To prop up the euro, a German court has agreed to allow Germany to fund the European Central Bank (ECB) so that it can bail out failing states. But it has imposed a cap on Germany’s contribution which only the Bundestag and Bundesrat together can overrule. Will the two parliaments ever do it? Certainly Themistocles would.
By 483 bc, the lead mines at Laurium on the southern tip of Attica (Athens’s hinterland) had produced an over-abundance of silver to the tune of 100 talents. The people’s Assembly (male Athenians over 18) debated a motion to copy the citizens of the fabulously gold-rich island of Siphnos and divide it up among themselves. But the statesman Themistocles seems to have had a grander vision: an Athens with total dominance of the sea. So he proposed the Assembly should forego short-term pleasure for long-term advantage and use the money to construct a huge fleet.
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