The EU Cracks

The EU's response to the current financial crisis smacks less of unity than reality–especially in Germany:

Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck made clear his government's opposition to the idea that the euro zone's single largest economy should put up money to prop up institutions outside his country. He said Monday that he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were considering creating a "shield" that would protect the country's entire financial sector, and that a Europe-wide shield or bailout was out of the question. "The chancellor and I reject a European shield because we as Germans do not want to pay into a big pot where we do not have control and do not know where German money might be used," he said in a separate interview with WDR 2 radio.

It looks like cracks in the euro-empire are appearing ten years sooner than I'd predicted. Excellent. The sooner this happens the more peaceful the break up of that Napoleonic monstrosity will be.

Greatest Thing Since...

The price of a loaf of bread in Britain has broken the £1 barrier.

This is one of those pieces of bad news that is actually good news in disguise. The notion that Tesco's think a loaf of Warburton's is worth a quid a loaf is ludicrous unless each slice is individually gold plated and comes with a coupon of a free loaf of decent bread at another shop, but it is heartening that this story ended up as a minor item on the business pages.

It wasn't that long ago when news of a rise in the price of a loaf would have made headlines and threatened to bring down the government as a sign of an unacceptable jump in the cost of living. Today, the price of bread is no longer the touchstone of the British living standard when there is so much wealth sloshing about that people worry more about ipods and 4x4s than bread. Indeed, the economy is so robust that it has even survived ten years of Labour rule without failing the bread test.

And that's like the Titanic ploughing through a phalanx of icebergs without a scratch.