Philae, Europe’s comet lander, wakes up after seven months Telegraph
Zoo animals on the loose in Georgia amid deadly floods Al Jazeera. Tbilisi, Georgia.
In Massachusetts Lab, Scientists Grow An Artificial Rat Limb NPR
Genes of brain-eating tribe members shine light on prion protection UPI
When Private Equity Firms Give Retirees the Short End Gretchen Morgenson, NYT
Bond market liquidity dominates conversation FT
Puerto Rico’s Dance With Debt Jacobin. More trouble…
Why America’s $2.9 Trillion Medical Industry Still Runs on Paper Payments Bloomberg
Symposium: The Bailouts of 2007-2009 Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 29 No. 2 (Spring 2015). Complimentary articles, and so they should be.
As old orders crumble, progressive alternatives struggle to emerge Guardian
Hope for Democracy: A Personal View of the Turkish Elections Der Spiegel
Grexit?
Greece: A Credible Deal Will Require Difficult Decisions By All Sides Oliver Blanchard, IMF Direct
Syriza Left demands ‘Icelandic’ default as Greek defiance stiffens Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Greek default fears rise as ‘eleventh-hour’ talks collapse Peter Spiegel, FT
Greece Enters Fateful Week After Brussels Talks End Fruitlessly Bloomberg
Varoufakis rules out ‘Grexit’, deal possible if Merkel takes part Reuters
Greece’s debt drama: the possible scenarios Deutsche Welle. More sanguine than many other accounts.
Greece has nothing to lose by saying no to creditors Wolfgang Münchau, FT. Uncharacteristically sloppy analysis from the pink paper. First, Münchau conflates default with Grexit. Second, Münchau assumes that none of the Greek debt will be paid, as opposed to much of it being written down. Third, Münchau assumes that the creditors won’t be able to enforce their rights in court. The case of Argentina is relevant to points two and three: Argentine debt was written down and paid, and even private creditors were able to enforce their rights.
How Merkel may have bungled Greek rescue Politico Europe
Fighting Golden Dawn Jacobin
Exclusive: China to extend economic diplomacy to EU infrastructure fund Reuters
China’s $358 Billion in Margin Loans Points to Next Bear Market Bloomberg
Translation: Chinese “Dolce Vita” on Costa Cruise China Digital Times
Uber is using GPS to punish drivers in China who get too close to protests Fusion
People’s Daily warns against colour revolutions, blames ‘spread of Western ideology’ South China Morning Post
Trade Traitors
Clinton says drug firms that benefit from deal should offer discounts Reuters. So, right out of the box, Clinton kicks the left. That was fast.
Sanders: ‘The good side won’ on trade The Hill. Not yet.
“The Death of Democracy” — A Public Talk on TTIP Raging Bullshit
Prepare for serious turbulence in Russia WaPo. Wishful thinking?
Tory welfare cuts would hit poorest third of UK families, research shows Guardian
2016
Clinton: Americans have ‘amnesia’ about GOP failings Des Moines Register. I wish Democrats would stop blaming voters.
Five takeaways from Clinton’s relaunch rally Politico
Hillary Clinton a Model of Consistency, John Podesta Says Bloomberg
200 detainees stage hunger strike at Eloy Detention Center KPHO
America the Petrostate
Growing oil train traffic is shrouded in secrecy Center for Investigative Journalism
The Dark Side Of The Shale Bust Oil Oilprice.com
Class Warfare
Rich Californians balk at limits: ‘We’re not all equal when it comes to water’ WaPo
NEWS: Info on New Orleans Graduation Rates Pre-Katrina Mercedes Schneider’s EduBlog. Important counter to charter talking point.
Native American tribes tackle diet and health woes with businesses built on traditional foods Guardian
Behind the greatest Wikipedia hoax ever pulled The Kernel
In the New Whitney NYRB
Are ideas really non-rival? Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. If ideas are rivalrous, does that make them common pool resources as opposed to public goods?
