I think that's heard in Paris every summer. If you work in Paris in a tourist area, English is pretty much a prerequisite, even if the Parisians don't like it.
I remember when I visited Paris and Germany I tried really hard to use the rudimentary language skills I had. The French always seemed too frustrated to slow down to the speed I could manage, and the Germans were just excited to have a chance to practice their English, and chide me (in English) about our invasion of Iraq. (admittedly this was almost 20 years ago, so things might be different now.)
People in Europe know all the big American cities and are well aware of the political differences. If someone asks where you are from, don't tell them you are from the US, tell them you are from NY/Chicago/LA/SF/whatever. There is a pretty decent chance that it will lead to a nice friendly conversation that you'll never get with an "I'm from the US" answer.
Especially since English is the tourist language for all tourists. Paris is full of Germans, Japanese, Russians, and many others. The wait staff and clerks aren't expected to speak every language, and the tourists aren't expected to speak conversational French. English is the fallback for everybody.
Allegedly Tony Blair told his friend Shirley Williams that Bush said this. Snopes claims this is false based on Alastair Campbell's [Blair’s director of communications and strategy] say-so. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/
He says “I can tell you that the prime minister [Blair] never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told [his friend] Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it. If she put this in a speech, it must have been a joke.”
While Blair / Campbell have an obvious interest in denying this (it's not good to be rude about other countries leaders), we might reasonably be suspicious of Campbell's denial.
Even if we believe that Shirley Williams was actually told by Blair that this happened, that still wouldn't mean Bush said it. Not least because Blair may have intended it as a joke, just as Williams may have.
This is still useful if our interest is "When was this said?" because we know Shirley Williams talks about it, so e.g. if some future historian is wondering about a claim Trump said this to Johnson, they've got this record that well, this particular "American Presidents are idiots" quote certainly pre-dates that.
There a lot of interesting turns of phrase where that is primarily what we care about - did Franklin say that stuff about hanging together or hanging separately? Perhaps not. This play on words does however seem to originate in that period, you won't find it much earlier than the American Revolution, while by the 19th century it's commonplace.
This sounds ridiculous, but you'll be surprised how thwarted your average american is at accents. If someone wrote down the french words, I'm pretty sure grandma would've figured it out.
I'm somewhat the defacto interviewer at my company for latino interviewees because of my time in south america. I don't even speak spanish barring enough to survive, but I can understand their english better than my peers. When they asked how I was understanding what they said, I didn't even realize I was the only one getting it.
I think people in general should hang out in strange lands to get your brain to be more flexible to different kinds of inputs even if you don't plan learning a new language.
Some of us just have a really bad ear for accents. I'm a native English speaker who's been to dozens of countries and have at least a passing knowledge of 4 languages, and I still have trouble with strong accents from the southern US, New York, and even my Indian coworkers that I've spoken to for years. I think it's some kind of bad aural signal processing in my case, since pretty low volumes of background noise can also screw up my comprehension of people I can normally understand.
Can definitely see that being an issue for many people. I think as long as a person is aware that demanding someone to speak English is the wrong attitude, most humans want to try to convey what they're saying.
I'm kind of the opposite of you. My hearing is extremely sensitive to a fault and picks up more than I even want. I'll say that I'm easily overwhelmed when there is a lot of competing noise though.
I met this kind of situation in more than a few colleagues and a common observation was: they have these troubles only in their native language. Maybe we're stronger wired to that language+accent to be the language, and whatever else we learn is more flexible by definition because it's learned?
Is it a joke about a tourist who doesn't understand a similar language, or about a Frenchman who uncharacterisically switches to English without showing contempt for the tourist?
Not a joke at all, I overheard it in a bar in Paris (at the Bar Sancerre, close to La Republic); I thought it mildly amusing. That the waiter switches to English without contempt is entirely characteristic of Paris waiting staff in my experience, professional and polite.
Written, it's obvious. But "dessert" is pronounced very differently in French and English (according to automatic translation). The "rt" don't seem to be pronounced and the "e" right before that is the other kind of "e". I would not have understood what was said to me (again, if the TTS on the automatic translation is correct).
And that's leaving out that the articles make it harder. If you don't speak French, knowing where the spaces go in uncafe isn't automatic (although written as one word it is much easier than verbally).
I recommend everyone try it before you judge the elderly lady.
Although, I may have been able to figure it out from context (end of a meal, sitting down at a coffee and desert place)
Or get it from both sides: the host of Coffee Break French speaks English with a strong Scottish accent. (Edinburgh, I think.)
His French is excellent. I really loved the early seasons, where he was teaching French to a Glaswegian woman. French with a Glasgow accent is baffling and beautiful.
It's little surprise that they wouldn't recognize "dessert". The French pronunciation is /de.sɛʁ/. The first half is similar to English, but the last half is a sound that doesn't even really exist in English.
The pronunciation of "café" is more similar to English, but spoken at conversational speed it can still be hard to parse. The article and the word flow together; it would sound like "ahcuhfay" (with the last syllable sort of fading out).
I'm still learning French. I watch French language films with the subtitles on, because even when I know 100% of the vocabulary I often can't follow the spoken words without a nudge to provide context.
French is a lovely language, but it's conspicuously mushy. They French are aware of it. There are many language resources that over-enunciate as an educational tool.
So I sympathize with the elderly tourist. Those words are very similar on the page, but in a noisy cafe I could see myself confused as well.
The pound is also down to $1.19 which is amazingly low. This might be due to the European malaise mentioned in the article or from the ongoing Brexit disruption. Fortunately, as the Canadian dollar is sort-of a petrodollar, we're holding at 0.77 USD which makes it a good time to head to Europe if you can get through the airports...
>>The pound is also down to $1.19 which is amazingly low. This might be due to the European malaise mentioned in the article or from the ongoing Brexit disruption...
Just Europe shooting itself in the foot again, to please the US.
If you mean Ukraine, it’s something they almost have to stand up to given their history. Can’t reward naked aggression as there’s many examples of what that leads to. Lotta blood in the soil there.
