Thomas L. Friedman
5/26/2010
Friedman says it is wrong for Brazil and Turkey–democracies who have overcome military rule in their past–to embrace Iran because Iran crushes democratic freedom. The nuclear deal these countries struck with Iran weakens the global coalition to pressure Iran to open its facilities to UN inspectors and legitimizes Ahmadinejad on the one-year anniversary of crushing the Iranian democracy movement that had demanded a recount of Iran’s tainted elections.
Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

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Parallels between Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and the global financial crisis are manifold. As with the housing market and the derivatives craze, the euro tale is one of easy money, excessive leverage, bad accounting, and failed supervision. De Vos states that the euro’s Stability and Growth Pact, meant to restrain budget deficits and national debt, was violated in its application and ignored in its supervision. In short, this was a bubble of public excess waiting to be pricked. For the sake of the euro’s and the continent’s future, political scapegoating needs to stop. The cardinal issue for the euro is whether its members will implement structural reforms that coincide with increased austerity before doing so only furthers their decline.





