An Experiment in Scotch

The priv­i­leged have reg­u­larly invited their own destruc­tion with their greed. — John Ken­neth Gal­braith If you fol­low the finan­cial news on a semi-regular basis, you know that MF Global, a futures fund run by Jon Corzine, for­mer gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey, went bank­rupt last week. If you don’t read the finan­cial news, well God …

Imag­ine if you will a friend–perhaps imag­i­nary, per­haps not–who spends money as if it grew on trees. He buys things con­stantly, upgrad­ing to the lat­est and great­est, always dri­ves a new car. None of this is a prob­lem if he’s inde­pen­dently wealthy but let’s say he’s not. Let’s say he makes $40,000 a year but …

Last week, it appeared that some­thing of a plan, how­ever roughly sketched out, had been drawn up in the great Euro­pean debt cri­sis. Mar­kets around the world rejoiced with some­thing bor­der­ing on aban­don even though astute observers ques­tioned the lack of details in the plan. The plan revolved around bond­hold­ers tak­ing an approx­i­mate 50% hair­cut …