The time for “not rewarding Russia and other dictatorships” was 5-10 years ago, now it’s pure economic suicide and does nothing to stop the war anyways
The best time may have been 10 years ago — I don’t know enough to argue that either way — but the war is now going to cost Russia 10% of its GDP, and appears to already be interfering with Russia’s ability to maintain the effectiveness (such as it is) of its armed forces.
But this isn’t the only thing going on, lots of governments are giving actual weapons to Ukraine as well. If he was rational, sadly that appears to be a big if, that would probably help deter Putin too.
Weaken the image and actual strength of the Russian Army and it puts into question their position in the various -stan's on their southern border. The Red Army was a terrifying concept during the Cold War.
I upvoted you for the "...it’s pure economic suicide and does nothing to stop the war anyways..." part of your comment. But does your remark about dictatorships include all dictatorships, or only the ones who aren't on our side?
In my opinion, “all dictatorships” but US/EU prefer realpolitik and try to collaborate with some (Saudi/UAE for oil, China/Vietnam for cheap labour, …). Might eventually backfire (in process re:China)
I've said before and got down-voted to oblivion but what the hey:
the only nation that's going to profit from the war in Ukraine is the US... increased NATO membership... increased arms sales... increased dependence on US for oil and gas supplies... etc. etc.
Downvote away as you always do. I know that even supposedly intelligent Americans have a total mental block when it comes to accepting that your country might actually be the cause of a lot of the trouble in the world --if not directly, then behind the scenes, fanning the flames. Unfortunately we'll all be dead and gone by the time the official documents relating to this period in time are declassified. But, boy are your grandchildren going to laugh at how gullible you all were!
The article doesn't say a word about money printing which is probably the main story (along interest rates). The US has stopped printing money (and pretends it will shrink the Fed's balance sheet, though they still haven't started [1]). The ECB and BoE are still printing money. So mechanically USD goes up against both GBP and EUR.
Those figures are for June 24th. I read the announcement as the ECB balance sheet stopped going up as of July 1st.
The BoE balance sheet stopped going up as of December and has been going down since March. (You can see this if you switch to the 1Y view of your chart.)
The US & Canada are energy independent (or at least equalized imports/exports) and food exporters. The EU is a net importer of both so pretty clear why recent events would favor the US/Canada & not the EU.
It certainly explains why the US pushed so much for sanctions against Russia, and it's less clear why Europe so enthusiastically shot itself in the foot by following suit.
Edit: this is not a "minor economic pain" for Europe and might reach extreme consequences later this year.
On the other hand, the US have played extremely well, gaining on all fronts (increased influence through enlarged Nato and, increased weapons sales, increases oil/gas profits), while China is left in an awkward position. Only downside seems to have been the push for alternatives to dollar/western-centric financial system.
Germany is set to run out of gas during winter under optimistic scenarios. This is looking less like a bit of unpleasantness and more like economic suicide by the day.
LNG is not going to suffice. There isnt even the port capacity to bring it in. Rationing would have to be extreme just to ride out the winter. And then what?
Hitting the economic self destruct button so that Ukraine reserves the right to join NATO doesnt look so appealing any more.
Running out in this case just means a spike in prices or the dreaded rationing. Lowering thermostats can dramatically reduce fuel consumption, how to achieve that nationwide is an open question.
Well, so far this hasn't deterred anything nor apparently slowed Russia down but it has had massively negative consequences for Europe.
In general, basic self-interest in geopolitics means to always to something only with a clear upside for yourselves (duh)
With the energy prices as they stand, the UK for example is heading for a social and potentially humanitarian disaster this winter. I don't see how "being firm against Putin" or "Ukraine" justify it.
>Well, so far this hasn't deterred anything nor apparently slowed Russia down but it has had massively negative consequences for Europe.
This a ridiculous absurd assumption. Russia has massive supply issues for just about everything, including defense related industries.
>In general, basic self-interest in geopolitics means to always to something only with a clear upside for yourselves (duh)
[Citation needed]. If the downsides for your enemy are massive it makes sense to take a hit your self. In fact Putin did count on the west to continue it's cynical way of doing business like it did after all the previous Russian wars (Chechnya 1/2, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, Donbass). I'm sure, if the EU could have made the threat of doing what it did later, this would have deterred the invasion. It just didn't have any credibility due to past decisions. But now future threats should be take more seriously. This might stabilize the world as a hole.
>I don't see how "being firm against Putin" or "Ukraine" justify it.
The next winter is going to suck and most people might not have realized that. But speaking of humanitarian disasters, this is our best bet to avoid a way, way bigger humanitarian disaster in the baltics.
Russians are raping and executing civilians, and Russian authorities have stated on more than one occasion that other countries beyond Ukraine will also be punished.
Ombudsman Denisova was sacked for excessive lies about woman rapes.
The Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights Daria Gerasimchuk on the Polish TV channel "Belsat" exposed fake Ukrainian propaganda about the alleged violence by the Russian military against Ukrainian children.
Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUBRGUH-Kc
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has not a single confirmed fact of violence so far.
Extremely straightforward, yes. What I don't think a lot of Americans get is just how utterly, terrifyingly destructive the wars of conquest that preceded the current era of peace were for Europe - especially the two world wars. Large chunks of entire generations killed, wounded and traumatized, whole citities levelled, regions rendered unfit for anything beyond farming. One of the major justifications for the European Union as an institution was to supposedly ensure that nothing like this would happen again. Now we have a brutal war of conquest right next to the EU's eastern border, and sabre-rattling about how some of its member states might be next. It's in the direct self-preservation interest of a lot of countries that Russia fails and fails hard.
It's not straightforward, it's simplistic, and a way to scare people into accepting a narrative (like turning public opinion into agreeing to join Nato in some countries...)
Europe (EU/Nato) is not at risk of attack by Russia. It's not clear why Finland would suddenly be at risk.
What is happening is a continuation of the fall of the USSR when Russia lost very big and was hastily written off. Russia has somewhat recovered and is asserting its claims and interests. While we should hold firm when this clashes with our own, saying that Russia should be beaten into submission is not going to work and is only going to perpetuate conflicts.
