OT - England crashes out of their Group . . . the EU that is.
England, along with the rest of the UK, have voted to leave the EU. Nobody thought they would do it, but they have.
Stock market's going for a ride boys.
Lot's of coverage on www.BBC.com
Interesting day to be an England fan at the Euros, no?
maybe you shoul disc golf instead of flame bait?
love you
its a Opinionated world Charlie Brown. As for loving me, no thanks, i'm already married. She agrees with you though, she wants to go disc golfing too.
loving you was like loving the dead
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Post pics.
You may get a Soccer Riot!, Scottish Independence Riot! and a Referendum Riot! in the same week.
Now one can only hope that Quebec leaves the Canadian Union...
Now that the UK is free from its "conference" entanglements, maybe you guys can schedule them?
Quebec City got screwed by the NHL so why not.
Precious metals are doing well.... :(
good point..Gold up 100 at one point
but Icelanders are on cloud nine after beating Austria in the world cup. Now that team has the confidence to beat England and why not they are playing world caiber soccer. I love the undedog but don't get me wrong when UM is favored (and most games they are) I can root for the favorite too.
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The EU was always an iffy proposition. You take 20+ countries that were trying to kill each other only 70 years ago and then shove them all together into one glorious harmonious union. It may not work that well.
Surprise, surprise, they don't always agree.
Like the Big 12, the EU needs divisions.
It needs 2 tiers:
- For those handful of countries that really want to deeply integrate into a single political/economic/cultural superstate there should be a Coalition-of-the-Willing Division.
- For everyone else like the UK, there should be another tier that is a looser economic trading arrangement that is closer to the original Common Market intent. They cooperate on economic matters, but they are not giving up any sovereignty.
is the major problem in my opinion. Countries need to be able to set their own monetary policy based on local market conditions.
Poland is in the EU, but they (like Britain) kept their own currency, so they made it through the 2008 financial crisis in much better shape than the rest of the EU. If Spain / Portugal / Greece had kept their own money they could have printed more when their economies called for it.
was what killed the Greek economy. That and their unwillingless to pay taxes.
I would love some hyperinflation. I have way more debt than savings. I'd love to be able to pay off my house and car with a wagon full of cash that I earned in a single day.
Goldman Sachs is to blame for a country where income, property taxes are viewed as optional?
Goldman was complicit, but it was the Greeks who needed to fudge their numbers to meet EU entrance requirements.
Goldman did. And the convinced the idiots in charge of the Greek economy to load up on debt that Goldman knew they'd never be able to pay back. Very similar play to CDO's and MBS' before 2008.
Goldman knew the rest of the EU would bailout Greece.
Like I said: Goldman was complicit. But Blankfein didn't wake up one morning and say: "Let me direct my publicly traded company to tank a minor European economy".
Greece's problem: their government spends WAAAAY too much, with over generous pensions, and a public service sector that provides political patronage jobs. Also, they CANNOT collect taxes. They suck at it, and Greek citizens treat tax avoidance as a national sport. And now they are in the EU, they can't devalue their currency to export their way out of their economic crisis.
Goldman was the savy banker pushing a 5/1 interest-only ARM with a balloon payment mortgage on someone that works at Chipotle and doesn't understand compound interest.
Yes, Greek politicians are stupid and the general population refuses to pay taxes.
Both parties deserve blame, I just happen to think Goldman deserves more. They knew better.
That's where you lost me. Sometimes, you can't force a stupid person not to do the wrong thing. So, Goldman Sachs chose to make money on a sucker's bet. They're not a charity (for that, they have Germany).
If fewer people were willing to profit off a sucker's bet, we'd be living in a much, much better world. It's one thing for a stupid person to screw themselves. It's another to lead them all the way off the cliff because you know they'll never see it.
But that doesn't mean we should just shrug when people do bad shit.
It's always good to buy Goldman shares when they are relatively cheap. That firm seems to have their fingers in every conceivable pie in the world.
Goldman never loses. I hate them, but I'd give my left foot for a job there.
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Yeah, people in the US don't realize how scared Europeans still are about the idea of intra-Europe WW3. There are still very deep scars from WW2.
Much of the motivation behind the EU was to bind together the nations of Europe in a Mafia Family style wedding to the point where they can't fight each other. They stil talk about the "European Project". In that sense, it has been very successful.
But it's too rigid and bureaucratic on the economic side of things to satisfy 27 very different nations.
Lucky for the Europeans most of them have standing armies smaller than the UM Football squad. They have socialism so baked into their societies it will be hard for them to find money to expand their militaries if they so chose.
Ultimately I think the UK leaving the EU won't be the catastrophe the doomsayers are predicting. Frankly, it was always amazing that citizens would willingly turn over their national sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
And we have runaway, unfettered capitalism, which has completely fucked up the world since Regan unleashed his philosophies of cannibalism and derision of everything upon which made the PEOPLE--and therefore this country, work for awhile.
Yay for socialism instead of Money Guys who can steal trillions from the world and then get PAID to do it again and again!
The European Union only dates to 1993. Previously there was the European Economic Community, which had much less of a political aspect to it. Basically it was a free trade area among Western European countries. The EEC worked very well, by all indications.
It's the EU - which eliminated border controls, launched a single currency for most nations and forced member states to abide by EU legislation - that's been much more controversial. It also expanded boldly into Eastern European countries that were much poorer and eager to sent emigrants to the West.
In the case of Britain, it wasn't as fully integrated as other countries, retaining its pound and refusing to give up border controls, but it had to accept EU legislative authority all the same, and it had to grant EU citizens the right of free entry.
If the EU wants to survive, it should go to a 2 tiered structure: The current politically/economically/culturally integrated super-sate that it is now for those countries that want that, and the original limited EEC for countires like the UK that want to remain more sovereign.
It may have to do something like that - although at this point, I don't know how many countries are even that enthusiastic about closer integration. Certainly not too many in the West.
The EU expanded too much, too soon. There was a lot of enthusiasm for it when it was a 12- or 15-country bloc, but adding all those Eastern European countries really changed the dynamic. It made immigration an issue. Open borders is one thing when it's just between countries that are all pretty wealthy, and another when you add a lot of countries that are much poorer. This has also made the euro really untenable, being one currency for countries on such different economic levels.
Agreed
Monetary union without political union was a recipe for disaster.
Futures climbing back some. Certainly will be a major down day in the US and worldwide. Expect a slow rebound with huge volatility.
The thing to continue to worry about is the uncertainty of other countries leaving the EU.
I think we see some false calmness come back. Where stuff seems like it settles down, but then we have a day or week of craziness. This is going to mess with markets for a while. This was just a vote, they still have to make plans and laws to actually exit the EU, and that's going to take time.