celtic tiger

These lapses in vacation time and the end of summer give H and I good opportunities to plan the next round of holiday-making.  We have decided to return the beautiful Ireland in the Autumn, and we are finding ourselves with a virtual embarassment of choices.  We are thinking about taking one of the ubiquitous vacation cottages in the countryside.  These locations are fantastic and authentic, seemingly the result of the properties boom that hit Ireland ahead of the housing market collapse.  In this case, however, these investments may have been a bit dubious, too, since people in rural areas could quickly take on the financial burden of a second, less rustic and more ameniable home and rent the original to tourists.  It is difficult to say if that was a good plan, though it is a little unfair to compare Ireland to Greece, since the Greeks never showed promise as an economic wonder and it is unfair, I think, to say Ireland disappointed. 

One unintended result of economic rescue-breathing, however, may be becoming apparent there, besides our overwhelming selection of venues.  There is an over-abdundance, as well, in the bigger towns of hotels--zombie establishments, as Bloomberg reports.  Despite decreased demand for room, many resort hotels and guesthouses remain open but as vertible ghost towns, since hotelliers would be more indebted should they give up the business, shutter it because they would have to remit those stimulus funds that put them in business in the first place, taxing a lost enterprise.  Empty hotels compete with lower and lower rates and make it impossible for businesses that would be otherwise healthy to turn a profit.  This is all interesting--how one's tourist buck affects this macro-miasma--but we are more focused on exploring more of the country, whose charm will surely be able to withstand this sort of contrived catastrophy.

pax romana

Depending on who one asks, and there is still a lot of latitude for pessimism, Germany and the rest of the EU have successfully staved off the worst of the financial cataclysm and are on their way to recovery. This is in stark contrast to the situation in the US, and it is in part at least owing to the extant social-safety-net, which keeps people from being evicted and turned out on the streets and did not need to debate some slap-dash welfare program, financial regulations that curtail the excessive accumulation of power for companies and temper share-holder decision, keeping executive salaries from escaping to unreal levels, a more patient and sounder fiscal policy.

The EU has its share of imperfections and there are still incidents of voracious greed and abject poverty, but the biggest and most stable difference between the two and economic prosperity is that the EU has a manufacturing base and produces tangible things. Measured just by its spun-up services industry, the USA is about like nouveau riche Dubai. Even little Liechtenstein, in addition to banking, has a healthy business in making dentures and artificial teeth. Stock market fluctuations are driven for the most part by knee-jerk computer programming that buys or sells by fiat once a certain threshold is met, and the stock markets as well as the varied basket of other economic health indicators do not really tell much of a story, if businesses cannot be coaxed into hiring or unfreezing excess funding they are holding on tightly to as insurance against deflation.

Only generation of revenue, both personal and commercial, marks real change and backs up currency's value. Like the oil barons of the Mid-East, Russian oligarchs and American robber-barons are dismissive of the EU as antiquated, but as H pointed out, Europe may not be as flashy or dynamic but has been doing what it has been doing for centuries and without oil, bubbles and busts.

tarnhelm or with my sword and magic helmet

Because I do not have a regular Hausartz, after I was discharged from the hospital, they released to me the photographs and a CD of the magnetic resonance images of my head.  The software on the CD would animate the whole sequence, and it was fascinating to watch, although it was a bit gruesome to see my head slowly materialize with the squiggle of an ear, then build up layer by layer to the wrinkles of my brain and naked eyeballs.  It made me think of that ghastly vintage pulp science-fiction paperback cover art, where just the suggestion of a shadow is frightening enough for the whole book.  My next resolution is to get a regular physician, not only to keep my records straight, but also so I don't hesitate and procrastinate until I have to hopping mad enough to go to the emergency room.

bacchanalia

My mother found an excellent wine-service, a pitcher, for us, decorated with the face of Bacchus and grape leaves.  I agree with H that it seems rather technical with the thumb-screw but the frame holds a bottle of wine perfectly secure and one could pour from this comfortably and neatly. 

Given the general flimsiness and shoddy construction of most modern accessories, like plastic containers whose lids are ill-fitting, shirts that loose buttons, paperclips malleable enough to make an argument against recycling, or bag clips that develop a severe under-bite, one becomes unaccustomed to working with something that is perfectly designed, solid and ergonomically correct, like a fine writing instrument and not a pair of scissors embossed "LEFTY" treated as if they could be the perfect synthesis of form and function. I was equally impressed and someone struggling not to compliment dexterity when I found a nice old silver pair of sugar tongs, which grasped a sugar cube with a minimum of extra pressure and no effort.

coyote savvy or chicken little

There has been a regular spree of concessions and confessions lately coming from the US government and I don't know quite what to make of this surprising bit of frankness.  Via a few bloggers either invited, planted, or embedded as part of a US Treasury Department deep background self-assessment, senior officials basically allow that the subsidies and programs styled mortage relief are in effect only benefiting the banks and prolonging the suffering of homeowners.  Under the terms of the program, for which only a narrow percentage of struggling households in America have managed to qualify and navigate the paperwork, total debt is not reduced, just the terms of the repayment schedule: families already underwater on their mortage--owing more on their home loans than their house is worth, can now pay less per month, letting banksters project more revenue due to interest on principle and thereby lend out more money with their risk of default mitigated by the government program.  Even without the assistance of unextraordinary cynicism, if Treasury officials did admit to this, knowing the information would go public and be left to skewed to fairly sober judgment, that is pretty flooring in itself.

 It is like the latest Wikileaks dispatch that poses the equally unextraordinary question what if America is garnering the reputation as an exporter of terror and general ill-will.  Is the US government more willing to entertain the hypothetical, even unapologetically so?  There is another blatant beast, as reported by Time Magazine, in the headlines concerning a California circuit court ruling that upholds the right of government agents to pop a tracking device on any one's vehicle.  The Constitutional augurers, very non-chalantly, decided that a citizen has no reasonable expectation--or freedom from intrusion, in his driveway.  I am sure that gated-communities within this court's jurisdiction are exempted.