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They agreed that there shall be no common bank recapitalisation until a full banking union is established. And the Bundesbank has reminded us that the latter is not possible without a political union. The logical implication is that we won’t solve the crisis for the next 20 years.

What we know now is that Germany will not agree to mutualised deposit insurance. It cannot even agree to give the European Stability Mechanism a banking licence so that it can leverage itself.

A narrow majority is still in favour of the euro, but a majority is against further rescues.

Early work on optimum currency areas by Robert Mundell had emphasised the symmetry or asymmetry of disturbances hitting different regional economies as a key criterion on which to gauge their suitability for sharing a common currency.

We now know that Kenen flagged a problem for which the Eurozone could have been better prepared. With an outsized capital-goods producing sector, Germany benefitted from a strong positive shock as a result of China’s emergence onto the global stage, given the Chinese economy’s voracious appetite for capital goods.

No, of course not. Today, we live in a currency zone that, despite everything, is significantly more stable than where the dollar or yen are used. The euro has brought growth and prosperity to Europe.

Actually, the euro was a mistake with particularly serious consequences. A monetary union requires its members to pursue the same policies and be similarly productive. The so-called convergence criteria were meant to ensure that this would happen. But -- as the dramatic developments in Greece are now showing -- they didn't.

Unfortunately, our fears have become a reality. The monetary union was launched with real self-deception.

More than 70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals.

Agribusiness groups disagree and say the main problem is overuse of antibiotic treatments for people. Bugs rarely migrate from animals to people, and even when they do, the risk they pose to human health is negligible, the industry contends.

He is comparing the genetic sequences of E. coli germs resistant to multiple antibiotics found in the meat samples to the ones that have caused urinary tract infections in people (mostly women).

Empirical evidence suggests deleveraging episodes accompanied by a housing crisis will take on average five and a half years across high-income OECD countries (or seven years when accompanied by a banking crisis (Aspachs-Bracon et al. 2011, IMF 2012).

The crisis has also transformed the European Union into something radically different from what was originally intended. The EU was meant to be a voluntary association of equal states but the crisis has turned it into a hierarchy with Germany and other creditors in charge and the heavily indebted countries relegated to second-class status. While in theory Germany cannot dictate policy, in practice no policy can be proposed without obtaining Germany's permission first.

Italy now has a majority opposed to the euro and the trend is likely to grow. There is now a real danger that the euro crisis may end up destroying the European Union.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.

Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon

Galileo — first proposed in 1994, more than 20 years after America started its own system, and initially promoted as a big potential moneymaker — “can’t give a direct return on investment, but politically it is very important for Europe to have its own autonomous system,” said Mr. Magliozzi of Telespazio.

It is also designed to be far more precise than the American version.

Galileo has been financed almost entirely by the European Union since 2007. It is the first and so far only major infrastructure project managed by the European Commission.

Most European leaders have nothing against using the central bank's reserves as a source of financing, as became evident at the Cannes summit. Important politicians like European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and French President Sarkozy proposed making IMF "special drawing rights" available

It appears that the euro crisis is approaching its endgame. Many promises made when the common currency was introduced have already been broken. The initial stipulation that only stable countries be allowed in, for example, quickly proved illusory once Italy and Greece were accepted.

German taxpayers were also promised that they would never be held liable for the debts of other countries in the euro zone. But then came the first and second bailout packages for Greece and the European bailout fund.

The recently created European Banking Authority has only limited powers over national supervisors, whose daily work is guided mainly by national considerations.

Moreover, the ECB already bears de facto responsibility for the stability of the eurozone’s banking system. But, until now, it had to lend massive amounts to banks without being able to judge their soundness, because all of that information was in the hands of national authorities who guarded it jealously and typically denied problems until it was too late.

