Greece’s Economic and Political Crises Gets Worse AGAIN !

Greece’s new finance minister on Saturday pledged to carry out reforms and privatizations demanded under its latest financial rescue in an attempt to regain credibility with international partners stumping up money to keep the country afloat.

In his first policy speech since taking office, respected economist Yannis Stournaras reiterated the government’s plan to ask lenders for an additional two years to implement deficit cutting measures, citing a deeper-than-expected recession.

But he also warned of a tough road ahead in convincing the so-called troika of European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank lenders to give Greece more time and money.

“The negotiations will not be quick – they will be long and arduous,” he told parliament during a debate ahead of a confidence vote on the government on Sunday.

“Additional time is required because the recession was bigger than expected. The extension means someone will have to give us more money and this is not simple.”

He warned the near-bankrupt country risked a great deal if it failed to hit the targets it had signed up to.

“Greece must carry out the measures that it has already voted on as part of its 2012 budget so that it moves towards the targets it has committed to and to avoid losing more of its credibility and risk the next aid tranche,” he said.

Faced with public anger and an emboldened opposition, Greece’s new conservative-led governmenthas promised to push for changes to a deeply unpopular 130 billion euro ($162.6 billion) bailout deal keeping the country away from bankruptcy.

But that has set it on course for a showdown with its increasingly impatient lenders, whose inspectors this week began their first visit to Athens since the government took office.

FOCUS ON PRIVATISATIONS

Athens, due to run out of cash in weeks without further aid, has already conceded that it has fallen behind agreed targets and euro zone officials have warned the country will get no further aid until it gets back on track with reforms.

Seeking to soothe some of those concerns, Stournaras said Greece was committed to carrying out an ambitious privatization plan, albeit with a delay due the elections, as well as structural reforms including cutting red tape, liberalizing the economy and improving efficiency in the justice system.

The privatization agency will accept Greek government bonds as payment in a bid to encourage investment, he said.

“Privatizations are the main pillar of structural reforms and a central lever of growth for the economy through investments, and hence a top priority for the government.”

He also pledged to turn around the economy through use of EU funds and efforts to boost competitiveness. He also noted some initial signs of hope for Greece’s tottering banking system, confirming a “significant” return of deposits since the June 17 election.

Greeks had withdrawn billions of euros in the run-up to the vote on fears that a leftist victory would push the country of the euro zone.

FAR RIGHT IN PARLIAMENT

Earlier on Saturday, Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos also pressed the government’s case for additional time to implement austerity cuts at a meeting with the troika officials visiting Athens.

Venizelos, whose PASOK party is one of three in Greece’s coalition government, negotiated the bailout when he was finance minister in an earlier government, but has since called for three more years to implement cuts included in the rescue plan.

Inspectors from the troika are due to leave Athens in the coming days after holding meetings with ministers in the new government, and are expected to return later in the month for discussions on Greece’s progress in meeting its targets.

On Friday, in his first policy speech since taking office, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said his aim was not to demand a change of the goals set in the bailout deal, but in the austerity policies imposed to meet them.

A Metron Analysis opinion poll published by weekly newspaper Ependytis on Saturday showed Greeks are equally split on whether the country should stick to the bailout terms or ditch them.

The poll showed 48 percent were in favor of sticking with the bailout and efforts to improve it, while another 48 percent felt it should be renounced for having failed.

Saturday’s parliamentary debate also saw the leader of the far-right Golden Dawn address parliament for the first time, prompting Communist and radical leftist Syriza lawmakers to leave the chamber in protest.

The party, which denies it is neo-Nazi but whose members are known to give Nazi-style salutes, kept up its fiery rhetoric against immigrants, politicians and the bailout program.

“Golden Dawn is against the bailout because it is against ceding national sovereignty,” Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos said. “Privatising strategic sectors of the economy is unacceptable; we must not sell even one meter of national land to foreigners.”

Greece’s new finance minister on Saturday pledged to carry out reforms and privatizations demanded under its latest financial rescue in an attempt to regain credibility with international partners stumping up money to keep the country afloat.

In his first policy speech since taking office, respected economist Yannis Stournaras reiterated the government’s plan to ask lenders for an additional two years to implement deficit cutting measures, citing a deeper-than-expected recession.

But he also warned of a tough road ahead in convincing the so-called troika of European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank lenders to give Greece more time and money.

“The negotiations will not be quick – they will be long and arduous,” he told parliament during a debate ahead of a confidence vote on the government on Sunday.

“Additional time is required because the recession was bigger than expected. The extension means someone will have to give us more money and this is not simple.”

He warned the near-bankrupt country risked a great deal if it failed to hit the targets it had signed up to.

“Greece must carry out the measures that it has already voted on as part of its 2012 budget so that it moves towards the targets it has committed to and to avoid losing more of its credibility and risk the next aid tranche,” he said.