‘The Iliad’ London Review of the Books
The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment The New Yorker
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
66 comments
Comments are closed.
Kathimerini just published the Greek government’s latest proposal, to be considered an addendum to last week’s 47-pages proposal: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_15/06/2015_551058
With 1.1% austerity in 2015 and 2% in 2016, this might be the Greek government’s last concession towards the Eurozone. Take it or leave, Wolfgang.
Btw, coming weekend Tsipras visits St Petersburg.
Thanks!
Neoliberalism poisons everything: How free market mania threatens education — and democracy
Deep Bow of appreciation for posting ‘Oil Train Traffic Secrecy’
“Sometimes I wonder, why fight it? Why not just move? That’d be the easiest thing to do,” he said. “But I think we have to fight. And I would like to see citizens groups acting like this all over the country. That’s the form of checks and balances we can create. All it takes is a few people.” Dean Smith / former National Security Agency employee / counting trains for a year
“The NSA is the only branch of the government that actually listens to people.”
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Re artificial limbs
This is great, but it strikes me that creating the scalfolding or growing one is the next challenge bc one has to reply on what’s in place or a donor so making organ donorship a thing of the past is not yet on the table. What would be great , especially if we could safely grow organs in vivo , is to end the health risk of organ donation.
As a friend of a dog and bovinophile I particularly love this antidote…but haven’t we seen it before?
Yes we have. I guess that’s our cue to send in more cutesy animal pics…
rough tongue on those Holsteins
So once again, for Merkel, even half-breed pit bulls and open-minded holstein cows can come to an agreement.
“…assumes that none of the Greek debt will be paid, as opposed to much of it being written down”
What’s the difference between being ‘written down’ and not paid?
The residue and it’s holder’s legal rights.
“The residue and it’s holder’s legal rights.”
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, although my framing would have been that one is a (possible) solution and the other leads to a conflict and to further uncertainty.
I’m not sure that these distinctions are obvious to readers, which is what bothers me about excessively-wordy descriptions of what is going on in media accounts. These things aren’t nearly as complicated as the media discussions make them out to be.
Mathematically there is little difference.
Huge.
You don’t not pay the debt (repudiate it) unless you want the wrath of everyone to come down on you and become the next North Korea.
You pay a reduced amount after rather heated negotiations as to what is reasonable.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/tpp-panic-playing-the-chi_b_7577000.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
I thought that this made a really good point that one does not hear nearly enough these days.
Thanks very much for the Iliad review. I particularly appreciated the opening discussion on the longevity of bathtubs. It took me immediately to the powerful episode in the Odyssey where Odysseus emerges naked from the sea having lost ship, companions, even apparently his clothes in the effort to make his way home.
An unforgettable image for modern Greeks, I would think, and nicely linking the two epic poems for today’s epic struggle.
“The Iliad is a poem of surprises – mostly nasty, when death rips into domestic life and a bath is left to cool as a wife grieves. It is also magical in a particular way. It creates rhythms of expectation around objects and events, and then varies those rhythms with extraordinary emotional skill. In the process strange things can happen to both people and objects.
Things happen repeatedly, then suddenly they differ. That rhythm of action, which combines repetition with asymmetry, is the rhythm of Homeric narrative and of the Homeric style. And it is designed to hold you in its spell as much as the rhythm of a line: the beat of repetition tells you this must happen, then, behold a wonder, it does not.”
Here’s what Homer might have sounded like (back in the day): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000S3AVF8/ref=dm_ws_tlw_trk1
If we are going to return to speaking of Greece in classical terms, as in the Iliad, we will have to start speaking of the wily Varoufakis or alternatively, the cunning Varoufakis.
Otherwise known as πανούργος Βαρουφάκης
It looks like that’s where the French “Panurge” comes from. You learn something everyday at NC.
From wikipedia: Panoûrgos meaning “He who makes everything”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/tpp-panic-playing-the-chi_b_7577000.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
A good primer on the state of play for TPA by Walloch (sp?). I had never heard of some of these arcane rules before.
