"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
(Leonard Cohen)
"Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"
(Michael Moorcock)
"Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."
(Andre Gide)

"I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
(Franz Kafka)
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated"
(John Donne)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Robert J. Hanlon)
"Life is beautiful, but the world is hell"
(Harold Pinter)

Thursday, November 24, 2011


Fear and Positioning


Lucas Papademos of Greece - technocrat appointed as prime minister

EXTRACT: As time goes by, it becomes painfully obvious that the destiny of Spain, Italy and others - even Belgium - lies almost entirely in the hands of Germany and France, the AAA creditor core, the EU authorities and the ECB; they will decide whether the ‘distressed’ countries get thrown a lifeline or just get pushed further into a downward spiral of austerity, depression and possible economic-social catastrophe. Having said that, it is just as obvious that the sheer size of Spain’s and Italy’s borrowing needs - leaving aside Portugal, Belgium, etc - leads to the logical conclusion that projects to simply enlarge or ‘leverage’ the European Financial Stability Facility are totally inadequate. Instead, the logical deduction is that the ECB and Germany can provide the financial firepower necessary to prevent the euro zone sliding into the abyss, in the process dragging down the entire world economy.