Faced with public anger and an emboldened opposition, Greece’s new conservative-led governmenthas promised to push for changes to a deeply unpopular 130 billion euro ($162.6 billion) bailout deal keeping the country away from bankruptcy.

But that has set it on course for a showdown with its increasingly impatient lenders, whose inspectors this week began their first visit to Athens since the government took office.

FOCUS ON PRIVATISATIONS

Athens, due to run out of cash in weeks without further aid, has already conceded that it has fallen behind agreed targets and euro zone officials have warned the country will get no further aid until it gets back on track with reforms.

Seeking to soothe some of those concerns, Stournaras said Greece was committed to carrying out an ambitious privatization plan, albeit with a delay due the elections, as well as structural reforms including cutting red tape, liberalizing the economy and improving efficiency in the justice system.

The privatization agency will accept Greek government bonds as payment in a bid to encourage investment, he said.

“Privatizations are the main pillar of structural reforms and a central lever of growth for the economy through investments, and hence a top priority for the government.”

He also pledged to turn around the economy through use of EU funds and efforts to boost competitiveness. He also noted some initial signs of hope for Greece’s tottering banking system, confirming a “significant” return of deposits since the June 17 election.

Greeks had withdrawn billions of euros in the run-up to the vote on fears that a leftist victory would push the country of the euro zone.

FAR RIGHT IN PARLIAMENT

Earlier on Saturday, Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos also pressed the government’s case for additional time to implement austerity cuts at a meeting with the troika officials visiting Athens.

Venizelos, whose PASOK party is one of three in Greece’s coalition government, negotiated the bailout when he was finance minister in an earlier government, but has since called for three more years to implement cuts included in the rescue plan.

Inspectors from the troika are due to leave Athens in the coming days after holding meetings with ministers in the new government, and are expected to return later in the month for discussions on Greece’s progress in meeting its targets.

On Friday, in his first policy speech since taking office, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said his aim was not to demand a change of the goals set in the bailout deal, but in the austerity policies imposed to meet them.

A Metron Analysis opinion poll published by weekly newspaper Ependytis on Saturday showed Greeks are equally split on whether the country should stick to the bailout terms or ditch them.

The poll showed 48 percent were in favor of sticking with the bailout and efforts to improve it, while another 48 percent felt it should be renounced for having failed.

Saturday’s parliamentary debate also saw the leader of the far-right Golden Dawn address parliament for the first time, prompting Communist and radical leftist Syriza lawmakers to leave the chamber in protest.

The party, which denies it is neo-Nazi but whose members are known to give Nazi-style salutes, kept up its fiery rhetoric against immigrants, politicians and the bailout program.

“Golden Dawn is against the bailout because it is against ceding national sovereignty,” Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos said. “Privatising strategic sectors of the economy is unacceptable; we must not sell even one meter of national land to foreigners.”

 The leader of Greece’s main opposition party has accused the country’s three-party coalition government of wanting to sell Greece’s resources and public companies on the cheap.

Alexis Tsipras, head of the Coalition of the Radical Left party, known as Syriza, told Parliament Saturday he was especially warning those who want to “grab state property on the cheap.” He warned would-be buyers of state property that they might lose all their money and face criminal proceedings.

Tsipras proposes a moratorium on the payment of Greece’s debt until the country, mired in a deep recession, returns to growth. He predicts his party will soon come to power because the coalition government will fail.

Arizona Goes To Supreme Court to Deny Same Sex Health Benefits

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) hasrequested that the Supreme Court overturn a ruling that allows state employees to keep their same-sex partners on their benefits, including health insurance.

Brewer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on July 2, requesting that the high court overturn the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s September 2011 ruling in Diaz vs. Brewer.The pushback comes three months after the Ninth Circuit denied a request by Arizona state lawyers to re-hear the case with an 11-judge panel.

Last September, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling prevented Arizona from implementing a law that would have barred state employees’ same-sex partners from remaining on their health plans. The ruling affirmed a lower court’s decision to place a preliminary injunction on the law.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time:

The 3-0 ruling upheld a federal judge’s injunction against a law that was signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in 2009 and was scheduled to take effect [in 2011]. Brewer’s predecessor, Janet Napolitano, had authorized health benefits for state employees’ domestic partners in April 2008 before leaving to become President Obama’s Homeland Security secretary.

“The district court found that the plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, because they showed that the law adversely affected a classification of employees on the basis of sexual orientation, and did not further any of the state’s claimed justifiable interests,” read the opinion.

In the initial complaint, the nine plaintiffs – all state employees in same-sex domestic partnerships — stated that if enacted, the loss of health coverage for their partners would cause “serious financial and emotional harm.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed this complaint, acknowledging that there was a high likelihood of “irreparable harm” if the law were to go into effect.