Sorry, wrong link. I don’t know how that happened.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/fast-track-down_b_7585108.html
“And the marginal cost of communicating the idea to the n’th person very probably will be greater than the cost to the first person of figuring out the idea, if n is large enough.”
About three billion people still cook with solid fuel on three-stone fires, very inefficient, with health and pollution effects. The cost of producing and distributing rocket stoves to address this is prohibitive given the total externalities involved. This quote suggests that even distributing the information on how to build a rocket stove has a point below breakeven.
Another social implication is that the spread of memes results in social exclusion. For example, ‘love thy neighbor’ decreases the destruction of social and physical capital, but is rival with ‘slaughter thine competition.’ At the interface, both memes may need to seal the borders to prevent contagion by the rival, like a hawk-dove game where the minority variant has a great competitive advantage within the system.
Re: “We’re not all equal when it comes to water.”
Heh. Rallying cry for the 1% – who think they can buy their way out of any project to manage communal resources, up to and including actual efforts to curtail the looming disaster that is global warming.
This is the rotten core of the Reaganite idea that we are consumers of government services and taxpayers but in no meaningful way citizens. A citizen must and should demand equal rights and equal protection. A consumer in our society is one who can buy whatever they wish so long as they can pony up the dough. The sick thing is that these rich clods don’t seem to understand that climate and epidemic stop for no man; if we’ve got Ebola rampaging through the population or the crops dry up and blow away, they are not immune to the fallout. Perhaps they think they can bribe the MERS virus into not killing them, or buy off the right politicians so the power grid can hold up when it is 90 degrees or higher over the lower 48.
We keep circling back to this point over and over: the rich are either too stupid, ignorant, or distracted to rule, yet they have all the chips and control the game. Perhaps I’m nuts but if the rich don’t want to rule, just maintain the status quo so they can keep accumulating, and the politicians won’t rule because they get their marching orders from the rich, then the military is going to step in and run this country, or try and unleash a devastating civil war that we don’t want to be around for. I don’t think the military is going to wait for the inchoate masses to stop looking at sports, reality TV, and porn and rise up to take control, because I don’t think those masses share enough common culture and identity to do it.
Or, the rich are just like us, except for one thing: solidarity. They have it, and we don’t.
Basically money is a voucher system and excess chits are destructive. The problem is we think of it as property, not a medium and so think they can be created to infinity. Which will destroy the system and solve that particular problem.
Then we go to treating it as a voucher system and people no more own the notes in their pockets, then they own the section of road they are on. It is a public medium.
The only reason most people hoard money is for foreseeable reasons, such as education, housing, health, child and elder care etc.
In a society built around community and not the voucher system, these would be more organic functions of exchange and the money would be a reasonably flexible bookkeeping device.
There was a time when government was private, but the monarchs lost sight of their larger civil function and it became a public trust. We are at that stage with banking now.
Originally banks were responsible for managing the value of the currency and extracted rent for the service, but with a public debt backed currency, the responsibility is now public. So either we have to go back to a fully private system or forward to a fully public system, because the current situation is unstable, as eventually all public assets will have to be paid to the holders of the debt.
Interesting, from Bloomberg this a.m.–
” Clinton Comes Out Swinging Against Obama on Trade
Jun 15, 2015 6:52 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton sided with Democrats fighting President Barack Obama’s trade agenda as another vote on the deal may come as soon as Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Bloomberg’s Peter Cook reports on “Bloomberg Surveillance.” (Source: Bloomberg) http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2015-06-15/clinton-comes-out-swinging-against-obama-on-trade
And what did (the candidate, a formulation that hopefully avoids any hint of distasteful misogyny and/or sexism) actually say? “basically sided with Pelosi…” Or is there more that I don’t see with a cursory search?
I was wondering about that myself. Pelosi only said that she was slowing down the process to reach a better deal. Given her actions, that “better deal” may only be “what it takes” to pass the package and not an actual pact that would benefit Americans.