As it stands Russia is going to take the Donbas, and it took Crimea back in 2014. So the question is where we go from there. They are not going to hand those territories back to anyone. So we need to negotiate spheres of influence backed by serious force as was the case before the fall of the USSR.
The proposal to have a neutral Ukraine was sensible provided all parties are very seriously held to their word.
Lastly, we should remember that Crimea used to be Russian until very recently and that Ukraine is very special for Russia, so it's far from obvious to me that what they are doing there means they plan to attack/invade other neighbouring countries afterwards...
> It's not clear why Finland would suddenly be at risk.
It's not that we're now suddenly at risk, it's more that we were at risk all the time and now we finally understand it.
Also the highly visible "special operation" allows Russia a whole new level of pressuring us into various things. The message we're seeing is "if we decide to fuck you up, we don't much care if a bunch of our boys get hurt in the process". Which pretty much renders useless any "credible defense deterrent" which isn't an existential threat to them.
> like turning public opinion into agreeing to join Nato in some countries
The change of public opinion as result of the actions we've seen was such an obvious consequence, it makes me wonder if it wasn't one of the effects Putin wanted to get out of this campaign.
This is beyond "drinking the Kool-Aid" at this point, and very skillfully organised mass hysteria.
Finland, which kept relatively good relations with the USSR throughout the Cold War had actually been at extreme risk all along and must join Nato right now. Right... well at least they have a long border with Russia, not like Sweden... As long as they order F-35s everything's cool, I guess.
The "relatively good relations" you speak of came with a great amount of licking ass and simultaneously preparing for the worst. It's not something we want to go back to.
It's probably something that's hard to understand from a comfy armchair half a world away, so I guess that's an excuse for the condescending tone.
Finlandisation is a dirty word in Finland. 'Good relations' were maintained by giving up an independent foreign policy, allowing Soviet-funded political parties, and censorship of anti-Soviet press. They were 'good relations' for the Soviets - not so much for the Finns.
Except that Russia broke agreements to respect Ukraine, which is why (obviously foolishly) they agreed to give up their nuclear arms. This affair has (again) shown the the only way to guarantee the survival of you country is to be able to respond with a sufficiently high pain level. This is a lesson that Iraq, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and probably Taiwan and Germany have taken to heart.
This is the exact wrong time to do these things. First, you need a strong economy and a backbone that can sustain sustainable practices. Otherwise, the cost of climate change is acceptable over literal starvation, insurrection (Sri Lanka) and other destructive effects in the society.
Has anyone done serious and with good faith, balance and ROI of some of these climate change policies? Note that I am not challenging the validity of CC science, just the economic policies. I hope that its open for debate.
But arguably the EU is even more motivated by the security issues of an emboldened Russia. Combined with the much stronger environmental push from groups in Europe, it seems reasonable that they would push as much or more for energy-based sanctions against Russia.
There is no to very little security issues. Russia is never going to attack the EU/Nato, which are many times stronger that it is, and we've seen that Russia is already struggling in Ukraine.
At the moment Europe is going through a self-inflicted crisis that is not justified, be it by security or "the environment".
It may be reasonable to decrease dependency on Russia but the sensible way is to have alternatives in place first.
Edit: Baltic states are in Nato, so my comment fully applies to them.
Saying that "Russia did invade Ukraine so they could attack Nato" is equivalent to saying "the US invaded Iraq so they could attack China". It is plainly a rhetorical fallacy.
How much are you willing to bet on that? I saw plenty of people saying before the invasion that it would be irrational for Putin to invade and therefore he wouldn't. He did it anyway and we can easily see from how badly it's gone so far that it wasn't rational, so the obvious conclusion is that he's not acting rationally.
He might be relying on people's grasp of history being terrible and that they have far more desire to be warm than concerned about naked aggression. Which is probably true, although frustrating after all of the examples Europe provided itself in the 1800's and 1900's.
>I saw plenty of people saying before the invasion that it would be irrational for Putin to invade and therefore he wouldn't.
I didn't, but nevertheless there's a difference between "it's irrational because the cost is higher than the benefit" and "it's irrational because there's no benefit to getting your ass kicked".
Isn’t one of those a subset of the other? Both look kinda like they’re applicable to Russia right now, but I’m aware my sense of scale may be wrong for stuff like this.
> Europe so enthusiastically shot itself in the foot
The alternative is letting Putin continue to believe that his vision of Russian irredentism — which could very easily go right though my home in Berlin and not stop for a further 100 miles or so — is something the rest of us will sit back and allow.
Putin started a war, even if he hasn't officially called it one yet. Hopefully it will be stopped before he does call it that, but nothing about his decision to invade Ukraine appears either rational or connected with reality.
> The alternative is letting Putin continue to believe that his vision of Russian irredentism — which could very easily go right though my home in Berlin
Maybe if Germany had Russian-majority areas, had started banning the use of Russian, and had violent demonstration clashes resulting in neo-Nazis burning ethnic Russian supporters and seperatists alive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes
I don't support Putin or the invasion at all, but it's not like he just invaded out of the blue. Ukraine also failed to allow Donetsk and Luhansk to hold independent referendums for secession - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Elections_in_...
The situation is nowhere near as black and white as just "Putin madman". A peaceful compromise around referendums and the right to self-determination would have been the best outcome, but now we should be neutral and put the stability of our own countries first.
Unfortunately there is evidence that Putin was deliberately stirring up trouble.
Even more unfortunately, at that level propaganda is beyond my ken to reliability disabuse, and I know full well that hawks want me to fear more than I need to.
Yet it is the locals he's claiming to want to liberate who are shooting his troops, the cities he's saying he wants to save that are being flattened by his missiles.
Reminds me of the stories of Afghanistan, where we blew up weddings and then were surprised the locals didn't like us.
Probably because relatively minor economic pain now is better than a dictator with imperial ambitions starting another European war. I mean, how much is Lithuania or Poland worth? Or if he keeps rolling West, how much do the Germans want to sacrifice now to make it less likely Berlin ends up under Russian control.
