30 de novembro de 2011
29 de novembro de 2011
Se isto corre mal, irá correr mal para todos ...
... e o que se vê no gráfico, ainda que sugestivo, não será o canal de transmissão mais importante.
PS:
E no mesmo sentido vem o que se diz em The euro crisis: Trouble around the other periphery | The Economist: onde se faz referência, a iniciar a peça, a um "striking statement made by Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, in a speech given yesterday:
I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.
Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 November 29 - Galáxia Centauro A
Astronomy Picture of the Day
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Image Credit: NASA , ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgement: R. O'Connell (U. Virginia) |
Explanation: A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom. Infrared images from the Hubble have also shown that hidden at the center of this activity are what seem to be disks of matter spiraling into a black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun. Centaurus A itself is apparently the result of a collision of two galaxies and the left over debris is steadily being consumed by the black hole. Astronomers believe that such black hole central engines generate the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy radiated by Centaurus A and other active galaxies. But for an active galaxy Centaurus A is close, a mere 10 million light-years away, and is a relatively convenient laboratory for exploring these powerful sources of energy.
28 de novembro de 2011
Mercúrio
Universe Today
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| A mosaic of nine oblique views from the MESSENGER spacecraft of Mercury's limb, looking towards the horizon. Click for larger, more amazing view. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
Coisas que li esta manhã, depois da marcha, e com as quais estou mais ou menos de acordo (mais do mais) ...
- A queda da Zona Euro- Economia - Jornal de negócios online [já tinha referenciado este artigo, na versão original em inglês]
Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 November 28 - Vesta
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| A Landslide on Asteroid Vesta Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA |
Explanation: Asteroid Vesta is home to some of the most impressive cliffs in the Solar System. Pictured above near the image center is a very deep cliff running about 20 kilometers from top to bottom. The image was taken by the robotic Dawn spacecraft that began orbiting the 500-kilometer space rock earlier this year. The topography of the scarp and its surroundings indicates that huge landslides may have occurred down this slope. The scarp's origin remains unknown, but parts of the cliff face itself must be quite old as several craters have appeared in it since it was created. Dawn has now finished up its high altitude mapping survey and will spiral down to a lower altitude orbit to better explore the asteroid's gravitational field. During 2012, Dawn is scheduled to blast away from Vesta and begin a long journey to the only asteroid belt object known to be larger: Ceres.
27 de novembro de 2011
Este é um texto de esquerda, da esquerda pura e dura, da efectiva "análise concreta da situação concreta"
Estava a pensar em fazer um comentário mais desenvolvido sobre este artigo da Naomi Klein, mas falta-me a pachorra. Em todo o caso, permitem-me sublinhar que este artigo é o melhor que li durante muito tempo em termos de esquerda e de esquerda radical (na acepção que dou ao conceito de radical, que não será decerto o de muita gente).
Na ausência do comentário, o bold e o sublinhado permitirão perceber o que considero relevante e o que, em princípio, concordo (mas, talvez, com algumas qualificações) - o bold com o sublinhado indicam aquilo em que estou absolutamente de acordo. O simples sublinhado é uma chamada de atenção para algo que, a meu ver, naturalmente, deve ser tido em linha de conta, mas que, nalguns casos - atenção, só nalguns casos - pode também não ser (factual ou programaticamente) correcto, ou que deve merecer qualificações. Isto não é mesmo uma forma eficiente de fazer um comentário?
Transcrevi o artigo na totalidade.
Capitalism vs. the Climate | The Nation
There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.He
introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he
ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had
come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were
actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question
for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late
June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green
Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic
doctrine?”
Leituras e vídeos sobre o momento dos EUA (dos mais antigos para os mais modernos
- John Steinbeck's bitter fruit | Books | The Guardian [tornei-me comunista na minha adolescência com este livro]
26 de novembro de 2011
Para variar, uma boa notícia ...
Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis…. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.
25 de novembro de 2011
24 de novembro de 2011
Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 November 24 - Aconteceu há 12 mil milhões de anos ...