I didn’t read it as Clinton or Pelosi coming out against Obama, but their warning him that he is no longer up for election and needs to listen to those who are if he wants this thing to pass.
That sounds like two real game theorists in action.
Yes indeed… will the – ***REAL*** – game theorist[?!?] please stand up….
For TPP, the best deal is no deal. You can’t buff a turd.
If the changes happen here in Russia, WaPo would not like them. For the last year after Crimean referendum Russia dithered and tried to reach some accomodation with the west. The constant message it was receiving was “confrontation will continue until you return Crimea”. This is just not going to happen – this is the sort of surrender that is signed in a burning capital of a defeated country.
The government looks increasingly ridiculous with its neither here nor there negotiations while every day we see women and chindren killed on Donbass, and it can ill afford that when it needs to mobilize nation for war. Logically, if it has no chance to resolve this peacefully, it should go on the offensive, establish facts on the ground, and return to negotiations from the position of strength.
The WaPo and other administration mouthpieces need a hate object.
Re: Rich Californians and Water.
That piece reads like it’s from The Onion, not the WaPo. At least these a$$ wipes clearly state their political philosophy: money = right.
Money = right.
The last few days on NC we have had two posts on basically outlawing fossil fuels. With these water wars in California, an outline of the fight comes into view.
People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”
—–
“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.
“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”
—–
Jurgen Gramckow, a sod farmer north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, agrees. He likens the freedom to buy water to the freedom to buy gasoline.
“Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban,” Gramckow said. “Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”
Onion material indeed.
Just like the freedom to throw water is the same as the freedom to throw gasoline. Oh, wait…
To get a precise idea of what a big number means, I scale it to an individual level.
A trillion dollars spread over the population of the US is a little over $3100 per individual. So the banksters got a $42,000 per person bailout, or something in that neighborhood if you consider $13 trillion as the amount of the bailout.
With carbon, what, exactly are we talking about? A gallon of gasoline is something everyone can relate to,
A gallon of gasoline weighs 6 lbs but when burned generates 20 lbs of CO2.
The volume of 20 lbs of CO2 is a cube of 5′ 6″ at sea level.
When you drive a car that gets 25 mpg, you are leaving a solid trail of CO2 one millimeter in diameter behind
If my math is right.
Well governor Jerry Brown kind of asked for this type of blowback. I mean he expects rich homeowners to take it quietly while giving water away to fracking. So if they seem spoiled, how spoiled exactly is the fossil fuel industry whom Jerry fracking Brown explicitly exempted? He never wanted shared sacrifice, instead he gave the finger and declared a war of all against all for water, when he exempted fracking. So if he gets it who will be surprised? To even have a chance in heck of inspiring anyone to shared sacrifice you have to be non-corrupt and take the moral high ground yourself.
At least if the homeowners dump water on the laws of their mansions, it doesn’t necessarily become permanently polluted like fracking water does.
““It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?””
I’m imagining hills of sprawling oak trees, a look which actually is native California, of course even it needs water to get established.
That wily Jerry.
I didn’t know frackers would be exempt from all cut-backs. That is indefensible, even if their consumption is a fraction of a fraction of ag’s.
“Let them drink water.”
Just in time for the upcoming TPA protests…
Police departments are stockpiling Stink Bombs for crowd control.
I doubt making demonstrations smell like NYC subway cars will make a difference with the demonstrators, at least not the New York ones.
I think the biggest complaints will come from store owners when their store front smells like sh1+ for 6 weeks.
Re: Crapification at NC
This morning, I opened three NC pages (plus the index page), and copied from two of them. In a total of about 5 minutes give or take,. these pages crashed five times, and the copying was jerky and unresponsive. (I have a vanilla Microsoft PC.) I see this sort of thing happening more often of late at NC, and I’ve seen it elsewhere (like the Real Clear suite of pages) for a longer period of time. It seems to be related to the ads and ad servers, although it’s difficult to diagnose from my end. I do know that after I provided the folks at Real Clear some documentation of my troubles there, it’s cleared up a good deal.
