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Europe's bond markets in a tizzy

IN 2008 a strike by French and Spanish lorry drivers cut off the supply of components from Germany to Volkswagen’s Auto Europa plant, south of Lisbon, forcing the factory to close for a day. Two years on there is a more serious threat to the supply lines of countries on the fringes of the euro zone. The yield on Ireland’s ten-year government bond vaulted towards 9% on November 10th, 6.2 percentage points above the yield on safe German Bunds (see chart); Portugal’s topped 7%.

  Bernanke's worse nightmare: Ron Paul to become subcomittee chairman

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Ben Bernanke has had his hands full since his first day on the job as Federal Reserve chairman nearly five years ago. It's about to get even tougher.
His harshest critic on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is about to become one of his overseers.

With the Republicans coming to power, Paul, who would like to abolish the Fed and the nation's current monetary system, will become the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
If you've never heard of the committee before, you're not alone. But Paul promises you'll be hearing a lot more from it.

Facebook shrinks the soul?

We know the consequences of this instinctively; we feel them. We know that having two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We know that we are using the software to behave in a certain, superficial way toward others. We know what we are doing “in” the software. But do we know, are we alert to, what the software is doing to us? Is it possible that what is communicated between people online “eventually becomes their truth”? What Lanier, a software expert, reveals to me, a software idiot, is what must be obvious (to software experts): software is not neutral. Different software embeds different philosophies, and these philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible.