Call me EU-biased, populist, fourth Reich apologist or whatever, but I don't see how the Euro has been bad for Belgium by looking at its GDP growth. It isn't spectacularly different before/after the Euro, but it seems there is a lot more economic stability after than before.

Belgium:

Before Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

After Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

As for France, the tendency of diminishing growth has been there since at least the oil shocks, nothing in the chart I see that would point to the introduction of the Euro as the culprit.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/france-gdp-growth-annual.png?s=frgegdpy&d1=19500101&d2=20151231

I want to see how a "financially independent" Greece does, really, except it won't be pretty. If the historical record is any indication, they'll be the third-poorest Balkan nation, ahead of maybe Macedonia and Albania but behind everybody else, with a GDP per capita at a healthy 15-20% of the EU-12 average and an economic growth in the low 50 points of one percent when times are exceptionally good.

Unless they have another coup d'etat or, maybe, get bought wholesale by Istanbul or Moscow with all the expectations of good government that such a deal implies.

Actually, that describes what happens in the context of the subject -- weight loss. You use 7700 kCal more than you take in, and about 1 kg of your body mass vanishes. Hardly bones, of course, but fat, proteins and what not.

It is easy to see this loss, and it is often visualized on weird Japanese TV shows about the subject -- people will have a full body MRI scan before/after a diet course and a doctor compare the two scans for the audience. Not very entertaining, but surely educational up to a point.

Also, this isn't magical. The stuff does actually leave your body as CO2, water and other waste products of metabolism of the said 1 kg. It does appear as a 'missing mass' on your weight scale.

Incidentally, losing weight as a result of using more energy than you take in is the reason all those survivors in pictures from Nazi German concentration camps look like fashion models before makeup, they had too little to eat, and too much hard labor, which used up all that body fat they had before Hitler.

And yes, I Godwined this discussion on purpose.

There was a reason that anti-monopoly and anti-oligopoly legislation was created. The idea is that if one participant in he market is stronger than everybody else and can impose conditions, the 'free' in 'free market' is gone, and the outcome is bad for everyone except the monopolist. This is especially true in markets where the monopoly isn't natural, but bestowed by a law, like the copyrights. The logic is also true for monopsonies, i.e. buyers' markets.

Too bad that the government doesn't sue large corporations for violating those laws very often.