FrankishKnight
No bio...
User ID: 645
Could a rebellion in eastern Congo widen into a regional war?
It already is, multiple foreign militaries are on the ground. Hundreds of Romanian mercenaries were even captured.
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
It fundamentally transformed the way I think more than anything, up until getting into software engineering, which I view as an extension of formal logic.
An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus by Michaelson starts from lambda calculus, extends it through logical inference to Lisp to typed ML in a few hundred cozy pages!
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
5 freshly graduated leutenants and 3 of their instructors were fired after their graduation ceremony, where they drew swords and said "we are the soldiers of Ataturk", understood as a prosecularist move against Erdogan's islamization. https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-military-dismisses-lieutenants-targeted-by-erdogan-for-ataturk-chanting-during-oath-ceremony-news-65613
Similarly, a historian was arrested for insulting Erdogan online. https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-court-arrests-historian-for-insulting-erdogan-news-65614
As do parents of a (long dead) protestor. https://www.duvarenglish.com/parents-of-gezi-park-victim-face-trial-for-insulting-turkish-president-news-65598
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
losing the thread
That makes two of us! ...for the American economy, ah. I suppose not. But it kept bonds valued well on their books, working out like deferred payments. The American banks both financed the loser's payments and forwarded loans to the victors on reparations payments. I don't have access to the full period of bond values then, but I suspect their balance sheets were held up quite well until the depression.
The German government's credit wasn't really impacted, surprisingly. Somehow everyone kept playing ball with them even after they chose to hyperinflate themselves. Germans who bought war bonds etc. in WWI were the most negatively impacted. Even more surprising to me, Germany was still able to access credit markets into the 30s, even after they started issuing fake money: Öffa then Mefo bills. Chase bank e.g. went through crazy hoops and even let Americans buy German war bonds during WWII (until 1941) (at a discount, buying subsidized returnee marks taken from Jews).
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
The amount of goods and serviced provided can decrease, too. Producers can't lower prices very much without losing money (there's a reason prices are sticky downwards) while consumers can't pay more to maintain consumption (with a stable money supply). So you have less economic activity for the money supply, with inflation as the proportion between them changes for the worst (just on the other side of the equation).
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
We're literally talking about the opposite situation!
American banks gave Germany perhaps 4x as much as the 20 years later Marshall plan. Some was from the reparations (Dawes and Young plans) they bankrolled, without being paid back, which did not circulate in the German economy, but they loaned and invested even more (about $5 billion/year in the late 1920s, more than Germany (American bankers) paid in reparations in total (for comparison, in dollars, the total original reparation sum was $30 billion) which helped Germany grow production 30% above 1914 levels, with the 2nd largest industry in the world.)
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
Southern Italy and Sicily have been backwards since literally the Roman times.
They were quite wealthy during the Middle Ages, e.g. Sicily under the Norman Roger II. However the south's cash crops stagnated the economy as great wealth flowed in without much need for diversification and increasing complexity (...and later the Kingdom of the 2 Sicilies banned agricultural exports!) Prosperity started breaking down in the 14th century, then in the 15th century when large earthquakes and plagues decimated the population and slave raids shifted settlements inland; the Spanish art of governance (rent seeking) also halted development (cf. Spanish literacy into the late 19th century).
Nevertheless, up to unification, Naples remained one of Europe's largest and wealthiest cities. Sicily had 3 of the most industrialized provinces in 1871 - but they hadn't changed production methods for centuries, doing seasonal labor in workshops (compared to the area around Milan which used power looms etc. from the 1820s).
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
jobbskatteavdraget
Isn't it only about $200 (5%) at the 45k crowns/month pretax we're talking about (to get ~33k after tax)?
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
You missed the "after tax". The 1/3 municipal tax lowers it a fair bit.
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
Yes this seems Bad For The Economy
How did this impact the German economy if it never circulated (neither entered nor left it)?
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
The Norse believed cats had magic powers, warded way spirits etc., carved them on things, sailed and went viking with them (and dogs).
FrankishKnight
10mo ago
in the postdoc bracket (so about $3k/month after tax or a bit more
That's what an American makes at McDonalds doing night shift, or the top 25% in Sweden or top 10% in France...
Germany paid almost none of the reparations. Less than 1/6 of the 130 billion marks were paid by 1930 (after which payments were paused, then indefinitely deferred due to the great depression), almost all by American banks which Germany never paid back. (N.b. only 50B (the A and B bonds) were required to be paid.) If you calculate for inflation etc. the US actually paid Germany significantly more than in the Marshall plan after!
For comparison, after the Franco-Prussian war, France received a similar proportion of GDP, had its banks finance it within a month then paid them off within 3 years. The German Empire (the Weimar state's actual name) via Havenstein instead chose to call a general strike and hyperinflate its currency to erase local war debts the government owed to German citizens and banks.
Also, the great depression started when the US stock market crashed, spreading elsewhere.
FrankishKnight
11mo ago
That's how Chinese governance works. The different regions are all allowed to have their own (radically different) policies to experiment with what works. After a bit, the winning method is spreads to the rest and they try a new experiment.
FrankishKnight
11mo ago
The Colombian government wasn't rejecting deportations outright, but the specific way, wanting the US to charter seats or such (which is generally cheaper, too) hence the president offering to fly them with his own plane.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d591ldq46o
More options
Context Copy link