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Caught in the Afterglow
Illustration Credit: ESO, L. Calçada - Research Team: Sandra Savaglio (MPE) et al.
|
Explanation: In this artist's illustration, two distant galaxies formed about 2 billion years after the big bang are caught in the afterglow of GRB090323, a gamma-ray burst seen across the Universe. Shining through its own host galaxy and another nearby galaxy, the alignment of gamma-ray burst and galaxies was inferred from the afterglow spectrum following the burst's initial detection by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope in March of 2009. As seen by one of the European Southern Observatory's very large telescope units, the spectrum of the burst's fading afterglow also offered a surprising result - the distant galaxies are richer in heavy elements than the Sun, with the highest abundances ever seen in the early Universe. Heavy elements that enrich mature galaxies in the local Universe were made in past generations of stars. So these young galaxies have experienced a prodigious rate of star formation and chemical evolution compared to our own Milky Way. In the illustration, the light from the burst site at the left passes successively through the galaxies to the right. Spectra illustrating dark absorption lines of the galaxies' elements imprinted on the afterglow light are shown as insets. Of course, astronomers on planet Earth would be about 12 billion light-years off the right edge of the frame.
22 de novembro de 2011
21 de novembro de 2011
Ainda sobre educação: o papel dos pais é determinante.
Isto para mim foi sempre óbvio, mas como costumo dizer o óbvio não é igual para todas as pessoas. Sempre considerei que a mobilização dos pais para a educação era a variável desprezada da actuação política na política da educação , e que a necessidade dessa falta ser remediada seria, de modo inequívoco, ainda mais imperiosa em regiões com as características dos Açores: escrevi isso em 1996 (e coloquei neste blogue: usar o motor de busca para ver as notas relativas a "educação" - são três notas de 17.01.2010 sob a epígrafe "Algo escrito sobre a educação para a Convenção...").
Num debate público, alguns anos atrás, afirmei que a eficácia das políticas públicas dependia em grande parte da adesão dos cidadãos (dos pais no caso da educação) à sua concretização. Fui apelidado de anti-democrático. Enfim...
Ao fim juntei ainda outro artigo que qualifica este no bom sentido (atenção ao bold com o sublinhado) e lembra que, em todo o caso, a introdução do pré-primário em Portual foi uma excelente aposta na potencialização dos resultados do nosso sistema educativo.
Ao fim juntei ainda outro artigo que qualifica este no bom sentido (atenção ao bold com o sublinhado) e lembra que, em todo o caso, a introdução do pré-primário em Portual foi uma excelente aposta na potencialização dos resultados do nosso sistema educativo.
How About Better Parents? - NYTimes.com
IN recent years, we’ve been treated to reams of op-ed articles about how we need better teachers in our public schools and, if only the teachers’ unions would go away, our kids would score like Singapore’s on the big international tests. There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.
Outras leituras sobre a Europa (de outros dias)
Coisas lidas nos últimos dias, e em geral, a maioria, mais de contexto. Uma ou outra vão na linha do susto em que estamos metidos no dia-a-dia europeu.
Matthew Yglesias: Competitiveness In A Currency Union and Fiscal Transfers in a Federal Nation (clicar)
Leituras sobre a Europa (de hoje)
Coisas lidas hoje: basicamente, são assustadoras. Fica de fora a crónica de Krugman no NYT de que gostaria fazer um comentário.
Uma das coisas a ter sempre presente ...
In the end, no one has managed to better Marx's dictum that people make their own history, but they do not do it under circumstances of their own choosing.
Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History, Granta, p.189
19 de novembro de 2011
Leituras sobre a educação
O que vem abaixo é uma apreciação crítica, no Los Angeles Review of Books, de um conjunto de livros publicados, recentemente, sobre o estado da educação nos EUA. A abordagem desses livros caracteriza-se por ser heterodoxa (ver o meu bold abaixo: fala-se de heresias). Penso que o artigo carreia elementos de informação úteis à reflexão sobre a educação em Portugal, malgrado todas as nossas diferenças. Transcreve-se só a parte de introdução.
Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States. In a time when Americans have lost faith in their government and economic institutions, millions of us still believe in its saving grace. National leaders, from Benjamin Rush on, oversaw plans for extending its benefits more broadly. In the 19th century, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie famously conceived of schools as ladders on which the industrious poor would ascend to a better life, and he spent a good bit of his fortune laying the foundations for such an education society. After World War II, policy makers who believed in the education gospel grew numerous enough to fill stadiums. One by one, the G.I. Bill, the Truman Commission report, and the War on Poverty singled out education as the way of national and personal advance. “The answer to all of our national problems,” as Lyndon Johnson put it in 1965, “comes down to one single word: education.”