It's crazy, it means the costs of imports from the US (oil, cars, even consumer electronics) have shot up almost 20% in a year - and then there's the inflation and looming gas shortages, etc.
Neutrality is looking really, really nice right about now. We could keep the gas flowing via NS2 and get some stability back.
In the long-term absolutely, but electrification of domestic heating and industry, and nuclear / wind / solar / hydroelectric power plants aren't going to be built by November.
Right now we're using coal for electricity again, and that's much worse than using NS2 in the short term.
With the EU preference for kicking the can down the road, and Germany’s tendency to make stupid decisions (e.g. shutting down nuclear), without Russia stirring shit up it would never have happened anyways.
Yeah, now, sure millions might freeze to death and die of hunger in the next (few) winter(s) / year(s) but at least politicians can’t deny the problem exists any longer so it will eventually get solved.
You say that as though "material comfort" doesn't matter - it's life and death, people will die during the gas shortages, industry will shut down, people will lose their livelihoods, the Euro will crash further, investment and industries will leave entirely.
For what? So corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs can skim off their gas transit fees (see Naftogaz and Burisma) instead of corrupt Russian ones, all assisted by far-right paramilitaries (on both sides)? We don't have to take a side in every conflict, especially when it demands so much sacrifice.
"For what"?? Sure there is tons of corruption in Ukraine, but that's the only thing that comes to your mind? Mass murders, mass rapes, perpetrated by russian soldiers, you choose to forget?...
"We should totally be appeasing the expansionist, authoritarian dictator biting chunks out of Eastern European countries in order to make sure we don't suffer any economic pain. That never works out poorly for anyone!"
Goods and services from warring countries often become inaccessible and friendly countries' goods and services get spent on materiel. Money is just an abstraction. The world's resources decrease in a very real way. Inflation just mirrors this onto the abstraction. (Although inflation can be caused by other things as well.)
When we originally legislated the closing of the nuclear plants, the next (conservative) government reverted those plans, only to change their minds after Fukushima. If we now revert again, the comedians would have a field day with Germany doing an exit from exit from the exit from the exit from nuclear energy
The plants would need refueling and a big safety check and overhaul, which would take them offline at pretty much exactly the time where they would be the most useful. The only way to make them useful for this situation would be to skip the safety check. And everything the last few years has been done under the assumption that they will shut down, this is not an easy decision to reverse on the spot.
And for energy generation we can fall back to coal, which is easier and quicker to reactivate than nuclear energy. Not nice in terms of CO2, but the most practical solution right now.
Electricity isn't the issue, several countries have re-opened coal plants to deal with that (also from what I understand the nuclear plants can't just be turned back on, they are several stages through decommissioning and were already reaching the end of service without refurbishment, etc.).
But natural gas itself is still required for industry and domestic heating in most of Europe, and that cannot be solved in the 3 months remaining to winter.
I still do not understand why there's a lot of focus on Germany without mentioning Italy.
They have voted in the 80s to ban nuclear power as well, and now energy costs are through the roof. It will be an awful, expensive winter over there importing French nuclear electricity and Russian gas.
AFAIK there is no movement whatsoever to reconsider that referendum. Last I checked Italians are very much against it.
Italy can get gas from Algeria IIRC - like Spain does from Nigeria too.
But the referendum doesn't matter right now anyway, there is no way to rush through electrification of domestic heating and industry and build functional nuclear power plants in ~4 months.
So the only question is what to do regarding gas sources or shortages.
Italy also voted recently to ban nuclear _again_ after it had been allowed a second time. There are some people in favor, but it's unlikely to get reversed any time soon.
FWIW, France is currently importing energy from Germany, and will be doing that until the winter, because they shut down many reactors for maintenance, the futures for electricity in France were > €1200/MWh last week.
> Italy also voted recently to ban nuclear _again_ after it had been allowed a second time.
The first referendum was 6 months after Chernobyl, the second one 3 months after Fukushima. No wonder the outcome was overwhelmingly against it. Demagogy in its purest form.
Well, to continue operating the three nuclear plants that are currently still operating (not to mention restarting those that have been shut down years ago), they would have to order new fuel rods. Obviously those aren't things you can simply order on Amazon. Usually, these orders have to be planned years in advance, and the chances of reducing the waiting time are pretty slim, because guess who is the largest manufacturer? Right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosatom.
Every so often I see adverts for a far broader range of things than is plausible. I assume Amazon and eBay bought “$NOUN, buy it cheap!” for all nouns.
It's interesting to see Europeans POV on the war in Ukraine - from here in the US it always looked like they were fully onboard with supporting Ukraine, but from the comments I see here, it seems people are starting to be unhappy about it because of the effects on their economy.
In the US we also feel the effects, but not as much.
It might be time for the US to help Europe monetarily with this, to share the pain as it were.
I'm not happy to pay more for things, but I'm willing to do it because it's the right thing to do.
Am I incorrect, are these comments from Europeans minority views, or is sentiment really starting to shift?
It's funny you say people in the U.S. were fully onboard with supporting Ukraine. I recall hacker news had a lot of posts against sanctions when the U.S. announced sanctions. Hacker news has a decent amount of libertarians and crypto-anarchists, as well as other free thinkers. All of whom had reasons to be against sanctions. (For one thing sanctions are interference in the free market.)
Anecdata from Berlin: The pulse here seems to be resignation. The Russians started this nonsense and dragged Europe into it. I haven't heard anyone ever consider letting the Russians have their way. It's just what we have to do. The line in the sand has already been drawn.
We can't help that these events have be set in motion. We're playing the hand we've been dealt. What's the alternative? Letting Putin win? And then what? Do you think it will end there? That it will all be water under the bridge, and that Russian aggression will end there?
At least here in northern Europe the opinion still seems to be solid in support for Ukraine. The invasion is not always the top headline anymore though.
the sentiment in Europe varies wildly by country. Baltics and Poland are firmly in the hawksish camp, since they have a traditional enmity for Russia.
Some like Hungary are Putin puppets.
Other countries have a strong no-war culture, e.g. in Germany and Italy the sentiment is more split.
