The UK was never part of Schengen, but it was part of the single market. So while passport/ID controls have always been performed on the UK border crossings with other EU countries, customs controls had not – until Brexit.
I am not aware that customs controls are made in the passport area, at least not between London and Paris. It is done at the exit of the terminal, in a non blocking way like in UK airports (and always was, they were already looking for illegal products before Brexit).
What? Which cities? In mine, Kraków, the above just isn't true. In my neighbourhood, there even isn't a chain-affiliated café that I could go to – if I wanted to in the first place – but there are five or six independent cafés in my immediate vicinity. Same with most Polish cities I've visited… That being said, yes, overall the number may be shrinking in favour of the chains. We're far from them becoming extinct, though.
There were also deep fake videos of the Ukrainian president going around meant to demoralise the Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian army, specifically.
Today, Rust compilation is parallel in the front-end at the crate level, not file or even module level. Large crates will therefore not benefit from parallelism, and splitting a large crate into smaller ones comes with its own costs too.
This, however, doesn't apply to the code generation phase with LLVM which is already parallelizable at the codegen unit level (the number of codegen units is configurable), but that's the “back-end”, whereas this new parallelization applies to the “front-end” of the compiler.
> Today, Rust compilation is parallel in the front-end at the crate level, not file or even module level. Large crates will therefore not benefit from parallelism,
Sort of, it's managed at the crate level and not file or module indeed, but the compiler then splits crates into smaller chunks called “codegen units”.
> This flag controls the maximum number of code generation units the crate is split into. […] When a crate is split into multiple codegen units, LLVM is able to process them in parallel. […]
The default value is 16 for non-incremental builds. For incremental builds the default is 256 which allows caching to be more granular.
> This, however, doesn't apply to the code generation phase with LLVM which is already parallelizable at the codegen unit level (the number of codegen units is configurable), but that's the “back-end”, whereas this new parallelization applies to the “front-end” of the compiler.
War as an impersonal phenomenon doesn't bring anything inherently, saying so simply blurs individual responsibility. It's up to the belligerents, up to the individual commanders, units and members of armed forces to decide what and whom they target. Targetting a dam by the Russians is a war crime per Art. 56 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.
Is Russia the kind of country that would kill you or members of your family if you were in uniform and didn't follow orders? I honestly don't know. I do think individual responsibility absolutely has a place for acts in war, but I'd want that informed by that what choices those individuals had available and what they'd have understood the consequences of their choices would be.
Of course they are, they've done it the whole war.
Most of the time executing civilian men as per our gender's supposed "main purpose" in life.
But they have also executed women and children indiscriminately as well. There are recorded radio conversations of Russian soldiers explaining their orders as "kill everyone, I don't care who they are".
“Privatize the profits”? What are you talking about? The owners of SVB are wiped out, they will not see any profits, they lost their entire equity in SVB.
> “Privatize the profits”? What are you talking about? The owners of SVB are wiped out
The depositors took risks by lending their money to such a risky bank for better returns in lieu of the risk. It doesnt matter whether SVB gave 0% interest. It provided other amenities, services and opportunities instead - things which other banks could not take the risk to do. Now these banks who played by the rules and the rest of the people and businesses who played it safe, will have to foot the bill for the risk that those depositors took. This literally says "If you are big enough you can take any risk to win big and have the public pay for it if you screw it up". That's something not afforded to a small business owner. So people who say that there is one rule for the ultra rich and another rule for the majority, they are right.
Additionally removing the burden of the deposits from SVB will allow it to recover some of its lost asset value. The state took over its liabilities now.
The depositors “took risks” by literally keeping their cash in a bank? This is ridiculous. What was the safe, responsible thing to do? Put it in one of the “too big to fail” banks instead, given that those are guaranteed to be bailed out should they encounter difficulties? Assume that the entire banking regulatory system is a sham, that the whole Dodd Frank system of regulators overseeing the books and running stress test is not worth shit, and then what? Pay their employees in crypto? Stuff their cash into a mattress? Please. Let’s not pretend that literally keeping cash in a savings account is irresponsible risk taking.
> The depositors “took risks” by literally keeping their cash in a bank? This is ridiculous
Its not ridiculous. Its how the free market works. Its a choice. There were other banks that were compliant with the regulation that !protects! the bank and its depositors. This bank wasn't one of them. People put their money in this bank anyway. It makes little difference if many startups were forced by their VCs to put their money in that bank - they chose to go with those VCs.
