Jacob Christensen

As if the world didn’t have more serious issues to consider – like, say Congo – LEGO™ bricks are now all the rage in Brussels. Or perhaps not.

But I find the idea of Sweden as an IKEA package (holding JAS Gripen fighters) pretty funny.

• IMF Survey: IMF Helping Counter Crisis Fallout in Emerging Europe
  "But how the crisis will play out in Europe will differ from how it plays out in the United States because the economies are structured differently. While Europe has very few toxic assets of its own, European banks owned a lot of bad U.S. assets, and were more highly leveraged than American ones. So we can expect more deleveraging in Europe than in the United States.

  The other difference is that automatic stabilizers are much more important in Europe than in the United States due to the size of the public sector. While this will help Europe, the unprecedented scale of this crisis will require more policy action."

  (tags: monetarypolicy europe fiscalpolicy economy imf)

The BBC World Service is hard to beat: It had philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah discussing the academic background of a certain Barack Obama.

Available as a podcast here, but hurry!