Greece prime minister Papandreou announces a referendum over the anti-bankruptcy aid package for his country announced at last week’s EU summit – and all hell breaks loose on world markets!

Yes, every other newspaper is writing about this as well, but this particular Die Welt article, by D. Eckert and H. Zschäpitz, stands out for its headline: Papandreou risks a global financial meltdown, or rather the alarm such a headline evokes in contrast to the serious, mainstream sort of paper we all know Die Welt to be – i.e one that doesn’t usually resort to such headlines. Yes, there are no doubt similar-sounding titles in tabloid papers, and not just in Germany, but all that is mere dog-bites-man.

This piece also stands out for the handy list it provides – you have to scroll down a little, look for Die größten Wertverluste . . . – of the banks which have lost the most market-capitalization, so far, from the plummeting prices of their shares. FYI, BNP Paribas stands at the top, with nearly €4.7 billion lost, followed by Deutsche Bank. (It also stands out for author “H. Zschäpitz”: isn’t that just a howler of a name? But no doubt the fellow has a Google Alert on it and will be reading this blogpost sooner or later – my apologies!)

Otherwise, though, I stand vulnerable to the charge of European tokenism. Because the piece that has really clarified things for me is in English, and written by our old friend Dana Blankenhorn. Greek Latest is Solar Scam is its title, it does spend a few paragraphs dissecting the faulty economics behind a Greek solar-energy investment plan. But then it addresses what Papandreou and the Greek authorities are really trying to do with this referendum. Given that Blankenhorn assumes that the result will be “No,” it’s simple: they are threatening to take the rest of Europe to down with them, unless they get an even-better debt-relief deal than the 50% they got from the EU last week.

You should check it out, and the article from Seeking Alpha that Blankenhorn links to as well. Strangely, his link to it reads “Sink the euro” even though that other article itself argues that there is still a chance for a “Yes” vote!

Among those who follow the American renewable-energy industry, the recent bankruptcy of the California-based solar-energy firm Solyndra was confusing and dismaying. Isn’t “green energy technology” of the type this firm embodies – namely solar – the new boom industry, where fortunes are there just waiting to be made? The company had even received just over $500 million in a federal government-guaranteed loan last year – which the federal government, indeed, will now have to step in and guarantee.

But things are not so simple, and few know that better than Dana Blankenhorn, a long-standing blogger and analyst of IT, of open source software, and of renewable energy. It seems that others outside the US are also curious about what happened to Solyndra, to the point that the Washington correspondent for the left-wing French newspaper Libération, one Lorraine Millot, got in contact with Mr. Blankenhorn while writing an article on the subject, which is here.

It’s an interesting one, and as a favor to Mr. Blankenhorn (whose on-line work I’ve been reading for at least a decade) and as a service both to his readers and mine, I offer a full personal translation (i.e. no Google Translate – I don’t touch that stuff) after the jump. (more…)

Sorry, it looks like I’m continuing here in a recent mini-trend of escaping what I’ve termed my usual €S “brief” and pointing out to you notable contributions in the (gasp!) English-language on-line media.

In this case it’s really a matter of an on-going “contribution,” i.e. an e-mail newsletter I can really recommend, namely A-Clue.com, written by Dana Blankenhorn, an IT business analyst of long experience. It’s weekly, and unfailingly a very informative and also entertaining read. And, I say again, it’s free.

What caught my attention in particular in this week’s issue was the following political commentary which, because Mr. Blankenhorn gives his subscribers permission “to forward this newsletter widely,” I assume he won’t mind my reproducing below:
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November 2

November 2 dawned clear and cold. But even where it rained, people took it as a bad omen.

Exit polls were out by 10 AM, on Drudge and the National Review. Despite a 40% approval rating, despite a 20% approval rating for Congress, President Bush and the Congress had been returned to power overwhelmingly. Senator Kerry, soon to be Senate Minority Leader Kerry, had won just two states, Hawaii and (ironically enough) Vermont. He had fallen in his home state of Massachusetts 53-47. Surveys indicated few found much real difference between the candidates. Both were Yale men, from the same secret society called Skull & Bones. Both were backed entirely by corporations. Why not go with the devil you know?

How could this be, people asked. And what happens now?

What would happen is that economics would take over where politics had failed. The dollar would continue falling and Russia would lead moves to start making more loans in the more-stable Euro. The economies of China and India would rocket along, the former beset by growing social unrest, the latter by religious strife, but all this allowing yet-more nations in Southeast Asia – like Vietnam and the Philippines – some time in the economic sun.

Australia and New Zealand processed a tsunami of visa applications from white Americans, many of them college-educated, all claiming a fear of persecution. In Canberra the Howard government urged continued processing, suggesting (sub rosa) that this would offset growing immigration from Asia and the Muslim world. In Auckland experienced LA techs took 1/10th their former salaries to work on Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” hoping against hope he might sponsor their staying.

The “brain drain” of American intellectuals, who would not be replaced by foreigners for the first time, was hardly noticed at the time. But the air of American triumphalism would be short-lived. For it’s intelligence, the “high bandwidth mind” as they say at Microsoft, that is the great engine of economic growth in a post-industrial age. With fewer of these on-hand, American power, influence, and the American lifestyle would slowly wither away.

Even as the Republic was replaced by an Empire, the American Century had ended.

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Pretty interesting to read, at least for this American working and building a life in Amsterdam.