As Chris Geidner notes, the Diaz plaintiffs have until August 6 to respond to Brewer’s latest petition.

What You Don’t Know About Fast Food Can Make You Vomit (seriously) !

On the heels of a recent Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) with a McDonald’s employee, an AskReddit conversation thread popped up yesterday that we couldn’t tear ourselves away from.

“Fast food workers of Reddit, what is the one menu option at your employment that you would recommend people never eat? (Because of cooking safety, cleanliness, unhealthy, etc),” asked user 4ScienceandReason. This thread, which generated over 6,000 comments in 24 hours, brought some amazingly gross things to light — some expected and some unexpected — as well as some good-to-know tricks for the fast-food customer.

Some things you should probably stay away from:

Chicken Nuggets: Some of the grossest stories on this thread talked about the dubious material nuggets are generally made of. As noted by 4ScienceandReason,pictures and videos like these have already scared a lot of us off of chicken nuggets forever. Just in case that wasn’t enough, this comment by Dfunkatron might seal the deal for you, “When I worked at McDonald’s, I accidentally left a whole bag of about 100 chicken nuggets out on a counter for way too long. They melted. Into a pool of liquid. I never understood why. But they were completely indiscernible as being the nuggets i once knew.”

Wendy’s Chili: While not as traditionally disgusting as some other fast food traditions, we found Cozmo23′s description of the chili recipe at Wendy’s to be pretty stomach-churning — “The meat comes from hamburger patties that sat on the grill too long to serve to customers. They take them and put them in a bin and then throw them in the fridge. When the chili is made they take it out, boil it, chop it up and dump them in the chili.”

Vegetarians Beware: While a lot of comments admitted to using the same grill/spatula/knife on vegetarian and meat items alike, this comment from user attack_goblin made us gasp a little extra: “I used to work at a restaurant where we deep-fried the Gardenburger patties in the same oil we deep-fried the bacon.”

Grilled Chicken: If there was any common theme in this thread, it was this: just probably don’t order grilled chicken in any fast food establishment ever. OneMcDonald’s employee confessed to slathering grilled chicken breasts with liquid margarine to keep it from sticking. An ex-Subway employee described the defrosting process they used, which involved soaking the chicken in hot water for hours, then squeezing the “chicken water” out at the end of the day.

Five Guys Appears to Be Safe: For now, no one has refuted user Cameron432′s claim that they freeze nothing and make most everything fresh. Also, stick to the regular-sized fries, “One thing I will say is that ordering a large fry is always a bad idea. The difference between a large fry and a regular fry is surprisingly small (especially when it’s busy).”

One comforting aspect of this discussion was the friendly disagreement. The most disgusting facts were usually counter-balanced by at least one other employee of each chain remarking that they’d always done it differently and that it really does depend on the management of each particular location. So if you have traditionally good luck in life, you can still order chicken nuggets, we suppose.

Other Tibits:

The simple answer is probably, “don’t ever eat fast food.” Sadly, for many people that’s just not a realistic option (for reasons financially or other). So help us out! Those of you behind the scenes, what should we stay away from and what is something you’d have no problem eating all the time?

Edit: Really appreciate all of the participation on this, anecdotal or not. What seems clear, and perhaps I should have mentioned it in the title, is that location and management makes (almost) all the difference. Really enjoy hearing the universally handled menu options, such as the way McDonald’s cooks their grilled chicken options.

Edit 2: 6000 Comments in 24 hours! Love this discussion and your stories. <3

Edit 3: Special thanks to Puurboi for this image concerning financial reasons.

Edit 4: So many “Sandwich Artists” of Subway on Reddit!. In Jared we trust

Edit 5: Smile, You’re all on Huffington Post and Perez Hilton’s fitness page

While management clearly plays a huge role in food safety and handling, we’re seeing some relatively universal concerns from different sources. I’d love to have an evolving list of surprising or especially alarming fast foods/menu items:

