New York TIMES / June 8, 2010 The Blog Prophet of Euro Zone Doom By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
BARCELONA, Spain — For years, almost nobody paid attention to the sky-is-falling alarms of Edward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist who repeatedly predicted that the euro zone could not survive. Living a largely hand-to-mouth existence here on his part-time teacher’s salary, he sent one post after another into the Internet wilderness. It was the height of policy folly, he warned, to think that aging, penny-pinching Germans could successfully coexist under one currency umbrella with the more youthful, credit-card-wielding Irish, Greeks and Spaniards who shared the euro with them. But now that the European sovereign debt crisis is rattling world markets, driving the euro lower almost every day and raising doubts about the future of the monetary union, his voluminous musings have become a must-read for an influential and growing global audience, including policy makers in the White House. ... At the same time, Mr. Hugh is determined to resist some of the newfound temptations that have lately come his way. He said he had turned down lucrative offers from hedge funds to provide exclusive research because he did not want his views monopolized by any one entity — although he said he was considering an offer to join the stable of contributors who work for Mr. Roubini. And when the Michael Milken Institute — financed by Mr. Milken, a felon who managed to hang on to a fortune even after having to pay a $550 million fine for his actions during the junk-bond boom of the 1980s — paid him $3,000 for a short report he did in a day on Eastern Europe, Mr. Hugh gave the money to a friend who was having trouble paying her mortgage, he said. “I don’t want to take a check from Michael Milken, thank you very much,” he said. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/global/09blogger.html] -- Jim Devine "Those who take the most from the table Teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined Demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary folk." – Bertolt Brecht. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
