samsonradu

This likely happens when the upcoming recession is brutal, which was the case in 2008. But if the recession is moderate it could be anticipated for.

I also believe that a moderate recession every decade is healthy, cleaning up the economical landscape of unproductive investments.

Were the banks supposed to play ball or say ‘hold on’ before offloading to the public? Honest question.

After the hurricane, for the next 2-3 days there were no working ATMs (that we found) in San Juan. Luckily, we had around 120$ in cash handy which we carefully spent. After that we had to queue up for 1h+ in the torrid sun at one of the few ATMs which had any cash. If I remember well there was a limit of 100$ withdrawal.

An interesting book right on the subject:

https://www.bridgewater.com/big-debt-crises/Principles-For-N...

> All of G's employees should move to an open office plan with non dedicated seats.

I've heard about this being discussed at one other large org. It sounds very concerning to me, is there any proven benefit to having non-dedicated seats?

Feels very much like an accounting trick indeed but I get the idea, thanks! Still some questions remain:

Why wouldn’t an employee add to the value of a piece of software?

Also why would a contractor paid 10k add 10k to the value of the project and not 0? Or 100k?

Would a company having a bigger than avg contractor-to-employee ratio be a red flag? As to be overvaluing their assets?

> Plus the work a contractor puts into the project is "balance sheet neutral" when it's capitalized. Can you please explain this in a more ELI5 manner?

Same happens at ‘struggling’ companies like Deutsche Bank fe. The media presenting massive layoffs while having first-hand information of very well paid contract gigs. Perhaps there are accounting benefits to contracting?

Not only this but you must also take into account the source of the money that buys your digital goods.

There is a strong correlation between the environmental cost and economic growth. It might weaken but it will never be decoupled, as long as people do have 'material' needs.

> And Apple is such a high profile company that it would likely cause an international incident.

That's an overstatement in my opinion. Can you provide an example where a high profile (tech) company caused an international incident?

Could be the case for companies with a national-security profile like energy or food industry, but the Chinese can live without iPhones and Apple, while feeling the bump, will move on.

And even if they did know what they were talking about (read JP Morgan), that doesn’t mean their estimates are reliable. There are many forces/interests at play wrt these public statements, see the WeWork case.

Don't forget about Iran.

You're right, it does encourage spending and investment. However a part of the money does eventually go into negative interest rate assets (due to regulations etc.) and I believe that shrinks the money supply.

Not an expert either.

Uhm... no.

I borrow $1000 and promise to pay back $1050. Lender now has a $1050 IOU which he will likely put into circulation (borrow against it, trade it etc.). Monetary supply just increased by $50.

Aren't negative interest rates deflationary by design? When an entity already in debt borrows money at negative interest rates the debt will keep shrinking, thus destroying monetary supply.

Having a 'secure' conversation definitely implies trust in Google/Apple, regardless of the Whatsapp binary behaving flawlessly (e2e encryption, solid PRNG, no logs etc.)

They could indeed serve you a different binary from the app-store. "Do you think that's Whatsapp you're using?"

> PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't.

PHP matters and if anything it would be good for you to learn both. It will give you a better insight on different ways to build software and use the appropriate solution.

PHP is a mature ecosystem with reliable tools/frameworks. It is relatively easy to learn and you can become productive quickly.

One benefit I find of PHP that is less mentioned:

When your team is short on people (and that happens quite often), you can pretty much throw anyone (provided they are generally competent) at a PHP codebase and they will do well. Wouldn't say the same for a back-end JS project, I've seen what a Java developer can do to a JS codebase.

PHP bites far less often than JS in my opinion.

It also helps with the evaluation. Looks good on a pitch to investors.

German infrastructure is top-class, trains work quite well and bridges are not collapsing. May I ask where you got this from?

EDIT

Please don't turn this into a flame war. I am slightly worried about the effects of mainstream media, as I've seen these kind of posts on Reddit also.

People keep hearing about the low/inexistent economic growth of countries like Germany or Japan and start thinking that these countries are a deep mess. The reality is quite far from it.

This could be due to the fact that margins are slim and they're trying to make a profit?

You kind of described Japan’s economy.

Why does owning a home compound wealth? Honest question.

IANAL but shouldn’t this be a requirement within the GDPR? As a data operator, an organisation has the obligation to disclose any loss/leak of data, so this should be enforced.

You might need Maps to avoid traffic on your way out.

Ironically, for the time being, the British do all of the above.

And yet, here we are with people buying Greece 10Y treasuries yielding 2%. Almost risk-free...

If the prices are stable yes, but why would prices remain stable? Wouldn't this be arbitraged to the level of negative rates?

Well, Europe will still be there, borders or not. Can you elaborate a bit on 'remilitarised'? Why would that be needed and when were borders last militarised? By militarised you mean customs officers?

> If the ECB doesn't do so Europe is doomed

Doomed is a strong word, what does it mean? Sure, there are flaws in the common currency and the ECB policies might fail. Europe might be the next Japan for the upcoming decade with ±0% economic growth, that doesn't make it doomed.

It has been proposed indeed, the Surplus Recycling Mechanism: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2011/02/09/what-is-a-surplus-...