• Fast food ice. This seems to be recurring as it is difficult to keep the machines clean and mold free. There have been studies and articles regarding this issue. Added We tend not to think about soft drink machines, how often they’re cleaned and the amount of calories in the drinks themselves.
• Chicken Nuggets are a hot topic and seem to be a “concern food.” Videos and articles like this certainly don’t help but as always, they’re going to be handled differently depending on the restaurant.
• Unconventional pizza toppings or menu items seem to be a popular concern among the employed. I can attest to this personally in regard to topping meats and certain specialty items.
• Sweetened teas. No matter where they come from, the consensus seems to be that “they’re called ‘Sweetened’ for a reason.” Watch out for amounts of sugar comparable to any soft drink.
• Grilled chicken options (such as McDonald’s sandwiches). The lesson here is that just because it’s grilled, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. While it may be the healthiest meat served at the restaurant… ”to keep it from sticking to the grill, we use three squirts of liquid margarine on the bottom of it. To keep it juicy, once we’ve lain the frozen blocks of chicken, three more squirts of liquid margarine are applied to the tops.”
• The quality of a Subway restaurant says a lot. This seems like a great insight for those of us who don’t think about or haven’t worked at a Subway before. If the servers are careless, the food seems to be odd colors, or there’s scraps of food all over the floor, etc.. think about the other Subway down the block (they’re everywhere, !#$@ing Jared!) Added Apparently the chicken and tuna are disgusting at many locations.
• Visiting restaurants before closing time. A no-brainer to some, less than obvious to others. Think about the style of restaurant. Old and unused menu items are probably not what you’re looking to pay for. Many pizza places make “Slice-pies” or overly large pizzas specifically for the purpose of selling individual slices. These slices are slowly heated and sit until sold throughout the day. While safe, they are cardboard at the end of the night. I don’t even want to think about day-long nachos or salad items.
• Arby’s meats, roast beef. This is getting a ton of comments, both from behind the counter and from customers. It seems as though this one has been ranked as a “hit or miss” item. Even if the restaurants are handling the meat correctly, it seems to make a fair amount of people ill compared to other menu items.
• Condiments/Complimentary items. I feel a slight rise in paranoia when it comes to communal condiments like ketchup bottles and Salt/Pepper containers. Uncleaned but re-filled containers has been such a recurring point here that my level of paranoia has raised to “terrorist orange.” Included in this point are things like complementary breadsticks. Some of you have talked about re-serving the “seemingly untouched or whole” breadsticks at Italian restaurants from previous customer’s plates. In other cases, they’re not re-plated but broken down to be used in different food items. Yummy.

Wall Street Learned It’s Lesson Right?? Think Again! Corruption RULES!

Just when you thought Wall Street couldn’t sink any lower — when its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system, giving birth to Tea Partiers and Occupiers and all manner of conspiracy theories; when its excesses have already wrought havoc with the lives of millions of Americans, causing taxpayers to shell out billions (of which only a portion has been repaid) even as its top executives are back to making more money than ever; when its vast political power (via campaign contributions) has already eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to rein it in, including the so-called “Volcker” Rule that was sold as a milder version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment from commercial banking — yes, just when you thought the Street had hit bottom, an even deeper level of public-be-damned greed and corruption is revealed.

Sit down and hold on to your chair.

What’s the most basic service banks provide? Borrow money and lend it out. You put your savings in a bank to hold in trust, and the bank agrees to pay you interest on it. Or you borrow money from the bank and you agree to pay the bank interest.

How is this interest rate determined? We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.

But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them — bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.

That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion — trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look like child’s play by comparison.

Sad to say, there’s reason to believe this has been going on, or something very much like it. This is what the emerging scandal over “Libor” (short for “London interbank offered rate”) is all about.

Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide — mortgage loans, small business loans, personal loans. It’s compiled by averaging the rates at which the major banks say they borrow.

So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclay’s, a big London-based bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders’ emails give a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. (Robert Diamond, Jr., the former Barclay CEO who was forced to resign, said the emails made him “physically ill” — perhaps because they so patently reveal the corruption.)

But Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America — because every major bank participates in setting the Libor rate, and Barclay’s couldn’t have rigged it without their witting involvement.

In fact, Barclay’s defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same reason. And Barclays is “cooperating” (i.e., giving damning evidence about other big banks) with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun.

There are really two different Libor scandals. One has to do with a period just before the financial crisis, around 2007, when Barclays and other banks submitted fake Libor rates lower than the banks’ actual borrowing costs in order to disguise how much trouble they were in. This was bad enough. Had the world known then, action might have been taken earlier to diminish the impact of the near financial meltdown of 2008.

But the other scandal is even worse. It involves a more general practice, starting around 2005 and continuing until — who knows? it might still be going on — to rig the Libor in whatever way necessary to assure the banks’ bets on derivatives would be profitable.

This is insider trading on a gigantic scale. It makes the bankers winners and the rest of us — whose money they’ve used for to make their bets — losers and chumps.

What to do about it, other than hope the Justice Department and other regulators impose stiff fines and even criminal penalties, and hold executives responsible?

When it comes to Wall Street and the financial sector in general, most of us suffer outrage fatigue combined with an overwhelming cynicism that nothing will ever be done to stop these abuses because the Street is too powerful. But that fatigue and cynicism are self-fulfilling; nothing will be done if we succumb to them.

The alternative is to be unflagging and unflinching in our demand that Glass-Steagall be reinstituted and the biggest banks be broken up. The question is whether the unfolding Libor scandal will provide enough ammunition and energy to finally get the job done.

