шангају и Шенџену (али и у Хонгконг, Сингапур, Сеул...). Званични Пекинг је у међувремену разгранао учешће државних инвестиционих фондова на берзама и пружио додатне подстицаје појединачним инвеститорима да купују деонице. Залет инвеститора и прилив огромног новца у акционарски бизнис допринео је фантастичном расту њихове вредности – утемељеном на веровању да је успон економије незаустављив, а порекло уложеног капитала солидно.
Од тог тренутка почела је силовита распродаја.
Да заштити берзе од краха који би могао да угрози целокупни кинески финансијски систем, званични Пекинг је од почетка јула почео да предузима различите ванредне мере.
Најпре, Пекинг је најавио да ће обезбедити средства кроз државну агенцију за финансирање хартија од вредности у циљу заштите стабилности тржишта обвезница. Кинеска регулаторна комисија за хартије саопштила је да је излазак 28 компанија на берзу одложен. Најутицајније кинеске брокерске куће су иза тога прошлог викенда најавиле да ће удруженим снагама купити акције у вредности од око 24 милијарде долара да би смириле тржишта.
Колико јуче Пекинг је наложио државним компанијама да почну са куповином акција и подигао лимит када је реч о броју акција које могу да поседују.
Драматично и на берзама крајње неуобичајено, замрзавање трговине акцијама лавовског дела компанија регистрованих на берзама у Шангају и Шенџену оборило је јуче вредност јуана на најнижи ниво у последња четири месеца, цена бакра стрмоглавила се на вредност из 2009. године, док је барел северноатлантске нафте појефтинио на око 55 америчких долара.
  Т. Вујић   објављено: 09.07.2015.

U donjem tekstu iz NYT ima i nekoliko korisnih grafikona pa vas ohrabrujem da kliknete na link.

How to Make Sense of China's Plummeting Stock Market

While the eyes of the world have been on the crisis in Greece, China, a country with 123 times its population, has faced financial troubles of its own. A free fall in the Chinese stock market could threaten the prosperity of the world's second-largest economy and have long-term effects of its own.
But the numbers suggest that the stock market collapse — it's down 32 percent in four weeks — may be less a shocking turn of events and more an inevitable correction in a market that featured many of the classic signs of a financial bubble.
Stock investing has become a middle-class pastime in China in recent years, and it's clear the Chinese government is nervous that a continued market rout will wipe out its citizens' wealth and stoke discord. The Chinese government has pulled out a series of policy measures to try to avert the collapse: interest rate cuts; using government pension funds to prop up the market; announcing plans to investigate those betting on a market drop.


The data, though, suggest that the market declines thus far aren't as outlandish as the Chinese government seems to think. The Shanghai composite index began an upward tear in late 2014, soaring 151 percent from the start of July last year to the June 12 high.


The chart shows how easy it is to frame market data in a way that sounds either scary or benign, depending on your inclination. "The Chinese stock market has dropped 32 percent in a month" is scary. "The Chinese stock market is up 70 percent over the last year" sounds great. Both are true.
In that sense, the people who have lost money in the last month are those who plowed money into Chinese stocks just in the last few months, aiming to take part in what seemed a rocket trajectory rise in prices. Anyone who has been invested for more than a few months is doing just fine, so far at least.
As it turns out, if you look at a slightly longer time horizon, the kind of volatility in Chinese stocks witnessed over the last year isn't that uncommon. The 2010 to 2013 period was more aberration than trend in the steady, consistent rise in prices.


Consider the Shanghai composite over the last decade, indexed to its June 2005 level and compared to an index of all global stocks. The Chinese market experienced much larger swings during its 2007 boom, 2008 bust and 2009-2010 resurgence than the rest of the world. And those swings were larger in percentage terms than the recent volatility. Big swings in the Chinese stock market may be damaging for Chinese savers, but they don't necessarily ripple across the global economy the way problems in United States mortgage securities did in 2008 or European debt did in 2011.
Why so much volatility? The Chinese stock market is less well developed than those in countries with more advanced financial markets. Many of the strongest Chinese companies list their shares in Hong Kong or New York, with those listing within China more likely to have questionable business models, accounting and corporate governance. Advertisement
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Continue reading the main story That has helped fuel wild swings between great optimism and great pessimism for Chinese stocks. That is no salve for the pain of individual investors who have lost their savings in the recent market drop, but it does support the idea that they had reason to know the kind of risk they were taking on.
But what about fundamentals? Are Chinese stocks falling toward a fair price relative to their earnings and growth rates or overshooting with further to fall?
Just a year ago, Chinese stocks looked relatively reasonably priced, with a price-to-earnings ratio of around 10, meaning an investor paid the equivalent of about $10 for a share of stock that offered $1 per share in annual earnings. By contrast, at the same time last summer, an investor in American stocks had to pay more like $17 for a share that produced $1 in income.
But the sharp rise in Chinese share prices starting in late 2014 took place without an accompanying rise in earnings. The shares rose because investors were willing to pay more for the same return.


