Welcome to Hard Questions, where we gather pastors together to take on your tough questions and answer them right from the Bible. I'm Tom Hollis, the moderator, and today our panelists include Dr. William R. Glaze, Bethany Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, Pastor Mark Motor, Berean Church in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, Pete Giacalone, Lead Pastor, South Hills Assembly Guy Church, Bethel Park, PA, Janthony Gilbert, pastor of another level ministries in the North Hills area. Well, pastors, I always say this, but I'm always excited when we get a chance to dig into these questions. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Today we've got topics, communion, tree of life, and aging. I don't know anybody on this panel that's aging, okay? So we'll be taking all of those questions, but we're taking hotline questions, and this is where you call in. So let's start with this one. Why did God put the tree of life and then the tree of knowledge of good and evil and subject that to Adam and Eve where the consequences would be if you eat the one tree, you're going to die, which they didn't know what dying was. They didn't know what the consequences were or what it all entailed because they lived in an atmosphere of utopia. So God loved Adam and Eve so much. Why did he subject them to that where you as a normal father would not place any harm close to your own child? All right. We thank you for that question. This is something that hits right at the whole nature of God, nature of man. Pastor Jay, why don't you start us off? Take a deep breath after that one, right? But you have to think about it too when you're answering this question. We're talking about it from a post-fall. Now, at the time when God was talking to Adam and to Eve, there was no sin in the earth. Man was never meant to know good and evil. We were meant to know life. That's why he said, now man has become like us. The product of us knowing good and evil and having that conscience and dealing with all of that and figuring things out was never what God originally intended. He didn't want us to have to be in that situation. So people say, well, why would God do that knowing this? Well, we were never supposed to know any of those anyways. But because we were fallen, now we're battling with these two types of things. And people always ask the question as well, well, why would God allow Adam and Eve to know if they were going to fall? Well, first of all, he's God. Number two, we have to realize as well, the reason why he put both trees in the garden is because you can't be a worshipper and you can't be obedient if you don't have options. So there must be options. And I always believe that the reason why God did that is that we are Lucifer's replacement. There is the war-faring angel who is Michael. There is the messenger who is Gabriel. And then there was the worshiper who was Lucifer. Well, when Lucifer was cast out of heaven with a third of the angels, there was the worshipping atmosphere that was not there anymore. So what does the Bible say Jesus said he looks for? He looks for one that will worship. Well, why? That's why Lucifer was put down there because he is the antagonistic part of the worship. So he's left there and God says I'm going to put both of these trees there to give you an opportunity to determine whether or not you can share with me in my glory. So that's the whole purpose of this whole life in my opinion is that who can God share his glory with? And will we become the worshippers he's called to be and without having those two choices, there cannot be a true definition. Choice is a big part of this. And something that what I read into this, as I heard him, I heard him say, the idea of the consequences. Remember, these two were extremely intelligent people. The Bible says that God brought all the animals to Adam and Adam named them all. And then the thing was Eve and Adam both knew what their consequences were to their choices. God explained to them so they knew what death was. What I'm getting from this question, he was saying that they did not know what the consequences were going to be. They knew the consequences. But yet knowing the consequences, the Bible says that what Adam ate knowingly. That's what the Scripture, he actually ate knowingly. Eve was deceived, but he ate knowingly what he was doing. That's a good point, Pete, because they had this, we don't know how long. It was a time of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden where they were walking with God so he would have explained it to them. They knew the consequences. When you look at it, to me, the bottom line is God wants us, as Jay talked about the choices, he wants us to make choices too because we love him. He could have made us robots and he could have made us follow everything that he commanded and just go like the robot and follow along. But God wants us to choose right and choose him. That's why there's options. If God made us love him, is that really love when you're forced to do it? I think that that's a part of it too. Then he gave man authority. When you think about the authority, and I'm going to piggyback on something that Pete said, that he had to know about death because the question that the gentleman is asking seems like he said they didn't have any concept. Not by experience, they didn't have it, but they knew about death and they knew about consequences because God gave them authority. I don't think that he would give somebody authority and them not know what consequences are. Right, absolutely. In God's foreknowledge, he did know that Adam and Eve would sin, but he also knew that Jesus was going to come and redeem mankind. I love something the Apostle Paul said in Romans 7, What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Even though there was a fall and God recognized that, he knew there was redemption and Jesus was going to pay the price. The best choice we can make is I choose Jesus and redemption becomes part of my life. I think this was a great question, a great question to start off with, and I appreciate the caller calling in because this is something that people have wondered and talked about for centuries, but the thing is, we have a choice now. Are we going to choose to follow Jesus and choose to obey God as well? Thank you for that. Let's go to our next one. Hi. I was wondering, is there aging in heaven? Or does everyone stay the same age they are when they go there? And if that's, if it's true, then what about babies that are premature or die in a miscarriage or something? Okay. Good question, Pete. All right. First John chapter 3, verses 2-3, Beloved, now we are the children of God and has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. And of course the Apostle Paul says to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord. We're going to talk about that later. So I believe as I read this portion of scripture, we're going to be like Him. God is ageless. We deal with time and age, but if we're going to be like Him, and as a matter of fact, He made us in His image in the very beginning. He really made our bodies never to die in the beginning, but because of the fall, our bodies, and because of sin, our bodies will corrupt. But God designed every human being never in the beginning to die. So I really believe it all in my heart. We will be like Him, meaning time will have no effect on us. We will be ageless. So if a baby dies, they're not going to be a baby in heaven. I don't believe it.  We can't prove or disprove this, but I was reading that some people feel that babies, if they die, would be fast forwarded to an ideal age. Maybe like an older person would be rewound to the ideal age, and some people say it could be... I don't know. I think 66 is the ideal age. You see that story of Forever 21? I asked my wife, where's Forever 66 at? I don't know, you know, but anyway... Well, some guess that it could be 33 years of age, and maybe that's how old Jesus died. We don't really know, but it's something interesting. You think about 30, 33 somewhere in there where you're the prime of life. We don't know, but that's one thought. I don't think a baby is going to remain a baby, but we'll find out when we get there. That's a good point. I think we're trying to bring a temporal thing into an eternal thing, and I think that's hard to do. We're trying to figure out, how do we fit earth into heaven in eternity? So I don't know necessarily what we're going to do. We're going to look at things that are terrified, not physical bodies. We're talking about a whole different thing that we're going to step into, so I think looking at that is important as well, because we're trying to figure out, okay, are they going to look like your age? Are they going to look like my age? I don't think they're going to look like any of our ages, because I think when we transition into there, we're going to have a completely different body that is going to be able to do things that we've never even seen before. And when we come back in 60 seconds, we ask, why does God take so long to answer our prayers? They do. Well, welcome back to Hard Questions, and today we're taking on the hotline questions. Let's listen to the next one. I love this station. I love all the programming, and I love how on Move Your Mountain they do communion. My question is, say you're someone who, for whatever reason, your physical locale, you're watching Move Your Mountain and they're doing communion. If you don't have physical access to elements for communion, do you think that the intent of your heart lets you receive communion in a spiritual sense without the physical elements? I believe so, and I'd love to hear what all the ministers think. Love of the program. Thank you for being there. God bless you. Well, thank you for watching. I'm glad to hear that you love the program. This is an interesting question. It brings up a lot of different things to my mind. Pastor Bill? Well, you know, I don't think that it's the focus of the elements, but it's the focus of the heart. I've taken communion before we drank water and we might have had a loaf of bread and kind of, you know. So, you know, the key is is that when you're taking it.  So, you know, we know that some religions have that as their, what we're actually doing.  That represent the body and blood. So, whatever the symbol is, that now traditionally, you know, and they've got these new things out now, right? Where it all comes in one.  