Additionally, countries such as Italy or France have historically harboured a sizeable amount of people who dislike NATO and the US, so they naturally flock to the "this is a colonial war by the US" camp.
If anything, it's surprising the EU has reacted in such a coordinated way.
There was a longer comment here a minute ago with several paragraphs the reading of which felt like watching Trumpian politics at its worst: So much to disagree with that one doesn’t know where to even start. I just wanted to write a note and thank whoever removed it.
Trump has criticized Europe for not spending enough on defence and for being too friendly with Russia. His administration also stopped Nord Stream 2, a decision which later Biden administration reversed. So while this comment is horrible, I really don't see how could you call it trumpist.
No, that's not from downvotes, that's from "flagging".
Personally I only flag spam and hate speech, but some people get really upset by certain posts and will flag them rather than (or in addition to) downvoting.
With enough flags the post becomes "dead" and then you can't reply to it, and it's hidden by default. It's possible to un-flag it with the "vouch" option.
I think flagged posts are often reviewed by dang (a moderator).
Let's not get too excited here folks. Parity amounts to a Usd/Dem rate of about 1.95 and change. The late 80s and most of the 90s were spent with a Usd/Dem rate of roughly 1.70 +/- 25 big figs and another 10 outside of that. Yes, I'm old.
FX rates are mostly driven by (real) investment flow and expectations of future growth. Absolute and relative levels of interest rates tend to reflect that as well though there are some speculative flows that will chase carry trades.
Europe is paying the piper for their energy and covid policies. US may be an industrial death machine crushing the poors in the wheels of industry, but it does have its upsides for the ones feeding the poors into the machine.
One thing I've always wondered: how aligned is the current spot price to day to day transactions when the trading day is active?
Let's say EUR/USD reaches parity for 2 hours during the trading day and I'm in Europe -- for those two hours are my transactions 1 to 1 or is there a lag of a few hours? Or is the "on the ground" exchange rate representative of the previous closing price?
There is no central exchange for FX so no "official spot price". I'm not clear what time is used to set the FX rate when you swipe a credit card. If you use a credit card it'll depend on the bank, and different banks will have different timing. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/currency-exc... . That site looks like the ISK example isn't right, but does have other hints and says ask your issuer.
US Bank A maintains an account with British Bank B but it’s dollar account
Now an American business with account in Bank A is paying a British contractor $100 in Bank B
So Bank B is going to subtract $100 from Bank A’s Dollar denominated account and add GBP 84 to the British contractors account. What happens in between? How did those dollars become pounds?
A foreign exchange is an exchange, ie there are two sides. Each starts with one thing and ends up with another. In your example American Bank A starts with $100 and ends up with £84, British Bank (or an intermediary) has to have someone who wants dollars (or is a Market Maker), that person will give their pounds and end up with the dollars.
Having two parties and two banks makes it a bit complicated. If you think of a guy behind a desk in an airport trading cash - you give him $100 and get £84, the guy behind the desk started with £84 and now has $100. (The next customer might pay £87 to get $100 - the desk makes a small profit and both customers have exchanged what they wanted)
Clearly if the price changes can be reported with such high precision, it needs to be based on a solid value from an exchange or a set of real exchanges instead of an aggregate of all the airport guys exchanging cash.
(For that matter, even the airport guys don’t set their own prices. They set a commission on top of the day’s forex rate)
There is no exchange, no central price. If you see a price on TV or somewhere its what a given bank or instution quotes, or maybe a blend of quotes. This is probably true of everything now, if you buy Apple stock you probably aren't trading on Nasdaq you trade on some hedge fund algo, the Nasdaq price is an approximation of what bid/ask you'll trade at.
FX is a shared or "distributed" market between the institutions that trade, such as big international banks and other market participants. They would use a shared electronic market (reporting) to determine the price. It's not exchange (as in NYSE) based. The exchange rate is set by what the market participants are willing to trade at. Banks can hold numerous currencies by having banking licences in the respective countries.
I researched this for my Chase Saphhire Reserve card, which uses Visa as its bank.
They lock in exchange rates for the whole day, based on rates yesterday. Don't know precisely what hour it's locked in, or if it's an average for the whole day, or some other calculation.
I think I calculated that they are charging ~1-2% premium on top of the market rate. CSR has no fees beyond that for foreign currency purchases.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder what if any liquid EUR-denominated good or services a US borrower could profitably buy with a credit card (if they had a huge, say, $1M credit limit), in the event the Euro ever dropped >5% in one day against the dollar, to exploit this delay.
I can't think of anything offhand but I bet someone clever could, and make some money doing it.
Although there tends to be a global reported price for FX, in reality it's an array of institutions enabling buying and selling.
The actual price you get for your transactions depends on who you're transacting with.
If you use a Visa or a Mastercard, generally there is fee taken by those companies, about 0.5% and then your bank may take a further cut, usually about 3%. There are many cards that don't take the 3%.
You may find that the transaction is reported to you initially near the spot price, less the 0.5%, but you'll see a different amount on your statement because the settlement of the transaction takes place at a different time (maybe 2 days later) and a different exchange rate. The reason for this is that the parties involved want to avoid exchange rate risk so they take the market rate when they actually account for the payment.
The article kind of dances around the cause. It suggests that the war might have something to do with it. Then it pivots to the ECB being "behind the curve" on raising interest rates in the face of sky-high inflation. The higher bond yields in the US must be drawing capital out of the euro and into the dollar. Maybe there's some safe haven buying.
Unfortunately, this article is representative of the kind of aimless search for an answer to the simple question of how the US dollar can be surging like this at a time of domestic inflation the likes of which haven't been seen in four decades and gargantuan budget deficits.
What the article does not mention is US dollar-denominated debt taken out by foreign entities. As the dollar rises, these entities must scramble to find the dollars to service the debt, driving the dollar still higher and so on. This seems like a strange thing to do (borrow in someone else's currency, specifically US dollars), but it is very, very common.
If this dynamic sounds familiar, it's because it's called a "short squeeze." Those foreign borrowers have shorted the US dollar by borrowing and then immediately spending the proceeds. If the dollar falls, the borrowers make out like bandits (sell high, buy low). But when the dollar rises, they come under pressure and must cough up assets to sell to buy... more US dollars (sell low, buy high).
