daily timewaster

Sunday, December 29, 2019

This will lower your blood pressure

Feels like home

The Silicon Valley Daughter has been here all week entertaining her parents.

She works at a big, readily recognized company there, and just like on TV, the perks the employees enjoy are absurd. She told us that:

1. They have a waffle bar, where you go and order up the waffle combo of your choice, no charge.

2. Once a week they have been having fourth quarter "Zen Meetings" to relieve stress, during which there is food, adult beverages, games.

3. A couple weeks ago, on a Friday, there was a pie table in the lobby. They could go and sample the pie of their choice.

4. The company has had massage tables set up in the lobby, and if you work there you can sign up for a free massage.

5. For the week before Christmas, there's been a spiced hot chocolate cart, pushed through the office by people dressed as elves, who serve up spiced hot cocoa at your desk

6. The daughter tells me she's been using Booster, a company that will find your car in the parking lot and fill it with gas for you, so you don't have to bother to go to the gas station. They'll even wipe down your windshield for a couple extra bucks. She says the price per gallon has been about 20 cents less than at the gas station, if you can believe that.

She says the idea is to get you to stay at the office and work for as long as possible. She told me she's going to be "slammed" with work for the next three weeks post holidays. Tough life in the fast lane.

While she was here we binged watched The Mandalorian. Other than one episode, I thought it was pretty good. Naturally, Mrs. CW and the Daughter loved the baby Yoda character and there are already a flood of memes on it.

They're funnier if you've seen the series, but this first one....looks a bit like a 1911 (a bit, now, all you pedants, not a lot), and in the series baby Yoda has a penchant for eating full sized bullfrogs that aren't much smaller than he is.

An interesting post for understanding the dynamic currently going on with Brexit and within the rest of the EU.

The key to understanding what’s happening is the ever-shifting dynamic between France, Germany and the U.K. in relation to their relationship with the United States.

Macron is pushing France to unseat Germany as the de facto rule-setter for the EU. He wants more integration at every level, but most importantly fiscally.

Macron understands that the euro is flawed because of a lack of fiscal integration. For the euro to survive at least three major things need to happen.

There needs to be a single entity capable of issuing and retiring Euro-zone sovereign debt. The ECB and the EU fiscal authorities need to have a relationship similar to that of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Dept.
The euro has to weaken considerably to remove the garrote around the necks of countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and even France.
Much of the existing sovereign debt needs to be converted into a Eurobond, doing away with much of the stock of debt as liabilities for member states like Italy and Spain. The ECB can lead the way with its $3 trillion it’s holding on its balance sheet.

Germany is dead set against any of these things occurring. It wants to continue with using the euro to underwrite its mercantilism to leverage its industrial prowess. It has benefited handsomely at the hollowing out of member states economies through internal trade advantages. And then, once they were broke used debt restructuring as a bludgeon to buy up their assets at pennies on the euro, c.f. Greece.

Italy was to be next on the block.

This is fundamentally why the euro is designed the way it currently is. It wasn’t a mistake, rather it was the plan.

Exactly. And that's how it works in practice. And why it will eventually need to change. Merkel's political weakness opens the door for change, and Macron may well push through.

In the meantime, we can cut better deals with the UK and any other Euro state that wants one.