VFAU: Huh?

  • Some Ahmadinejad has been president of Iran since the mid-2000s, speaks large ham about Israel to be erased, denies the Holocaust, won after a rigged election that was followed by a bloody student revolt. Also goes nuclear, UN has a hard time to hinder him to achieve A-bomb production capabilities. Russians successfully offered to defuse the last thing.
  • Hm, nothing happened there. At least as I know.
  • No. After 9/11, Bush jr. invaded Iraq, made Saddam get toppled and caught him at the end of the same year, 2003 to be exact. Executed by the end of 2006. A by-stander secretly made a video with his cellular phone that leaked onto the net. A major site for such videos is called youtube.com.
  • They flooded parts of the Yangtze with asking residents to build the Three Gorges Damn, they suppressed a Tibetan revolt some months before the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008. But Chinese-American relations are run like a good marriage, the one side earns things, the other one spends.
  • What's ECA? Do you lack a P saying European Common Agrarian Policy?
  • Did better than many expected, even peaked about $1.60, but the Greek budget crisis (they cheated to get into Eurozone, but we already knew it a long time) put a heavy strain on the Euro, now being at about $1.20. Some guys wait for the Euro to fall and they're dealing with one rescue package after another, but it will survive. Which brings us to the last point. There are riots in Greece against the budget cuts, but the rioters don't speak for most of the people in this case.
  • The financial crisis of 2007/8- onwards. People labeled it the second 1929, and it's been the worst thing since then indeed. But the world largely succeeded in avoiding the wrongs of the early 1930s. Let's say that American politics from both camps fueled a housing bubble. They ordered and supported the banks to give mortgages to people who couldn't afford it.
    • To retake the Greece issue: People are afraid of it because it came at a time when people began to think it's been all over now. Though it just uncovered a mess that's already been there, before the crisis. A young academic earning less than an olive farmer receiving rich subsidies or a retiree enjoying an early and relatively feasty pension. They call it the 700 bucks generation. You see how much went wrong down there? Oh, they already talk of a so-called PIIGS group: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain. Oink, oink, indeed. Greece is a hell of a mess, but the rest tries its best to avoid similar proportions.
 
  • Well I know that, just look at the clipping, but aren't there full-blown riots now? After that rigged election?
  • Well that Chavez guy invaded in 07, so the Dutch and us blew him out of the water and out of Caracas.
  • Well he isn't here either. He was killed in a bombing (that everyone knows the US orchestrated), and there's been a bloody civil war since. Surprisingly, Iran hasn't invaded.
  • Sino-American relations are rougher. Anderson clearly sees the PRC as a threat to American hegemony and treats them accordingly. It seems as there is a significant trade imbalance- is the US still the largest exporter?
  • No, the Economic Commission for Africa. Basically a new Marshall Plan. Has been working wonders.
  • Well here it's own the verge of collapse. More or less all of Southern Europe is in deep financial straits. Basically all that stuff in like in Greece has hit them all at once. There've been some been some pretty nasty stuff in Spain and Italy. Unsurprisingly, Northern rationalists in Italy have made significant gains. People say they could be the largest single party in Parliament there.
  • Well we basically had the same root cause- the housing bubble, but the government contained it really well, and not much happened. Just a lot more regulation. The bubble popped everywhere else though.
So it seems like the US has it worse and Europe has it much better. Anything else you might like to add? Give me time to change though. This whole mourning getup looks really odd now, why does no one wear hats?
 
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