French Elections Could Affect HADOPI, ACTA 153
bs0d3 writes "From having a position in the development and support of ACTA, to implementation of HADOPI, to imposing an internet tax to pay for music; France has been at the forefront of anti-piracy legislation. This week, it has been announced that current President and anti-piracy advocate Nicolas Sarkozy is unlikely to win the next election. His leading opponent is a man named Francois Hollande. Hollande has in the past opposed both ACTA and HADOPI (France's 3 strikes law). Hollande believes that ACTA, 'originally intended to combat counterfeiting trade[,] was gradually diverted from its objective, in the utmost discretion and without any democratic process.' At the same time, Hollande is also strongly against piracy. 'Piracy has been costly,' Hollande said, 'but I do not think that law enforcement alone is the answer to the problem.' Will internet issues be of concern to the voters in France? It certainly is to the rest of us internet users."
Too early to tell (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering Sarkozy got only 1% less of the vote than Hollande in the first round, it's far too early to call it. All the folks that voted for other candidates will pick 1 of the 2 in the next round, and considering the massive amount of votes that went to Le Pen...we might very well be seeing more of Sarkozy.
Re:Too early to tell (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering Sarkozy got only 1% less of the vote than Hollande in the first round, it's far too early to call it. All the folks that voted for other candidates will pick 1 of the 2 in the next round, and considering the massive amount of votes that went to Le Pen...we might very well be seeing more of Sarkozy.
There are a lot bad signs for Sarkozy. For one, this is the first election in France's 5th republic where the sitting president didn't come out on top in the first-round popular vote [1]. Another is that Sarkozy has yielded his platform to the extreme right - this not only transfers power in the hands of Le Pen, but will piss off many of the non-extreme right wing voters. He has a very tough fight coming up, and I predict, barring any last-minute gimmicks/scandals, he'll lose it.
[1] http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/04/hollande-beats-sarkozy-in-french-first-round-voting/ [vanguardngr.com]
Re:Too early to tell (Score:5, Informative)
Considering Sarkozy got only 1% less of the vote than Hollande in the first round, it's far too early to call it. All the folks that voted for other candidates will pick 1 of the 2 in the next round, and considering the massive amount of votes that went to Le Pen...we might very well be seeing more of Sarkozy.
Maybe, but according to exit polls in round 1 [parismatch.com], the 18% who voted for Le Pen are only leaning 48/31 for Sarkozy over Hollande, while the 11% who voted for Mélenchon are leaning 83/6 for Hollande over Sarkozy. The poll shows Hollande leading by 9 points, 54.5% vs 45.5%.
Re:Too early to tell (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering Sarkozy got only 1% less of the vote than Hollande in the first round, it's far too early to call it. All the folks that voted for other candidates will pick 1 of the 2 in the next round, and considering the massive amount of votes that went to Le Pen...we might very well be seeing more of Sarkozy.
true. besides, even if hollande got to power he would pretty soon change his mind on the subject, like any and every other european leader has done. it would just take a few phone calls, if at all necessary. the only difference would be that while sarko just barks, hollande would dish out some justifying bland rethoric. these matters just float high above politics.
that not to mention that nowadays any socialist party in europe could be as socialistic as, say, us democrats. with some exceptions in scandinavia, maybe. if real political change in europe does not come from a social revolution, don't expect it before the next generation of politicians pitches in. if at all.
Re:Too early to tell (Score:5, Interesting)
There is one difference though. To Sarkozy, piracy and copyright infringement is personal because of his wife. To Hollande, it's business as usual.
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. if real political change in europe does not come from a social revolution, don't expect it before the next generation of politicians pitches in. if at all.
I'm curious what sort of change you're expecting to see. Confiscation of property from the wealthy? Minor pension changes? Because I guarantee there will never be a social revolution based on copyright. 90% of the people don't care about copyright issues, and half of those that do are satisfied as long as they can pirate.
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Because I guarantee there will never be a social revolution based on copyright.
There will be if they actually start cutting off substantial numbers of people from the Internet, particularly if a significant proportion of those people didn't actually commit the crimes they are accused of but got punished extra-judicially anyway.
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Right to be left.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Right to be left.. (Score:5, Interesting)
As a dutchman, I'm telling you that plenty of us would be happy to kick Wilders out of the country-... or better yet, launch him on a one-way trip to space if we can. But we can't seem to get him out of our politics democratically because a lot of christians vote for him out of fear of muslims.
