Global exposure to European default
There’s more discussion of how the European sovereign debt crisis is global in scope.
Tony Barber of the Financial Times writes about a Royal Bank of Scotland report, published on Monday, that suggests that banks outside of southern Europe have much greater exposure than previously thought. RBS estimates that institutions ...
Racism reduced to a liberal smear
Last week Rand Paul made some comments about his support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act during an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and the media commentary has continued to run since. Paul suggested that Act should not have covered discriminatory policies of private businesses.
It’s hard to see the relevance ...
Why Mrs Europe is bashing the bankers

Angela Merkel’s unilateral decision to ban “short selling” shows how deluded and divided the political class is.
Read my spiked article in full here.
This week’s articles of note
“The failure of the American Jewish establishment,” The New York Review of Books, by Peter Beinart
“Sex and the Shiite,” Newsweek, by Christopher Dickey
“The Kerry-Lieberman scheme for carbon rationing,” Reason, by Ronald Bailey
“What did Jesus do?” The New Yorker, by Adam Gopnik
“Take your kids to the ...
Observations on Tuesday’s votes
Some quick observations about the results of the various elections that took place on Tuesday:
Neither party can be said to have come out of it better than the other. The Democrats’ victory in John Murtha’s old House seat in western Pennsylvania, in particular, showed that it wasn’t an entirely Republican ...If you don’t know what to do, ban short-selling
German chancellor Angela Merkel joined the ranks of Western politicians who blame short-sellers for market woes. On Wednesday, the German government acted unilaterally to impose a temporary ban on “naked” shorting – that is, selling shares and bonds that are not owned or borrowed. Specifically, the ban is on sovereign ...
Brooklyn Public Library

This past weekend I took my seven-year-old son to our local library, the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza.
He wanted to go so that he could learn more about the French Revolution (having had his curiosity piqued ...
Crash talk
There’s a lot of talk going around today about an imminent market crash. Get a load of what investor and renowned Dow Theory Letters author Richard Russell has to say (via Pragmatic Capitalism):
Do your friends a favor. Tell them to “batten down the hatches” because there’s a HARD RAIN ...
Will the US gain from Europe’s crisis?
Economist Tim Duy thinks so. Duy says the Eurozone’s problems will be a “net positive” for the US:
Bottom Line: The European crisis, by keeping US interest rates in check and oil prices low, may do more to help the US recovery than hurt it. In the process, however, ...