Chinese Counterfeiting Items You May Not Expect

 Examples of Chinese Counterfeiting

Whenever you hear about counterfeit merchandise, you almost always think about China. It’s not completely undeserved — the country does have a history of churning out tons of fake DVDs, electronics, designer clothing and everything else you can and can’t imagine.

Why? Because they’re really, really good at it. The amount of work and creativity the Chinese underworld puts into their fakes is so damn impressive that you have to wonder why they’d ever need to steal other people’s ideas. These are the people who have faked …

#5. Entire Companies

When Chinese counterfeiters decide to set up a series of knockoff store chains, they don’t mess around trying to be subtle. Check out this strangely familiar retailer in Kunming, China:

birdabroad
Everything at this Apple Store is 30 percent cheaper than the one down the street because capitalism.

They have the Apple logo, the displays and even blue-T-shirt-clad staff members sporting that classic Apple smug grin.

birdabroad
Ha, that awkward 45-degree angle. Classic.

The illusion was so perfect that even the employees thought the place was legit. Let’s say that again: Even though it’s a complete knockoff, all the employees completely believed they were working for Apple.

Chinese officials have so far found a total of 22 fake Apple stores operating across the country. Hell, at least when somebody opened a chain of fake Ikea stores, they had the courtesy to reverse the color scheme:

reuters
The food in their cafe was 40 percent lead, making it markedly more delicious than the real thing.

But both of those pale in comparison with the scope of the counterfeiting operation that targeted the Japanese electronics giant NEC.

In 2004, NEC got word that some counterfeit computer products with their logo on them were coming out of China. Big surprise, right? But when they had someone investigate it further, instead of a single rogue factory they discovered a massive, multinational operation counterfeiting … well, all of NEC.

nytimes
Which one do we sue? Which one do we sue?

Someone in China actually created an entire parallel NEC enterprise with business cards, R&D commissions, detailed production plans and even warranties all bearing the NEC mark.

This fake NEC also had a network of over 50(!) factories across China and Taiwan producing existing NEC goods and totally new products like MP3 players and entertainment systems … for which the evil-twin NEC was receiving “royalties.” Some of their products were even found in stores of major retailers.

But here’s the craziest part: The real NEC guys admitted that those “original fakes” were actually of a pretty good quality, which was probably like being told that some guy stole your identity and then used it to win the Biggest Penis World Championship.

#4. Prehistoric Fossils

Dinosaur bones are valuable, for obvious reasons — besides being a finite resource, they’re also difficult to find, being buried deep underground and all. What if you could simply skip the entire “discover it and clean it off and assemble it together” process that makes archaeology so tedious and skip right to the “make money from tourists” part? Leave it to industrious Chinese counterfeiters to find a way.

In the 1970s, the Chinese fossil market exploded, with dino-bits being dug up and sold all over the country. When the supply dried up, someone suggested, “Why don’t we just make some more?”

paleodirect
Really, the difference between a million years and 10 minutes is where you put the decimal point.

And thus, today China is one of the biggest suppliers of fake fossils on the planet. Why bother? Well, here’s a fake rat fossil made from a calcified fish. It sold on eBay for over $3,000:

paleodirect
We don’t even buy HDMI cables from Chinese retailers.

They can be made in a number of ways, including building skeletons out of chicken/frog bones or plaster and rock, to more authentic fakes made by mixing existing fossils into completely new animals, and sometimes even crushing them into a paste and sculpting new bones. Examples range from fake pterosaur fossils …

paleodirect
Scientists speculate he was delicious with hoisin sauce.

… to fake saber-tooth tiger heads made from modified dog skulls:

paleodirect

The problem is so persistent that some Chinese scientists are claiming that judging modern fossil collections on their authenticity is just “unrealistic.” We wonder if the same thing will eventually happen for …

#3. IDs for Underage Kids

bangordailynews

There’s been a lot of talk lately about China taking away American jobs, but the one profession we’ve always assumed would forever stay within U.S. borders is the proud tradition of making fake IDs for underage kids wanting to get shitfaced. That is no longer the case.

businessinsider
Because you don’t need an ID for meth.

Since 2010, police have been finding insanely high-quality fake driver’s licenses and other IDs on underage drinkers all across the country. The fakes were so sophisticated, in fact, that they could fool not only bouncers and law enforcement officers, but also some bar-code readers. And they all originated from one company in Nanjing, China.

It works like this: You email the company your physical description, your picture and other information you want on the ID. Then you pay them $300 (or $75 if you order more than 20). Finally, you receive your ID in the mail, hidden in the sole of cheap-ass shoes.

arlingtoncardinal
Which will prevent you from getting into most clubs, no matter how many ID cards you throw at people.

