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Its refusal to act in the face of an existential threat to monetary union has set off violent tremors across the global financial system, raising the risk that the crisis will spiral out of control. Bank shares crashed in Madrid and Milan, with Intesa Sanpaolo down 10pc and Italy's MIB index reduced to its knees with a one-day fall of 5.2pc. Share trading was suspended at a string of bourses across Europe. .... Professor Willem Buiter, Citigroup's chief economist, said the apparent ECB action was pointless. "The warped logic of intervening in two countries that don't need it is as strange as it gets." Mr Buiter said Europe risks a disastrous chain of events and the worst financial collapse since the onset of the Great Depression unless Europe's central bank steps in with sufficient muscle to back-stop the system. "The ECB has yet so show it understands that it is the only institution that can save Italy and Spain from fundamentally unwarranted defaults. Everybody is afraid and real money investors are dumping their holdings. The ECB must step in to cap the yields at 6pc or 6.5pc and put a floor under the market," he said. .... "As long as the ECB stays on the sidelines, a speculative, fear-driven withdrawal of market funding can feed a self-fulfilling insolvency. Any number of banks and insurance companies would take huge hits. The ECB will have to come in, or accept the biggest banking crisis since 1931," Mr Buiter said.
Bank shares crashed in Madrid and Milan, with Intesa Sanpaolo down 10pc and Italy's MIB index reduced to its knees with a one-day fall of 5.2pc. Share trading was suspended at a string of bourses across Europe.
....
Professor Willem Buiter, Citigroup's chief economist, said the apparent ECB action was pointless. "The warped logic of intervening in two countries that don't need it is as strange as it gets."
Mr Buiter said Europe risks a disastrous chain of events and the worst financial collapse since the onset of the Great Depression unless Europe's central bank steps in with sufficient muscle to back-stop the system.
"The ECB has yet so show it understands that it is the only institution that can save Italy and Spain from fundamentally unwarranted defaults. Everybody is afraid and real money investors are dumping their holdings. The ECB must step in to cap the yields at 6pc or 6.5pc and put a floor under the market," he said.
"As long as the ECB stays on the sidelines, a speculative, fear-driven withdrawal of market funding can feed a self-fulfilling insolvency. Any number of banks and insurance companies would take huge hits. The ECB will have to come in, or accept the biggest banking crisis since 1931," Mr Buiter said.
At least that's what I take from Migeru's numerous posts and comments on the subject.
The only way to break the cycle is Throw the Bums Out ... and there's no mechanism - that I know of - to do it. Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
(Showing our age. :-) Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
- Jake Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.
Bill Nighy made a superb appearance in a short web movie about the Robin Hood Tax - you must have seen it?.
Expensive? Not necessarily. There are a lot of movie professionals who will give a couple of free days of work for something in which they share a passion or belief. It happens all the time in Finland. Equipment companies rent stuff out free for a good cause, and everyone (citation needed) can edit and master at home these days.
But it has to be something that all contributors are passionate about. Svennish aphorism: Logic only goes so far, facts still have to be presented with passion. You can't be me, I'm taken
But look at the share: 542,112 for "The Banker," "The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See" - the 8 part lecture on Exponential Growth I posted a year (or so) ago - started out strong with 2,873,746 views for Part One dropping to 449,340 for Part Eight.
These are excellent numbers, as such things go.
Now compare to the 30,812,823 for "Dramatic Chipmunk" or the numbers Top 10 as of August 2011 with #1 at 598,457,143 views.
The average YouTube user watches 5 hours a day for a total, as of May 25, 2011, 3 billion daily views. Which sounds like a lot. It IS a lot.
However, to capture those eyeballs 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute!
It's a rough, tough, world out there in YouTube land and while I have no intention of disparaging or belittling the production side it is nevertheless true compared to successfully marketing the product, cutting through the clutter, having people watch the video versus watching Lady Gaga, making the thing is a Slam Dunk.
Now, if you can grab someone on this list or - better - THIS list ... then we're cooking and you can ignore everything above because Good Ol' name recognition will cut through.
The other way is the rotten grubby slog of Building an Audience. You put up a YouTube, market the FUCK outta of it ... and it bombs. Put up another on, ditto, raspberries. Put up another and another and another and another and another and hope like hell enough people start finding them, like them, start looking at the old ones, and start saying, "Please, sir. Give us more! Give us more!"
Or, in a one to a gazillion chance, one of them hits the jackpot for Teh Win! and goes viral.
OK, so much for Marketing.
On the content side ... IMO ... narrative trumps message, "commercials" trumps lectures; "Grab 'em by their limbic system and their frontal cortex will follow." Story has to be the text, dialectic the sub-text.
Beats the heck outta me how to do that. Or, rather, there are several ways to do that and durned if I know which is the best. Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
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