Yeah, right, right. Well, you know, whenever I serve communion, I make sure that mine is already off. Because I don't want to be doing it. But, you know, just think how it's observed in different ways and different traditions. So, it's really not the elements. You know, it's the heart. You know, and if while you're taking it, you know, you think about the fact that, man, Christ's body was broken for me and his blood was shed for me. And that's why I'm saved. And that's where your heart is at. You know, I think that if you have elements that represent that, that God is pleased with that. And I think what you were referring to is that from a certain differentiation where it actually becomes the actual body and blood of Christ. And we know without a doubt, like you said, Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. So, I believe, like what is taught here at Channel 40, that if you don't have access to grape juice, I believe God will still honor that. It's the idea of what the whole purpose is, we're remembering the death, the burial, the resurrection. And we also are warned that we do it with the right attitude. Because, you know, we're warned to examine ourselves. You know, that's a really good point. And I know that in most of the times and the churches that I've been a part of, they usually say something about, you know, examine yourself and see that there's no sin in there. No sin that you're walking in so that you can have, you know, not drink condemnation unto yourself. But I have another question. It's not in here. So, I'm just wondering why do we need to remember Jesus through communion at all? I mean, obviously because he commanded it. But I mean, we have Christ living inside of us. I've actually pondered this. I mean, we have Christ living inside of us. We walk with him daily. Why communion? Why this kind of ritualistic thing to remember him? Any ideas, any thoughts on that? I think it's a pause in our lives to take the time to reflect. One of the phrases would be a point of contact. Lord, I'm receiving forgiveness and I believe there's no only forgiveness but there's healing through the bread because by Jesus stripes we are healed so we receive forgiveness. We receive healing at that time and I think as a congregation it's a really powerful time of gathering together, connecting with heaven and then connecting with one another. But it's prophetic in Luke chapter 22 14 through 20. Listen to this this is just amazing. I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God. This is where he says, I have desired to eat. I have desired to desire. Then he says, then he took the cup and gave thanks. He said, take this and divide it among yourselves for say I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God. So this is something prophetic that there's going to be a glorious communion time so it's there's something more there than what we realize. Yeah, I think same thing that you mentioned as well. I think it gives the opportunity because we forget and I think sometimes we have to be careful too that we don't do communion so often that it just becomes you know just ritualistic and so sometimes it's good to like you said to pause and to remember what happened and ask God Lord show me a fresh what this body if he told us to do it as often then there's a reasoning behind it and so we need to dig deep and understand the mystery of his body and how we can appropriate that in our lives because it says later on down the line many are weak, sickly and even sleep because you did not rightly discern so there's something about it that God wants us to dig into that'll help us.  Right yeah because you know again if you really pause and think about it you're connecting with the the broken body and the shared blood of Jesus Christ and that's what our salvation is all about so I believe yeah you're right there is that spiritual connection that takes place and again you know as Baptist you know we teach that is symbolic and I do believe that but I believe that it's beyond symbolic I believe that there's a spiritual connection with it too and that you know it touches your heart in a special way I think that you mentioned it Pete I think for a long time I've wrestled with okay there's I never believed in transubstantiation that it actually becomes the body and blood but is it purely symbolic so there's kind of like this I won't say middle ground but it's symbolic with power. God revealed this to me one time I was doing taking communion to an individual's home and as I was breaking the host I'll never forget it, it came to me wholeness Christ was broken for all of our brokenness physical, spiritual, mental, financial, emotional all of our brokenness to be made whole so when we break that we declare He was broken for all of wholeness was broken for all of our brokenness so we can believe to be made whole and then the blood cleanses the blood purifies. Wow, that's great so there's healing in communion I appreciate that discussion there's a lot more there thank you for the question let's move on to the next one yeah how come it takes a long time for God to answer a prayer like if you've been praying for like say a couple years and you don't see any change in what you're asking like you know your prayer why does it take long for him to answer a prayer that you want something in your life to change but it's not changing I think this is one that we have all had at one time or another Pete Jeremiah 33 and verse 3 it's God's phone number call unto me and I will answer and show you great many things which you know not but again God's timing is different from our timing we always refer to Pentecostal time we refer to you know the 12th hour at 1159 but the thing is if we were to use the example of Daniel, Daniel prayed and when the angel appeared to him he says I was on my way the very moment you prayed but I was hindered so there's times God says wait we don't want that there's times God says no and there's times that God says yes if I can share real quick I remember one time our food bank was in desperate need of money and I'm praying alone and I just said father my phone went off and it said how much do you need you can't make this up how much do you need and don't be shy I really need a thousand I said 500 and the reply was a thousand would be better now you can't make this up I really I didn't know God had your phone number like that it was a different Mark there is definitely an aspect of God's timing we had a church member who had moved from Pittsburgh to another state they had a house they were trying to sell for about a year nothing happened they prayed they fasted they pulled every lever they pushed every button nothing was taking place all of a sudden she turned 55 the very next day it sold and she came to find out after the fact that there were great tax benefits once you're 55 years of age so even though she didn't recognize God knew what he was doing and he made great decisions that's what we were talking about age is a good thing any final words on the I think that when you start praying God releases his power on that situation regardless of what's happening down here God has unleashed his power because you started praying in that situation so now we just wait for the manifestation of it that's right great question one that we've all had we're going to take a quick break and afterwards we ask how do you get the devil to stop bothering you stay tuned welcome back to hard questions we're taking your hotline questions and remember you can always call in and we'll share that at the end of the show but here is our last hotline question today get the devil to stop bothering you how do we get rid of the devil to stop bothering me we might have to define this a little bit about what's going on but Pastor J take us well you know there's a couple of things that come to mind you know one do we have any open doors because if we've got doors opened the devils understand legal right so sometimes we've opened doors so we need to make sure there's no sin nothing in our lives that's allowing the devil to have access to us to torment us and I'll pass it on to the rest of the fellows how do I get the devil to stop bothering me keep bothering him the bible says the gates of hell won't prevail so if there's nothing in your life that you're aware of that you've done wrong the reality is that you are on the offensive you need to go in and dispossess the enemy and God has put you in the middle of the conflict because he's anointed you with the keys of the kingdom to go in and dispossess the enemy and to take what it is that God has for you we're not going to get rid of the devil he's here as long as we're here but we do know this James 4.7 we know the verse well resist the devil and he'll flee from you but that's the second part of the verse the beginning says therefore submit to God and a lot of people want the resistance of the devil without submitting to their savior so it's important to say Lord I submit to you to your point I want to make sure there are no open doors sometimes we call them blessing blockers no blessing blockers because if you're fully submitted to God when you resist the devil he will flee now he won't flee permanently but he will flee for a season so it's so important to say Lord first of all I submit to you you're my Lord then when I resist the devil he will flee it's interesting isn't it I can remember my own life periods of time where I've committed myself to seek after God and I can remember feeling like completely free temptation, oppression, everything and then a few months down the road it was like the devil was leaning against the side of the wall as I was coming out of the house or something he's like remember me and like you said he's not going to leave forever but when we resist him consistently he's going to flee well again I'm reminded that as we submit to God what happens God becomes more developed or enveloped in us to see more of him than seeing of us he doesn't want to be anywhere in the presence the manifested presence of Almighty God so he's going to run from that so the more we stay in the Lord the more the enemy is not going to want anything to do with us I wrote a book and the title of the book is 50 ways to resist the devil actually based on that Paul Simon song 50 ways to leave your lover I got it and basically what the book deals with there's the word rama every rama that comes out of the mouth of God that word rama actually means the word of God as you claim it as you interact against whatever you're dealing with so if Satan is coming against me as this lady right here is saying what she needs to begin to do is to take ramas in whatever area you're taking her in she needs to find a scripture and she finds that scripture it becomes a rama not where you just read it out of rote memory but it's one that you believe in your heart it's one that has a hold of your spirit and that when Satan comes against you you stand against him with that rama and he'll flee every time because you know when Jesus was in the wilderness and Satan tempted him what did he do ramas and he called it the rama of God and Satan left him he quoted the Old Testament real fast and then after that though that's what I want to mention says then the devil left him until a more opportune that word opportune is Kyros which means a God moment in your life so when you see Satan showing up it's because you are on the verge of something good happening absolutely yeah this is the thing we are going to have difficulties in this life and we are going to have temptations we're going to have that all and so sister just stand with the Lord in all those things we love to close with the scripture and so we have this one are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin and not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father's will but the very hairs of your head are all numbered do not fear therefore you are of more value than many sparrows that's Matthew 10, 29 through 31 well we hope that you've enjoyed today's program I know I enjoy this time I enjoy the chance to talk to the pastors and hear their answers and we want to hear from you we heard from so many today we're hearing from some more in the future we want you to email your questions to hard questions at ctvn.org or call to our hotline at<PHONE_NUMBER> God loves you have a wonderful day