In today's world dollar strength is a sign of a distressed world economy. Selling assets to buy US currency to service debts is not sustainable. So the long-term picture for the US is not rosy, even less so for the rest of the world. A lot of debts will be defaulted on because the squeeze squashes borrowers like bugs. In the intermediate term, however, the dynamic of a rising dollar and distressed world economy can work very much to the benefit of the US. The stock and bond markets can soar as capital floods into US markets, driven by the far higher return potential compared to the rest of the world. This in turn can severely distort the economic picture, causing catastrophic policy mistakes and private mis-readings of the economic picture.
Fair points but why is the dollar rising in the first place? Isn’t that because of the artificially high oil prices because of the war.. since middle eastern oil is sold in USD.
Countries need to buy dollars to buy oil. That’s why dollar is rising.
The largest driver of currency movements in major currencies like the USD and EUR is interest rates. The US is currently has 2% (I think?) higher rates than EUR and the FED is more likely to raise rates more aggressively than the ECB.
That alone is enough to set off a declining trend in the euro vs the dollar.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadWaiter: Un café? Un dessert?
Elderly lady tourist: I'm sorry, in English?
Waiter: A coffee? A dessert?
A bit like "the French have no word for entrepreneur" (-- George w. Bush, alledgedly)
He says “I can tell you that the prime minister [Blair] never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told [his friend] Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it. If she put this in a speech, it must have been a joke.”
While Blair / Campbell have an obvious interest in denying this (it's not good to be rude about other countries leaders), we might reasonably be suspicious of Campbell's denial.
This is still useful if our interest is "When was this said?" because we know Shirley Williams talks about it, so e.g. if some future historian is wondering about a claim Trump said this to Johnson, they've got this record that well, this particular "American Presidents are idiots" quote certainly pre-dates that.
There a lot of interesting turns of phrase where that is primarily what we care about - did Franklin say that stuff about hanging together or hanging separately? Perhaps not. This play on words does however seem to originate in that period, you won't find it much earlier than the American Revolution, while by the 19th century it's commonplace.
I'm somewhat the defacto interviewer at my company for latino interviewees because of my time in south america. I don't even speak spanish barring enough to survive, but I can understand their english better than my peers. When they asked how I was understanding what they said, I didn't even realize I was the only one getting it.
I think people in general should hang out in strange lands to get your brain to be more flexible to different kinds of inputs even if you don't plan learning a new language.
I'm kind of the opposite of you. My hearing is extremely sensitive to a fault and picks up more than I even want. I'll say that I'm easily overwhelmed when there is a lot of competing noise though.
And that's leaving out that the articles make it harder. If you don't speak French, knowing where the spaces go in uncafe isn't automatic (although written as one word it is much easier than verbally).
I recommend everyone try it before you judge the elderly lady.
Although, I may have been able to figure it out from context (end of a meal, sitting down at a coffee and desert place)
I mean, lots of us have trouble understanding various British accents, before slang even enters the game.
His French is excellent. I really loved the early seasons, where he was teaching French to a Glaswegian woman. French with a Glasgow accent is baffling and beautiful.
The pronunciation of "café" is more similar to English, but spoken at conversational speed it can still be hard to parse. The article and the word flow together; it would sound like "ahcuhfay" (with the last syllable sort of fading out).
I'm still learning French. I watch French language films with the subtitles on, because even when I know 100% of the vocabulary I often can't follow the spoken words without a nudge to provide context.
French is a lovely language, but it's conspicuously mushy. They French are aware of it. There are many language resources that over-enunciate as an educational tool.
So I sympathize with the elderly tourist. Those words are very similar on the page, but in a noisy cafe I could see myself confused as well.
But this isn’t the only thing going on, lots of governments are giving actual weapons to Ukraine as well. If he was rational, sadly that appears to be a big if, that would probably help deter Putin too.
the only nation that's going to profit from the war in Ukraine is the US... increased NATO membership... increased arms sales... increased dependence on US for oil and gas supplies... etc. etc.
Downvote away as you always do. I know that even supposedly intelligent Americans have a total mental block when it comes to accepting that your country might actually be the cause of a lot of the trouble in the world --if not directly, then behind the scenes, fanning the flames. Unfortunately we'll all be dead and gone by the time the official documents relating to this period in time are declassified. But, boy are your grandchildren going to laugh at how gullible you all were!
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
The ECB has stopped bond buying as of July 1st. https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/ecb-ends-bond-bu...
The BoE stopped expanding QE in December and started tightening in March. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/quantitative...
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/central-bank-balance-...
[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/central-bank-bal...
The BoE balance sheet stopped going up as of December and has been going down since March. (You can see this if you switch to the 1Y view of your chart.)
Edit: this is not a "minor economic pain" for Europe and might reach extreme consequences later this year.
On the other hand, the US have played extremely well, gaining on all fronts (increased influence through enlarged Nato and, increased weapons sales, increases oil/gas profits), while China is left in an awkward position. Only downside seems to have been the push for alternatives to dollar/western-centric financial system.
is rather unfair I think - there are very good reasons why an unpleasant action might be necessary
LNG is not going to suffice. There isnt even the port capacity to bring it in. Rationing would have to be extreme just to ride out the winter. And then what?
Hitting the economic self destruct button so that Ukraine reserves the right to join NATO doesnt look so appealing any more.
If supplies where dropping 80% Germany would be facing real issues, but that's not the scale we are talking about.
In general, basic self-interest in geopolitics means to always to something only with a clear upside for yourselves (duh)
With the energy prices as they stand, the UK for example is heading for a social and potentially humanitarian disaster this winter. I don't see how "being firm against Putin" or "Ukraine" justify it.
This a ridiculous absurd assumption. Russia has massive supply issues for just about everything, including defense related industries.
