Europe, the Euro, and Political Integration

One of my favorite movies is Star Wars, for a number of reasons. The scene I am reminded of right now is the one where the Imperial stormtroopers stop Luke and Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan uses a Jedi mind trick to make the troopers let them go.

The meta-story today is again the Paul Ryan candidacy and the presidential race. The Financial Times (FT) leads with “Obama uses heartland visit to launch first attack on Romney running mate,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) opens with “Presidential Race Snaps Into Gear,” and the New York Times (NYT) has a front-page picture and “Medicare Rises As Voters’ Issue in GOP Gamble.”

Other Ryan stories include “Everything Wall St. Should Know About Ryan” on page B1 of the NYT, which states that he actually may not be very pro-financial industry; “Ryan’s Record Shows Flexibility on Policy” on page A4 of the WSJ, which notes that Ryan voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Bush-era Medicare prescription drug benefit extension, and an early version of the auto bailout; and “Obama tries to harvest votes in Iowa” on page 4 of the FT, which has the subtitle “The president blames Paul Ryan for holding up the farm bill.”

Balancing Europe and the Euro

The media has focused a lot of its attention on Europe recently—and deservedly so. The meta-stories generally concern weakness in one country or another or the slow disintegration of hope for Greece. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how I thought Europe would end up pulling itself together for political reasons—the fear of history, mostly—but I did not really delve into what would have to happen to make that the case.

In July, I spoke at the Commonwealth Live! networking tour. The conversations I had there, as well as the increasing sense that Europe is continuing to deteriorate, suggested that I should lay out how I see the evolution of the eurozone and how it might succeed or fail. This thought process will obviously adjust to conditions on the ground, and one reason for writing it down is to track the changes as we move forward.

The big story over the weekend and on Monday was the Paul Ryan vice presidential selection. The U.S. presidential race really started with that announcement. Yes, I know that we have had months of Republican primaries and you could argue that the race began when Romney wrapped up the nomination. But until this weekend we did not really know what the race would be about.

Once again, nothing particularly new or noteworthy on economics, politics, or finance in the papers. One article I did find interesting was on a tidal power project here in Maine that’s nearing completion: “The Search for Energy Takes a Turn Underwater” on page A8 of the New York Times (NYT). Apparently, this will be the first commercial tidal power station. If it’s successful, it could lead to further development.

As I have outlined before, energy is the one big area where the U.S. is vulnerable, but the fact that we keep exploring different ways to generate energy should help solve the problem—and probably sooner rather than later. There is an unavoidable gestation period for new technologies, but when they do hit, they can have huge effects in a short period of time. Fracking is the best example I can think of—it has already changed the natural gas world—but there are others as well. Tidal power may or may not be one of them, but this potential energy source has been under development for a while, and it’s getting close to viability.

Sorry to miss yesterday’s post, but I spent the day in Story Land. For those of you not from New England, this is a small amusement park built around fairy tales—Cinderella’s castle, Heidi’s grandfather’s hut, the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and similar exhibits. It is perfect for small children, and my four-year-old son had what was possibly the best day of his life. We opened and closed the park and had a two-hour drive each way—thus, the day was not conducive to posting a blog.

It was an interesting day, though. From my son’s perspective, the whole thing was free, as it was paid for by a higher power (me). The visitors covered an amazingly wide range of people—Hasidim, Muslims, WASPs (me again), multiple races and socio-economic classes—all united in letting our kids have fun. The park itself was very well designed, well run, and incredibly effective at extracting money from dad’s wallet.

As far as I am concerned, the big news today is yesterday’s successful landing of the NASA rover on Mars. We haven’t had all that many space triumphs recently, so here’s to the engineers who made it happen! The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had it on page A1—where it belonged—with “Rover Probes Secrets of Mars,” the Financial Times (FT) had it on page 1 with “Curiosity sets out to answer mysteries of Mars” and on page 5 with “Mars robot puts US back on the map,” and the New York Times (NYT) had it all the way back on A9 with “After Safe Landing a Rover Sends Images From Mars.” What was the NYT thinking?

The other big story is the ongoing lobster roll investigation. I went up to Linda Bean’s in Freeport, across from the L.L. Bean store there, to check out one of the WSJ best, and I am sorry to say that I was disappointed. The roll was only so-so, as it was overtoasted and needed more butter. There were lots of large pieces of firm lobster, which was excellent, but there was not enough seasoning and mayo. You don’t need a lot, but you do need some. Overall, probably a 7 or 8 out of 10, which is definitely not bad, but not best in class, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJ5dnFJjrA