There are three types of people in the world. Some people act, politicians, businessmen, central bankers. Other people contemplate the world. Philosophers, economists. And then you have some people who try to combine both action and contemplates your. I tried myself. I went to Belgium Parliament. And I found out how bad I am as a man of action. So I decided to go back to academia. So I failed dismally in my attempt to combine action and contemplatio. But that's not what happened with Vito. He was highly successful in combining contemplatio in actioni, like the Latinist among us would call it. So that's why I admire him. And that's why I'm so happy to be here today. So I was asked to talk about corporate within the Eurozone. Basically, this was the same theme as what we have been hearing before, in a way. But I will try to look at it in somewhat different way. Sometimes one picture is worth 1,000 words. You must have seen this before. These are the spreads, the spreads of 10-year government bond rates, spreads vis-à-vis Germany, starting in 1990 or 1991, up to last year. And what you find is the striking feature that is in the 1990s, the spreads were high. Then they collapsed to essentially zero and shot up again. And we know all what is behind this. In the 1990s, this was essentially devaluation risks. This was a protection system for most of these countries. And then during the period 2010, 2012, this was essentially default and liquidity risk that sovereigns were experiencing. So this is the important part that I want to mention here is that those who were in the 1990s experiencing these high spreads, those countries that experienced these high spreads in the 1990s, turned out to be also the countries that experienced the high spreads associated with default and liquidity crisis later on. So that leads to the following question. Is there an original sin by you? Of course, the notion of original sin is a very old notion. I almost said by invented this notion, which obviously is not the case. But he applied it to Latin American countries. And I'm asking the question here, is there something similar? That is, the countries that experienced the exchange risk in the 1990s happened to be also the countries that experienced the sovereign debt crisis later on. And therefore, the question that arises here is the devaluation risk that we observe in the 1990s, a good predictor of the subsequent default crisis in the eurozone. And that is my question of the original sin. Is there something in these countries that somehow determined that when they were in trouble during the fixed exchange rate system, they would also be in trouble in a monetary union? So what I did here is the following. I looked at the average spreads for each of these countries during the period 1991, 1999. That's the pre-eurozone. And then during the, in fact, it should be 2010, 2012. I don't know what happened there. Must have been late at night. So it's 2010, 2012. And here you can see that, yes, indeed, it looks like countries that experienced high spreads in the 1990s also experienced these high spreads during the subsequent sovereign debt crisis. And this is a very tight relationship. There are a few exceptions there, Ireland and Finland, to which I will return in a second. So it turns out that the spreads of the 1990s are good predictors of the spreads later on. That is, countries that got into trouble during the 1990s in the fixed exchange rate regime also turned out to be gotten into trouble later on. And the intensity of the foreign exchange crisis is also correlated with the intensity of the sovereign crisis later on. This is quite remarkable because there is a lag of 10 years, right? And it seemed that something deep down there was working. So it looks like that the periphery countries, because we call these countries, the periphery countries, seem to carry the burden of an original sin. There are a few exceptions that I showed to you. Ireland apparently did not carry an original sin. In other words, in the 1990s, the spreads were lower, but suddenly appeared to have gotten into trouble. And Finland is the other way around. It seemed to have escaped from the original sin. What happened after the crisis? Does the original sin continue to do its work later on? Here, I show you the same spreads in the 1990s, average spreads in the 1990s, and then the spreads after the crisis. And you can see, again, a very strong relationship. So that's, I think, quite remarkable. And then the question is, where does that come from? Is there something? Is there a story we can tell that is behind, is underlying this original sin? And I'm going to talk of the German school, but I could also call it the German Dutch school. The governor of the Dutch Central Bank is here, and I'm sure he would be offended if I only called it the German school. So what is it that produces an original sin? I hear this, weak legal and political institutions. That make it difficult to maintain fiscal discipline. That lead to macroeconomic and monetary instability, a little bit like the Latin American story that Barry was telling about these countries. And these countries, when they are in a pegged exchange rate system, then will experience speculative crisis, because they cannot credibly fix an exchange rate. And when they are in a monetary union, that problem of regovidence will reappear, not in the form of high inflation, because inflation is not out of their control, but in the form of fiscal crisis, budgetary and sovereign debt crisis. So in this view, there is the same source of weak governance that drives this origin, that is at the basis of the original sin, and that in a quite deterministic way condemns people to be always in the periphery. Now, that has been a very influential analysis, and I heard some comments today already that seem to tell us, yes, that is the way things work. But is it so convincing? If it is a good story, we would in fact observe that prior to the sovereign debt crisis, the countries that experienced the sovereign debt crisis would have experienced the biggest explosion of the public debt. Let's look at this, whether we find this. And here I show you, on the horizontal axis, public debt accumulation or decumulation during the period prior to the crisis, 1999, 2007, the euro, the period of the euro. And so you can see here the numbers are percentage points of GDP. Note the following, most of these countries were on a declining part of debt to GDP ratio. Portugal was different, Greece are outliers there, but most of these countries are a declining part. And on the vertical axis, I set out the bond yield as my measure of the intensity of the sovereign debt crisis. And what you can say is that the debt accumulation prior to the crisis is not a good predictor of the sovereign debt crisis that erupted in 2010. And here I show you the yield in 2012, at the peak of the sovereign debt crisis. So the public debt accumulation is not a good predictor of sovereign debt crisis. So what could it be? Well, here I show you private debt accumulation. On the horizontal axis, I show you the same or similar numbers, private debt accumulation prior to the crisis. And you can see most of the observation are the positive, large private debt accumulation prior to the crisis. And that turns out to be a much better predictor of the sovereign debt crisis, which is quite remarkable. You would think, and the idea of, well, why do we have a sovereign debt crisis? It's government profligacy. We have discipline in them. It turns out it's private debt accumulation that is the better predictor of the sovereign debt crisis. So that's quite interesting to see, I think. So what I get from this is that with the possible exception of Greece and Portugal, this law, discipline, original sin may explain the foreign exchange crisis, but does not explain well the sovereign debt crisis that emerged in 2010. So the latter may have little to do with the original sin, condemning periphery countries to be hit by a sovereign debt crisis. So my interpretation and is the following. The sovereign debt crisis was as a result of a classical boom, bus dynamics that has been described by people that have died some time ago, Kindleberg, Minsky, and many others. You have a period of boom, euphoria, debt accumulation, bubbles, and then the crash. That leads to debt-delveraging recession and all that. And then governments have to step in to save the system by increasing their own debt. And if you take that view, you might even argue that sovereign debt crisis is the result mostly of responsible behavior of governments faced with the collateral damage created by booms and busts. What could they do? Let the market system collapse? They couldn't, and they acted, and they did the right thing. But what I will argue now is that these booms and busts dynamics create special problems in a monetary union. That's the focus that I really want to give now. But before I do that, a note of warning here. What I do not say is that countries of the periphery have no deep-seated governance problems. They probably have. But so many other countries also have that. But it means that these governance problems are not good predictors of the sovereign debt crisis that developed in 2010. That's the major point that