By early June, the price-earnings ratio of the Shanghai composite index had soared to nearly 26, meaning the same dollar in earnings that cost $10 a year ago now cost an investor in those stocks $26. The swoon in prices since then has left that ratio at 18, still a bit pricier than the American market, but still quite a bit higher than the valuation of the Chinese market just a year ago.
There is a case that Chinese stocks deserve a rich valuation. If you expect that the companies whose shares you are buying will become much more profitable over time — that is, that they will grow quickly — it might make perfect sense to pay $18 or $26 for a dollar of earnings. That dollar, after all, might soon be two, and then four.
But it's worth looking at the economic backdrop as those companies will be trying to increase their earnings.


The Chinese economy was growing by 10 to 12 percent a decade ago, an environment conducive to rapid growth in corporate profits. That has been falling steadily, to 7 percent in the most recent reading. China has been trying to adjust to a more consumer-driven economy, away from housing, infrastructure and imports, but it has been a rocky process.
In other words, valuations are higher relative to earnings, even as economic growth prospects have slowed. And it's hard to see anything in Chinese economic conditions or policies that changed between July 2014 and June 2015 that would justify the kind of remarkable increase that preceded the recent crash.
Put all these pieces together, and here's what we have: a rise in Chinese share prices in the last year that seemed to be driven more by investor psychology than by anything fundamental. It is hard to see how the prices as of a month ago were justified, and easy to see why the sell-off of the last month would occur.
That, in turn, implies that Chinese officials are fighting an uphill battle in their policy moves to try to stop the correction, and helps explain why their policy actions have had little effect so far.
The question now for China — and hence for the world economy — is how far the Chinese market has to fall, and, regardless of whether the drop is justified, how much pain it will cause.

[scallop]

Rekoh ja da su sve berze mehur sapunice. Šta je 3,2 biliona dolara? Ko je izgubio? Kako su ih dobili? Mogli su da ih daju Grčkoj. Nek njima nestane. Ionako su dužni deset % te sume. Šta je za Grke deset puta više.

[Albedo 0]

pa bješe davno onaj tekst iz londonskog telegrafa pisao da su sve berze vještački dignute, vulf ov vol strit stajl

čudo da je samo kineska berza pukla

[Albedo 0]

nađoše i oni konja za trku

http://www.petersaysstuff.com/2014/05/attempting-the-impossible-calculating-capitalisms-death-toll/

[scallop]

Balkan ni ne pomenu.

[Meho Krljic]

German media reacts angrily to Greek bailout deal

A fierce backlash to the deal thrashed out over the weekend between Greece and its creditors has begun in Germany's media, with concerns being raised that the German government has "destroyed seven decades of post-war diplomacy on a single weekend".
Details have begun to emerge about the gruelling 17-hour EU summit which took place in the office of the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and was attended by French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras over the weekend. The talks resulted in all sides agreeing to a third bailout package for Greece early on Monday.
According to The Times, Tsipras was only allowed to leave the room to make calls to Athens, and the FT reported that Tusk at one point told Tsipras and Merkel: "There is no way you are leaving this room until we agree." One EU diplomat reportedly described the prolonged talks as: "The most brutal negotiations I have ever seen," adding: "There is an element of humiliation especially coming from Germany."


Fears about how the deal will effect's Germany's reputation in Europe have been echoed in some sections of the country's media.
The centre-left daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "Merkel has managed to revive the image of the ugly, hard-hearted and stingy German that had just begun to fade".
"The German government destroyed seven decades of post-war diplomacy on a single weekend," news website Spiegel Online remarked. Spiegel described the final deal as a "catalogue of cruelties".
"Every cent of aid to Greece that the Germans tried to save will have to be spent two and three times over in the coming years to polish that image again," the editorial continued.
The left-leaning Taz newspaper wrote that in some European countries, "they're outraged by the authoritarian and egotistical behaviour of the Germans".
A satirical video featuring two German comedians mocking Germany's hardline stance in the Greek debt negotiations has gone viral, attracting over one million hits on YouTube.


