Oh dear

The always excellent "Behind the News" interviewed Yanis Varoufakis a few weeks ago on the crisis in Greece (the second half of the show). Short story: if Greece leaves the Euro, bank runs in other periphery countries on expectations of devaluation (e.g. Ireland), and Germany will leave the Euro so it doesn't have to bail them out; the Euro monetary union will be gone within days. At that point Germany and other surplus countries will have a deep recession as their new currencies appreciate and their exports become expensive.

More at Varoufakis' blog.

Arithmetic, it is hard

From the Massachusetts Association of Realtors®:

When REALTOR® members were asked about what they thought was going to happen with interest rates in the next 12 months, 67 percent responded that rates would either increase significantly (1 percent) or increase slightly (66 percent). Thirty-six percent thought interest rates would stay the same and four percent thought interest rates would drop slightly. None of the respondents thought interest rates would drop significantly in the next 12 months.

67% + 36% + 4% = 107%. Obviously there are too many Realtors® in MA...

Political question of the day

Does being associated with an unpleasant substance like santorum impede one's ability to run for President? How do you fight back against what you feel is a smear campaign, especially when you can't call it that?

Rick Santorum's solution is to complain about a double standard of incivility. My proposal: double down with more comparisons of homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia and then choose a new campaign slogan: "More civility, less civil rights." The conservative base will love it.

On the other hand, I've seen some conservative blogger who dislikes Santorum because he supports food stamps. So maybe the faction of the Republican party that hates poor people more than it hates gay people will kick him out in the primaries and the interwebs will have to stop making horrible puns.