Over the weekend of August 6–7, as the world digested the downgrade of America’s sovereign debt, heads of government, central bankers and Treasury officials interrupted their summer vacations for a frantic round of telephone conferences. But all that emerged were lame communiqués, which did nothing to inspire confidence. On Monday, August 8, rocked by bad news from both sides of the Atlantic, stock markets sold off sharply. President Obama was left to remark: “We now live in a global economy where everything is interconnected, and that means that when you have problems in Europe and in Spain
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