Education

Recently we commented on an insightful article in the UK Telegraph that pointed out that Germany was now most obviously the cynosure of the EU, and that the financial crisis had made that clear. But while acknowledging this was true, we wondered if being the center of attention would make any difference to the average German. We asked then, what we ask now: If Germany is going to be dragged into the middle of multiple, sovereign bankruptcies, will remaining in the EU seem such a good thing?

It is often a bit hard to figure out what is going on in the domain of high finance because the reporting is nearly impermeable. But if people understood clearly, they would probably be enraged. This article from Bloomberg is a case in point. What it really is reporting is that the ECB will print as much money as necessary to fund the Greek government so long as the larger market is unwilling to lend to Greece. While it may work for a while, funding government deficits by printing money out of

We have our doubts. It is indisputably true that a lot of Afghan civilians are being killed by NATO troops and American Marines. And what is also true is that every time an Afghan civilian is killed (even by the Taliban), Americans in particular are blamed - which makes pacification harder. Finally, as the Bell among other publications has pointed out, the Taliban are actually made up of Pashtuns - and this 40 million strong tribe constitutes the populace that the war is being fought over.

Last week Congress did something fiscally responsible. It's not very often I can say that. Granted, it was small in the grand scheme of things, but I was glad to be an original cosponsor, along with Congressman Harry Mitchell of Arizona, of a bill to block the automatic pay raise that Congress otherwise receives every year. Every Member of Congress gets this raise unless it is expressly voted down. For the second year in a row Congress has voted to freeze its own pay, which, in a time of

So Bill Gates sold me some software when he was still in that business. He was then immensely rich, certainly compared to me. I was not compared to him. How unfair, you say? But Bill took his gains from this trade and used it to feed starving African children, while I used the software I bought from him to do something utterly trivial on my computer, like writing a dull column. Now was this a fair trade? Impossible to tell.

Over the weekend, we analyzed a Washington Post article describing the economic crisis in simple but powerful terms. The article maintained that the problem was caused by risky lending and the solution was regulation to impel "banks" to reduce practices that could lead to risky lending. We pointed out in our analysis that regulatory efforts will likely fail - as they always have in these situations (and in fact all such situations) - and that it would be much better to let the free market work.

This is a powerful video. Is it a hoax? If it is proves to be true - and not fake or mistranslated - it will go down in the annals of history (unless it goes down the memory hole) as one of the most significant and memorable video documentaries ever created. Yes, if true, it would be worthy of an Oscar and other mainstream media awards, though it likely will not receive a single one.