Apparently, for some of us any muslim is worth losing all common sense over. I guess.. that's some bonus points to them muslim-folks?
Seriously though, this deserves a huge facepalm.
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Re:Right to be left.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Was it effective? I doubt Wilders would have become as popular as he is if Fortuyn were still around. At least Fortuyn was remarkably honest for a politician, while I get the impression that Wilders is playing one big popularity game. The problem is not Wilders himself, but that a large number of people vote for him.
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No, it's not. How is ripping the sock puppet apart keeping the puppeteer at bay?
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As a dutchman, I'm telling you that plenty of us would be happy to kick Wilders out of the country
In other words, you disagree with the majority of your voters? You sound like a particularly bitter political person one who blames the majority of your countrymen's as being fearful idiots who simply vote for someone for one obviously bad reason. I somehow doubt that's the real truth behind it, as it comes off pretty much like American politics and how one political party endlessly describes the other, including the "they fear Muslims" line.
And regarding this topic, one would have to be ignorant if you t
Re:Right to be left.. (Score:4, Insightful)
> In other words, you disagree with the majority of your voters?
The majority of voters did not vote for Wilders, so what's your point again?
Re:Right to be left.. (Score:5, Informative)
As a dutchman, I'm telling you that plenty of us would be happy to kick Wilders out of the country
In other words, you disagree with the majority of your voters? You sound like a particularly bitter political person one who blames the majority of your countrymen's as being fearful idiots who simply vote for someone for one obviously bad reason.
You know there are countries that have more than two political parties? Where you can 'win' an election (with the most votes) because you are the largest minority?
In the last Dutch election Wilders got 24 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, making his party the third largest party in Dutch parliament (behind the VVD - 31 seats - and the PvdA - 30 seats). Hardly a majority isn't it?
Re:Right to be left.. (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, you disagree with the majority of your voters?
I think in any democracy, from time to time, we all agree with Churchill when elections don't go the way we think they should: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
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I think in any democracy, from time to time, we all agree with Churchill when elections don't go the way we think they should: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Well if I was sick I wouldn't take a poll, I'd go see a doctor. But if you're looking for a way to run the country, then taking a poll is a good idea? Democracy makes plenty mistakes, the only saving grace is really that we're all in on it. It doesn't not stop you from banging your head on the wall shouting "OMG you've got to be kidding me they can't be this stupid, didn't you learn anything from last time?!" And it's obvious that what's good for the majority is not always what's good for the people, like t
Re:Right to be left.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, cause of all the muslims i know, none of them in this country (Australia) seem to have an issue with me eating non halal food, or not covering up everywhere, or well anything. I'm sure they exist, just like there exists white australians who go around beating up people of different cultures. i just tend to not associate with people like these.
Perhaps if you weren't so afraid of speaking to people of a different culture, you would have a different view.
assimilation is a slow process. people in one country who all come from another country/share a religion will tend to band together simply because they share something in common. as time passes (generally a couple of generations) there is more mingling between cultures.
i have never heard of these culture wars you speak of and i do not believe in their existence.
Baroness Warsi in the UK (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount of hatred she gets directed against her is impressive, But almost all of it is from white men, including members of her own political party. For every "backward" Muslim in the UK, I suspect we can produce at least 10 equally backward white Brits.
You would think that demonising the Muslims would take the pressure off the Jews, the previous candidates of people like the GP for planned world domination. But in their minds it's simple - white people of nominally Christian background should naturally rule the world, so anybody else is a threat. At least, unlike the USA, in this country you can be openly gay or an atheist and still get elected to political office.
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Planning? We did a while ago, never had any history lessons?
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cause of all the muslims i know, none of them in this country (Australia) seem to have an issue with me eating non halal food
For fear of invoking the no true scotsman fallacy, this sounds a lot like saying 'of all of the christians I know, none of them actually go to church or have read the bible'. These people sound like they are people with muslim parents or a muslim upbringing, rather than muslims. Do they pray four times a day? How often do they go to the mosque?
In general, the people who claim to be members of a religion but don't actually observe any of its practices are not the problem. It's the ones that put their
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How exactly is you not wanting to see two guys kissing different from a Muslim not wanting to see a woman without a burka? It's that hypocrisy that irks me about such arguments. It's wrong, immoral and against God's will if two guys fuck each other, but exactly the same argument is not valid for something that Muslims consider wrong, immoral and against God's will.
