Monthly Archives: June 2012

Zimbabwe

Comrade Chinx ousted in Zimbabwe’s twitter coup: ‘We are new to this twita thing’

Leave a comment

Too good to be true, especially for a Saturday.

It appears that the Zimbabwe government’s twitter feed is still having some growing pains:

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: We unreservedly apologise for saying whites are pink like raw meat We demanded it be deleted and have will return Cde Soddy as moderator. [7 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: Cde Chinx has been removed from twitter duties. We will however give him a fertile piece of land to farm. He is a good man, just angry. [6 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: We look forward to Cde Sodindo’s return & in the mean time our tweeting is on hold. We have also downloaded a spell check 2assist Cde Soddy. [6 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: Last tweet from Cde Chinx “Cdes I am sorry for my mistake, I have lots of angry against the white- I am sorry.” [6 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: 2show how dedicated & committed Cde Chinx has been he also asked that we tweet this photo of him & our beloved leader: pic.twitter.com/jIpNLKo1 [6 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: Cdes and friends! Its me cde Soddy! I will continue to tweet revolutionary statements and information for beloved party. Pamberi.NeZANUPF [2 hours ago]

ZANU PF ‏@zanu_pf: Cdes and friends please realise that despite our vigorious screen process, something wrong tweet, slip out. We are new to this twita thing. [2 hours ago]

Comrade Chinx’ Dickson Chingaira is a longtime supporter of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party of Robert Mugabe, and he has long had a cultural role in Mugabe’s governments — he is especially well known for his pro-liberation songs from the 1970s and in ensuing years.  It appears he has not had the best string of luck recently, though: he had his mansion bulldozed in 2005, had to become a fishmonger in 2010 and now has been ousted from his Twitter perch.

Spain

Spain set to seek European bailout this weekend

4 Comments

If true, at least this would put Greece on the backburner for a while. From Reuters, which has the scoop:

Spain is expected to ask the euro zone for help with recapitalising its stricken banks at the weekend, EU and German sources said on Friday, becoming the fourth country to seek assistance since Europe’s debt crisis began.

Five officials in Brussels and Berlin said the finance ministers of the single currency area would hold a conference call on Saturday morning to discuss a Spanish request for aid, although no figure on the assistance has been set.

The Eurogroup, which comprises the 17 euro zone states, will issue a statement after the call, which is scheduled to take place before midday (1000 GMT), the sources said.

“The announcement is expected for Saturday afternoon,” one of the EU officials said.

The dramatic move comes after Fitch Ratings cut Madrid’s sovereign credit rating by three notches to BBB on Thursday, highlighting the Spanish banking sector’s exposure to bad property loans and to contagion from Greece’s debt crisis.

Spain, with a nominal GDP (as of 2010) of $1.4 trillion, dwarfs that of either Ireland (nominal 2010 GDP = $229 billion), Portugal (nominal GDP = $204 billion) or Greece (GDP = $305 billion).  It is the eurozone’s fourth largest economy, after Germany, France and Italy, and it is the world’s 12-largest economy.

So this bailout would go much further to the heart of the eurozone than the previous bailouts to Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Spain’s growth has stalled (or has been in recession) since 2009 and unemployment was 24.3% as of April 2012.  Although Spain’s banks have been fairly conservative, and Spain ran a surplus (or a very modest deficit) for much of the prior decade, the bust of a construction and property-value boom has left it in the midst of a staggering economic decline that brought Mariano Rajoy and the Partido Popular (PP — People’s Party) to power in December 2011 after nearly a decade of rule by prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE — Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) took much of the brunt of Spanish anger about the sudden economic turn, after implementing harsh budget cuts in response to the reality of reduced revenues and rising anxiety among Spanish bondholders.

So just a little over half a year after taking power, it will be on Rajoy’s watch — Rajoy promised never to accept an aid package — that Spain seeks a bailout. Continue reading Spain set to seek European bailout this weekend →

France

Le Pen and Mélenchon battle in Hénin-Beaumont precinct highlights four-way French campaign

1 Comment

The most interesting contest in Sunday’s first round of the French parliamentary election may well be the most irrelevant to determining whether President François Hollande’s center-left or the center-right will control the Assemblée nationale — but it also showcases that the far-left and far-right are both playing the strongest role in over a decade in any French legislative election.

