“Southern Europe has not done enough to enhance its competitiveness, while northern Europe has not done enough to boost demand. Debt burdens remain crushing, and Europe’s economy remains unable to grow.”

The 24% unemployment reached at the depths of the Great Depression was no picnic.

Why was there so much work-sharing in the 1930s? One reason is that government pushed for it. In his memoirs, President Herbert Hoover estimated that as many as two million workers avoided unemployment as a result of his efforts to promote work-sharing.

Across the continent, political divisions are deepening. For all of these reasons, the specter of a euro zone collapse has not been dispatched.

For those unfortunate enough to experience it, long-term unemployment – now, as in the 1930s – is a tragedy. And, for society as a whole, there is the danger that the productive capacity of a significant portion of the labour force will be impaired.

Political union means transferring the prerogatives of national legislatures to the European parliament, which would then decide how to structure Europe’s fiscal, banking, and monetary union.

The consequences of a collapse would not be pretty. Whichever country precipitated it – Germany by threatening to abandon the euro, or Greece or Spain by actually doing so – would trigger economic chaos and incur its neighbours’ wrath.

The 1992 crisis proved that the existing system was unstable. Not moving forward to the euro would have set up Europe for even more disruptive crises.

While holding the eurozone together will be costly and difficult and painful for the politicians, breaking it up will be even more costly and more difficult.

As for the single market, the E.U.’s landmark achievement, there is no question that a euro zone breakup would severely disrupt its operation in the short run.

More than the Big Mac, Coca Cola, or Levi’s 501 jeans, the dollar is surely the United States’ signature export.

I think working in the industry, I’d be pretty nervous to have a celebrity crush.

I think working in the industry, I’d be pretty nervous to have a celebrity crush. I’d be pretty nervous if my boyfriend did as well because inevitably you’d end up working with them and then it would feel very suspicious.

The advice I have for new artists is this – write great songs and play them live as often as possible. Get residencies all over town and crush it.

Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

All Buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddhas.

Many persons lead lives of crushing boredom.

If you love anything in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations.

They saw the flicker of bats overhead. They smelt the drifting scent of honeysuckle, and the delicious smell of wild thyme crushed under their bodies. A reed-warbler sang a beautiful little song in the reeds below, and then another answered.