Though it does have some relevance to the financial crisis, a brief item from the gentleman who brought you the immensely useful crazification factor:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with [...]

You may have known them already:
The Russian word for train station, voksal, is related to the London neighborhood of Vauxhall.
It is considered bad luck in Georgia to take out the trash at night; it is a sign of throwing money away.
In Tbilisi, the Armenian ambassador’s official car was parked outside the residence of the Turkish [...]

For a small break from Brussels and the economic crisis:
Nothing fades so quickly or so tackily as a Soviet resort.
One of the lighter observations (on p. 139) from The Spirit-Wrestlers by Philip Marsden, a journey across southern Russia and the Caucasus in search of various religious non-conformists who fell afoul of both Russian and Soviet [...]

From Geert Mak’s visit to Sarajevo in 1999:

Batinic leans over and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Tell me, Geert, honestly: what kind of people are you sending us anyway? The ones at the top are usually fine. But otherwise, with only a few exceptions, the people I have to deal with are third-class adventurers [...]

Describing some events in the last months of 1989:
Meanwhile, an unknown KGB agent in Dresden, Vladimir Putin, had tried to pile so many documents into a burning stove that the thing exploded
In Europe, by Geert Mak, p.718
I’m nearing the end of the book, and it’s living up to my initial impression. More, perhaps, when I’m [...]

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, [...]

This is the 3003rd post at A Fistful of Euros. An odd number for an observance, but things are coming fast and furious these days, and I just missed MMM.
That is all.

Over at English Russia, Sergei Larenkov has merged historic photos form the siege of Leningrad with contemporary pictures taken from the same vantage point. Flak balloons, protective scaffolding, ruins and dead bodies juxtaposed with SUVs, modern busses, restored facades. Fascinating work.
Don’t miss his links to other photo projects down at the bottom of the post. [...]

The world my children (one, three and five) remember will always be one in which a black person has been President of the United States of America.

“They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do. … You have done what America can do in [...]