> What was the safe, responsible thing to do? Put it in one of the “too big to fail” banks instead, given that those are guaranteed to be bailed out should they encounter difficulties?
The first thing to do was to put their money in banks that have not lobbied for exemption from the regulations that protect the bank and its depositors' money from exactly what is happening right now.
The second thing would be to put it in multiple banks that are not exempt from that regulation to spread around the risk.
The third thing would be to spread the risk around many investment tools and banks.
It turns out that there ARE startups that did precisely that, and they were not affected by the SVB thing in the slightest manner.
> Let’s not pretend that literally keeping cash in a savings account is irresponsible risk taking.
It is unless it is a state run bank, period. This is the free market, and if the organization that you are putting your money into is a private organization, you are simply taking a risk. If that does not sound good, then it means that all the rhetoric about free market vs government should be revised.
And how much stock he has left that he didn’t sell, and lost entirely a few days later? Is this really the best argument for the “privatize the profits” narrative, that someone picked up a few pennies from in front of $6B steamroller?
Aren't lots of us owners of SVB? I really don't get this "it's ok to wipe out the shareholders", i.e. all of us, "but it's not ok to wipe out the depositors" (e.g. Mark Cuban's 10M or so). Why should I lose money because of a run on this bank? If you're already bailing the bank out, oust the management, claw back what you can, but don't wipe out share holders or bond holders.
No, this is not how the deal works. We do not reimburse investors for wrong, or just plain unlucky investment decisions. Our financial-regulatory system treats banking and speculative investment differently, and this is by design.
> If you're already bailing the bank out, oust the management, claw back what you can, but don't wipe out share holders or bond holders.
You don’t get it: the bank is bailed out using funds of shareholders and bondholders. Taxpayers aren’t bailing out SVB, you are. If you don’t like it, well, I recommend selling your investments and keeping your money in regular savings accounts: the deal is, at the basic, very simple: if the company you own screwed up, your entire equity may be used to made those whom it screwed up whole, and you should be happy that your liability is limited to your equity only.
It's not clear whether the assets are enough to make the depositors whole. It sounds like the FDIC is making up the difference. Which it normally would not.
That's the bailout part. If the government is stepping in to bail people out via making up for any difference of uninsured deposits from FDIC funds then it's no longer a question of risk/being wrong/luck. The depositors were taking risk just as the shareholders were taking risk. If they didn't like it, well they could have kept the money in their mattresses.
I'm totally with you that everyone has to accept the risks they're taking. This is creating a distortion field here for certain types of risk taking.
Even if we ignore the bailout, I don't think the story is as simple as you put it. There was a run on the bank with VCs telling companies to withdraw their funds. From a stock market perspective this could be considered manipulation.
When I invest in a bank I'm also relying on the government's role as a regulator. If they failed in their role, or the government actions contributed to the failure of the bank, or they had other courses of action, why should I be on the hook for the consequences?
Maybe this course of action was necessary to stabilize the situation and protect against more bank runs. It still doesn't feel right. It feels like something we'll pay for in the future.
> It's not clear whether the assets are enough to make the depositors whole. It sounds like the FDIC is making up the difference. Which it normally would not.
Sure, which is why I’m not opposed to depositors taking some haircut. But that’s only more reason to wipe the shareholders to the last penny.
> The depositors were taking risk just as the shareholders were taking risk.
No, they were not, that’s the whole point. They took completely different kinds of risks. Irrespective to what degree the taxpayers are encumbered with extending the bail out loans, shareholders are the ones who are expected to foot any bill first and foremost.
Yes, every part of the economy is indirectly connected. Profits are also democratised via income and capital gains tax, even if it's not at a high enough level that people feel good about.
The important part here is that SVBs assets are basically guaranteed to pay out, you just have to wait it out. It’s fairly likely that there are basically no costs (excepting costs to service the insured 250k in the first place, so no marginal costs)
A dollar in ten years is not the same currency as a dollar today. It’s absurd to say that there is “no cost” to holding bonds that pay 1% interest for years when you can now buy bonds that pay multiple times that.