The American education gospel is built around four core beliefs. First, it teaches that access to higher levels of education should be available to everyone, regardless of their background or previous academic performance. Every educational sinner should have a path to redemption. (Most of these paths now run through community colleges.) Second, the gospel teaches that opportunity for a better life is the goal of everyone and that education is the primary — and perhaps the only — road to opportunity. Third, it teaches that the country can solve its social problems — drugs, crime, poverty, and the rest — by providing more education to the poor. Education instills the knowledge, discipline, and the habits of life that lead to personal renewal and social mobility. And, finally, it teaches that higher levels of education for all will reduce social inequalities, as they will put everyone on a more equal footing. No wonder President Obama and Bill Gates want the country to double its college graduation rate over the next 10 years.
The advance of the education gospel has been shadowed from the beginning by critics who claim that education, despite our best efforts, remains a bastion of privilege. For these critics, it is not that the educational gospel is wrong (a truly democratic, meritocratic school system would, if it existed, be a good thing); it is that the benefits of education have not yet spread evenly to every corner of American society, and that the trend toward educational equality may be heading in the wrong direction. They decry the fact that schools in poor communities have become dropout factories and that only the wealthy can afford the private preparatory schools that are the primary feeders to prestigious private colleges. The higher education Establishment recognizes critics like these as family. They accept the core beliefs of the education gospel and are impatient only with its slow and incomplete adoption. Other heresies are more radical, and thus more disturbing to settled beliefs about the power of education.
Leituras sobre a China
Diversas leituras sobre a China. O que se passa na China e a capacidade de descortinar para onde ela vai, é um exemplo acabado da coexistência possível de diversas narrativas, todas elas comportando uma dada adequação à realidade, um dado nível de verdade, quando a realidade em presença é substancialmente complexa. A conjugação destas leituras ilustra bem esse ponto. A regra a retirar é a da necessidade de tentar sempre obter um vector que considere todas essas narrativas.
Aliás, e a este respeito, chamo a atenção para um livro que li recentemente (compra na Feira do Livro, em Ponta Delgada) sobre o papel da China na globalização: Fast Boat to China, High-Tech Outsourcing and the Consequences of Free Trade, Andrew Ross, Vintage Books. Ele chama a atenção para o elementar facto, a esmagadora das vezes esquecido, da globalização ser impulsionada, determinada e defendida, em primeiro lugar e principalmente, pela estratégia das multinacionais dos países desenvolvidos, e para o facto dos trabalhadores e o governo chinês terem disso uma aguda consciência, que deve integrar como elemento importante a explicação da sua resposta e aproveitamento das possíveis potencialidades do fenómeno.
Requisito mínimo para se ter democracia
An improved version:“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” — James Bovard’s 1994 book Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (Conclusion, p 333). The origin of this saying is not known; earlier versions appeared on the Internet.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
A política internacional dos EUA na perspectiva dos candidatos à nomeação Republicana
Mad, mad people: leiam o artigo na sua totalidade e vão vendo o Jon Stewart.
Saturday’s Republican debate, sponsored by CBS and the National Journal, revealed a Republican field that is promising war on Iran and a revival of the use of torture, as well as horrible relations with the new governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (according to Herman Cain, they have gotten “out of hand,” and he and Gingrich want to deal with them by supporting a muscular Christianity).
[....]
These people just like the idea of war. War is good for munitions firms and security firms, who give a lot of money to Republican candidates. They’re actively looking for a war. It is good for business, for them.
[....]Since all the Republicans are against raising taxes on their cronies among the billionaires, there would only be one way to pay for a $9 trillion Iran War, which would be to abolish social security and medicare. Maybe accomplishing that long-desired goal is even what drives the Republican frontrunners to their fantastic dreams of another Middle Eastern War.
Merkel não tem razão quanto à idade de reforma dos portugueses e dos espanhóis
O bold é meu.
Our methodology provides two measures of a country’s ‘natural’
retirement age. The raw predictor, described in Figure 2 and a linear
fit as plotted in Figure 3. Both of these benchmarks provide a yardstick
to assess common arguments in on-going political debates. For example,
Greece, Spain and Portugal are frequently accused of retiring too early.
In particular, the German chancellor Angela Merkel requested that people in Southern Europe should not ‘be able to retire earlier than in Germany’.
This argument seems far-fetched when observing that the effective age
of retirement in Greece exceeds that of Germany by about 27 month.
Indeed, observing these inconsistencies, the Financial Times Deutschland writes that “Merkel's push for a comparison here is both unnecessary and absurd.”
18 de novembro de 2011
....