Fortunately, most of the fake IDs can be identified immediately with advanced scanning, so they don’t really pose a problem to national security or anything. Still, that doesn’t mean they have no negative consequences; studies have shown that underage people are more prone to binge drinking than legal adults, which can often have lethal results. And what about Steve from Dorm B?! How is he supposed to pay for that new laminating machine and his WoW subscription with China taking away all of his business?

drewgstephens
“Well, I guess it’s back to the gold farmi — awww, damn it.”

But before you breathe too much of a sigh of relief about national security, there’s the issue of …

#2. U.S. Military Hardware

Getty

As we mentioned with the NEC situation earlier, counterfeit Chinese electronics have become very sophisticated. Nowadays, most people probably couldn’t tell the difference between a fake iPod and a real one because the former no longer features mangled-up English phrases on the box like “General Turtleneck’s Happiness Music Mini Pod.” If you think that’s a concern, consider this problem on a more internal scale. Take this microchip, for instance:

Wired
It’s for a time machine. Go on, prove us wrong.

Can you tell if it’s real or a Chinese fake? If you can’t, congratulations, you now qualify for a spot in the U.S. Department of Defense, which helped supply American armed forces with tons of counterfeit electronics that went right into crucial weapon systems.

In 2011, the Senate Armed Services Committee, led by John “Rambo II” McCain, discovered that, among electronics ordered from Asia by the DOD, some were in fact Chinese counterfeits, produced without oversight or quality control. And by “some” we mean “over one flippity-fracking-hell million” parts, such as thermal weapon sights, missile computer components and electronics for military planes. And no one has any idea how many they might have missed.

Getty
“We’ve replaced one of the soldier’s weapons with a Chinese fake. Let’s see if he survives.”

But it’s not just simply a problem of inferior parts malfunctioning or giving out too early. In 2010, the U.S. military unknowingly purchased 59,000 counterfeit Chinese microchips that could have been hacked and used to shut down the country’s missile defense system.

The good news is that the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is working on a way to quickly scan electronics and detect whether they are genuine or not. Not that they need to hurry — what are the odds that the U.S. will ever get into a war again?

Getty
Only slightly lower than the odds that this “scanner” will also end up being made from counterfeit Chinese parts.

#1. Cigarettes

Getty

If you smoke, there’s a decent chance that you’ve smoked a fake Chinese cigarette at some point.

You see, China smokes like a chimney. They smoke around 2.2 trillion cigarettes a year. Trillion. That’s a one and 12 zeroes … and then 2.2 times that. The state-owned Chinese tobacco industry actually brings in about 8 percent of the country’s annual budget (the second largest economy in the world, mind you). Naturally, all that money was bound to attract counterfeiters sooner or later — supplying knockoff Marlboros and every other brand to the largest population of smokers in the world.

lightwerk
This must be the Chinese warning for “You will get adorable heart cancer and die.”

You can see how that would be a problem, since even if counterfeited smokes were a tiny fraction of the cigarette market in China, the scale of the country’s smoking phenomenon alone would make them one colossal operation. Counterfeited smokes are not a tiny fraction of the cigarette market in China.

cnreviews / sina
That’s, like, a trillion dollars in prison money.

Currently, there are about 400 billion fake cigarettes being produced in China, enough to supply each U.S. smoker with 460 packs of fake Marlboros, Newports or Benson & Hedges. Surprisingly, about half of those all come from one place — Yunxiao, a county in the south of China roughly twice the size of New York City and home to 200-plus counterfeit cigarette operations hidden underground. And we meant that last part literally. Yunxiao’s illegal cigarette factories are actually hidden below the surface of the city, in neighboring mountain caves and under streets, temples and once even a lake.

publicintegrity
Living in a cave, being a tech genius and making things look cool. This Chinese guy is Batman.

In one case, some Yunxiao counterfeiters even tried to divert attention from the underground factory by disguising their compound as a military base, complete with 20 guys parading around in military uniforms and doing daily drills.

The scope of these operations ranges from rusty rolling machines hidden in old bunkers to multimillion-dollar enterprises. The return is amazing (up to 20 times their original investment), and the worst Chinese law can do is gently slap them on the wrist with a couple of years in jail or a small fine. What’s not to love?

publicintegrity
Other than the cancer?

Well, how about the fact that the fake Chinese cigarettes often contain 80 percent more nicotine and 130 percent more carbon monoxide than the genuine article, plus occasional insect eggs and human feces?

Oh, and then there’s what we said earlier — there’s actually a chance you yourself have taken a nice, long drag of counterfeit Chinese poop-sticks. Cigarette factories from Yunxiao export their products to over 60 countries around the globe because it’s impossible to spot the fakes unless you’re an industry specialist. So 99 percent of all fake cigarettes in the U.S. come from China. In the U.K., one in every three packs is believed to be a Chinese counterfeit.

