Atropos

9 ms·

31.
by Atropos 11y ago
But quite tame in comparison to Greek media the picturing Merkel with a swastika or the Schäuble cartoon where it was implied he wanted to make soap out of Greek citizens in new concentration camps...
32.
by Atropos 11y ago
Wouldn't help, Deutsche Bank doesn't have too many retail clients , getting reimbursed for 100.000 Euros of deposits doesn't help the typical corporate client much. Highly unusual for an investment bank, they acquired Postb
33.
by Atropos 11y ago
Oh sure nobody knows how it will turn out in detail. But it's important to keep in mind what the EU Commission as the decisive actor wants. If companies would be compensated for the retraction of illegal tax subsidies - for example, by
34.
by Atropos 11y ago
Don't worry about damages claims, EU state aid law > national law. Even if national courts would grant a damages claim, the EU Commission would just order a recovery again, because it would be state aid in another form. Not exactly
35.
by Atropos 11y ago
Your misconception is that the action was "completely legal in the law of the country they were operating in". Belgium is part of the EU and the EU rules on state aid are in the Treaty on the Function of the European Union, which
36.
by Atropos 11y ago
You need to understand the setup of the European Union and EU state aid law. Part of the idea of the EU is creating a common internal market between the 28 EU member states. For creating a level playing field that is not distorted by state
37.
by Atropos 11y ago
"Proving" something in a court of law (in criminal law) only requires that there is no reasonable doubt. Providing alternative explanations that are not logically impossible, but exceedingly unlikely, does not help you much. If th
38.
by Atropos 11y ago
Bitcoin's usage would go down, legitimate businesses would disappear. Legislation like this is not likely to happen, but this techno-hubris "Governments can't touch us, because we use smart technologies!" is quite ridicu
39.
by Atropos 11y ago
Oh please, in principle you could easily regulate Bitcoin like Heroin, meaning make it illegal to buy/sell, manufacture (mine) etc... While Bitcoin would not disappear, it would become even less mainstream than now. Hopefully this is n
40.
by Atropos 11y ago
>> It's just bizarre. That's what I thought about the New Yorker article about Theranos/Holmes ( http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler ) a while back, where it was
41.
by Atropos 11y ago
Oh but the current generation of Germans has a moral responsibility to help the current generation of Greeks because Germany got debt forgiveness 60 years ago ???
42.
by Atropos 11y ago
This is beyond ridiculous and in fact insulting to recent Greek governments. Come on, do you really think the media landscape and average knowledge of voters in 1933 in Germany was anywhere comparable to elections in Greece from 1990 onward
43.
by Atropos 11y ago
Not working less hours, but much less "productive" in an economic sense. See US Patent statistics: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_utl.htm Even in the boom years
44.
by Atropos 11y ago
Greece supporters do not seem to care about facts at all. Same for the GDP numbers, they always use the graph from 2008, whereas the graph from 1999 is much more enlightening: https://twitter.com/jmackin2/status/61
45.
by Atropos 11y ago
You are misinformed, according to the regularly performed Eurobarometer polls ( http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb82/eb82_en.... ), there is not a single poll since 2006 where more people ha
46.
by Atropos 11y ago
The article is about a decision of the UK High Court, not the European Court of Justice, so it only applies to the UK.
47.
by Atropos 11y ago
I guess it depends on how productive the smart watches become. Maybe 10-15 years ago, you could still find politicians openly state that they do not use computers, that they never read emails but only get them printed out by their secretari
48.
by Atropos 11y ago
The "not going homeless" already exists in European welfare states, you do not need Basic Income for that. The main difference with basic income is that it would be paid to people who could work, but choose not to. This might not
49.
by Atropos 11y ago
Would the basic income only apply to high income countries or worldwide? Because I feel that it would be extremely unfair and maybe even unethical to give every US citizen a basic income for life, while people elsewhere die from hunger.
50.
by Atropos 11y ago
You were complaining about lacking enforcement by the EU in your other comment. Firstly this is misplaced in this case - there is no central EU telecom regulator so it is up to the national member states to enforce it. Secondly the quoted p
51.
by Atropos 11y ago
This is just blind EU hate, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulati... how war the roaming charges have dropped over the years. The costs are much lower than in geographically near but n
52.
by Atropos 11y ago
The fine amounts being thrown around are mostly bad journalism. The law allows a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover, but even in most hard-core cartel cases, they will not go into the upper bound. And especially in this case, it is not cl
53.
by Atropos 11y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a ridiculous way to think! You give me 100 Euros that I promise to repay later. When "later" comes, I refuse to pay. My brother finds this humiliating and to protect the family name buys the debt from y
54.
by Atropos 11y ago
Sometimes using fewer words enhances clarity. Country A has debts of 100 Euro. The debt gets restructured by 50% so that Country A now only has debts of 50 Euros. How has this transaction magically pushed losses onto public books of Country
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by Atropos 11y ago
Actually, the highest investment in Greek government bonds was by Greek banks, see "The Greek Debt Restructuring: An Autopsy" by Zettelmeyer/Trebesch/Gulati.
56.
by Atropos 11y ago
You are using the anti-bailout and anti-banker rhetoric from the bailouts in the financial crisis, but this situation here is totally different: Greece borrows 100€ from a bank, cannot repay it, so there is a huge debt haircut and Greece on
57.
by Atropos 12y ago
The EU's competition authority has actually launched an antitrust investigation into this in January 2014: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm It's a really complicated issue though, but hope
58.
by Atropos 12y ago
Small nitpick: EU has 28 member states, everybody always forgets about Croatia :)
59.
by Atropos 12y ago
1) Spanish and Italian ten year bond yields are around 1,50, an all time low. Obviously the market doesn't think that Greece defaulting would have a huge impact on them. 2) Sweden and Switzerland both have strong currencies and are doi
60.
by Atropos 12y ago
Does anybody know if this is in the "idea" stage right now or if it is a working product? If I understand correctly, this is a project by a team of University of Toronto undergraduate students for a competition to receive 100,000

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