I want to make here. Now let me turn to the eurozone. Booms and busts in the eurozone. Here I show you the business cycle component of GDP, which is obtained by just filtering out a trend. And this shows something that, in fact, we already found in Barry and also a little bit in Lucrezia. The business cycle in the eurozone was highly correlated. This is the business cycle component. It was highly correlated. When you look at the correlation coefficient, it's quite high, 0.8, 0.9 even more. The asymmetry was in the amplitude of these things. You see that some countries like Ireland, Greece, Spain, experienced an extremely strong boom and then a very deep crash. And countries like Germany had only very small movements. So the asymmetry was not in low correlations but in the difference in amplitude. And that creates a problem, of course. Here I show you the following. This is a regression of the domestic cycle on the euro cycle. And the slope that I get there tells you something about the amplitude. The countries like Germany, Belgium, Austria had a very low slope. And then other countries in the periphery had a very high slope, much higher amplitude. And that created, of course, problems in the monetary union for two reasons. One, it led to a large buildup of divergences in competitive position and external imbalances, things that we all know. But also, it made clear how unstable the government bond markets can be during a downswing. These are the two things that I want to stress. Oops. Yeah, here are the divergences. Maybe I can go a little quicker. Divergences in the competitive position where the direct result of this difference in amplitude can't be extreme. The experience is extreme boom. So the competitive position declined fast, accumulating external imbalances. And we're then forced to adjust the hard way with internal devaluations and leading to political upheaval and even dynamics of rejection. And then what appeared is the second problem, namely the instability of the government bond market in a monetary union that I want to talk a little bit about. And that has to do with the fact that governments of member states in a monetary union cannot guarantee the bondholders that the cash will always be there to pay them out at maturity. And that creates potential for a self-fulfilling crisis, which typically appears during a recession when budget deficits increase leads to distrust of bondholders. They dump the bonds, interest rate increase, liquidity is withdrawn from national markets, and governments find themselves unable to roll over their debt. And they are forced to introduce immediate and intense austerity, intensifying the recession. So the scenario that we have seen during the sovereign debt crisis. But note that this has to do with the fact that there is no backup of these bond markets. There is no one ready in times of crisis to step in. And it's the countries that have experienced the largest boom and subsequent burst that are singled out by financial market pushed into a bad equilibrium, leading to massive capital flows within the monetary union, where those who sell the bonds, the first set of countries, channel it to safe haven countries, and thereby intensifying the asymmetry and the conflict in the union. And this problem is likely to reappear with each recession. As these recessions will vary in amplitude and therefore create problems. So my conclusion, in fact, is from all these that there is no original sin. But where does the high correlation that I noted in the beginning come from? Here is my explanation. Essentially, the countries that experienced this foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s were indeed countries with high inflation, monetary instability. And when they were promised entry into the monetary union, the effect of this was a massive reduction of real interest rates. Because the real interest rates before expressed the risk attached to the fact that these were high inflation and viable inflation countries. And as a result, essentially what happened is an asymmetric shock in the form of decline in the real interest rate in these countries, something that did not happen in the low inflation countries. And that led them to the boom and the bust that was so intense in these countries. So it was a kind of legacy that appeared from some sins in the past, you may say. But the question is, is that something that has a deterministic component that will continue to affect these countries in the future? And I'm saying no. The correlation that I observed earlier is in a sense a spurious one. The missing variable is the asymmetric shock in real interest rate that led to this extreme boom bust scenario later on. And there was no need here to invoke some dark force coming from weak governance that condemned these countries into a part of sovereign default once in a moment there. You and I will continue to condemn them in the future. So I'm not an adept of original sins. I have a Catholic upbringing. And I was told when I was a kid that the original sin is something that weigh on you. And that's some of the fictions that I threw out as soon as I left school. So again, it doesn't mean that these countries may not have problems with governance. I don't want to minimize this. There are governance problems in many countries. But capitalism will continue to produce booms and busts. And the impact of these booms and busts will continue to be very different. And we do not know which of these countries will be on the right side of the fence. It could be countries that are today in the core and find themselves on the wrong side of the fence in a future crisis. Let's keep that in mind and not continue to think it's always going to come from the periphery, right? Because they have something deeply sinful in them. Now, the previous discussion tells us is that the eurozone, in fact, is not well prepared to deal with booms and busts that capitalism produces and that will continue to produce. And then the question is, how should we redesign the eurozone? I have very little time to say much about this. But I will try to say a few things now. How to redesign the eurozone? I have identified essentially two problems. One is that the eurozone has poor instruments to deal with asymmetric shocks, right? This is where the asymmetry is in the amplitude of the movements. I call that the OCA problem, right? And the second problem has to do with the instability of the government bond markets in the eurozone. So how to deal with that? The standard theory of OCA theory has told us, well, if you have asymmetric shocks, be flexible. Structural reforms. That was the main message, right? We continue to say that. And then you will go to Nirvana. It has been very influential. The eurozone countries have gone into programs of structural reforms. I think this analysis is very much based on the view that these asymmetric shocks are somehow exogenous and permanent, right? They supply shock quite often. And then, yes, you have to be flexible. But if they are temporary, business cycle shocks, as I have illustrated, it's not clear that you have to be more flexible, right? And then it's probably better to look into stabilization efforts. It's a stabilization problem that we have to work on, right? And of course, there are many ways we can do it. So it certainly means that we have to create mechanism, aiming at stabilizing the eurozone business cycle instead of focusing on structural reforms. Again, structural reforms we may want to do for other reasons, right? That are worthwhile. But it's not the kind of thing we have to do to solve a eurozone problem, right? So there have been proposed common and employee benefit schemes. I'm not going to go into the detail here. I think this is one possibility to move forward. But let me say a few things about the instability of the government bond markets. How should we deal with it? Here, of course, key. And this is a conference about the ECB. Finally, I can say something about the ECB. Here, it's key that the ECB stands ready to provide liquidity support in times of crisis. And that's what the ECB actually did in 2012, right? It didn't call this lend-off last resort. It would have been more appropriate to say, we are the lend-off last resort. I understand the ECB didn't want to say that and call this terrible name outright monetary transactions. Anyway, OMT was the trick that did wonders, right? The yields collapsed without ECB actually having to do anything. They could sit back, relax. You relaxed after the OMT announcement, right? And the private sector did it for you, right? They did it. So it was a beauty. But of course, the issue that arises here, how credible is that OMT program going to be for the future? Is the ECB going to be willing to use it in the future? And that we are not sure. One can have doubts, right? Depends on who will be president of the ECB. That's one of the things it may depend on. I see negative. OK, that's not something it will depend on. But I think that the issue is one of credibility, right? How credible is the OMT? And here, I think we have a fundamental problem which has to do with the fact that OMT should only be used to deal with liquidity problems, not with solvency problems, right? But in real time, it's extremely difficult to decide is it a solvency or a liquidity problem, right? And this, of course, will always put the ECB, whatever it does, at the center of controversy, political controversy. And therefore, it's unsure whether the ECB will be willing to act in the future. That's very different in standalone countries. There, there can be no doubt that if the sovereign is in trouble, the central bank will act. Whether it solvency or liquidity becomes unimportant. But in the case of the ECB, where you have one central bank and 19 sovereigns, it is key. It is a key issue, right? And therefore, we should not count on it. And that lead me, then, finally to the idea that we have to use towards a budgetary and political. We are condemned to do that, right? Because that's the only way we can stabilize the government bond markets by consolidating significant parts of national debts into one eurozone debt, right? Now, whoops. Of course, these are very intrusive, even revolutionary transformation of the eurozone. And there is no appetite today to do that. Official circles certainly don't want to do that. They understand that. I mean, there is no way we can move in that direction today. There is a risk, though, that we start believing in technical solutions. Let's try the financial engineering part, right? Save assets and other things that will do the trick for us. I just want that this may not work. Conclusion, I mean, OK. So I do think that the long-run success of the eurozone depends on the continuing process of political unification. And that political unification is needed because the eurozone has dramatically weakened the power and legitimacy of nation states without creating a nation at the European level. That's the key problem that we face. We have whipped off the possibility of nation states to do stabilization. And we have not created some institution that the eurozone will do it. And that, of course, will have to be solved. Today, there is integration fatigue. The willingness to go in that direction is non-existent. And that will continue to make the eurozone a fragile institution. Its long-run success, therefore, cannot be guaranteed. