09:37 – It’s the last day of the month, and I’d scheduled the Fungi chapter to be complete today. I don’t think I’m going to make it, but I may come close.
13:24 – Good grief. The Fed, the Bank of England, and most of the world’s other major central banks are going to bailout the eurozone, with (of course) the US bearing a disproportionate share of the costs. Not that it will ultimately make any difference. The euro has a fatal design flaw, so all this latest initiative will do is kick the can down the road a bit farther. And, like all the other half-measures taken so far, the actual long-term benefit will be zero while the costs will be extraordinarily high. You can’t fix a rotten, collapsing old shack by slapping a fresh coat of paint on it, and euro makes that rotten old shack look like a concrete blockhouse.
In case it’s not obvious to everyone, this initiative has nothing to do with saving the euro, which is not savable. The only purpose is to kick the can down the road far enough to stave off the collapse until after the 2012 election. Obama is as cynical as they come. He’s obviously weighed the political cost to himself and the Democrats of committing hundreds of billions of dollars to an ultimately futile bailout of Europe and Europe’s banks against the political fallout if the EU collapses before the 2012 election and concluded that screwing US taxpayers is his best option. No surprise, I guess. That’s what he’s been doing since he was elected.