>In general, basic self-interest in geopolitics means to always to something only with a clear upside for yourselves (duh)
[Citation needed]. If the downsides for your enemy are massive it makes sense to take a hit your self. In fact Putin did count on the west to continue it's cynical way of doing business like it did after all the previous Russian wars (Chechnya 1/2, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, Donbass). I'm sure, if the EU could have made the threat of doing what it did later, this would have deterred the invasion. It just didn't have any credibility due to past decisions. But now future threats should be take more seriously. This might stabilize the world as a hole.
>I don't see how "being firm against Putin" or "Ukraine" justify it.
The next winter is going to suck and most people might not have realized that. But speaking of humanitarian disasters, this is our best bet to avoid a way, way bigger humanitarian disaster in the baltics.
What extra justification is needed?
The Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights Daria Gerasimchuk on the Polish TV channel "Belsat" exposed fake Ukrainian propaganda about the alleged violence by the Russian military against Ukrainian children. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUBRGUH-Kc
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has not a single confirmed fact of violence so far.
Europe (EU/Nato) is not at risk of attack by Russia. It's not clear why Finland would suddenly be at risk.
What is happening is a continuation of the fall of the USSR when Russia lost very big and was hastily written off. Russia has somewhat recovered and is asserting its claims and interests. While we should hold firm when this clashes with our own, saying that Russia should be beaten into submission is not going to work and is only going to perpetuate conflicts.
As it stands Russia is going to take the Donbas, and it took Crimea back in 2014. So the question is where we go from there. They are not going to hand those territories back to anyone. So we need to negotiate spheres of influence backed by serious force as was the case before the fall of the USSR.
The proposal to have a neutral Ukraine was sensible provided all parties are very seriously held to their word.
Lastly, we should remember that Crimea used to be Russian until very recently and that Ukraine is very special for Russia, so it's far from obvious to me that what they are doing there means they plan to attack/invade other neighbouring countries afterwards...
It's not that we're now suddenly at risk, it's more that we were at risk all the time and now we finally understand it.
Also the highly visible "special operation" allows Russia a whole new level of pressuring us into various things. The message we're seeing is "if we decide to fuck you up, we don't much care if a bunch of our boys get hurt in the process". Which pretty much renders useless any "credible defense deterrent" which isn't an existential threat to them.
> like turning public opinion into agreeing to join Nato in some countries
The change of public opinion as result of the actions we've seen was such an obvious consequence, it makes me wonder if it wasn't one of the effects Putin wanted to get out of this campaign.
Finland, which kept relatively good relations with the USSR throughout the Cold War had actually been at extreme risk all along and must join Nato right now. Right... well at least they have a long border with Russia, not like Sweden... As long as they order F-35s everything's cool, I guess.
It's probably something that's hard to understand from a comfy armchair half a world away, so I guess that's an excuse for the condescending tone.
There is a farmer's revolt in Netherlands that's not covered by American media for some reason, but dw and Politico is: https://www.politico.eu/article/police-fire-dutch-farmer-pro...
This is the exact wrong time to do these things. First, you need a strong economy and a backbone that can sustain sustainable practices. Otherwise, the cost of climate change is acceptable over literal starvation, insurrection (Sri Lanka) and other destructive effects in the society.
Has anyone done serious and with good faith, balance and ROI of some of these climate change policies? Note that I am not challenging the validity of CC science, just the economic policies. I hope that its open for debate.
At the moment Europe is going through a self-inflicted crisis that is not justified, be it by security or "the environment".
It may be reasonable to decrease dependency on Russia but the sensible way is to have alternatives in place first.
Edit: Baltic states are in Nato, so my comment fully applies to them.
Saying that "Russia did invade Ukraine so they could attack Nato" is equivalent to saying "the US invaded Iraq so they could attack China". It is plainly a rhetorical fallacy.
I didn't, but nevertheless there's a difference between "it's irrational because the cost is higher than the benefit" and "it's irrational because there's no benefit to getting your ass kicked".
EDIT: Finland was also part of Russia.
The alternative is letting Putin continue to believe that his vision of Russian irredentism — which could very easily go right though my home in Berlin and not stop for a further 100 miles or so — is something the rest of us will sit back and allow.
Putin started a war, even if he hasn't officially called it one yet. Hopefully it will be stopped before he does call it that, but nothing about his decision to invade Ukraine appears either rational or connected with reality.
Maybe if Germany had Russian-majority areas, had started banning the use of Russian, and had violent demonstration clashes resulting in neo-Nazis burning ethnic Russian supporters and seperatists alive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes
I don't support Putin or the invasion at all, but it's not like he just invaded out of the blue. Ukraine also failed to allow Donetsk and Luhansk to hold independent referendums for secession - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Elections_in_...
The situation is nowhere near as black and white as just "Putin madman". A peaceful compromise around referendums and the right to self-determination would have been the best outcome, but now we should be neutral and put the stability of our own countries first.
Even more unfortunately, at that level propaganda is beyond my ken to reliability disabuse, and I know full well that hawks want me to fear more than I need to.
Yet it is the locals he's claiming to want to liberate who are shooting his troops, the cities he's saying he wants to save that are being flattened by his missiles.
Reminds me of the stories of Afghanistan, where we blew up weddings and then were surprised the locals didn't like us.
It's a massive win for the US, the arms exports too.
No, it’s not. Half our politicians are pissed we’re spending $40 billion.
Neutrality is looking really, really nice right about now. We could keep the gas flowing via NS2 and get some stability back.
Right now we're using coal for electricity again, and that's much worse than using NS2 in the short term.
Yeah, now, sure millions might freeze to death and die of hunger in the next (few) winter(s) / year(s) but at least politicians can’t deny the problem exists any longer so it will eventually get solved.
For what? So corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs can skim off their gas transit fees (see Naftogaz and Burisma) instead of corrupt Russian ones, all assisted by far-right paramilitaries (on both sides)? We don't have to take a side in every conflict, especially when it demands so much sacrifice.
War destroys stuff, even as the numerical quantity of money remains the same.
And for energy generation we can fall back to coal, which is easier and quicker to reactivate than nuclear energy. Not nice in terms of CO2, but the most practical solution right now.