Don't get me wrong, personally, I don't give half a shit what someone's imaginary friend wants, but why is the argument A-OK if you bring it but
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But THEY are probably expecting that...
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Ecstasy (Score:2)
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Re:Right to be left.. (Score:4, Informative)
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As much as I dislike most of Wilders' ideas, his party did vote for network neutrality and against ratification of ACTA.
After this weekend's events, I don't think any other party is eager to having Wilders as an ally any time soon. So while he'll continue to create noise in the media, at least we can get a new government that is not held hostage by him.
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Politics is a game to him.
I am glad our kabinet crashed. There is no conceivable way the next kabinet will be as unstable and insane as this one (Wilders wasn't really in the ka
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Still, it's not enough to make me vote socialist
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"Liberal" parties in Europe are mostly "business liberal". Don't expect them to do anything for your liberties, what they care about is unfettered and unregulated business. Or rather, regulating you in favor of businesses.
And judging from the recent elections in Germany, it seems the Germans found out about that...
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My guess is that then there's a chance Greece could be allowed to use the money they get for something other than weapons and bailouts. Maybe even for something that could restart their economy.
An election may have an effect on politics? (Score:5, Funny)
What a bold idea.
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Yeah, let's all Hope for a Change when the new guy comes in. Surely he will abolish all the old power structures in order to fulfill all of his campaign promises.
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Not bloody likely. He may try to implement some ideas, but as soon as he tries to issue debt the cold reality will be like a dog running full speed hitting the end of his leash.
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Don't get your hopes up. If elections could really change anything, they would've been outlawed a while ago.
French internal politics? (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? How'd this make the front page? French internal politics? And such a narrow, parochial viewpoint, too. "A man named Francois Hollande"? That's the best we can do to characterize the man? How about this snippet from The Wikipedia, the Source of all Knowledge: "On 16 October 2011, Hollande was nominated to be the Socialist and Left Radical Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election." Funny how his party affiliation is omitted from the summary. What, it's not relevant?
And not a word about how his #1 rival for the Socialist candidacy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was very conveniently removed from contention from the French race by being arrested in New York on the shocking charge of rape. Let's quote The Holy Wikipedia again: "On June 30, 2011, the New York Times reported that the case was on the "verge of collapse" because of problems with the credibility of the alleged victim, who had, according to sources within the NYPD, repeatedly lied to the police since making her first statement.[57] According to prosecutors, the accuser admitted that she lied to a grand jury about the events surrounding the alleged attack." Had this rape accusation not happened, DSK would be the nominee going against Sarkozy and not "a man named Francois Hollande."
Hey, I'm not saying socialism is bad. It's been a good influence on Western culture in general. Pretty much every item on Marx's Communist Manifesto has been put into law in all Western countries as well as the United Nations. I'm saying let's put the party affiliation right up there where everyone can see...instead of referring to Hollande purely by gender as "a man". Is there anything to be ashamed of?
I'm also questioning the relevance of some random country's internal politics for a Slashdot front page story, even couched in terms of internet freedoms. And the "from the strategic-surrender-in-order-sometimes dept." part of the story is just a cheap shot. America wouldn't even be an independent republic without help from the French. We'd just be a constitutional monarchy like Canada, with a foreigner as our Head of State. What the hell, Slashdot [tvtropes.org]?
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Huh? How'd this make the front page? French internal politics?
When first apparatus for recording music came about SACEM - French equivalent of German GEMA or American RIAA or insert_relevant_copyright_agency_here was first to introduce everything, we in 21st century fight against on interwebs. So, of course that it is interesting how they swing, as they do influence radicalized, corrupt and fascistoid EU. Look at the turnout at their elections - more then 70%. What is turnout in USA? Like 20% or so...if. So, no lesson learned.
Re:French internal politics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? How'd this make the front page? French internal politics?
Well I'm not French either, but it does make a pleasant change from the US political stories that seem to inevitably descend into bleating about libertarians after about a dozen comments.
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Watch this video. [scanpix.no]
I listened through the whole video (two years spent in Montreal let me understand this language well enough) and had shivers down my spine as this video triggered a recall of the very recent history as they were singing The Internationale.
