Interesting Links for 12-06-2012

[andrewducker]

• Your brain is more excited by junk food when you're short on sleep.
  (tags: sleep food self-control )
• Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro (Fascinating idea, not sure I can see it happening)
  (tags: german greece euro )
• I WANT THIS CREDIT CARD!
  (tags: banking credit awesome design )
• Play Snakes On A Cartesian Plane - 28 variants on the classic game "Snake"
  (tags: snake games )
• Have an issue with your bank account and EA will ban your account, locking you out of your games.
  (tags: EpicFail games ea )
• Oatmeal threatened with bogus lawsuit. Responds awesomely.
  (tags: usa copyright law funny oatmeal )
• "Most family-friendly" government forces families to choose between splitting up and leaving the country.
  (tags: uk immigration family )
• Sainsbury's gets into the ebook business
  (tags: uk ebooks sainsbury's )
• An Open Letter in Defense of Our Alien Overlords
  (tags: scifi shortstory aliens )
• Wales returns to being an undersea kingdom
  (tags: Wales funny )

Comments

[drplokta]

The problem with Germany exiting the Euro is that everyone's savings have to stay in Euro (if they don't, then the banks go really bust, since they'll be matching a lot of assets in Euro from foreign borrowers against their liabilities to savers in the rapidly appreciating new currency), which means that the German savers lose a lot in terms of what their savings can buy them in Germany, as the new currency appreciates instantly against the Euro. So there's no way they will ever vote for any government that might do this. And the savers of the Netherlands, Finland, Austria and perhaps even France see this happening and pull their money from their bank accounts to invest in shares or property instead, in case their countries do the same, which causes runs on the banks in those countries. It's basically a mirror-image of the problem with Greece pulling out.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Wow. I know Bloomberg has a reputation of stealing ideas from other places and claiming it as their own, but, seriously bringing up the idea of Germany instead of Greece exiting the Euro on June 10th and making no citations to any other publication is simply breathtaking in the amount of intellectual theft involved.

Because, I know that I've read that idea a minimum of four times in The New York Times/International Herald Tribune over the past two to three months and read it again multiple times in La Monde, at least once in The Financial Times, and, I think, but can't find the article, The Economist.

The Financial Times seems to want money for me to search their archive (even though I pay a fucking fortune to buy the actual print version of it in France) but the IHT still has a search feature and the results are here showing that the idea has been kicking around non-Bloomberg publications since at least April 16th.

I cant' find all the articles the IHT ran because their search function fucking sucks, but I promise you I didn't just imagine them.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I read the one in the economist too. At least six months ago, if not more.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Glad I didn't imagine it!

I could not find it on Google at all.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

And, wait, The Telegraph brought up the idea on June 18th, 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8584064/Why-Germany-must-exit-the-euro.html

And WikiLeaks reported that Germany was considering it last year:

http://www.wikileaks-forum.com/index.php?topic=5874.0

Oh, and BusinessWeek - which is owned by Bloomberg brought up this idea on May 24.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-24/germany-not-greece-should-exit-euro-argentina-s-nielsen-says

And the Christian Science Monitor brought it up in Feb. 2010

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Stefan-Karlsson/2010/0222/What-if-Germany-exited-the-euro-area

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

So many Germans are pissed off with having to bankroll the Eurozone, with the added worry of having a potentially very unstable currency, that I could easily imagine politicians there proposing a return to the Mark in the not too dim and distant future. Say, just before the next election for Chancellor- or even sooner if things get much worse.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Custom credit cards and cheques have been popular in the US for ages. I don't know if any banks over here do that kind of thing.