I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand “friends”—in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook’s community—for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend’s illness or life celebrations. Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism—and its commercial exploitation of these values—Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation’s social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month’s initial public offering of stock—a ... Continue reading →
A WSJ reconstruction reveals how Germany -- criticized for not dealing forcefully with the Europe debt crisis in its early phase -- responded to the dangers in Italy by imposing its power on a divided euro zone. A WSJ investigation revealed how the currency union floundered in indecision this spring—failing to address either the immediate concerns of investors or the fundamental weaknesses undermining the euro. The common currency is becoming controversial even in the Netherlands, host of the Maastricht summit 20 years ago and a place where economic and political opinion long was almost unanimously pro-euro. EU members such as Poland that are doing well with their own currencies have soured on the euro, an ominous portent for the decades-long process of increasing European economic ... Continue reading →
Former iPhone owner Katy McCaffrey now has a public Facebook photo album that she shares with an unwitting partner: a Disney cruise ship employee named Nelson who's apparently been snapping photos on the stolen smartphone and automatically uploading them to McCaffrey's Facebook account. Within the "stolen iPhone adventures" gallery, which you can see here, are photos of Nelson's supposed love interest, his friends, and other mundane happenings aboard the ship that McCaffrey has taken the liberty to narrate with ad-libbed captions. In a comment on the album, she says that the iPhone "was stolen on board the Disney Wonder cruiseline back in April," and that "his photos are just making it to my photostream." While Nelson's employer is likely to put an end to his ... Continue reading →
BY MICHAEL J. CASEY The last two prime ministers of Greece have both just taken a leaf out of Hank Paulson's financial crisis playbook. They reached for the fear card. Lucas Papademos, speaking to Dow Jones Newswires in his first interview since his unelected caretaker government was replaced earlier this month by a fractured, ungovernable new Parliament, said Tuesday that the threat of a Greek exit from the euro was "real," and that if it came to that, it would have "profound" and "catastrophic" consequences for both Greece and the monetary union. Around the same time, George Papandreou, who handed power to Mr. Papademos ...BY MICHAEL J. CASEY The last two prime ministers of Greece have both just taken a leaf out of Hank Paulson's ... Continue reading →
