14/05/2008 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

State responses to the Spanish construction slump

This excellent piece by Mr Butler provides background to Deutsche’s warning on Spanish mid-table banks and illustrates the eternal perils of investing in real estate in Andalusia–unless you happen to have Manuel Chaves’ mobile number. It will be ghoulishly interesting to observe whether interventionist regions fcuk up better or worse than the ones that still…

Kettledrum of potatoes with broken eggs and creaking ham

Here

In praise of toads

George Sandford has left a fascinating comment on this post, which deals with an amusing 19th century literary-historical hoax–purported correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and an esoteric global selection of fellow-monarchs. George is family of the alleged editor, Brother Antonio the Goth, and thus of the Christian clan kidnapped by the Moors when they invaded…

Ben Shahn’s maypole

Something puzzling me on V-E Day on May 8 last week: no one seems to have noticed that Ben Shahn‘s Liberation is a French maypole scene. I believe from the MOMA@NY blurb that it draws on a Cartier-Bresson image, but if it’s a maypole it must surely be celebrating the end of the war in…