The race is the 11th precinct of the Hénin-Beaumont region, where Front national leader Marine Le Pen is running against Front de gauche leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.  Le Pen originally targeted the region in 2007 (where she won 24.5% of the vote) — it’s an economically stagnant area where coal mining was once the major economic activity.  Think of it as the part of Wallonia that’s actually part of France.*

Like many of the old French Parti communiste strongholds, it is today receptive to the economic populist message of the Front national — in the first round of the presidential election, Le Pen won 35% there, followed by Hollande with 27% and Nicolas Sarkozy with just 16%.

So it’s a constituency that Le Pen continues to view as fertile ground, a great pickup opportunity in what seems to be the Front national‘s best shot at seats in the Assemblée nationale since 1997.

Mélenchon, however, decided to parachute into the precinct to run against Le Pen (although neither have true roots in the region), prolonging the bitter antagonism that marked the presidential race.  In the spring, their enmity seemed greater than even that between Hollande and Sarkozy.

Mélenchon’s eagerness to attack the Front national led to a surge of support in the first round.  Although Mélenchon won less than some polls indicated he could have, his 11% total was still the best presidential result for the far left in two decades.

For a time, it looked as if Mélenchon’s move was a masterstroke — he would secure a seat for the Front de gauche and in so doing, polls showed, would become the left’s champion in defeating Le Pen.  As predicted, the campaign for Hénin-Beaumont has become a battle royale between the far left and the hard right, with rhetoric matching that of the presidential campaign:

“I find it funny the passion he has developed for me and that he follows me all across France,” Ms Le Pen remarked to a group of journalists at her constituency headquarters in the recession-hit town of Hénin-Beaumont. “But it is good. He divides people. There are people who would not vote for me if he wasn’t here.”

Speaking earlier as he greeted shoppers in a street market in neighbouring  Noyelles-Godault, Mr Mélenchon brushed aside the innuendo that he has some kind of obsession with his rival.

“I do not find her erotic, as I have read in certain newspapers,” he protested. He had become a candidate in Hénin-Beaumont to “shine a light on the vampires” of the National Front, he said. It would be “absolutely shaming” for the left if Ms Le Pen were elected in a former mining area “at the heart of the history of the French workers’ movement”.

And so on.

But as the campaign concludes, polls show an uptick for Parti socialiste candidate Philippe Kemel, who had previously polled far behind the two national stars — even the retiring PS deputy had abstained from endorsing Kemel.

Two polls on Wednesday showed a tight race, however: Continue reading Le Pen and Mélenchon battle in Hénin-Beaumont precinct highlights four-way French campaign →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 7

Leave a comment

The president of Estonia unloads both barrels on Paul Krugman. (UPDATE: Krugman shrugs).

Henrique Capriles steps down as Miranda state governor to focus on the Venezuelan presidential campaign.

Haunting photo essay of the new Athens.

The misery of being Greek, from someone who knows.

Russian president Vladimir Putin pushes anti-protest law through the Duma. Alexey Nalvany does not care for this.

Incoming Hong Kong chief exec Leung Chun-ying is planning his first 100-day blitz.

 

Greece

Golden Dawn incident highlights possibility of neo-fascist decline in Greek election re-run

2 Comments

There aren’t many silver linings in being forced to hold two legislative elections in as many months, while your country is running out of money, mired in near-depression economic conditions and suffering from budget cuts that have torn apart the country’s social contract.

But perhaps one of the best things that can come of the June 17 elections — regardless of whether the pro-bailout center-right New Democracy or the anti-bailout radical left SYRIZA wins — is the chance that the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party will fare significantly poorer this time around.

Among other things, reduced support for Golden Dawn would significantly facilitate the arithmetic of forming a government.

