And what makes you think that squishing two AI brains would give you twice the intelligence? About the only thing we can reasonably say about a working implementation of general AI is that it must be closer to an animal brain than a silicon processor. Look at sperm whales. Their brains are 5x more massive brains than humans, and yet no one would say they are 5x more intelligent.

3D interconnects? You mean like the ones that have been in chips for decades?

Transistors are not neurons. They don't process like neurons, and they aren't plastic like neurons.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Even without a central bank this would still happen with regular banks. Even with a commodity-backed currency this would still happen with regular banks.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the creation of capital through lending. The problem is that too much leverage results in speculation and Ponzi schemes. The dose makes the poison.

I'm not so sure it's different. There are still far too many companies, with advertising as their only source of income, valued at billions of dollars.

You can't buy shares of Dropbox because it has not gone public yet. It will. Almost all of these highly-valued internet companies go public, because they were funded by VC's who expect a large, quick payoff.

Not when house buyers were being told they could sell their house next year to pay off their zero-down 110% mortgage at a profit. The Fed is not to blame for the predatory lending practices of the giant corporate banks.

The slow and steady rise in Fed-held US treasury securities prior to the crisis was a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of mortgage-backed securities they had to take on to stabilize the housing market.

Unless of course reducing the budget by 1% reduces GDP by 2%. Then it's actually impossible, because the budget is financed by taxes.

Governments are not households.

While it is true that there is no provision for an EU central bank to issue new currency, every bank creates currency by issuing debt. Thus, the EU is not zero sum.

Please stop comparing governments to households. It's misleading. Governments are far closer to businesses than they are to households. The rest of your post was spot on.

A household runs a deficit to fulfill personal needs and wants. Businesses and governments run a deficit to finance future production. In a recession, governments have the critical role of countering deflation by either taking on debt or creating central-bank money. Deflation is horrible for an economy because it discourages investment. Greece and the other EU countries naively signed away their ability to create central-bank money when they joined the EU, and thus are left only with taking on debt.

Yes, they can. The absolute level of public debt is not what matters. The debt/GDP ratio is what matters. If raising the public debt 1% raises GDP 5%, then it is in the countries best interest to raise the public debt 1%, and roll over that debt indefinitely.

As long as GDP is rising faster, yes one can.

Governments are not households. Macroeconomics is not microeconomics. It is more important for governments to minimize unemployment (with productive jobs, not breaking windows and then fixing them) than it is for them to pay down public debt.

He's not saying they should. He's saying they're screwed either way, because without Government stimulus the GDP will continue to tank until there is no more private debt. The EU governments signed away their economic sovereignty just to simplify inter-country trade. Only the largest entities with controlling majority votes will benefit.

Repeating what I said above:

If 25% of the population is unemployed, the worst thing you can do is balance the Government's budget. You need to get people working and investing.

Sovereign governments are not households. Macroeconomics is not microeconomics. Having a growing GDP matters more than the level of public debt. If you sacrifice the former to reign in the latter (austerity), you're doing it wrong. Our entire capitalist economy is financed by debt. Without growing debt, currency deflates (unless the central bank creates more), which discourages investment, which reduces GDP. Empirically, Debt/GDP rises when austerity is implemented, simply because GDP falls faster than Debt.

If you think it's bad now, wait for the next shock. Private leverage is so high right now that any significant downturn will trigger a crash.

How does the absolute value of the currency matter? I don't understand this assertion. I completely agree that Greece would be far better off with the ability to control their own currency (all EU countries would be). But I've never understood why exchange rates matter from a macroeconomic perspective.

You seem to have wandered off somewhere that has nothing to do with this conversation. I am not interested in your opinions about the best country to live in. In support freedom to choose where you live and reduction of all barriers, to the extent possible, in the way of you choosing where you live. The safety net provided by Germany has nothing to do with this. I claimed that the min wage reduced output and increases unemployment. You said the opposite. I asked how you would explain per capita GDP, a measure of output, being higher when min wage is lower. I asked how you would explain unemployment rate being lower when min wage is lower. These are two results directly in conflict with your assertion. You ignored both points in your response and instead essentially said these things are okay because of a better safety net. That is a non sequitur and I am not really interested.