a pretty interesting political landscape. But we hope that bunga bunga Berlusconi will finally go to jail, and that will change things. Of course it left some impression on people like me, when we search the global published opinion landscape, and you get the impression, it is all reasonable people, the overwhelming majority of media, the American economists, the financial press (Bloomberg, FT, etc), all mocking and condemning the seemingly bone headedness of just a few German only dinosaurs. They have so many economics Nobel Prize winners, and we so few. I could not even recommend a book, describing Ordnungspolitk. So many people are threatening a replay of the 1930ties, if we don't give in to all this nonsense, Eurobonds, never ending deficits, massive, permanent transfers. If people hate us, and don't buy our goods anymore, we would be in deep trouble, and being right would not help us, we are a massively trading nation. But then, taking a very careful look, engaging in several blogs around the world, and carefully listening and engaging in discussions, in fact a very different picture emerges: Phelps: "Germany is right to ask for austerity" http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/21d62aa8-\\... "Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schuble, her finance minister, are right to oppose fiscal and bank unions without political union. Without any teeth in such agreements, the nations now besotted with wealth, private and social, could use the loans and grants for financing more deficits and more entitlements -- another round of corporatist excess -- rather than for