France is in dire need of a libertarian movement, now that Melenchon is gathering so much of the radical left into one coalition and promising to spread this ideology 'Pour tout l'Europe' as he said in the video.
As far as I am concerned, this signals a hu
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We'd just be a constitutional monarchy like Canada, with a foreigner as our Head of State.
The governor-general, the person who actually wields the power of the monarchy is Canadian, and is head of state in name only. So instead of having dead presidents on our currency, we'd have the face of an old english lady. What's the issue?
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First off, "Queen of England"? There has been no such office since the Acts of Union in 1707. Also, I'm not aware of any monarch directly participating in Canadian politics since King George VI sat in on a session of parliament. In the UK she at least has a role meeting with foreign heads of state and such. Since Canada has common law, things don't actually have to be written down for it to be considered law. I'm not sure how the courts would handle the GG picking a PM that didn't represent the largest part
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She is the Queen of the United Kingdom, which includes England, but there is no Queen of England. The number reflects the fact that the monarchy of the UK was a continuation of the monarchy that had existed in England and Scotland.
I'm not French, but I don't eat Freedom Fries (Score:2)
They understand using nuclear power and do it well
SAECM is better than NTSC - tv standards
They were bright enough to go with the Chunnel, despite it taking longer than one election cycle
They do not support Donald Trump for President
They gave the USA the Statue of Liberty and were critical in the Revolutionary War
Maybe they can help in the fight with the RIAA
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There is nothing wrong about constitutional monarchy. The fact that a constitutional monarchy pretty much mandates that the head of state being a different person to head of government actually brings many benefits (and is also one of the main reason many republics follow this path, they just swapped the "crown" for a "president").
Re:French internal politics? (Score:5, Informative)
"Hollande was nominated to be the Socialist and Left Radical Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election."
You known, it is pretty funny to read this from a french point of view. The socialist party in France is considered as a moderate one. And I actually have no idea why the hell the english version of wikipedia says that he was nominated to be the left radical party candidate. It a guy called Mélenchon (and there are other candidates to his left). But I suppose that he is so far on the left that he overflows american standards...
Le Parti Radical (Score:2)
... has not been a radical party for over a century. It's /always/ been to the right of the Socialists.
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In any case, he's a man named François Hollande.
I guess timothy omitted the cedilla for fear that slashcode would mangle it.
I still think CD sales tax for hollywood is weak (Score:2)
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He could be European too, the same shit comes down in most EU countries.
Something I don't understand here... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which isn't much of a problem on a local level because if they fuck up we can have a recall election and yank them out.
Won't matter who is elected. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hollande is unclear on those questions (Score:5, Informative)
During this campaign, François Hollande sent many contradictory signals regarding Hadopi, the anti-piracy legislation. At the beginning of 2012, he said he would abrogate this law. Later he said he would just modify it. Finally he published a letter where he stood aside of the rights holder against pirates, and claimed he would "gather everyone around a table", a trick he used on many topics he wanted to evade. So, even if Hollande is elected (he probably will), no one knows whether he will actually change anything.
Now, on a sidenote, on why French internal policies may have their place on headlines:
* France and Germany are the most influent countries in Europe and a shift of their positions could change the European ones. And since Europe is the first economic power in the world and gathers 27 countries, international treaties and regulations are worthless without it. Here is why such a topic may be of importance.
* If USA's internal policies are on the headlines, why not other countries? Not all of the American policies reported on Slashdot matters for people outside of the USA (95% of the world, the rest of us).
So, yes, a shift in French position regarding the Internet regulation would matter and should be on Slashdot. This news, however, I don't think so.
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Ie, he's the second Obama, where the only "change" was changing his promises, right?
Re:Police not enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Confusing France and Nazi Germany is just fucking dumb.
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Well... Marshal Pétain did it, and a lot of others besides.
Pétain (Score:2)
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You conveniently gloss over the fact that Petain also established a dictatorship within France itself, in direct contravention of all republican principles that the Third Republic stood on. He instituted a secret police that detained and tortured dissenters. And he shipped many Jews over to German death camps. That is what he is vilified for, not just making peace with Germans.
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Confusing France and Nazi Germany is just fucking dumb.
You reckon? [phphosts.org]
You mean a group of organisations [wikipedia.org] which don't shy away of using lies to see the law passed is better in your eyes, eh? After all, SS was equally a "protection squad"... even if the subject of protection was not quite the interest of the part [wikipedia.org] of the German society that preferred democracy and freedom of expression... Besides, you know?, shit will happen [wikipedia.org] when the things are rushed [techdirt.com] by organisations showing little respect [zeropaid.com] for due process.
