West J

Thoughts, Travel, Music & History. Co-founder of @BigSmall_Travel:

[West J @J_Coast6]

Travel Music 🏞️🏔️ #dreampop https://t.co/44QWzBwR9b

[West J @J_Coast6]

@teachrobotslove Perspective is everything

[Bastet @usuario96958737]

Nos quisieron colar que Alemania era la locomotora europea porque son muy trabajadores y productivos.
La realidad era que tenían gas ruso barato para producir y que se fueron cargando la industria de los países que entraban en la U.E para que no les hiciesen la competencia.

[West J @J_Coast6]

Graham Coxon - Billy Says
https://t.co/fEoGh7XfQJ

[West J @J_Coast6]

@CelticSceptic @RachelVT42

[Jon Elder @BlackLabelAdvsr]

Europeans are realizing they’ve been lied to.

Firsthand, they’re learning that:

-Americans water their lawns with drinking water.

-Fast food abundance is next level.

-Americans are friendlier than them.

-Almost zero homeless on the streets.

-Zero gun crimes.

-Everyone has a fast car.

-Freeway system is out of a sci-fi movie.

-Average American is extremely happy.

-Portion sizes are unreal.

-Free soda refills.

-Beautiful, state of the art hospitals in every city.

I hope thousands are radicalized as they go back to Europe. Maybe they will demand real capitalism from their communist leaders. Or maybe they will just be smart and move here.

If you love America, we have room for you!

[Ryan @reallyoptimized]

I don't understand how people deal with the lack of AC and act normal about it in Denmark.

It's crazy uncomfortable and not even all that hot outside yet.

Serious sleep disruption.

Misery.

Why do people accept this as normal?

[West J @J_Coast6]

@mamboitaliano__ Is Rhodes the best Greek island to visit? For ancient acropolises, whitewashed cliffside villages, and a slew of beautiful beaches https://t.co/OWTbUOlWzz

[Handre @Handre]

Two small island economies blew up in 2008. Iceland and Ireland. Their names differ by one letter, and their handling of the crisis differed by everything that matters.

Iceland's three big banks, Kaupthing, Landsbanki, and Glitnir, had grown assets to roughly ten times the country's GDP by 2008. Pure credit-fueled madness. When the music stopped, the Icelandic government did the unthinkable: it let them fail. Bondholders ate the losses. The state refused to socialize private bank debt onto 320,000 citizens who never signed up for it. Capital controls went up, the króna collapsed, and the politicians actually prosecuted bankers. Twenty-six of them went to prison. Sigurður Einarsson and Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson, the men who ran Kaupthing, served real sentences.

Ireland took the opposite road. In September 2008, the Irish government issued a blanket guarantee covering the liabilities of its major banks, including Anglo Irish Bank, a property-lending casino that should have been allowed to die in peace. The taxpayer absorbed the bill. By the time the rescue ended, Ireland had poured around 64 billion euros into its banks, roughly 40 percent of GDP. The state took on private gambling debts, then went to the Troika in 2010 hat in hand for an 85 billion euro bailout, and accepted years of austerity to pay for losses it had no business owning.

Both economies recovered. Both eventually grew again. The difference is who paid and who learned. Iceland made creditors and reckless bankers bear the consequences of their own decisions, which is the entire point of capitalism: profit and loss, not profit and bailout. Ireland protected the people who made the bad bets and handed the invoice to schoolteachers and shopkeepers.

You will hear economists call Ireland's GDP rebound a triumph (much of that "growth" is multinational accounting fiction, Leprechaun economics, but that's another lesson). What they skip is the moral architecture. When you guarantee bank liabilities, you abolish the discipline that makes markets work. You tell every banker in the country that downside is optional.

Iceland jailed its bankers. Ireland reimbursed theirs.

[West J @J_Coast6]

@Krastafilakou @TifoG96561 I refer to Italy foremost. The strength of calling yourself Nordic or Scandinavian is how specific it is compared to a large area like the North Sea or Mediterranean. The countries closest to Italy are France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Latin also relates to ancient Greece.

[Ada Lluch @AdaLluch]

What’s really depressing about Italy is that Meloni was the leader that brought us hope.

I wonder how much different the migration crisis would be in Italy if the EU didn’t exist…

[Big & Small Travel @BigSmall_Travel]

Does Antwerp, Belgium have Europe’s most beautiful train station? Built in 1904, an architectural beauty🇧🇪
https://t.co/R1hIEStx6E #antwerp #belgium #flemish

[West J @J_Coast6]

@KarolineGosling Sad but true. The UK is not a free country anymore.

[West J @J_Coast6]

@AdaLluch @Rogowskawero In Brussels, it felt dangerous because of the non-European groups even as early as 2002. Today in Belgium, cities like Antwerp are experiencing mounting problems from hordes of jobless and aimless young men from North Africa and the Middle East.

[West J @J_Coast6]

Blumfeld #indie Post Rock from Germany 🇩🇪 #Blumfeld

https://t.co/NJNv9eDUfv

[West J @J_Coast6]

@MarioBojic Not good, respect history. Hungary is notable because of the Millennium Monument, which commemorates the thousandth anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. The migration pact is an about face to the prior policy by Orban.

https://t.co/DTNnjMOeLM

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

This is the best preserved medieval street in Europe.

Recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, The Shambles in York, England has had shops trading on it for nearly a thousand years. It's older than the Crusades.

[West J @J_Coast6]

@GGFF02417981 @Robkearney1981 Thank you for saying this because these important events all happened on the peninsula of Italy for a reason.

[Learn Latin @latinedisce]

Because he was Italian

[West J @J_Coast6]

@DSoukal @South_Euro True and geopolitically Eastern Europe.