Consider the case of a bank headquartered in Italy, but with an important subsidiary in Germany. The German operations naturally generate a surplus of funds (given that savings in Germany far exceed investment on average). The parent bank would like to use these funds to reinforce the group’s liquidity. But the German supervisory authorities consider Italy at risk and thus oppose any transfer of funds there.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe supervisor of the home country (Italy) has the opposite interest. It would like to see the “internal capital market” operate as much as possible. Here, too, it makes sense to have the ECB in charge as a neutral arbiter with respect to these opposing interests.

Like an inmate on death row, the euro has received another last-minute stay of execution. It will survive a little longer. The markets are celebrating, as they have after each of the four previous “euro crisis” summits – until they come to understand that the fundamental problems have yet to be addressed.

Europe’s leaders did not recognize this rising danger, which could easily be averted by a common guarantee, which would simultaneously correct the market distortion arising from the differential implicit subsidy.

Likewise, they now recognize that bailout loans that give the new lender seniority over other creditors worsen the position of private investors, who will simply demand even higher interest rates.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph

Its full name is more than a mouthful. Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement System is better known as TARGET2 for short. It is the behind-the-scene payments system that conveniently enables citizens across the euro area to settle electronic transactions in euro. And at just over €500 billion, its TARGET2 claim on the Eurosystem is also the largest and fastest growing item on the Bundesbank’s balance sheet, as well as a source of much misunderstanding and debate.

The allocation of TARGET2 balances among the seventeen national central banks, which together with the ECB make up the Eurosystem, reflects where the market allocates the money created by the ECB. The fact that the Bundesbank has a large TARGET2 claim (asset) on the Eurosystem, while national central banks in southern Europe and Ireland together have an equally large TARGET2 liability, simply reflects that a lot of the ECB’s newly created money has ended up in Germany. Why? Because of capital flight.

Since the euro eliminated exchange rate risk among its member states, Germany has invested a substantial portion of its savings in Europe’s current account deficit countries. Some of those savings are now returning home. That’s the capital flight.

THE European Monetary Union, the basis of the euro, began with a grand illusion. On one side were countries — Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands — whose currencies had persistently appreciated, both within Europe and worldwide; the countries on the other side — Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain — had persistently depreciating currencies.

Rather than pulling the lagging countries forward, the low interest rates of the European Central Bank have lured governments and households, especially in the southern part of the euro zone, into frivolous budgetary policies and excessive consumption.

the solution is clear: the only way to avoid further harm to the global economy is for Germany to lead its fellow stable states out of the euro and into a new and stronger currency bloc.

Deposit flight from Spanish banks has been gaining pace and it is not clear a euro zone agreement to lend Madrid up to 100 billion euros in rescue funds will reverse the flows if investors fear Spain may face a full sovereign bailout.

Many banks are reorganising, or being forced to reorganise, along national lines, accentuating a deepening north-south divide within the currency bloc.

Since government credit ratings and bond yields effectively set a floor for the borrowing costs of banks and businesses in their jurisdiction, the best-managed Spanish or Italian banks or companies have to pay far more for loans, if they can get them, than their worst-managed German or Dutch peers.

Crippled eurozone to face fresh debt crisis this year, warns ex-ECB strongman Axel Weber

Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff said the launch of the euro had been a "giant historic mistake, done to soon" that now requires a degree of fiscal union and a common bank resolution fund to make it work, but EMU leaders are still refusing to take these steps.

"People are no longer talking about the euro falling apart but youth unemployment is really horrific. They can't leave this twisting in wind for another five years," he said.

In the winter of 2005, Randolph read “Learned Optimism,” a book by Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped establish the Positive Psychology movement.

Recasting high school, German firms transplant apprentice model to U.S.

The apprentices are grouped together for coursework that leads to an associate’s degree in mechatronics, a hybrid discipline pioneered in Japan and Germany that melds the basics of mechanical engineering, electronics and other areas.

It produces workers that can program, operate and fix the machines common to the factories run by Siemens and other top companies. There used to be an elective among the 24 courses the students take. That was replaced with a logic class.