The high-profile implosion of the party’s spokesperson Ilias Kasidiaris — an arrest warrant was issued for Kasidiaris after he threw water at one female parliamentary candidate yesterday and repeated slapped another on a live television talk show — does not bode well for the party’s chances:

The exchanges came when the discussion turned to the sensitive topic of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949).
When Kasidiaris called [Communist MP Liana] Kanelli an “old Commie”, she retorted that he was a “fascist”.  Kasidiaris also was incensed that SYRIZA’s Rena Dourou mentioned a pending court case against him.
When Dourou said that there was a “crisis of democracy when people who will take the country back 500 years have got into the parliament”, Kasidiaris, who has served in the army’s special forces, picked up a glass of water and hurled its contents at her.
“You joke,” he shouted.
He then turned on Kanelli, who had got up out of her chair and appeared to throw a newspaper at him.
He slapped Kanelli three times on the side of the face.

The Kasidiaris distraction follows a ridiculous post-election press conference in May when Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, the party’s leader, launched into a neo-nazi screed after the party’s thugs tried to force journalists to stand at attention.

Golden Dawn thrives on these confrontational moments to attract attention.  But even if you think that these kinds of outbursts are deliberate, it’s a sign of Golden Dawn’s weakness that it is staging these moments to suck away media attention from the main parties just 10 days before the election.

In the May elections, Golden Dawn won 6.97% of the vote and 21 seats.  Parties will win seats in the parliament, on the basis of proportional representation, if they can draw more than 3% of the vote. Continue reading Golden Dawn incident highlights possibility of neo-fascist decline in Greek election re-run →

Mexico

AMLO rising: López Obrador gets lift in Mexican presidential race

5 Comments

Gone are the days when Mexico’s first female presidential candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, could have transformed the presidential race with her historic candidacy with a high-profile break from the current leadership of her party, the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

Over the past month, the man to watch in the Mexican presidential election — except, of course, for the longtime frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) — has increasingly been Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), who previously served as head of government of the Distrito Federal from 2000 to 2005 and who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential race to current PAN president Felipe Calderón.

López Obrador led the 2006 polls throughout much of the campaign, much as Peña Nieto has led polls in the current presidential campaign, but narrowly lost after the PAN and the PRI launched negative attacks claiming that López Obrador would take Mexico down a path similar to that of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.  Although those fears were overblown, they were strong enough to deny López Obrador a long-anticipated win.

Once regarded as a hopeless retread in the current campaign, López Obrador — or AMLO, as he’s also known in Mexico — has overtaken Vázquez Mota in polls for second place in the increasingly bleak race to become the main challenger to Peña Nieto.  Despite his narrow 2006 finish, López Obrador alienated much of the Mexican electorate by loudly protesting the vote result for months afterwards, a tactical mistake from which he never quite recovered.

So it was surprising, to say the least, when López Obrador placed just four percentage points behind Peña Nieto in a Reforma poll last week.  Other, more reliable polls, show Peña Nieto with a steadier lead — Peña Nieto has led every presidential poll since last year — but also show an unmistakable rise in support for López Obrador.  In one recent poll, he is even leading among independents and among college-educated Mexicans.

Rivals have taken notice — both the PRI and the PAN have taken aim at López Obrador in recent days.  Continue reading AMLO rising: López Obrador gets lift in Mexican presidential race →

Lesotho

Who is Tom Thabane? And what next for Lesotho?

1 Comment


The last transfer of power in Lesotho to Pakalitha Mosisili in 1998 ended in riots and violence by opposition supporters who did not believe that Mosisili’s party had truly won a crushing victory in the 1997 election — although the vote largely reflected the will of the people, the crisis ended only with international intervention from South Africa.

So with word that Mosisili has given up hope to form a coalition headed by his breakaway Democratic Congress party, the path seems clear for an orderly — and peaceful — transfer of power from Mosisili to Tom Thabane, former foreign minister and one-time protegé of Mosisili, later this week.

In the parliamentary election on May 26, Democratic Congress — a party formed only in February 2012 as a splinter from Mosisili’s longstanding Lesotho Congress for Democracy party — won 48 seats.  The Lesotho Congress for Democracy, under Mothetjoa Metsing, won just 26 seats, as somewhat of an evolved protest group, while Thabane’s All Basotho Convention won 30 seats.