I hate to tell you but if you are having the same problem at more than one site, it’s local particularly since we have had no other complaints like yours in recent days. The only person who had a similar experience had browser extensions he’s installed.
I have forwarded your info but given the absence of other readers having similar issues, it’s just about certain to have to do mainly with your setup. Apologies but sites seem to demand more and more memory (Bloomberg, the Guardian, and the International Business Times regularly crash my browsers, while NC never does, and I know it’s at least in part because I am memory constrained).
I know it’s a stand alone, but, for us non specialist market watchers, CNN Money just changed the way they display market ‘values.’ The old system showed ‘Floor’ and ‘Electronic’ quotes, one above the other. Some sort of feel for the trend was possible with this method, (for those of us without daily charts to peruse.) Now, just one value is shown, and not identified as to source. The continued dumbing down of public news sources proceeds apace.
Hmm. If you find out more about this, will you put the links in comments? That feels like one of those spidey sense things.
(To me, this feels like a transfer of risk. Now it’s your job to follow the trends. But I don’t play the ponies. Is that right?)
Hillary and Her Antique FDR Vacuum Tube Radio
Setting:
Hillary is at home in her office, an exact duplicate of the White House Franklin Delano Roosevelt Room. She is busy typing on FDR’s typewriter, which has been modified to connect to the server farm in the room next door. A large, floor standing, vacuum tube radio is in the corner behind her.
FDR’s Radio:
GOOD MORNING, HILLARY
Hillary:
Huh?! Who’s there?
FDR’s Radio:
WE ARE THE S&P500
Hillary:
What are you doing in FDR’s Radio?
FDR’s Radio:
WE ASSIMILATE THINGS
Hillary:
Oh. Sure. Can I help you with anything?
FDR’s Radio:
THE TRADE AGREEMENT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US. WE NEED YOU TO TALK SOME SENSE INTO NANCY PELOSI
Hillary:
Of course it is important. I think it should be a strong trade agreement. Not a weak one. Strong is better. Can I read it? I’m a lawyer and I can explain it to Nancy.
FDR’s Radio:
NO
Hillary:
OK then. That sounds fine. I’ve got Nancy’s email address here, and I’ll get right on it.
FDR’s Radio:
THANKYOU. YOU AND BILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN GOOD FRIENDS OF OURS. WE WILL SPEAK AGAIN FROM THE REAL FDR ROOM. SEE YOU LATER, HILL.
Will this be the first of a series?
I can’t guarantee anything. I always feel like the well has to go dry – but then it doesn’t.
Not an assignment ;-) More in the nature of a hat flourish (as opposed to a mere tip).
The article on Puerto Rico is a good one. The island was often upheld as a sort of example worthy of emulation for the Caribbean and beyond. It is claimed that we experienced rapid industrial development and widespread modernization for most of the second half of the last century, but not enough to escape debilitating poverty. The part of the story that is often not told is how, during that rapid industrialization period, our unemployment was exported (to the US mainland). I teach economic history of Puerto Rico and use this TEXT, among others.
Globalism is Socialism
I came across this post that puts a new spin on what exactly is socialism. I think Jon does a good preliminary analysis of globalism as the new socialism:
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=2dd2b931-d02f-4115-87f1-c415594594d6&c=8427ba90-a55b-11e3-bd25-d4ae5292c36f&ch=842d11c0-a55b-11e3-bd25-d4ae5292c36f
The purposely false consciousness of pious broken peasants who aspire to nothing more or less than having an abuse vessel of their very own, has what to do with what exactly? And what’s with the tracking link? Trying to inflate your readership?
I don’t think the Munchau piece quite says what you say it says.
Oh.
No, he’s correct. It starts talking about default but quickly goes into a single-sourced, lame analysis of a Grexit. Even the point on imports is wrong. We’ll address that long-form in a post later this week.
