EUROZONE: Paul Solman Dissects The Euro Crisis.

PBS-TV NEWSHOUR: 9:03/ With transcript /


  This blog revels in the foibles of politicians and the machinations of the macro economy.
 Hopefully leavened with humor and occasional insight.
  The editor has been fascinated by economics since taking his first class in high school.
 He follows 2 reporters religiously, both called Paul.
The NYTimes' Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and Paul Solman makes sense of economic news on America's PBS Newshour.
     Krugman probably provides more original insight but few explain the complexities of economics better than Solman.
     Confused about what's really going on with Europe's debt crisis?
     Let Solman explain it .
    

CUBA: Fears Mixed With Hope As Workers Cope With Economic Changes.

PBS/NEWSHOUR/ 10:56 VIDEO With TEXT/

   In the first of 3 reports, Ray Suarez gives an overview on Raul Castro's new economic reforms to promote much needed growth and also preserve socialism.
    "But is change coming? Cubans have heard it before. And, in previous decades, the government opened the door a crack to the development of a small business sector, only to pull back the reforms by refusing to issue more new licenses.
     A tiny private sector remains from the '90s. Now there's a national debate about making that sector bigger. A rare Communist Party Congress is set for the spring to discuss change. Self-employment looms large in Cuba's future. The government has already announced the coming firings of half-a-million workers. To start the transition, over 100 different occupations will be opened for self-employment."
AND:"... right now, we live in a moment of complete frustration, and most of the Cuban people are feeling that way. The revolution is going backwards. It's now taken the country back to a point that is worse than it was before 1959. Our dreams have become a nightmare."

CUBA: One Of America's Best TV Journalist Returns For First Time In 23 Years.

PBS.ORG/NEWSHOUR/
    I've observed over the years that after Thanksgiving, many of America's media mavens rediscover Cuba. Maybe it's the Northeast's chilling winds that make the balmy weather of La Habana suddenly more tantalizing.
    But, traditional media's ad meltdown may have changed that.
   However, there is a fresh hope of new insightful reporting about Cuba.
    From Ray Suarez of America's public TV network.
    Suarez has returned to Cuba for the first time since the 80's when the Soviets held sway. During the next weeks, he will be reporting and blogging about the changes he sees. Even after over a dozen trips to Cuba since 1996, I expect to learn a lot about today's Cuba from Suarez.

CUBA: Fidel's Recent Comment On a Broken Economic Model; An Interview With 2 Witnesses.

PBS NEWSHOUR/ 8:42 With transcript/
    Always dependable reporter Margaret Warner interviews Jeffrey Goldberg of "The Atlantic" magazine and Julia Sweig, who met with Fidel Castro in La Habana and discussed the Cuba's economic system and revealed a quote about a failing economy that... echoed around the world.

JULIA SWEIG: "Well, yes, he really said that. Let it be stated here definitively. I was there. He said it. And he said it definitively and unequivocally. His attempt to roll it back might take away from that, and it picked up in your story a little bit, was saying: Although we are changing our model, and it needs to change, that doesn't mean we're importing their model, the American capitalist model.

There's a long history in Cuba of discussing publicly what models do and don't work, whether Spanish imperial model, American neocolonial model, the Soviet communist model. And, so, God forbid they actually should change their model and import something else. This is a Cuban hybrid that is evolving."