And are you aware that when you create money, the value of that currency drops to reflect that? If it didn't any country could become infinitely wealthy by just printing money endlessly. Obviously printing money doesn't increase the amount of stuff, and printing enough creates inflation that pushes down currency values.
The fact that you took this trivial statement and described it as propaganda is very worrying. It seems to me that people have lost the ability to evaluate the EU objectively.
As for illegal "refugees" (many of them come from countries that aren't at war), in 2017 204,219 people crossed an EU border illegally compared to 511,074 in 2016 and 1.8 million in 2015.
And straight cucumbers - the EU does in fact regulate the straightness of cucumbers. The page you link to says bendy cucumbers aren't banned, they just fall into a different grade. But the OP didn't claim they were banned, he claimed these laws were 'silly' and a waste of time - a subjective evaluation but not propaganda.
> euro QE
A lot of shaky implications without much grounding in economic theory or reality. Please study:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap http://eur.exchangeconversions.com/usd/charts (10y chart)
There was drop in 2014-2015, but ever since Euro has not moved down, rather in opposite direction... So both facts and theory contradicts your continuously-deprecated-currency theory.
> refugees
Now quote the numbers for following years please.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis
No wonder all refugee scaremongers quote numbers only up to 2015.
But hey, it is worrying! . . . that people on HN spread such lame propaganda.
I did. Go back and try again. You are so eager to defend the EU you can't even be bothered reading what I wrote and immediately dived for the insults: scaremonger, propaganda, lame.
Now for your misunderstanding of basic supply and demand.
Look. Let's say there's a million euros in circulation, total. People are using these million euros to buy and sell things. Suddenly the ECB awards itself 9 million euros and starts spending them. Eventually the currency equalises out and those 10 million euro total are spread over the entire economy. But the total amount of stuff being bought and sold hasn't changed, so the prices must have done - they will have gone up by 10x. Likewise, an external currency will now buy 10x more euros than before.
If you understand that you will understand what I was talking about.
Your confusion about the USD/EUR rate is fairly basic I'm afraid. USD was also engaged in huge money printing during the same period. Despite that the ECB still managed to depreciate the currency. The reason the value started dropping at the start of 2015 is that this is when Mario Monti began huge monthly printing runs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Europe
on 22 January 2015 Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, announced an 'expanded asset purchase programme': where €60 billion per month of euro-area bonds from central governments, agencies and European institutions would be bought
I had the same wonder after I read the first few paragraphs of the ridiculous article that this thread is about!
It defines a standard for the quality classification of cucumbers. It doesn't require cucumbers to be straight, it just requires them to meet certain criteria to be declared a certain class of cucumber. It didn't prevent anyone from selling bent cucumbers as long as they were classified accordingly.
In fact, what I just said is exactly what the blog post linked in the comment you're responding to is said and which you're completely ignoring.
The EU didn't pass a law requiring cucumbers to be straight. The EU passed a standard for classifying cucumbers. Exactly the kind of standard that would have been passed by each country individually if the EU didn't exist (as evidenced by non-EU countries having such standards).