Together with the Basotho National Party, the LCD and the ABC are expected to form a coalition under Thabane.

The peaceful transfer of power in the small mountainous country (it’s surrounded entirely by the national of South Africa) comes just after a remarkably similar transfer in Senegal earlier this year.  As in Senegal, the transfer from Mosisili to Thabane is expected to be marked more by continuity than by rupture.

Continue reading Who is Tom Thabane? And what next for Lesotho? →

France

Warning signs for Hollande in French parliamentary campaign

Leave a comment

The campaign for French parliamentary elections kicked off just last Monday, for what most observers believe is a formality in installing the newly inaugurated President François Hollande’s Parti socialiste as the majority of the Assemblée nationale.

French voters go to the polls this Sunday for the first of two rounds — in each parliamentary district, if no candidate wins over 50% (with at least 25% support of all registered voters in the district), each candidate that commands at least 12.5% support of all registered voters (or the top two candidates, alternatively) in the first round will advance to the second round on May 17.

In 2002, parliamentary and presidential elections were fixed so that the former follows nearly a month after the latter.  As in 2002 and 2007, it is expected that the winner of the presidential race in May will thereupon see his party win the parliamentary elections in June.

The rationale is to avoid cohabitation — the divided government that sees one party control the presidency and another party control the government, which has occurred only three times in the history of the Fifth Republic (most recently from 1997 to 2002, when Parti socialiste prime minister Lionel Jospin led the government under center-right President Jacques Chirac).  More than in most countries, the French electorate seem a bit more allergic to divided government, which should give Hollande some relief in advance of Sunday’s vote.

But there are complications this time around, which may result in a somewhat murkier result.

Wait a minute, you might say: Deposed president Nicolas Sarkozy is off licking his wounds in Morocco, leaving a decapitated center-right split between followers of outgoing prime minister François Fillon and Jean-François Copé, head of the Union pour un mouvement populaire (which, unlike the Parti socialiste, is not a decades-long party, but only the latest brand of a series of shifting vehicles of France’s center-right) — Fillon and Copé last week were already sniping at one another.

A surging Front national on the far right (and increasingly and uncomfortably encroached on the center-right and parts of the populist left as well), under Marine Le Pen, garnered nearly one out of every five votes in the first round of the presidential election and is hoping to do just as well in the legislative election.

Meanwhile, Hollande’s prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, seen as a prudent and moderate choice to lead France’s new government, has a 65% approval rating (higher than Hollande’s own 61% approval!), and Ayrault is already moving to reverse part of Sarkozy’s signature reform — raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 — by allowing a small subset of longtime workers to retire at 60.

How, under these conditions, could the PS possibly lose? Continue reading Warning signs for Hollande in French parliamentary campaign →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 6

Leave a comment

The economics blogosphere — from all sides of the debate — is noting with some alarm Martin Wolf’s latest column in the Financial Times:

Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events.

Former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, who was defeated by Macky Sall in March 2012, is now under suspicion of embezzlement of public assets upon leaving office.

More Tahrir Square protests demanding Ahmed Shafiq’s disuqalification from June 16’s Egyptian presidential runoff.

Recently defeated Serbian president Boris Tadić says his party may be close to forming a parliamentary majority with the Progressives.

Germany’s Pirate Party has growing pains.

More evidence that Kim Han-gil is emerging as the Democratic United Party’s presidential candidate for December’s election.

 

Assorted Links

First Past the Post:June 4

Leave a comment

In an apparent dirty trick, someone is putting up “Diosdado for president” posters in Caracas — Diosdado Cabello is president of the Asamblea Nacional and an ally of ailing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who would be one of several potential PSUV candidates for Venezuela’s presidency in the event of Chávez’s death.

More confirmation that the Greek election comes down to who can get the best deal from Europe without getting booted from the eurozone.

In losing the ‘no’ campaign on the Irish referendum, did Gerry Adams win the next general election?