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On the plus side, if we put “May contain human feces” on every pack, we can probably lower smoking rates by, like, 2 to 3 percent.

So THIS is Why China’s Economy Is So Great… Or NOT

I read the financial pages, because they’re like science fiction for a freelance writer, and every week someone asks “Should the U.S. be concerned about China?” As if “No, it should just ignore the outside world and Eloi it up forever” were a possible answer. Despite only remembering what money was 30 years ago, China has the second-largest economy on the planet. The U.S. has spent the same amount of time giving China its money in exchange for also giving China its jobs. I’m no economist, which is a relief, because pretty soon describing money in English will be like describing immigration in Navajo.

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I’m going to need to see an entry visa and IQUQ, THAT’S A LOT OF GUNS.

China already owns 8 percent of the U.S. national debt. Which I think means you owe them four states. Or one, if you can convince them to take Texas, which would honestly solve all kinds of problems for both sides and create the world’s largest situation comedy.

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This week on Little China in Big Trouble, Sheng must pretend to approve of firearms in time for the big BBQ Monster Truck Hoedown!

But while business columnists search for the secret behind the second-largest country in the world having the second-largest economy in the world, Cracked columnists shout “Duh” and then do real research anyway. I’ve been chosen to infiltrate China, because no one would suspect an Irishman of even knowing what an economy was. I’ve spent the last few weeks learning their financial secrets for the West. And making myself as visible as possible, because I figure if enough of them remember me after repossessing North America, I might get a job as foreman.

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… and he gets double rice rations if he does a silly dance!

#7. The Chinese Economy Is Growing Stupid Fast

There are many numbers for measuring economic growth, and in China every single one is spinning upward like a multiball high score.

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And for the same reasons: Lots of extra things running around making electronics beep.

The most obvious symptom is how the Chinese have gone on a Viking rampage through their own country with jackhammers instead of axes. Every year they build another city. Joined directly to every existing city. They have metropolii you’ve never heard of bigger than my entire country and containing many more tiny people with huge fortunes.

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Honestly, I’m beginning to doubt Irish economics classes.

In the southeast, their idea of “countryside” is only one cement factory per field. And their idea of “southeast” is bigger than most nation’s “multilateral defense alliances.” But don’t worry, they’re showing the exact same regard for human rights and the environment as every other country to ever go through an industrial revolution. They’re also merging nine cities to build the first megacity. Possibly because we underestimated the appeal of Judge Dredd in Asia.

2000 AD, Dark Horse
He probably knows kung fu. No one’s ever gotten close enough to find out.

Guangzhou and Foshan are already linked by the same subway. The result will be 26 times the size of London, more populous than Canada and the setting for at least 50 near-future action movies.

#6. They Are Prepared to Die to Get to Work

While I’m losing battles of will with my alarm clock, the Chinese are risking death to get to work. And that’s when I realized I was already outflanked because my alarm clock was Chinese.

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Ni hao, I WATCH YOU SLEEP.

Every single driver has the Mario invincibility music in their head, and you’ve played Frogger with more care than their pedestrians. China has 1.3 billion lives, and they all act like they know that. Chinese pedestrians take more risks in a single commute than James Bond has in several movies. Every three-way junction is a seven-way game of chicken, with everything moving in both directions and one old man ambling right through the middle, because he’s survived Chinese history since 1930 and is now just daring the world to kill him.

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Call me back when a fender can destroy and rebuild the country twice.

Weaving through this not-quite-demolition-derby are two contra-flowing Tours de China. Bikes don’t just carry people, they carry cargo, children, grandparents — a single bicycle accident in Beijing could extinguish an entire family line. And that’s still not the craziest thing on the roads.

Yosemite, Wikimedia Commons
This is. The mobile version of the Suicide Booth.

A tuk-tuk is a motor-trike with a thin shell of metal and glass. This shell blocks three-quarters of the driver’s view, and in an accident the only person it’ll help is the street cleaner by keeping the liquidized victim in one easily mopped spot. The only things that could get me into a tuk-tuk are a cybernetic assassin ex-girlfriend and her exploding volcano base, because then it wouldn’t be the most dangerous thing I’d been inside.

#5. A Billion Jobs

China approaches the problem of employing a billion people like Sesame Street: They force people to share, cooperate and flat-out pretend that imaginary jobs are there.

Children’s Television Workshop
Mr. Snuffleupagus creates twice as many jobs as Big Bird.

Some restaurants are wallpapered with staff. Many places have entrance lobbies built entirely of women, but they only sell noodles, which can cause embarrassingly graphic misunderstandings. One parking lot had 16 parking spaces and four parking attendants. Though that might just be spares in case some are killed by a taxi. Chinese taxis navigate likePac-Man ghosts, but without the same understanding of mortality.