"[A]ny society... is at once a structure which can only be understood in terms of the interrelationship of its parts, and a process which can only be understood in terms of the cumulative weight of its past. The difficulty is to synthesize the two aspects in any actual study. Liberal history and formalist sociology represent extreme opposed attempts to divorce the two dimensions altogether.... The coexistence of the two in the Anglo-Saxon countries marks the limits of the penetration of Marxism in these cultures. For Marxism is the only thought which has rigorously united developmental and structural analysis: it is at once pure historicity (denial of all suprahistorical essences) and radical functionalism (societies are significant totalities). This synthesis remains unique…"
Perry Anderson
17 de novembro de 2011
Percebo a lógica do dilema, mas não tenho certeza sobre a verdade da afirmação com que começa a frase
"We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it"
Jean-Claude Juncker, on the euro crisis
Leitura deprimente, mas material substancial de reflexão para diversas questões
In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it?
Desabafos de um economista norte-americano sobre o estado da democracia no seu país
O bold é do autor, Barry Ritholtz.
EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » The U.S. Is Now a Corporate Monarchy
EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » The U.S. Is Now a Corporate Monarchy
I did an interview with a print reporter yesterday about what has been going on with lack of prosecutions, the banks, and Wall Street in general. We discussed the corrupt exchanges and HFT. I dropped lots of F-Bombs, called out cowards and crooks and held nothing back. (“That fucker belongs in prison; this son of a bitch should hang“). Afterwards, she commented that I seemed angry.I wrote back suggesting that I am a happy dude, and its not Anger — its closer to an ineffable sadness that comes once you realize you have lost something dear. I am old enough to have grown up when this nation was a Democracy, but that era has passed. We now live in a nation no longer run by the citizens — it is a Corporatocracy — and that makes me sadder than angry . . . She suggests perhaps a better word is outraged.I wonder: Why have the Europeans figured out they are getting screwed, and we haven’t? Why are they taking to the streets en masse, while we seem to be watching our own control over our own futures slip from our hands almost as if from afar?In America, we are too busy dropping the kids off at soccer, running around looking for sales and bargains, racing to keep our heads above water. We seem to forget to get outraged. Our control over our once Democracy — the one we had a revolution against a monarchy dictating decisions from afar — slips away from us. Not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a 1000s acts of gradual ceding of power to the new Monarch. We have given up hard won rights to a coordinated attack from all three branches of government; Our Congress has become the legislative branch of eBay — Congressmen are auctioned off to the highest bidder; they even have a Buy It Now button to get specific legislation passed. The executive branch has fallen under the sunk cost fallacy, afraid to prosecute banks because we spent so many billions bailing them out. It turns out that even our once venerable Supreme Court is just as corrupted, with lobbyists partying with Justices and backdooring ethics by hiring their wives.In short, our new overlords are enormously well funded, well connected, relentless and perhaps most of all, patient. This new King was not appointed by primogeniture, or even Divine Right, but by acquiring enough profits in the free market that they can buy control over society, even as they thwart that free market ideal for their own ends. We have become, in short, a Corporate Monarchy.
E quem não percebe isso, não percebe nada e não tem muitas hipótese de vir a perceber alguma coisa de significativo!
“We have not succeeded in answering all our problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.”
"I read this quote on a wall on Mark Cane’s office at LDEO (Columbia) many years ago and always wondered where it came from. He found it as an epigram in a book on ‘Stochastic Differential Equations‘ by Bernt Øksendal where it is sourced to a sign outside the mathematics reading room at Tromsø University. The actual source appears to be a 1951 report on an education workshop by Earl C. Kelley, a professor at Wayne University (sleuthing by QI)."
16 de novembro de 2011
13 de novembro de 2011
Leiam isto!
Algumas das coisas que são ditas nesta síntese (exemplar) da situação da zona euro feita por Martin Wolf tinham sido escritas e referenciadas neste blogue (ver os artigos sob a etiqueta europa-economia-países) - o artigo tem ser lido na totalidade para apanhar tudo o que é importante.
Teria só de fazer um reparo quanto ao que é dito sobre a criação do Euro: a narrativa prevalecente sobre isso é que aquela foi determinada pela necessidade de resolver as tensões políticas inter-EM criadas pela unificação alemã. Obviamente que isso é verdade, mas só em parte (ver aqui o que aponto às narrativas incompletas): fica de fora a outra determinante, a da resolução das tensões estruturais criadas à política económica europeia e dos EM pela adopção do Acto Único - todos estiveram de acordo, embora, por diversas razões, até Margaret Hilda Thatcher -, via desbloqueamento de todos os entraves à livre circulação de capitais.