http://youtu.be/ktqKNu4N9Ds




Titled "Our precious German euros", a pair of wealthy Germans conduct a telephone conversation in separate hotel rooms, based on speeches made by Angela Merkel and various German tabloid newspaper headlines. At one point, one of the comedian shouts: "Sell your islands, you broke Greeks, and the Acropolis too!"
The video ends with the tagline: "This summer, we Germans have a historic opportunity - not to behave like assholes for once."
Despite a YouGov poll from earlier this month showing that Germans still take a hard line on the Greek crisis, with the majority of those surveyed agreeing that European countries should insist on the original terms of the loans, a softening of attitudes was also revealed, with a fall in the number of Germans who want Greece to leave the euro between June and July of this year.
A popular hashtag that criticised the terms of the deal, #ThisIsACoup, was the second top trending hashtag on Twitter worldwide on Monday and the top trending hashtag in Germany.
Yet the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, renowned for his tough stance in the bailout negotiations has had his highest-ever approval rating in Germany, with 70% of Germans saying they approve of the job he is doing, according to Bloomberg.

O istom trošku, Varufakis veli da sad ne bi bilo čudno da vidimo uspon Zlatne zore u Grčkoj.

[Meho Krljic]

I da se malo razgalimo: čovek u Londonu uhapšen jer je punio ajfoun na štekeru na metro-stanici. Ispostavlja se da u Britaniji postoji zakon iz šezdesetih koji prekršajem smatra "nečasno korišćenje, potrošnju ili skretanje" električne struje i, bogami je zaprećen zatvor od pet godina za nešto ovako, pošto su pomenuti štekeri prevashodno namenjeni za mašine za čišćenje.

Nije da to nema nikakve logike - neko bi mogao na taj šteker da dotera i priključi, šta ja znam, električni automobil or samtin i to bi svakako bilo loše - ali u poređenju sa "štetom" koju je punjenje telefona nanelo, reakcija sistema koja podrazumeva trošenje vremena i resursa ljudi u policiji i pravosuđu deluje apsurdno predimenzionirana.

[Meho Krljic]

Još jedna tema za nepostojeći topik "Užasi neoliberalizma" i šokantno saznanje da Hilari Klinton deli sa nama određene stavove glede "share ekonomije" (naime zabrinutost da kada privremeni i povremeni poslovi postanu pravilo i osnovni model sticanja prihoda možemo da se pozdravimo sa socijalnom sigurnošću koja je bila sveti gral zapada pola veka...).


Hillary Clinton takes aim at Uber economy in speech

Uber was the elephant in the room when Hillary Clinton gave her economic-policy speech on Monday, as the Democrats' leading presidential contender called out the "gig economy."
In a major campaign speech in New York City, the former secretary of state didn't mention the ride-sharing service by name. But it was pretty clear what sort of companies she was talking about when she got to how some Americans earn money.
"Many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car," she said at the New School.  But that sort of work comes with its own problems, she said.
"This 'on demand' or so-called 'gig economy' is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it's also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future," Clinton added.
As Mashable notes, her remarks came as startups like Uber and its competitor Lyft are under mounting scrutiny for classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than part-time or full-time employees, entitled to health-care benefits, sick time and paid time off.

[scallop]

Hilari Klinton je lažov koji veruje da još jednom može nekog da prevari.

[Meho Krljic]

Ali je i realno da će ona biti budući predsednik SAD, tako da - spremimo se na još laganja i obmana. 

[scallop]

Imaš informaciju da je realno?

[Meho Krljic]

Istorija ukazuje da je tako! Prvo prvi afroamerički predsednik, za njim prva žena. Ima smisla! Pogotovo što je Hilari poznatija i od Džeba Buša i od Teda Kruza i od Mita Romnija u narodu, plus sa iskustvom državne sekretarke koja je roknula Osamu itd. Naravno da se ne bih kladio baš u život ali da je realno - realno je.

[scallop]

Šipak. Ja imam informaciju da im je dosta demokrata, afroameričkih predsednika, pa i eksperimenata. Ustvari, sve budalaštine u SAD su moguće, ali napisati da je realno, naprosto nije - realno.

[Meho Krljic]

Pa, jasno, sve je moguće. Opet, Obama je bio predsednik sa strašnim zamerkama i padovima rejtinga, al njihova privreda dobro funkcioniše, na međunarodnom planu imaju solidan kombo diplomatskih uspeha (Iran, Kuba) i željenih sukoba (Ukrajina, Rusija) i GOPovci će morati dosta da se potrude da pokažu da su Demokrati upropastili državu i da samo povratak izvornim republikanskim vrednostima može da ih spase...

[Ugly MF]

Ja sam tvrdio nebrojeno puta,  cim se u serijama i filmovima krene pojavljivat, znaci i uskoro bice stvarno....
kolko smo Morgana Frimena i Deni Glovera imali pre Obame!?

abreeee, Gebels ih je sve naucio....

[Dybuk]

Slazem se s scallopom. Demokrate su svoje odsvirali.