People would have been paying much more through their bank deposits and mortgages if this contagion had been allowed to spread unchecked. Banks benefit from stability in the financial system. They'll happily pay a small special assessment to stem loss of confidence in the banking system.
What you don't pay for in tax, you will pay for in inflation, basically.
> The additional funding will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution's need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.
They're basically going to allow banks to post treasuries as collateral in exchange for cash. Making this effectively a form of QE.
To understand better, banks don't hold the cash you give them. They take it and invest it in "safe" assets like treasuries and mortgage backed securities. But because rates have sky rocketed US banks are currently sitting on hundreds of billions in loses on these investments.
That's generally not a huge problem though because so long as the banks can hold these assets to maturity they'll eventually get their money back. Problems only occur when a large number of customers start demanding their deposits back ASAP. If enough customers want their deposits in a short enough window then the bank will be force sell those investments at a loss so they can return cash to customers.
To avoid this scenario the Fed are basically saying, if a bank is ever forced to realise loses, then the Fed will take those loses and "print cash" to make them whole again.
It's probably the right thing to do given the systemic risk, but this is inflationary.
The bank uses the $100 to purchase a treasury bill.
The treasury bill falls in value and is now worth $80 on the open market.
The Fed says, it's cool, just pretend it's worth $100 because it will look bad otherwise.
Customer says, I want my $100 back.
The bank is now forced to sell the treasury bill and admit that it's actually worth $80.
Fed says, it's cool, just give us your $80 treasury and we'll print $100 and give it to you.
There now exist, a $80 treasury (held by the Fed) and $100 in cash which is given to the customer.
Where is this $180 of value coming from?
----
Its inflationary in two ways.
Firstly, money in the economy is created via debt, and Fed in this case is creating a debt which increases money supply. Secondly, the Fed is exchanging the bank's assets at an above market price and taking the loss onto its balance sheet.
Edit:
I see. I think you’re missing the full accounting picture. When somebody moves $100 of petty cash into a bank, they don’t have $0. They have $100 of cash. The bank has an asset and a liability. Rinse and repeat with the bank and Fed transactions. There’s not an $80 treasury note anywhere because those aren’t MTM.
idk if the numbers exactly add up here or if there are other sources of funding but the I in FDIC is Insurance, which is already paid for - the FDIC has money from insurance premiums to cover expected cost of losses
I understand your snark is simply meant to signal your sympathy towards war crime negationism, but the Gulf War incubator reference does happen to be on topic and not in the way you may have intended.
By all means, do read Dostoyevsky. A Writer's Diary, for example. If you want to see where today's russian chauvinism and genocidal war crimes flourished in ideas, that's a place to look.
They didn't vote to be annexed. Ticking a checkbox on a ballot with armed soldiers behind your back is not voting. Any referendum carried out by an occupying force and followed by an annexation is against international law, specifically Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, not to mention the UN Charter.
> Ticking a checkbox on a ballot with armed soldiers behind your back is not voting.
> Any referendum carried out by an occupying force and followed by an annexation is against international law, specifically Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, not to mention the UN Charter
There is already a legal precedent with Kosovo, which at the very least means that the global community accepts voting "with armed soldiers behind your back".
Sure. But even if you think that the referendum was fair, unforced, and valid (which I don't), even then Russia is doing something bogus, because the rest of the regions didn't vote to be annexed.
Cute. I take it you're not aware of the elephant in the room which is the corruption of the German political (and, even more so, business) elites by the Russian energy lobby. At the regional level we're talking about people like SPD's Manuela Schwesig and the "Klima und Umweltschutz" (Climate and Environment Protection) foundation¹, and at the high-level political level – about people like Gerhard Schröder who, in exchange for his Ribbentrop-Molotov-style tight energy cooperation with Russia, was awarded board seats at Nord Stream AG and Russia's Rosneft. But I guess that's not corruption?
By the way, the very reason Russia invaded Ukraine is because Ukraine is on a relentless path to successful democratisation, deoligarchization and, yes, reduction, slow or not, of corruption. Russia wouldn't care if Ukraine was to stay _like_ Russia, corrupted and undemocratic. Russians invaded precisely because Ukraine was demonstrating it was (and is!) becoming European, adopting the European standards of the rule of law and a healthy market economy. The last thing Russia wants is a successful democracy at its doorstep, especially in a country that it claims (however falsely) it shares historical heritage with.