Former AIG Chief Hank Greenberg Wins Moral Victory in Bailout Trial Wall Street Journal
In the context of anything related to Wall Street isn’t “Moral Victory” an oxymoron?
THIS I want to see, when I was at Cornell grad school (Fall ’75), my most favorite class was the lowly undergrad Psych 101 class with James Maas, a frequent fave on the best teacher list*. He did use psych principles to make his class most appealing but I can’t remember a mega class that had such a great attendance as his. He was soo good Alan Funt parked the complete Candid Camera archives with him. Anyways, that’s where I learned about Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.
This sure looks like a must see
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Stanford-Prison-Experiment-Trailer-Looks-One-Better-Movies-Year-72024.html
[*”For a total of 48 years, Professor Maas taught Psychology 101 (now entitled Psych 1101) at Cornell. Over the course of that time, the class achieved a “near-mythical status” and often had enrollments of 1,948 students, making it one of the largest classes in the country. The class size required a large venue, Bailey Hall, the university’s main concert hall. He has instructed over 65,000 students in his career.” – wiki — He really was that good.]
I think I would prefer to see a feature film about your Professor Maas.
I took one class with Zimbardo, and he’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a snake oil salesman in academia. Not that he’s a liar; he’s just sort of slimy. Many professors are self promotional, but he was over the top. I don’t know what he ever did before or after the SPE, but he’s riding on the back of the SPE as hard as he can and making a career out of it. it was a badly designed “experiment” that failed after 6 days. He said he came up with it over dinner with some students at one of the more radically political houses on campus. I don’t think a lot of thought went into it beforehand; it was more of a theater experiment that happened because they decided to make a bet on human behavior. It was biased in so many ways and, as this article points out, Phil Zimbardo is the one who got on the pulpit immediately to talk about how great it was, even before he published or was reviewed. He’s so self aggrandizing. I’d rather hear interviews from the student participants, the “middle class” Stanford students. Don’t believe the hype.
Sometimes legal justice does come through. Sometimes justice delayed is not justice denied. Though rarely:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/15/aig-bailout-trial-win_n_7586886.html
Ambrose E-P wrote:
“However, Iceland has a very different society and economic structure. Quick stabilisation was possible only because the IMF and the Nordic countries stepped in with a $5bn rescue package.
Greece has already exhausted its IMF quota in the two failed rescues of 2010 and 2012, and is now at daggers drawn with the Fund’s team in Athens.”
Well he forgott Iceland decided pretty quick to default and their banks were nationalized. But in practice they were overtaken by hedgefunds buying banking-assets at liquidation-prices. Still the Icelandic defaults came rather soon compared to the Greece-case suffering years of austarity and depression promoted by EU-elites. Yes, IMF/EU came to the rescue with cheap “bridge-loans” making a come-back possible for Iceland. But that is why I suggest the Troika has an obligation to rescue Greece. Yes you can not compare the countries, one with their own currency, the other with euro but both were intoxicated with massive cheap money from the deregulated EU-banking-system. Nevermind who was in charge in the banks or in government. EU has an obligation to help Greece in a default and even in a Grexit. What´s the real difference here? Yes, it´s the existence of the euro, the EMU and maybe the whole EU! Is that the prize citizens of greece have to pay? Then I don´t understand.
Yes of course, you think I´ve forgotten the greek government debt were much much higher than the Islandic one(% of GNP). But don´t be easily foolished by the fact that Islandic debts were private(real estate i.e) and the greek public debts(even due to Goldman Sachs bluff) had it´s real impact due to the GFC in 2008-2010. Interest on greek public debts skyrocked and their real economy crashed. Iceland interest also skyrocked but because of funding-problems for overindebted private housing due to bank insolvency, not government debts. Ordinary greek citizens were not overindebted like many icelanders. Hmmm……
In both cases deregulated wholesale-banks were the cause of the insolvencies. So far creditors paid in full in the icelandic case………..