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Let's just conveniently ignore Spain, shall we, and invalidate any argument by calling in Godwin's Law?
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Only in Germany so far... wait at least 'til all of Europe had a few elections, I don't really remember a lot of elections recently (that weren't just personal elections like prez elections where being third is just being second loser).
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"will you convert? No no'
'Will you confess? NOnoi'
Well then
BRING ON THE NUNS!!!
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<diabolical scare chord>
No-one expects the French Inquisition!
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Sarkozy on the other hand is as genuine as it gets, and he will always have my admiration for being able to render an islamic activist speechless during a television interview (those guys usually won't stop babbling). Sarkozy is the guy that ordered the woman in charge of budget cuts to downsize her own team - that was awesome. He tried to open eyes in France to
as appalling as your admiration for this guy's virtues is, you have a point in that it is actually this kind of mindset what motivates most voters, and that this bullshit is what democracy turns out to be all about. very sad.
the danger of having insanely generous social programs (ask the Greeks)
so we should ask the greeks about their "insanely generous social programs"? funny guy.
Re:Go Sarko (Score:4, Insightful)
so we should ask the greeks about their "insanely generous social programs"? funny guy.
Yes, you should. They drove the country to the very brink of bankruptcy.
greece has never had any "social programs" worth to mention whatsoever. they just had massive state employment. but that they have had for decades without "driving to the very brink of bankruptcy". they are almost broke now, thanks to political corruption and financial speculation and incidentally germany and france had plenty to do with it, not to forget goldman sachs.
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and incidentally germany and france had plenty to do with it, not to forget goldman sachs.
You're blaming Germany and France? Really? Also, blaming Goldman Sachs is like blaming Visa for your high credit card debt. Sure, they are evil enablers, but it's your own stupid fault.
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Evil enablers - think about it this way - is a single evil doer more evil, or is a evil enable that encourages 100 people do evil, more evil?
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Well, let's put it that way, if a sizable portion of the money Greece gets as bailouts has to be used to buy submarines from Germany and frigates and helicopters from France [lepointinternational.com], I cannot help but wonder if there has been an ulterior motive for the whole deal...
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I cannot help but wonder if there has been an ulterior motive for the whole deal...
There is. German and French banks are among the biggest creditors of Greece. So a large part of it has likely been to keep the French and German banks from collapsing. The also locked Greece into a stricter deal, which says on their new bonds, they cannot default, unlike their old bonds. I'm not sure how likely they will be to enforce that, though.
Also, over recent months, the European central bank has been loaning money cheaply to regional European banks (ie, French and German), who then loan the money t
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I think you're confusing "massive defrauding of governments on social programs" with "insanely generous social programs".
They have shit like islands with almost ten percent of people being registered as legally blind. It's simply widespread fraud that's become the "way of the land". It has little to nothing to do with social programs themselves and everything to do with massive corruption and self-centred cultural issues.
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Not to the brink. Greece is actually bankrupt, having defaulted on it's debt.
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greece hasn't defaulted yet. second "rescue" plan avoided that for now.
Did investors take a 'haircut'? Then it's a default, no matter what else you want to call it. They couldn't pay their bills and needed to restructure.
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Did investors take a 'haircut'? Then it's a default, no matter what else you want to call it. They couldn't pay their bills and needed to restructure.
No.
A negotiated restructuring is not the same as a default.
No matter how you slice it or play at words, it isn't the same.
That said, what the Greeks did was a defacto orderly default.
But because they got everyone on board, they don't have to call it one.
Greece is the perfect example of:
"If someone owes you $10 bucks, they have a problem. If someone owes you $1,000,000,000 you have a problem."
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A negotiated restructuring is not the same as a default. No matter how you slice it or play at words, it isn't the same.
Either way, you can't (or are unwilling to) pay back your loans, and your creditor loses money. Details of what you want to call it are unimportant.
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No.
A negotiated restructuring is not the same as a default.
No matter how you slice it or play at words, it isn't the same.