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Paul. So let me turn to John. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also, obviously, very pleased to be here to honor Victor. And thinking about his achievements here at the ECB, it reminded me of this famous sentence by Jean Monnet, rien ne se crée sans les hommes, rien ne dure sans les institutions. So nothing can be created without men. In that time, it was men. Today, it's very different, obviously, as can be seen in the composition of this room. And nothing can last without institutions. And it's fair to say, then, when you took charge, this institution was not prepared for what you had to do. It was not within its mandate. It was not within its worth thinking. And at that time, we were lucky that we had men who were able to think out of the book and prepare for bold decisions and a change in the institutions. Paul gave his taxonomy, let me give mine. You have people who are very good at choosing between A and B when they are presented with A and B as possible solutions. And this is a basic training of politicians. And you have people who are able to define C when they are presented with A and B and you have to think about C. And these are people we need in these kind of situations. Let me move to the paper by Paul and Numeji. This is a very quintessential Paul de Grau paper. It starts with strong stylus facts. Then it develops a sort of a conventional explanatory model. This time, the model is a little bit less unconventional. But it ends always with provocative policy conclusions. And they are there. So let me go through some of the observations and some of the more disputable claims that are made. I think it very much in line with what was developed by Barry and Lucrezia, the way that we had this sort of underlying model of shocks. And we shouldn't think in terms of shocks. And I think that's interesting because that's a way that reconciles different views of the crisis. I think the German-Dutch view doesn't think in terms of shocks. When you speak of shocks, people always answer, what are shocks? I mean, those crises that were hit for a reason. It was not just at random. And I think that's right. And we have to think in these terms. Then you say that it was a crisis credit balance of payment story, not a fiscal story. That public debt accumulation is a poor predictor. That history matters because the spreads of the 1990s are good predictors. And that it very much can be explained by the initial conditions and the convergence play that triggered this boom. So I think on that, I wouldn't have this agreement. Now, where I would be focusing, because there is room for discussion, is on the fact that institutional quality has become a second-order factor. And the core and periphery can essentially trade places, which is something you actually say in the paper. The second is your amplification story and whether it's a permanent feature in the euro area. The third is about the common budget and the fact that the common budget would be the most effective way to address this problem if the problem is amplification. And the fourth is your most provocative conclusion about the type of solution to the fragility of the debt market and the need for a full-fledged political union. So on the situation today and the reason why we had that, I think you're convincingly argue that initial conditions mattered. That initial conditions, in a way, were related to the quality of institution pre-crisis because the reason why we had this fast convergence is because we had economies that started from higher inflation rates and higher exchange rate stability and that reflected in the nature of the policy institution, then they converge rapidly and distribute the boom. So that's right. Now, is it true that we are facing now a situation where, I mean, reforms have been done, convergence has happened even in tears, but that we can think in terms of equal opportunity threats? That would be neglecting some of the scars that are there. And I have very simple statistics here about the share of the six crisis countries in GDP, bank loans, but public debt, NPLs, and at the same time manufacturing capital stock and unemployment. I mean, there is a high degree of asymmetry in the present initial conditions that is going to be inevitably reflected in the reactions to the next recession. So the next recession will see countries that have not caught up yet that are still affected by the scars of the crisis and there will be inevitably weaker and at risk of being hit harder by the crisis. What does it tell us? It tells us that we have to recognize that. And there is no value of ignorance. We can't have this discussion about the policy system under a value of ignorance. We should accept the reality that a system, a solidarity system, will have inevitably a bias. It will, at least in the short run, and I think in the short run, it will have a mechanism that will benefit certain countries more than others. So the fact that in the long run, banking crisis, as Ken Rogoff said, are equal opportunity threats, it's true in the long run. But in the short run, we still have initial conditions that differ significantly and that may be reflected in the next crisis. So asymmetric cycle amplification. There is some degree of contradiction in the paper because on one hand, you say the crisis was contingent, it was not about institutions, but we have cycle amplification as a permanent feature. So why is it that we should have cycle amplification permanently if it's linked to a sort of particular boom bust financial cycle and that this is not rooted in the quality of the domestic institution, this is only rooted in the initial conditions pre-EMU. So amplification may be in fact contingent and I don't think actually we are with through an amplification cycle and I think Lucretia very clearly showed that this is not a fair account of what's happening at present. There is evidence of amplification in the US, it's more linked to structural factors, it's more linked to the share manufacturing, it's more linked to the resilience of individual states. So I think in terms of thinking about the policy reform, we have to be careful not to wage the last war and to think about what's needed in the future. So banking union obviously was absolutely right as an answer to this type of vulnerability. But the stabilization mechanism may not have to be thought in terms of addressing this amplification problem. Assuming it's an amplification problem, would a common budget would be the right solution? I mean the case for a common budget rests on the sort of randomly distributed shocks. So it's a pure veil of ignorance approach. It can be thought in terms of providing insurance for more risky activities. So if some countries would specialize in innovation type of activities that have high variance or a long distance export that also involves exposure to external shocks, there might be a case to say in the name of the common welfare, you would insure this type of civilization. And obviously there is also the case for a common budget that rests on a different argument, which is the need for a common fiscal instrument to address common shocks. But if we speak of pure cycle amplification, I'm not sure the logical conclusion is that we need a common budget. I mean they can be individual stabilization or they can be rainy day fans, but it's not obvious that the sort of mutualization component is needed if you think in terms of pure amplification. Finally, on your last point on the instability of the government bond market, so it goes back to your famous paper of 2011, where you identified the roots of fragility and the risk of multiple equilibria and the need for conditional support. Now, the way I read this paper is that liquidity is essential, that you need a central bank or you need an agent, let's say, to avoid being pushed into the bad equilibrium. But that's this liquidity support can be conditional on sovereign solvency. So that means it is compatible with the Nobel out-close being interpreted as meaning you don't provide liquidity support to an unsolven state. And so that leads to provision of liquidity through the OMT. But the OMT is conditional on an ESM program. I mean I would wish to have liquidity support that is not conditional on an ESM program because it's basically helps avoid the bad equilibrium. So there could be, for example, and this is one of the things we propose in the Franco-German paper, liquidity support, possibly backed by the ECB, conditional on some pre-qualification, but not conditional on an exposed program. Now, you go much further in this paper because what you're saying is that in a standalone country, and I quote here, the commitment of the central bank is unconditional because in times of crisis, the sovereign prevails over bureaucrats at the central bank, which means essentially fiscal dominance. So what you're saying is that what you need is fiscal dominance. This is a very strong statement. And you say actually this is because this risk is being taken in standalone countries that they avoid the fragility or instability of the government market. And the fact that we don't have that, and we have the opposite in the euro area, means permanent instability of the government market. So I think that the controversial policy recommendation that you're providing, I would not agree. I would say that support in standalone countries is not unconditional. I mean, it is tell the Bank of England that essentially they are under the threat of being pushed into financing in an insolvent state. And that the reason why they're providing stability, I think they would dispute it. I see Charles, maybe Charles has a view on it. And I don't think it is necessary that it's unconditional in the euro area. I think we can design mechanisms that provide liquidity, that are conditional on insolvency, but that help avoid the bad equilibrium. Let me end here. Thank you. Thank you, John. OK, so let me.