Notem os mais distraídos que esse Acto Único é que motivou o surgimento em grande dos Fundos Estruturais, pelo que o Euro e os Fundos Estruturais são no máximo primos em segundo grau - "connect the points"!
Teria só de fazer um reparo quanto ao que é dito sobre a criação do Euro: a narrativa prevalecente sobre isso é que aquela foi determinada pela necessidade de resolver as tensões políticas inter-EM criadas pela unificação alemã. Obviamente que isso é verdade, mas só em parte (ver aqui o que aponto às narrativas incompletas): fica de fora a outra determinante, a da resolução das tensões estruturais criadas à política económica europeia e dos EM pela adopção do Acto Único - todos estiveram de acordo, embora, por diversas razões, até Margaret Hilda Thatcher -, via desbloqueamento de todos os entraves à livre circulação de capitais.
Notem os mais distraídos que esse Acto Único é que motivou o surgimento em grande dos Fundos Estruturais, pelo que o Euro e os Fundos Estruturais são no máximo primos em segundo grau - "connect the points"!
Será que a zona euro vai sobreviver? | Económico
Os líderes da França e da Alemanha levantam agora essa questão relativamente à Grécia. Se os governantes soubessem há 20 anos o que sabem hoje, nunca teriam lançado a moeda única. Só o medo das consequências evitou a desagregação. No entanto, a questão que se coloca é saber se isso basta. Desconfio que não.
Até ao momento, todos os esforços para controlar a crise fracassaram. É verdade que as lideranças da zona euro amordaçaram o desejo indisciplinado de Papandreou pela legitimidade democrática, mas também é verdade que o stress financeiro ganhou terreno em Itália e Espanha. Com uma taxa de juro real na ordem dos 4,5% e um crescimento económico de 1,5% (a média entre 2000 e 2007, inclusive), o excedente orçamental primário de Itália (antes de juros) terá de ser próximo dos 4% do PIB indefinidamente. O rácio da dívida é, no entanto, demasiado elevado.
Resultado? Ou o excedente primário cresce substancialmente, ou a taxa de crescimento aumenta, ou os juros baixam. Sob a batuta de Berlusconi, as mudanças necessárias nunca terão lugar, mas poderá outro líder inverter o rumo actual? Duvido.
A incapacidade de compreender a essência desta crise tem sido, de facto, o principal problema. Nouriel Roubini, professor na Stern School of Business da Universidade de Nova Iorque, toca nos pontos nevrálgicos desta questão num artigo publicado recentemente*. Roubini distingue, tal como eu fiz na minha crónica de 7 de Outubro, entre stocks e fluxos de dívida, muito embora estes sejam mais relevantes do que aqueles. É, pois, fundamental repor a competitividade externa e o crescimento económico. Como observa Thomas Mayer, do Deutsche Bank, "sob a superfície da dívida pública da zona euro e da crise bancária esconde-se uma crise da balança de pagamentos, originada por um mau alinhamento das taxas de câmbio internas". A crise só poderá terminar se os países mais fracos voltarem a ser competitivos. No presente, os seus défices externos estruturais são demasiado elevados para serem financiados voluntariamente.
Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2011 November 13 - Nebulosa da Borboleta
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Esta tem mesmo de ser vista numa versão maior: clique sobre ela!
Image Credit:
NASA,
ESA, and the
Hubble SM4 ERO Team
The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble
Explanation:
Few butterflies have a wingspan this big.
The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often
named for
flowers or
insects, and
NGC 6302 is no exception.
With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C,
the central star of this particular
planetary nebula is exceptionally
hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from
direct view by a dense torus of dust.
This
dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope soon after it was
upgraded in 2009.
Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the
dust torus surrounding the central star is near
the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight.
Molecular hydrogen
has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud.
NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the
arachnologically correct constellation of the
Scorpion
(Scorpius).
12 de novembro de 2011
Leituras sobre o momento que passa o Euro
Diversos artigos sobre o momento da zona euro, do mais antigo para o mais recente:
The euro crisis: Is it easier on the outside? | The Economist
EconoMonitor : Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor » Rising Risk of Eurozone Breakup
Understanding the euro crisis: It's not about Berlusconi | The Economist:
Is Europe On The Verge Of Another Great Depression – Or A Great Inflation? « The Baseline Scenario
Sovereign Debt Turns Sour in Euro Zone - NYTimes.com
The European Council on Foreign Relations | True Europeans now need a 'Plan B'
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