"Good News" for Monday

Some interesting, and frightening bits from "Some Assembly Required" -- follow link to original
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Science doesn't care whether you believe.

Grimm Tales: Spain's unemployment is fast approaching 1 out of 4, Europe as a whole has over 10% unemployed. Italy is paying well over 7% on its bonds. German industrial production dropped 8% while retail sales on the continent sputtered and fell sharply in Germany. Belgium, Malta and Cyprus all face fines from the EU for not being able to control their debt (thus they have more money taken away from them... Good Idea.) France is rushing to impose a form of Tobin transaction tax. And the technocrats in Brussels want a new pact that will allow them to spank countries that break the rules.

Book Talk: UBS warns that the Greek sovereign debt crisis "will deteriorate further than the stressed levels of late November. We do not believe that Greek PSI will take place in a “voluntary” fashion but instead expect coercive restructuring of Greek debt... triggering CDS contracts. Is this an honest prediction or just UBS looking for someone, anyone to bail out the banks? And Greece is just the beginning. The holding company that controls Portugal's second largest retailer has moved to Holland due to worry that Portugal will leave the euro.

Times Change: The US once believed that while everyone benefited from good schools, excellent roads, decent parks and playgrounds and public transit, the rich benefited proportionally more and thus should pay proportionally more in taxes. But the rich figured out that they could afford to turn to private replacements for shoddy public goods and services, so they stopped paying taxes and let the country's shared spaces deteriorate. “Public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12% of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3% by 2011." The public be damned.
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There's more - go there and read it.