Good morning friends welcome back to another Vlog today is gonna be another classroom setup video day four. I believe I did hang two bulletin boards yesterday Just in between like meetings and stuff I do have one more meeting today, and then I'm planning on finishing up bulletin board walls I'm probably not gonna put things up on the wall very like very many things up on the wall Just because I'm waiting for some card stock to come in the mail so that I can cut out words Anyway, I'm in the Starbucks line and Then I'm gonna go into Walmart real quick. It's 750. I don't have a meeting until 9 So I'm gonna try and run into Walmart really quickly a couple things I need to get extension cords two of them one black crate I need to get some command hooks, and then I also need to get I want to get a new sensei like Wax warmer and some smells So that is everything on my Walmart list. I think I'll have to check again, but Everything is so close now and so convenient. It's just really really nice The Starbucks is like five minute drive and then Walmart's right next to it. So if I need anything, it's just super nice So I opened up what I thought was gonna be a breakfast burrito It's a sandwich, but I'll eat it. It's still yummy Okay, you guys I just ran up the stairs. So Walmart did not have the black crate that I needed So I think I ordered the right one from Target, and it's gonna be available for pickup. So I'll pick it up later today What else did I get at Walmart? I? Got a new sensei warmer My favorite thing About my classroom is the smells in here. I got a new warmer. This one's really cute. It's like Kind of bohemian-looking. This one's gonna be over here on my desk. I have another one across the room And then I got a few extension cords I got two six foot and one 12 foot and then I got a bunch of sense these the better homes and gardens ones are literally the best and then Conditioner, but it's not for here So I have about 30 minutes until my meeting starts So I'm gonna go wash my hands eat my breakfast and then I think I'm gonna take all of the stools down off of the Desks put them under the desks so that when I show you guys stuff The stools are not like in the way because I just realized like as I look around the room I can't really see everything and that's just simply because there's stools up So I'm gonna do that and then I will check in with you guys about the game plan Okay, so let me give you a quick progress update So this bulletin board was hung yesterday This board is going to be my science and social studies board. So I will probably put anchor charts maps posters whatever here and then I Did purchase a Tablecloth for this tablecloth or for this table for this tablecloth. It should be here today or tomorrow It's on coming from Amazon. I also hung this board and I'm not sure how I like it because so I ran out of Border or sorry paper And I didn't have enough to cover the whole board. So that maybe I could do like a border situation This is probably going to be like my information station So I'm thinking I'll probably put like some bitmojis with speech bubbles on the black Put a calendar and then basically like scholastic book order stuff Announcements things like that on this board Sorry, I just bumped with the camera just because it's like right up front and these are my turn-in bins as of now So, yeah, that's the progress Today I'm gonna do this wall. I'm gonna do a wall behind my desk I'm gonna do this wall and then this wall is going to be for the math and ELA teachers to put their anchor charts and Then if for some reason we decide not to switch Then I'll use the space for something else, but this is gonna be like Kind of Whatever they need so anyway, I have a meeting that starts in about 20 minutes so I'm gonna check my email finish eating because I can't Can't be eating during a meeting maybe I'll set this cutie up so I can get some good smellage and then After the meeting's over, which it should only be an hour, then I will start setting up again Okay, so a few years ago a kid broke one of my staplers and it turned out to be like a life changer These are great for stapling things on the wall Does anybody else get really freaking irritated when the staples do that thing? When they do that thing where they like Don't go down all the way they go down on one side Really freaking annoying So I'm currently doing the wall behind my desk And if you guys haven't invested in some of this better than paper bulletin board paper You really need to get on board with that. I know that it's kind of pricey But you can probably get away with using like two rolls Maybe three in your classroom and they're less than $20 on Amazon and honestly this piece of paper has lasted me This is my third classroom or class year using this paper this specific sheet and it has lasted me Through the test of time. They are dry erase. They do not rip. They don't tear They're easy to put up by yourself. All I use is a yard stick and I just pin it up on one side and then I start to roll it out and I smooth it with one of these and then as I go I just staple down and it stays flat and it's really easy to put up. So I'm also Putting up this border to go with it and this is behind my desk space So this is like where I put all of my stuff all my important paperwork My pictures things the kids make me stuff like that. So Yes better than paper bulletin board paper is way better than butcher paper. It is an investment It's not a waste of money. It's an investment. So I highly recommend getting this if you're interested in this one Or the brick that I'm using it is linked in my Amazon store front. Okay guys So I am done with my board behind my desk and I love it. It's very functional I'm just fishing out my Professional binders because I know those go behind my desk and I like to save certain stuff in them and Finding things that need to go in them. I just have these two binders. They're from Target a long time ago and I think I've had them since my first year teaching, but I always like to put stuff like this in there Like Name tags pieces that I've taught. So I like to keep that kind of stuff in here. I always have like staff photos and Things like that that I like to keep So I'm gonna show you guys what behind my desk looks like so far I do have a few things I want to do to my fridge. So I'll explain that but basically This is what it looks like So I have these two clear File folders that I nailed to the wall. It's another great thing about this paper Is that you can put nails through it and it doesn't rip or tear or anything like obviously there's holes in it But you can always cover those up So I've got my phone and then this is gonna be like where I put Things on the top are gonna be things that I need to Complete and turn in and then the bottom is gonna be for handouts that I get from the school This up here is a lunch bunch and behavioral things. So like detention slips and Detention essays and then this is like school information. So this is gonna be like my school schedule Duty schedules things like that that I need to like really keep these down here might be like I can toss But I have my little Darth Valdez setup I was thinking about not putting the shelf here But I honestly didn't want to put it anywhere else and this is kind of like my little ode to Darth Vader So anything that I get that is Darth Vader themed. I always like to keep it together so this is this little spot and then I also have my degree here and then my picture of my grandma and her twin sister they graduated 30 years before me from The teacher's college ASU. So I always keep that and then so I bought some black contact paper that I'm planning on putting on This refrigerator and then I have plans for a little coffee Bar here This Brita will probably be kept in the fridge full of water. This is for ice So if I want to bring ice to and from home, I can put it in here and it will stay pretty cold And then I bought this yesterday at home goods or sorry TJ Maxx and it's for keeping my coffee filters in So I'll probably keep this And the coffee pot up and I'll probably move this like Up here. I think but I think I ordered a different one. This was a gift from Mandy. I don't know where I'll put this I want to keep it, but I don't know where I'll put it yet But anyway, this will be a little coffee bar area I wanted to get some hooks to put back here or maybe here if I can find out how to hang them To put my coffee mugs on But I don't know yet I don't want to get crazy and then stuff break or anything like that So anyway, and then my desk I'm going to keep very Very minimal because like I've said before I am going to have another teacher that has to plug in And use the space so I want to keep this desk very clean um Obviously there's stuff on it right now that I'm using But you guys get it so I made this bulletin board last night Not really bulletin board. Um, this is just Words that are going to go up on that wall So I need to go get my painter's tape from home So that I can Put them up there. I have to hot glue them up there So I think I'm going to wait a little bit until I I'm done with some more bulletin boards before I do that I found this in my little Roll of joy. So I'm going to put this one here. I think it will fit. It should I'm going to do this board next And I think I'm going to put this burlap border around it So we'll see if it fits So I just found out that I cannot hang anything from my ceilings, which is really sad because I bought a bunch of these pom poms that I was totally wanting to hang From the ceiling, but I can still use them. I just have to put them on the walls instead of hanging them from the ceiling So the paper hangs over a slight slight amount on this side, but that my friends is the beauty of borders Okay, let's go pick a border for this wall I think I'm gonna do This again because I have plenty of it Ooh, or I could do Oh shard Hey, where are you going with that? By the way, if you guys hear strange noises, it's just Helen Vacuuming Hey, what are you doing? She's taking stuff There's one way to help me keep stuff off of the floor Because she will vacuum it right up Okay, do I want to do light bulbs over there? or Colors over there with bulletin boards always leave the corner Unstapled until you're ready to complete it because it's easier to tuck pieces behind the straight one On the end rather than having to cut it. You just tuck it right in so I always leave these ends undone That way I can just tuck around them Hey guys, so I had to switch to my phone because my camera is dying. That was me a mistake Okay, so I think I've decided what I'm gonna do with this wall up here I think I'm gonna take it down put that brick somewhere else in the room Use it for a small wall, which I think I might put it over here by the door Or I can just roll it up and use it somewhere else some other time. I have enough wood paper To fill that board. So I think that's what I'm gonna do I have not done this ball this wall yet, but I'm about to and I'm going to leave this wall empty So I think I'm going to take this down And not worry about it I'm not going to take it down yet I'm going to wait until after I do this wall and decide what I want to do But I really just I'm not thrilled about how it looks I did finish this wall love it Um now