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Comment Re:My solution (Score 4, Insightful) 485

You're joking, but the Greeks have to give away a ton of assets for this deal. It's hard to see where they're going to get the sums necessary without looking at the antiquities.

This is clearly a bad deal and frankly it seems like most of the people at the table know it is a joke. Did you see the deadlines in the article? They're giving themselves basically until the end of the week to completely turn their economy around, for the mere promise that the rest of the EU will consider extending the repayment period of the debts. They aren't even considering debt forgiveness.

IMHO, the correct solution for Greece, painful as it would definitely be, is an exit from the Eurozone and a return to a national currency. The Eurozone has fundamental structural problems that are going to put Greece back in the hotseat in a few years even with this deal. Combined monetary policy with independent fiscal policy is not a sustainable model. It's like giving your irresponsible uncle your credit card on his promise that he will pay you back for everything he charges, even though he has defaulted on every loan he has ever had and is currently tens of thousands of euros in the hole and doesn't have a job.

It also doesn't allow your currency to fluctuate with your economy, which puts a stranglehold on your economy when you have a recession.

Sadly, a unified fiscal policy is politically impossible in the current EU. It would give up way too much sovereignty and be political suicide in most countries. You're talking about the EU itself collecting taxes and spending them on infrastructure. Foreign governments gaining oversight over national governments, an especially worrisome situation when the national government is breathtakingly corrupt. There is no chance you would get even a simple majority of countries to agree, much less the supermajority that would no doubt be required.

Comment Re:Helping a full third of all citizens? (Score 1) 80

Most town websites I've seen are fairly unidirectional. They are for disseminating information out, not for communicating with town officials. Sure they usually have an email address, if you can find the email for the right person in the town.

I guess the advantage of Twitter is that nobody can go on long rambling tirades like they can with email. It enforces brevity.

Comment Everybody got off scott free then (Score 3, Funny) 46

Prior to this Sergey Aleynikov was the only person connected with the global financial meltdown to receive any prison time at all in the US. Now that it has been dismissed we can say that nobody involved in destroying the savings and retirements of billions of people around the world was significantly punished. At least they gave their word that they wouldn't engage in the sort of risky behavior that collapsed the global economy again I guess, and we know that investment bankers are as good as their word.

Comment Sadly, gas is cheaper than electricity in CA (Score 3, Interesting) 688

I just bought a Ford C-Max Energi; but I bought it strictly for the green carpool-lane sticker.

In California, if you live in a big house, your marginal cost of electricity is shockingly high. For me, it's $0.33/kilowatt-hour.

My Energi goes 20 miles with a 8 kWh charge. That's $2.64 On gas, it gets about 35 mpg. If gas is $3.50 (current price) that's $2.20.

Now, during mid-day on a sunny day, I can charge it much cheaper on our solar panels (currently we are selling power back to PG&E, but at $0.11/kWh) and I do that. I also charge it at work, where it's 'free'; but I live 50 miles from work so I can't keep the car charged just at work. The 'free' power at work won't last forever, either.

You may ask "why not get a Tesla?" Good question. It turns out that there are (at my company) 3x the number of electric-ish cars as there are charging stations, so we have to swap them out after just a few hours. The Tesla would take all day to charge. Also, the Tesla is such a lumbering overpowered beast that it gets substantially less miles-per-kilowatt-hour.

Thad

Comment Reading her mind... (Score 1) 132

Somebody I know started taking antidepressants some time ago, and they helped the depression quite a bit. One curious thing, though, is that once she is taking them, she assumes that I can read her mind; that I obviously know what she is thinking. She stopped taking them for a while, and it was immediately apparent that she no longer felt that way, then when she started taking them again, it was back.

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