#4. Old-Fashioned Values

I went from “observing China” to “learning Mandarin” while eating breakfast. Eating breakfast and watching restaurant staff across the street file out into the parking lot, form into ranks and go through more synchronized physical training than several armed forces. I asked the restaurant I was eating in if we were about to be annexed by Huo Long’s Spicy Chicken Empire, and was told no, of course not, because Guang Xing’s Noodlery staff trained harder and earlier.

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Three chicken, two duck, and get down and give you 50, got it.

Not every establishment does this. It depends on how old-fashioned the owner is, and in China, “old-fashioned” isn’t your grandfather saying “We worked on the farm for a living” but “We worked on the state farm during the presumably sarcastically named ‘Great Leap Forward’ and also, if we were very lucky, continued living.” This is a country where man vs. tank isn’t a meme, it’s something they remember instead of The A-Team.

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If you think I’m making jokes about a guy with balls this big, you’re a fool.

Millions of middle-aged women still hold nightly communal exercise sessions in the streets. In Shamian, one group was dancing in a square, demonstrating perfect social harmony, while down the street riot police practiced full baton and shield-edge-bashing techniques, in case they ever stopped demonstrating that. And everyone was fine with that. That’s a level of community spirit that makes an anthill look anarchist. Every public phone I passed worked and didn’t stink of urine. They have solid-steel public exercise equipment installed in public walks and housing estates for anyone to use. Imagine someone leaving that outside in your neighborhood, and what would happen to it, and now stop imagining before you get imagination-hepatitis.

#3. Human Resources Is a Thing, Not a Department

Where I live, the history of mankind is divided into Paleolithic, Metal-Using and Main Street road works. When pressed to explain why it’s taking so long, workers admit they’re just stalling until humanity transcends the need to move on the material plane.

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Spiritual enlightenment means double pay. Union rules.

Over three days, I saw a Beijing street torn up, disemboweled and resurfaced. The roadway was made whole at Jesus velocity. Sure, during the “sidewalk full of video game style pits of doom” stage, the only warning was a single orange cone, presumably sarcastic, as if to say “In case you didn’t notice the voids of death, here’s a different color.” But that’s probably less poor safety consciousness than cunning population control.

#2. No Bathroom Breaks

Many things in China are a couple of feet shorter than I’m used to, including the toilets, which is unfortunate, because toilets are only a couple of feet tall in the first place. Instead of a porcelain throne, there’s a sunken squat-hole that couldn’t be filthier without including the orcs who first designed it. I know several countries allege that this is normal. I can now confirm that those countries don’t actually have magic dick-stabilizing gyros. Adding an extra two feet of vertical drop does for urine flow what flapping butterfly wings do for thunderstorms, and results in similar areas of fluid coverage.

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Any mathematical modeler will tell you that chaos theory just pisses on everything.

Squatting becomes a tipping-point problem with one degree between aiming your bomb-bay doors and soaking your dangling pant-edges. This can strike in even the fanciest businesses. It’s like being welcomed into a five-star restaurant and being presented with a burnished jade-handled spear to stab a pig they’ve released into the room. Except, you know, not awesome. Instead of relaxing in peace, it’s a sustained effort to be completed as quickly as possible. I’m not saying that all business is defined by the behavior of assholes …

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… but the fundamental shift in business could result from the business of shifting their fundaments.

#1. No Facebook

Internet users in China face more electronic enemies than the Autobots, and those enemies are just as stupid and even easier to defeat. Because the 27 minutes it takes to trounce Megatron is 27 times longer than needed to tunnel through the Great Firewall.

Sunbow Productions
I told you NOT to stand around aimlessly for 20 minutes after the early success!

It’s embarrassingly easy to circumvent the infamous barriers. Anyone with a keyboard and two neurons already knows how, to the point where Google now actively warns people when search terms will trigger “connection errors.” Lone computer users haven’t outwitted huge shadowy governments so quickly since ’90s hacker movies, and the tactics are even more ridiculously simple. We’re not talking spoofing ISPs and bouncing off satellites — it’s Googling and little programs that really do have progress bars and ping up little messages with exclamation marks saying “CENSORSHIP DEFEATED!”

Only the laziest can’t outwit it. But without the laziest people, there are like five people on Facebook. There are already Chinese clones of every major social service (Weibo, YouKu and KaiXin), but they’re monitored by the government and censored. The result is a wonderful segregation — the only time that phrase has ever been possible — that filters fools into a local “containment” Internet while those smart enough to bypass the barrier are allowed out to talk to everyone else. And from that alone, the answer to the question “Can the U.S. learn anything from China?” is surprisingly “HELL YES.”