Another One Bites the Dust -- Eurozone Bailouts -- Cyprus

From page A6 of today's WSJ: Cyprus becomes the fifth Euro-Zone nation seeking bailout.

The article doesn't mention the other four, but I am aware of Greece and Spain. The other two?

Spain was fourth (and coincidentally, Spain is the fourth largest economy in the Eurozone). Spain was also angry about the bailout. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I guess Ireland was first. Ireland's problem, according to wiki, a property bubble.

Then, Portugal in the first half of 2011, was second, same link.

Greece, of course, preceded Spain, making it third.

So:

C-PFIIGS ("see figs"): Cyprus,Portugal, France, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain).

France lowered it retirement age to 60 this past month. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

The bad news: apparently Portugal was thought to have a number of things going for it, to prevent this calamity.

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A Note for the Granddaughters

I happened to mention Dido and Aeneas a couple of times in recent blog postings. It's become a point of discussion for the granddaughters and me, lately.

Over the weekend, our older granddaughter received another (her nth) book on classical mythology which she is now reading. Her grandmother asked her yesterday if there were any stories of Dido and Aeneas in the book. Before she could answer, I spoke out of turn. I said the book was on mythology, the gods, and it would not include the heroes.

Our granddaughter disagreed. She said that, yes, it was about the gods, but there were some heroes mentioned, such as Heracles. So, there.

This morning, while we were still in bed, before getting up to take them to school, the older one came in with her new book on mythology. She said she was up to page 180 of the 188-page book (she started reading it three days ago; she received it on Saturday; this is Tuesday). She brought it in to me to show that, yes, indeed, on page 155, in a footnote, Aeneas is mentioned, and mentioned just that once, as far as we can tell. So, there.