Sbagliando s'impera

I have been examining and re-examining the situation, trying to find the potential happy ending. It isn’t there. The euro zone is in a death spiral. Markets are abandoning the periphery, including Italy, which is the world’s eighth largest economy and third largest bond market. This is triggering margin calls and leading banks to pull credit from the European market. This, in turn, is damaging the European economy, which is already being squeezed by the austerity programmes adopted in every large euro-zone economy. A weakening economy will damage revenues, undermining efforts at fiscal consolidation, further driving away investors and potentially triggering more austerity. The cycle will continue until something breaks. Eventually, one economy or another will face a true bank run and severe capital flight and will be forced to adopt capital controls. At that point, it will effectively be out of the euro area. What happens next isn’t clear, but it’s unlikely to be pretty.

The euro crisis: Finito? | The Economist

Andate a vederla, vale la pena.

E in questo momento siamo i più grandi!

Topics most commented on | The Economist

Sempre grandissimi i gesuiti: ammetto di avere un debole per loro.

Il nuovo direttore de La Civiltà Cattolica, Antonio Spadaro S.J., è un cyberpadre. Nel numero 1 del 2011 (pp. 536-549) ha pubblicato un articolo dal titolo «Etica “hacker” e visione cristiana», in cui sostiene di avere riscontrato che la cultura hacker parla la lingua dei valori teologici. Ne dà conto l’Economist nell’articolo segnalato qui sotto..

“THE kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” Jesus said of little children. But computer hackers might give the kids some competition, according to Antonio Spadaro, an Italian Jesuit priest. In an article published earlier this year in La Civiltà Cattolica, a fortnightly magazine backed by the Vatican, entitled “Hacker ethics and Christian vision”, he did not merely praise hackers, but held up their approach to life as in some ways divine. Mr Spadaro argued that hacking is a form of participation in God’s work of creation. (He uses the word hacking in its traditional, noble sense within computing circles, to refer to building or tinkering with code, rather than breaking into websites. Such nefarious activities are instead known as “malicious hacking” or “cracking”.)

Mr Spadaro says he became interested in the subject when he noticed that hackers and students of hacker culture used “the language of theological value” when writing about creativity and coding, so he decided to examine the idea more deeply. The hacker ethic forged on America’s west coast in the 1970s and 1980s was playful, open to sharing, and ready to challenge models of proprietary control, competition and even private property. Hackers were the origin of the “open source” movement which creates and distributes software that is free in two senses: it costs nothing and its underlying code can be modified by anyone to fit their needs. “In a world devoted to the logic of profit,” wrote Mr Spadaro, hackers and Christians have “much to give each other” as they promote a more positive vision of work, sharing and creativity.

Monitor: What would Jesus hack? | The Economist

Peccato che, come spesso accade, padre Spadaro predichi bene ma razzoli male: il suo articolo non può essere letto o scaricato gratuitamente dal sito della prestigiosa rivista che dirige. Per fortuna ha un blog, Cyberteologia, su cui vi segnalo il prezioso articolo Gli Hackers, la Genesi e il senso della vita. Buona lettura.

Aggiornamrento del 4 gennaio 2011. Mi scrive Antonino Rao:

Il 27 marzo 2011, prima che lei scrivesse questo articolo, l’articolo di Spadaro a cui lei fa riferimento è stato postato per intero ed è liberamente accessibile da chiunque sempre in cyberteologia.it:
http://www.cyberteologia.it/2011/03/etica-hacker-e-visione-cristiana-ecco-larticolo-full-text-apparso-su-la-civilta-cattolica/

Gli sono grato della segnalazione e provvedo immediatamente a condividerla con voi e a scusarmi con padre Spadaro per la critica immeritata.

http://www.cyberteologia.it