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Poster Children for European Profligacy Who Owns Whom? The Lessons Greece Can Teach Us about Europe – Madame Frexit? In Defense of Alexander Hamilton New York, Denver, Maine, and Boston “If this were a marriage, the lawyers would be circling.” The Economist, My Big Fat Greek Divorce...
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An Unexpected Decade Spending Money You Don’t Have on Promises You Can’t Keep Hello, Illinois, Anyone Home? How Many Trillions Did He Say? Why Illinois Is the Next Greece New York, Maine, and Boston When you were young and your heart was an open book You used to say live and let live…...
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Collateral damage. Unintended consequences. Friendly fire. Certainly no one intended to have a global banking meltdown when they let Lehman Bros. go under. Now we’re watching another Greek drama that could have significant unintended consequences – far beyond anything the market has priced...
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Greece Must Stay in the Euro Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds Contagion, Thy Name Was Greece Prisoner of the Bureaucracy Toronto, New York, Washington DC, Las Vegas, and Argentina I wrote some time ago that Greece had a choice between Disaster A: staying in the euro; and Disaster B: leaving the euro. I...
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Unsustainability and Transition One Bubble to Rule Them All The Year of the Windshield Godzilla Redux: Disaster A or Disaster B France Is the New Greece US: The Crisis Games Entitlement Unsustainability London, Athens, Geneva, Toronto, and New York “There are decades when nothing happens and there...
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The Next Bubble A Hollow Powerhouse? We’ve Seen This (Manufacturing) Movie Before A Manufacturing Renaissance Bismarck, Scandinavia, Greece, Geneva, and Writing Schedule For the last year, as I travel around, it seems a main topic of conversation is “Where will my kids find jobs?” It...
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In today's Outside the Box, the ever-philosophical Grant Williams introduces us to the ancient and profound art and science of alchemy – "the original 12-step program," as he calls it, the avid pursuit of übernerds from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton to (believe it or not...
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After I sent out this week's OTB on Germany, I remembered this very intriguingly titled piece by my friend George Friedman, founder of a geopolitical analysis company called Stratfor. The piece was written a few days ago, but when it comes to someone as ahead of the pack as George, who managed to...
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A Dysfunctional Nation One Minute to Midnight? The Triumph of Hope A Quadrillion Here, A Quadrillion There New York, Chicago, Italy, and Singapore dysfunctional [dɪsˈfʌŋkʃən ə l] adj 1. (Medicine) Med (of an organ or part) not functioning normally 2. (especially of a family) characterized by a breakdown...
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Sarkozy: Problem Solved, Or… Germany to Sarkozy: It’s Not Over The ISDA Steps Up No Winners in Ugly Greek Debt Deal, Only Lessons And By the Way, Close Your Borders The Next Greek Tragedy Orlando, Stockholm, Paris, and Staying Young … (December 11, 2009) – Greece's prime...
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Unintended Consequences Sufficient Unto the Day What Should Greece Do? And Then There Is Ireland New York, Orlando, Sweden, and Paris Just One Question, Daddy "Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without...
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Long-time readers will be familiar with Michael Lewitt, one of my favorite thinkers and analysts. He has gone off on his own to write his letter, and I am encouraging him to write even more. I call Michael a thinker because he really does. He reads a lot of thought-provoking tomes and then thinks about...
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This week's Outside the Box will be unusual. Rather than one essay, I give you a number of short ones, and links that are representative of the confusion that is Europe, along with a little history. As I noted this weekend, last week's Eurozone announcement was short of details, and very little...
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In my letter earlier this week, our guest writer, Grant Williams, gave Europe about the same odds of escaping crisis as a pitcher throwing a perfect game in baseball. That's 40,000 to 1. Take a look at this decision tree on Europe (below) from STRATFOR, a private intelligence company. Looks like...
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Folks, you hear a lot about the eurozone crisis, but what you don't run across very often is a coherent idea on how to move forward. My friends at STRATFOR, a private intelligence company, have done us all the courtesy of saying out loud what everyone else shies away from: Eject Greece from the eurozone...