that I'm like really thinking about the room Maybe the brick was a mistake and I should have just done all wood, but that's fine I'm going to leave it there. It is what it is Okay, so now I need to move this table out of the way With all of the stuff that's underneath it I really don't know why I do this to myself like why Do I set myself up for this challenge? Why did I just not have it pulled out to begin with? You know what I mean? I don't know. I do this to myself all the time. Okay I'm not going to be able to time lapse this because of my phone and I don't have a tripod So I'm just going to show you the before And after so I decided to put the colorful border on it just to put a pop of color in this corner And then while I was gone, I also did the library space which I love I wasn't totally sure about the mirror in the middle But I'm thinking I'll probably put some vinyl letters on there that say like I see a reader in you maybe I don't know. Um, I really like the space. Um I know there's not going to be any kids hanging out back here Which is why I'm using the bench to put this rotating bookshelf And then let me tell you it was a pain trying to get all those leveled They probably aren't even leveled at this point, but it looks good enough to me. So Um, that's the library space looking good I still have three of these black frames that I'm going to use somewhere else in the room Maybe I'll put darla over here Above this chair. I don't know. I don't want to be like oh, I have wall space. Let's throw some crap up on it Um, I know I want to try and put my full length mirror right there Like as an entrance place But I also thought about moving that brick wall Over there and making it like a welcome area Like maybe I would put Stuff there. I don't know next to the mirror under the mirror over the mirror. I don't I have this wall. I think maybe I'll put one of these frames Up there just to kind of kill the emptiness And then maybe one here um I don't want to put anything on these walls because they are brick and it will probably just fall off So I'm not going to do that. I am probably going to put all this stuff All of this like character count stuff Up there possibly I also have miss fifths Motivational posters that I can put up there Hey you guys so update I am sitting at my desk. I'm actually sitting For the first time it's 150 and I'm just taking a break from Doing bulletin boards. I did get all of my bulletin boards hung I have not put anything on them yet. So that is the next step I know that my meet the teacher video is due the 17th. So my room has to be done before then I still have plenty of time. I have all not all day tomorrow. I have until I'm going to leave here at three so I have another hour here and then I will have some time tomorrow tomorrow's our first staff meeting which is exciting but also terrifying Because I know we're going to find out What teaching is going to look like at this point like what our expectations are for google classroom and stuff like that um So that's a little bit Freaky, but I will have some time tomorrow. So right now i'm cutting out these. Um, these are maniac in the middles engineering practices And I really love these. They're so cute. This is like the theme of my room is like These posters like black and white with pops of color Um, but anyways, I'm going to show you what I accomplished since we last spoke So let me flip you around Okay, so since the last time we talked, I think I'd shown you guys that one's done um Also, I decided to change this from the brick It was that brick I just couldn't deal with it and I had enough wood paper that I just put that up So I finished that wall This wall is done too And then I moved all of the rest of the decor that needs to be put up Over there with the tools that I need to do it with And then up there I have Christmas lights that need to go up around The perimeter of the white board and some other things. I still need to focus on like My objective wall and stuff like that, but That's for another day. Um, so I think I'll probably hang these before I leave maybe I don't know yet Overall the classroom is pretty much done other than the bulletin boards um Library is done. I'm really liking it. It feels very big It feels very tidy, which I'm surprised because I have so much stuff But it all has a place So that's positive So yeah, I'm just gonna sit here and continue cutting And then I'll catch up with you guys when I'm done Okay friends, so this is going to be the last check-in on day four of classroom setup Um, since I last talked to you I did add a final bulletin board area I needed a space for information because I decided to put my class rules right here I don't know if they'll stay there the whole year, but You know, they are kind of important in the beginning. So I'm gonna put Um information back here. So I'll put like the calendar And then I will put my scholastic book order number here.  This is gonna be my outfit of the day mirror Um It's a good spot. I mean it doesn't look too crowded. I don't think Um on the wall there. I'm not still not sure about this mirror here Um, I might move that and do something else with that Small space, but overall I'm very pleased with the way my room is turning out This right here is all that I have left To hang up that I currently have so anything else that needs to be hung up has not been made Purchased or given to me quite yet. I do still have an alphabet, but I'm not going to hang it I have a calendar, but I think I'm gonna hold off and print one And then that will go like I said back there I also have a lot of empty bins, which is really exciting. So I know that that pink one is empty This green one is empty and then I have one two three empty crates on this Which is good news because that means I have space For when kids come in and bring supplies Which I don't know when that will be but we're gonna leave them empty for now Because we don't want to overcrowd ourselves. So tomorrow if I have time I will be putting up Christmas lights and doing the front of the room Hanging up all this stuff. These are like non-negotiables that need to go up Around so those will go up somewhere My desk area is clean So that's nice. This is just trash and then this is a cart I need to put together This chair. I don't know. I think I probably should just Stick it somewhere so that it can get taken away because I don't need it So anyway, I'm going to sign off. Hopefully you guys enjoyed today's uh classroom setup If you're not already and you would like to don't forget to subscribe to the channel and follow me on instagram for more daily updates and I'm just so glad you guys are here and on this journey with me. It's been really nice to see comments and ideas that you guys have It's very helpful Because there's certain things that I don't notice or that I don't think of and you guys Giving me ideas is really helpful. Okay. I'm rambling. All right. I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye


I'm a senior technical evangelist with Microsoft a bit about myself I've been developing applications for more than 16 years now and as a part of my job I work with startups customers help them build scalable applications on the cloud in case you're wondering about the t-shirt I'm also the Docker community mentor for the Mumbai Docker user group. So today's talk I'm going to be talking about using jmeter for load testing and what we can achieve using jmeter combine combining it with the power of web driver plugin and why we should do that some of my experiences working with startups I'll share those along the way. So very quickly I'm just going to discuss I think we've many of the sessions have already covered the aspects of why measuring performance I just had a couple of points from my perspective then we look at jmeter what Apache jmeter is what Selenium web driver is how they work in tandem we'll spend most of our time there and there'll be I'll show quite a few demos of things how they work after that we'll discuss that ideally in most cases why we should use cloud based jmeter testing we'll discuss some tooling in that space and towards the end we'll discuss that why it's not sufficient to just you know worry about performance at the end when you see the performance issues tools like jmeter they're open source they're free so just you know test using them and include these tests as a part of your automated build process or your release pipelines that will really help so we look at how we can do that as well so before you so why measure performance I mean if you can't measure something you can't improve it and normally we develop code based on best practices and that doesn't always work so the GitHub repository which I'll be sharing in the next few slides that has a link to a presentation by the likes of Kyle Simpson which is called javascript midbusters where they bust a lot of javascript optimization myths one of them being string.concat versus array.join so till you don't actually test it you know things you cannot not be sure of the performance and many times I've seen it so in the startup world you build a site and then it becomes popular and then you start getting the load and then you find out that at that load you have some things which are breaking right so earlier you find that out the better how do you measure performance in a repeatable way well this is maybe level two but basically if you're comparing application configuration so you change some javascript code and then you want to compare that with the previous version so to do that in a repeatable way there are two things first is that the test should be automated right and the second one is the environments themselves should be created using some kind of infrastructure as code because that is the only way you'll be sure that both these tests are run against the same environment or you're aware of exactly the difference in the environment so one of the jmeter test show is using docker containers for that part jmeter apache jmeter is a load testing tool so you can simulate user load so you can say that first you define your test in a jmeter file where in you can define okay call this particular API then do this then this next task and then repeat this for thousand users and ramp up the user over five minutes so basically now what you're doing is when you ramp up the users from zero to thousand you will see the difference in the response times right so when my application had ten users the response time was a millisecond right less than a second but when the number of concurrent users goes to 300 or even 100 that's when you'll see the response time going or you'll see errors appearing that is what happens and that's why we should test early right jmeter does some things which a browser can for instance you can follow redirects but it is not a browser in the sense that it does not execute client side JavaScript and that's where we use the web driver plugin so using the selenium basically automates the browsers using the selenium client libraries will have a look at the examples of this in the next slide but using the selenium client libraries you can do tasks like okay load the page go to this text box at this value submitted so you can actually simulate what the user and how the user interacts with the your site and using