Greece first passed a law [financialriskstoday.com] lowering the trigger value for their collective action clause (CAC) from 95% to 66% in best Star Wars fashion: "I've altered our deal. Pray that I don't alter it further" then a few days later activated [wsj.com] their CAC to force the participation from 83.5% to 95.7% - the remaining 4.3% was in foreign jurisdiction where they couldn't do this money grab. The result of this is that all rating companies declared this as a default because:
As we have previously stated, we may view an issuer's unilateral change of the original terms and conditions of an obligation as a de facto restructuring and thus a default by Standard & Poor's published definition
In short, Greece did not reach a voluntary deal. They
Re:Go Sarko (Score:4, Insightful)
Greece's social programs are pretty pitiful. Scandinavia, now there is somewhere with generous social programs. Greece doesn't even have free universal healthcare, and its unemployment insurance is a joke compare to the norms in Scandinavia.
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And they also work more hours per year than people in the USA, the UK, France or Germany. But who cares about economical facts as long as one can go with sterotypes and urge us to look at Greece to justify anti-social, anti-taxes and anti-regulation programs?
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Scandinavia's are definitely higher, but it's not really "nothing at all" in Greece. Denmark collects about 50% of GDP in taxes, while Greece collects about 30% (that's more than the U.S. collects!).
The bigger problem is that Greece's GDP per capita isn't that high, because the economy is disproportionately small-time industry and agriculture. Scandinavia has Lego, Maersk, IKEA, whereas Greece has thousands of tavernas, shopkeepers, and shepherds. In a global capitalist economy, Maersk beats scrappy small b
Re:Go Sarko (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if the Greeks WOULD pay their tax, it might be different. :)
But I don't mind our tax (I pay about 50% given my income), as long as I get something back from it. And when I look around myself, I can't help but agree that it's well spent money.
Retirement? Covered. Unemployment? 6 months of getting my current paycheck, then getting enough to survive on. Sick leave? Indefinite, with payment, and all medical expenses (ok, safe a few bucks participation) covered. Injury/health? Covered, no limit. Crime? Lowest in Europe (yes, despite 10% immigrant rates, dear xenophobes). Unemployment level? Around 5%. Public transport? 6 minutes intervals during the day, 15 minutes during the night (at least in cities > 200.000 people). Roads? In perfect repair (though I have to pay extra to use highways). Power/gas/water? Very affordable. Food? Basic food (bread, butter, milk...) is subsidized, you can survive on 3 bucks a day if you really have to (no need to kill old grannies for their purse, even if you have nothing at all). Education? Free until university level, then it's about 400-1000 tuition fee a year.
Should I go on?
And all that on a tax level that the average US citizen would have revolted long ago.
But tell me, who's better off? Me, or a Greek?
Re:Go Sarko (Score:4, Informative)
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He just anticipated the inflation he planned.
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Sarkozy has a tendency of burying himself in debates at least as much as eating his opponents alive. He has a sharp tongue, and it bites him back quite often.
Re:not convicted (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with "flipflopping". One of the most successful chancellors of Germany is often quoted with "What do I care about my chitchat from yesterday?" [wikiquote.org].
If new information changes the situation, if one gets convinced that the own stance was misguided, why not make up your mind and change your opinion? People unable to react if circumstances change and old concepts cede to work should not be the masters of our fate.
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You're making it sound as if these politicians have an epiphany and change their opinion for good reasons. What really happens is that they look at polls, realize that the position that they had been arguing for/against doesn't chime that well with the voters (for instance because, after primaries, they now have to appear to the median voter and "moderates"), so they shamelessly switch positions and now argue as vehemently the exact opposite of what they had been saying before.
When you have been on both sid
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If I go to a customer with my concept of a solution, and the customer comes back to me with some changes he wants, I will incorporate them in my concept, if possible or feasible. It does not mean that I am "flipflopping" about my concepts. It just means that I listen to my customer and will provide him with a solution as optimal as possible fit to his needs.
But if a politican goes to his electorate with a concept how to govern, and the electorate (via polls) comes back with some changes, he should be barred
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For the record, Adenauer (the "flip-flopper" in question) was about as die hard conservative as they come, he'd make Bush senior look like a liberal leftie in comparison.
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Well, I'd still prefer a talking head who doesn't know what he wants to a talking head who knows what he wants and it's exactly the opposite of what I want. At least there's a chance he might flip-flop on my side from time to time, compared to never.
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Actually, his father is hungarian, and his mother, while french, is of jewish-greek origin.
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Asian colleague: "Oh, well, almost evely molning."