Voting in Libya’s first post-Gaddafi parliamentary elections, scheduled for June 19, has been postponed.

In Australia, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both remain more popular than their respective rivals, Labor prime minister Julie Gillard and Coalition opposition leader Tony Abbott.

Venezuela

Doubts surface in media about Capriles in Venezuelan presidential race

Leave a comment

Journalist Rafael Poleo, not exactly a fan of Hugo Chávez, wrote a column earlier this week, “No camina,” arguing that the opposition campaign of charming, energetic, 39-year old governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles, “isn’t walking.” (In English, maybe the best equivalent is that Capriles’s campaign has no legs).

Poleo essentially wrote that Capriles is a weak candidate with the wrong strategy, setting off a week of hand-wringing over the Capriles campaign in the Venezuelan press.

When Capriles won the nomination of the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), the umbrella opposition group united against Chávez, there was hope that Capriles, tied at the time in polls against Chávez, might be able to succeed where a decades-worth of opposition candidate failed in defeating a cancer-stricken Chávez — or a Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) without Chávez, chavismo without Chávez.

But that was in February — it’s now June, and the Capriles campaign, while not necessarily uncompetitive with Chávez, hasn’t exactly soared in the polls.  And notwithstanding what Dan Rather may or may not report about how terminal Chávez’s cancer may be, the Venezuelan president needs to hold on to life for just four more months in order to secure another presidential term for the PSUV.

As Francisco Toro explains at the awesome Caracas Chronicles blog: it’s the economy, stupid.  As with any incumbent, Chávez and the PSUV can manipulate the highly state-run economy — and government spending — in ways that Capriles cannot.  Toro points, in particular, to public spending that’s risen 28% against the first quarter of 2011, public sector construction that’s risen 56.6% since the first quarter of 2011, and GDP growth in excess of 5%:

In these circumstances, even a non-Chávez PSUV candidate would have a decent chance against HCR this year. In a petrostate like ours in the middle of an economic and consumption boom, the advantages of incumbency loom large. Very large. Most people just aren’t that interested in politics, most don’t follow politics closely. For them, if their pocketbooks are ok, the guy in power must be doing something right, and that’s that.

Personally, I think that Capriles’s campaign has the right strategy. Within the very narrow confines of what a challenger is able to do when running against a petro-empowered autocracy, I can’t really find fault with Capriles at all. There are two issues that potential swing voters are especially sensitive to – jobs and crime – and he’s hitting both hard. Admittedly, I also find the notion that Rafael Poleo might be right about something a kind of ontological impossibility, so the whole notion that his candidacy “no camina” can probably be dismissed out of hand.

But I also think we should be clear: the basic drivers of what we’re going to see on October 7th have to do with factors both far bigger (the macro-economy) and far smaller (the reproduction rate of certain genetically damaged cells) than anything within Henrique Capriles’s power to change.

For his own part, Capriles claims his campaign is running ‘head to head’ with Chávez.
It’s still a long way to October, though, and Capriles remains in better shape than any presidential challenger to Chávez at any time in the past decade.  Chávez’s health is as uncertain as ever and he has no PSUV-based successor groomed in the event of his death, which could throw the race into turmoil.  Capriles benefits from an unusually united opposition in the meanwhile, and he’s by no means a lost cause.
But no one ever said defeating even a cancer-stricken Chávez would be easy.

Greece

Tsipras outlines SYRIZA program, as Samaras shifts tone toward bailout renegotiation

1 Comment

Alexis Tsipras laid out his party’s program for the upcoming June 17 Greek election on Friday.

Tsipras said a SYRIZA government would immediately reject the memorandum on coming to power and ask for Greece’s debt to be restructured or for a moratorium on repayments. It would then repeal a reduction to the minimum wage and extend unemployment benefit to two years. It would also repeal recent labor market reforms limiting collective contracts.

Tsipras set out how his government would stabilize the economy. He said public spending would be set at between 43 and 46 percent of GDP, rather than under 36 percent as agreed in the memorandum. The SYRIZA leader said he would raise revenues by cutting down on tax evasion, waste and corruption and forming an assets register for all Greeks at home and abroad. The wealthy would pay more under a new tax system, he said.

