News Flash: The Baltics Are Awesome

I came across this article today in the EU Observer.  The success is pretty amazing and the Baltics in general are in great shape.  Poland has also been doing well and Romania is, according to the Economist, still a worthy investment.  Unstable countries naturally get all the attention in the media and since Orbán has been doing a fanastic job as an embarrasment to his country, it's hard not to focus on the ridiculous demands and overblown confidence.  It makes for good television.  The world seems to forget that there are countries who have emerged victorious from this whole mess.  This brings me back to the original reason I found CEE so fascinating: the shift from Communism to capitalism and how they did it.  Gushing feelings of love towards CEE today.

Euro crisis: what of it?

My hiatus on this blog coincided pretty closely with the time when the euro started falling apart.  That was not planned.  But now that work has slowed down, it's given me some time to do otherwise productive activities--this blog.  I've missed it so.  I wanted to address the euro crisis, but only on a broad basis.  I do not understand a penny's worth about macro/microeconomics and though I get the general idea, I do not think myself so clever that I actually believe I know what I'm talking about.  So let's join together as I talk out of my butt (no, I joke, I won't be talking so much about economics).