But natural gas itself is still required for industry and domestic heating in most of Europe, and that cannot be solved in the 3 months remaining to winter.
They have voted in the 80s to ban nuclear power as well, and now energy costs are through the roof. It will be an awful, expensive winter over there importing French nuclear electricity and Russian gas.
AFAIK there is no movement whatsoever to reconsider that referendum. Last I checked Italians are very much against it.
But the referendum doesn't matter right now anyway, there is no way to rush through electrification of domestic heating and industry and build functional nuclear power plants in ~4 months.
So the only question is what to do regarding gas sources or shortages.
FWIW, France is currently importing energy from Germany, and will be doing that until the winter, because they shut down many reactors for maintenance, the futures for electricity in France were > €1200/MWh last week.
The first referendum was 6 months after Chernobyl, the second one 3 months after Fukushima. No wonder the outcome was overwhelmingly against it. Demagogy in its purest form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Italy
Didn’t see that today, sadly, but I did find this: https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM
In the US we also feel the effects, but not as much.
It might be time for the US to help Europe monetarily with this, to share the pain as it were.
I'm not happy to pay more for things, but I'm willing to do it because it's the right thing to do.
Am I incorrect, are these comments from Europeans minority views, or is sentiment really starting to shift?
We'll play our part, because we have to.
Some like Hungary are Putin puppets.
Other countries have a strong no-war culture, e.g. in Germany and Italy the sentiment is more split.
Additionally, countries such as Italy or France have historically harboured a sizeable amount of people who dislike NATO and the US, so they naturally flock to the "this is a colonial war by the US" camp.
If anything, it's surprising the EU has reacted in such a coordinated way.
> It might be time for the US to help Europe monetarily with this, to share the pain as it were.
That would be very much appreciated.
You can reveal it by going to your user settings and changing "showdead" to "yes".
Personally I only flag spam and hate speech, but some people get really upset by certain posts and will flag them rather than (or in addition to) downvoting.
With enough flags the post becomes "dead" and then you can't reply to it, and it's hidden by default. It's possible to un-flag it with the "vouch" option.
I think flagged posts are often reviewed by dang (a moderator).
FX rates are mostly driven by (real) investment flow and expectations of future growth. Absolute and relative levels of interest rates tend to reflect that as well though there are some speculative flows that will chase carry trades.
Let's say EUR/USD reaches parity for 2 hours during the trading day and I'm in Europe -- for those two hours are my transactions 1 to 1 or is there a lag of a few hours? Or is the "on the ground" exchange rate representative of the previous closing price?
US Bank A maintains an account with British Bank B but it’s dollar account
Now an American business with account in Bank A is paying a British contractor $100 in Bank B
So Bank B is going to subtract $100 from Bank A’s Dollar denominated account and add GBP 84 to the British contractors account. What happens in between? How did those dollars become pounds?
Having two parties and two banks makes it a bit complicated. If you think of a guy behind a desk in an airport trading cash - you give him $100 and get £84, the guy behind the desk started with £84 and now has $100. (The next customer might pay £87 to get $100 - the desk makes a small profit and both customers have exchanged what they wanted)
Clearly if the price changes can be reported with such high precision, it needs to be based on a solid value from an exchange or a set of real exchanges instead of an aggregate of all the airport guys exchanging cash.
(For that matter, even the airport guys don’t set their own prices. They set a commission on top of the day’s forex rate)
The currencies themselves are merely entries in a (bank) ledger for an account denominated in the given currency.
The same with shares, options and other intangibles; they are records in institutions that are empowered to hold them.
1. What/Where is this market? What’s the forex equivalent of NYSE or NASDAQ
2. Even If both the banks hold the other country’s currency, (which in most cases they won’t), how do they know what the exchange rate is.
See here for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market
They lock in exchange rates for the whole day, based on rates yesterday. Don't know precisely what hour it's locked in, or if it's an average for the whole day, or some other calculation.
I think I calculated that they are charging ~1-2% premium on top of the market rate. CSR has no fees beyond that for foreign currency purchases.
I can't think of anything offhand but I bet someone clever could, and make some money doing it.
The actual price you get for your transactions depends on who you're transacting with.
If you use a Visa or a Mastercard, generally there is fee taken by those companies, about 0.5% and then your bank may take a further cut, usually about 3%. There are many cards that don't take the 3%.
You may find that the transaction is reported to you initially near the spot price, less the 0.5%, but you'll see a different amount on your statement because the settlement of the transaction takes place at a different time (maybe 2 days later) and a different exchange rate. The reason for this is that the parties involved want to avoid exchange rate risk so they take the market rate when they actually account for the payment.
Unfortunately, this article is representative of the kind of aimless search for an answer to the simple question of how the US dollar can be surging like this at a time of domestic inflation the likes of which haven't been seen in four decades and gargantuan budget deficits.
What the article does not mention is US dollar-denominated debt taken out by foreign entities. As the dollar rises, these entities must scramble to find the dollars to service the debt, driving the dollar still higher and so on. This seems like a strange thing to do (borrow in someone else's currency, specifically US dollars), but it is very, very common.
If this dynamic sounds familiar, it's because it's called a "short squeeze." Those foreign borrowers have shorted the US dollar by borrowing and then immediately spending the proceeds. If the dollar falls, the borrowers make out like bandits (sell high, buy low). But when the dollar rises, they come under pressure and must cough up assets to sell to buy... more US dollars (sell low, buy high).
In today's world dollar strength is a sign of a distressed world economy. Selling assets to buy US currency to service debts is not sustainable. So the long-term picture for the US is not rosy, even less so for the rest of the world. A lot of debts will be defaulted on because the squeeze squashes borrowers like bugs. In the intermediate term, however, the dynamic of a rising dollar and distressed world economy can work very much to the benefit of the US. The stock and bond markets can soar as capital floods into US markets, driven by the far higher return potential compared to the rest of the world. This in turn can severely distort the economic picture, causing catastrophic policy mistakes and private mis-readings of the economic picture.
Countries need to buy dollars to buy oil. That’s why dollar is rising.
That alone is enough to set off a declining trend in the euro vs the dollar.