the jmeter plugin all that you can capture using your response times so this is the GitHub repository I'll quickly go to the different sections of this towards end but this has all the application code which I'm for the applications I'll be load testing as well as the jmeter tests for all the tests I'm going to demo so the application which we use for most of these tests it's called it's the chirp application which is basically it's a mean stack application it's a kind of like a very very light Twitter like application which basically just show it to you so you can log in you can register right and then you can just type a very short message right so this is the application will be testing and if I was to just test this using jmeter how I would traditionally do it is I would test the APIs right so this particular jmeter test which I've loaded what I do here is for one once this I do once I randomly create username and password then using the STTP sampler I register the user right then the user logs in and then for five times he posts a message right so this is how I simulate so if I run this test okay what it will do is it'll actually start firing these STTP requests right so this is the login the request the response and it will start monitoring all kinds of statistics how long it took to load and one key part of this test was I mentioned that you ramp up to 10 users in a period of 20 seconds when you actually do this for your site it'll perhaps be 100 users over five minutes right so that it ramps up gradually and you know at what point your site is going to crash and then you know the break points and you investigate further if you look at some of the reports so this test is finished running so it's given me for each of the operations what is the average time what is the 95th percentile which is a key metric which people look at so the 95th percentile what is the response time so for one of these operations is 480 milliseconds and the error rate which is again a key metric so normally if you test your site for the first time I've seen it happening most often you will see the error rate spiking when you first time you load test your application I'm just going to open another load test so this time I've included the web driver sampler right so till this runs what what is actually happening is in this test we are actually simulating the user interacting with the browser how do we how did we do that we did that using the web driver plugin okay here in the config I mentioned okay I want to test with Firefox and in the sampler the code which I've written is open the login page then in the find the username field add the username okay and then submit normally when you're adding in a load test you would perhaps only want the web driver test to check the load time for key pages in your application okay but this is just to demonstrate what all you can do right I mean of course with selenium this has always been there maybe we'll just look at another one so both these JavaScript files are there on as I said on my GitHub repository so I'm just I've deployed this array join in a separate Docker container and the string dot concat in a separate one and I'm just you know testing that using using web driver so the loop count I've kept it low right so if you look at the name of the page name of the host that will be different for the two calls but what we are doing is this is one way in which you you can compare this is a quick one I wanted to show in the demo so at the end the aggregate report will show us that okay so how much time so the string not concat is constantly for you know faster so as I said that was one of the myths busted in that tutorial so yeah another thing I wanted to show you guys is the selenium IDE okay so what we can do with the selenium IDE suppose I go to bing.com okay I search for jmeter go to images I go to videos I come back to web so basically the selenium IDE is recording all this okay now I will stop recording okay and so all the clicks it identifies basically each of the buttons each of the elements I click I can now actually replay this so yeah it'll do exactly that and the really cool part is here so now we have a jmeter plugin for the selenium IDE so you can actually just record and download the jmx file for the load test right from here but this creates a lot of extra requests I don't I write my own but yeah you can do this to quickly get started to record your journeys and get going I'm going to go back switch over to the slides again I'm going to just quickly go through the slides and then again I'll go to some of the tools which I will be discussing so why do we need cloud-based jmeter tests even I mean you need these at a later stage initially you can just start with the jmeter but what happens is can you generate 10,000 concurrent connections from your local machine no right because your bandwidth locally will become a constraint you will not be able to generate that much of load traditionally how this was done was using you know test tracks with several induces which generated the load which was quite expensive both in terms of maintenance cost but now with the power of cloud so blaze meter is one very popular tool which I've used where you can just upload the jmx file and you can then choose the location you want to run the test from and then fire the test you'll get a good response you'll get an indication of when your application really needs to scale how well it does that which used to do team services is again Microsoft's cloud-based tool which cloud DevOps tool which can do anything from iOS to Android builds to all tasks it also has a jmx load testing where you upload the jmx file and you run the load tests and you get all these cool metrics about your error rates with that high performance when you have a lot of load of against your websites so as I said when you need to test your application against really heavy load you need this right also when you want to test from a particular location region where your users typically log in from it's a good option this is like why you need to include it in your build pipelines so if you don't have a build pipeline I mean then it's fine but if you are if you have a you deliver you have a nightly build going somewhere it is a good idea to have the basic jmeter assertions which are like your response time assertion and your size assertion which basically tell you that what is the size of your response so if I hit a particular your home page what is the size in bytes of your response and you can set a threshold for that beyond that the build will fail I mean the jmeter assertion will fail and the build will fail and it's really simple to do it is not expensive at all so you know I would suggest at least those basic tests can be included in your build pipeline so in this example this is a case of a java app which using visual studio team services where we do a maven package we build the docker container deploy to the docker containers in a different environment and then before going to prod we do a load test so but again this totally depends on what your situation is whether you want to go in for such an extensive pipeline to start with maybe not what I'll do is I'll just show you some of these so this is the GitHub repo I'll just quickly show you so all the jmex files are here this is the if you just do a installation instructions for the mean the job application installation are provided below so this is the repository you do a npm install I mean I've given the installation instructions and then you can just fire the jmeter test against that the other one where I'm doing the string concat versus a rejoin that is again over here okay I've given the link to that as well yeah here this is the presentation kyle simpson's presentation and this is the repository where I'm just writing that JavaScript so this is the just wanted to take you through this repository and just a quick view of visual studio team services so as I told you this is a build where I'm doing a npm install a gulp and if I just list of tasks available here you can do jmeter test you can do Android Android build you can do iOS build I mean a lot of the stuff so as I said it's a cloud based DevOps tool if you have a Jenkins build you can use get the Jenkins build and use VSTS for release management that is also possible there are of course a free time free free tier for you guys to try it out if you want to and here I'm using this is the whole QA PVT prod I'm using a different tool for the load testing here but we can use jmeter as well I think I'll take questions now that's pretty much what I wanted to cover if you have any questions so when you say JS you mean JS on the server side or the front end so normally the jmeter samplers they just give you they don't execute the client side JavaScript but when you include the web driver plug-in so you saw that user ID password being tapped typed in that was a that is angular app right so it won't work so with the web driver plug-in it executes the client side JavaScript as well and you you can capture the responses you can capture everything which is done by Angular by anything which is done by the browser so basically what web driver does is it it drives so the web driver executables are provided by the browser manufacturers so I mean Firefox provides it's executable you can do same from crowing so what I'm trying to ask is if you have a dialogue which is coming up using JavaScript yes web driver wouldn't get no right how would web driver come into place so how will the user interact with that you say he's clicking there's an Ajax request come there's a response exactly so you can handle Ajax through web driver as well right but when you are writing your load test do you want to capture those things or you just want to capture the client side JavaScript execution time or load times that is up to you but you can do that you can do Ajax pretty much to that you can do this with Selenium but the thing is when I'm doing load testing right your JavaScript is executing very well right but as soon as you reach 100 100 users if you've got everything say in a CDN your static content everything is fine but if everything is being served by the same server including your static content you don't have the correct expires headers even the static content request will go there and you'll see errors so that's why with load you just using Selenium you can't don't induce load right absolutely correct correct that's why so I mean you don't for every few requests if you include this you'll need with whether the client side JavaScript it might test some parts which are not tested by a jmeter API tests so so for instance you don't have any API test you don't have any unit test where you normally start is the UI Selenium test right so if you write that Selenium test and you it will cover a lot of the parts which your API test do not cover so you will identify those errors is nothing is foolproof this is a good way to have this kind of load testing is a good way to include in your I mean normal build process to keep a tab on how your page look page load times for your key pages don't exceed a certain threshold because anyway you're running these jmeter tests as a part of that even testing the JavaScript client side performance thank you