The key takeaway point is that it is not substantively different from the program under which he led SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς) in the previous May elections.

It does, however, highlight a subtle but unmistakable shift in the tone of Tsipras’s main rival, Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy (Νέα Δημοκρατία), the center-right pro-bailout party that finished first in the May election.  Samaras in recent days has increasingly been taking a softer line on renegotiating Greece’s austerity program with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all of which granted two bailouts to Greece in exchange for its adoption of austerity measures and labor market reforms.

Although Samaras has raged throughout both campaigns that a SYRIZA win would be catastrophic and lead to Greece’s exit from the eurozone, it’s clear that in the second campaign, ND and the pro-bailout PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement — Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα) are moving toward SYRIZA’s position.   Continue reading Tsipras outlines SYRIZA program, as Samaras shifts tone toward bailout renegotiation →

China, Hong Kong

Tsang apologizes, pledges to implement anti-corruption reforms in Hong Kong

Leave a comment

Outgoing chief executive Donald Tsang apologized on Friday to Hong Kong residents one day after two damning reports criticized Tsang for accepting luxurious gifts and favors from business tycoons and misuse of public funds — the report of one three-month inquiry, established by Tsang himself amid impeachment calls in March, found his conduct “totally inappropriate”:

“Because I handled matters improperly, public confidence in Hong Kong’s government as a clean government was shaken and our colleagues in the civil service were disappointed,” he said, bowing his head and looking on the verge of tears. “Here I sincerely apologise once again.”

The disclosure that Tsang had accepted favors from Hong Kong businessmen, including travel of yachts and private jets, special deals for rent on a penthouse in Shenzhen, and other gifts, rocked Hong Kong at the height of the campaign to replace Tsang, who had previously enjoyed a sterling reputation for probity, first as a civil servant for over three decades and as chief executive since 2005.

In another instance, Tsang was discovered to have spent public money for a $6,900 per night suite on a visit to Brazil.

One report recommended making it a criminal offense for the chief executive to accept certain favors without special permission:

[Former chief justice Andrew Li Kwow-nang] recommended that legislation be enacted so that accepting advantages required the permission of a statutory independent panel, which consists of three members, including a chairman, to be appointed jointly by the chief justice and the president of the Legislative Council.

The committee also suggested that the chief executive and his spouse can receive gifts valued below HK$400; gifts valued between HK$400 and HK$1,000 – if the gifts are inscribed with the chief executive’s or his spouse’s names; and invitations to functions or performances worth up to HK$2,000.

The scandal only amplified other charges of sleaze and corruption surrounding Henry Tang, who lost the chief executive election to Leung Chun-ying on March 25 when it became increasingly clear that both the Hong Kong public and the Chinese leadership in Beijing preferred Leung.  Although the 1200-member Election Committee were the only ones with votes in the election, Hong Kong residents made their voices heard loudly during the campaign.  It is expected that Hong Kong will hold its first openly democratic chief executive race in 2017.

Tsang will step down on June 30, but said he would work with his successor to craft anti-corruption legislation, which would be an unprecedented step for Hong Kong as it prepares to open the door to full democracy.

Such legislation will rise to the top of Leung’s agenda, which also includes increasingly high housing prices for Hong Kong residents, the strains placed on Hong Kong’s health, housing and other public services by migrants from mainland China and Article 23, a long-controversial anti-subversion law.

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 1

Leave a comment

A stripper, a porn star, the Church of Blessed Consumerism and other screwball French legislative candidates.

Tyler Cowen on the economic future of Italy, Greece and the eurozone.

Ahn Cheol-soo is moving closer toward running in South Korea’s December presidential election. No word on whether his Angry Birds-themed commentary will return.

Spain is leaking capital in what has become the Rajoy government’s first (and perhaps largest) test.

Violence in Kosovo might be the Nikolić presidency’s first test in Serbia.

The latest round of talks on tuition have collapsed in Quebec.