TheQueen
06-08-2010, 07:35 PM
June 8, 2010
Economic Prophet of the Internet
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/06/09/world/09blogger-cnd/09blogger-cnd-articleLarge.jpgEdward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist, at the XXVI Barcelona Society of Economy Meeting in Barcelona, in May.
BARCELONA — For years, almost nobody paid attention to the sky-is-falling alarms of Edward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist who repeatedly predicted that the euro zone could not survive.
Living a largely hand-to-mouth existence here on his part-time teacher’s salary, he sent one post after another into the Internet wilderness. It was the height of policy folly, he warned, to think that aging, penny-pinching Germans could successfully coexist under one currency umbrella with the more youthful, credit-card-wielding Irish, Greeks and Spaniards who share the euro with them.
But now that the European sovereign debt crisis is rattling world markets, driving the euro lower almost every day and raising doubts about the future of the monetary union, his voluminous musings have become a must-read for an influential and growing global audience, including policy makers in the White House.
He has even been courted by the International Monetary Fund, which recently asked him to fly to Madrid to assist in its analysis of the Spanish economy.
“It’s quite nice, actually,” Mr. Hugh, 61, said with amusement as he leaned back in a plush town car that was taking him to his latest speaking engagement organized by the Círculo de Economía, an influential business lobbying group in Barcelona. “I am meeting all sorts of interesting people and they are paying me to have lunch with them.”
But in other ways, his life has changed very little. Last week, in fact, he even had to borrow money from friends to buy clothes presentable enough to allow him to address the conference of Spanish politicians and business executives. He still mostly supports himself by teaching English to locals here, where he has lived for two decades.
“I guess I am countercyclical,” he said with a laugh. “For all the years during the boom when everyone was doing well here, I wasn’t doing anything. Now I am a household name in Catalonia.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/global/09blogger.html?hp
Economic Prophet of the Internet
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/06/09/world/09blogger-cnd/09blogger-cnd-articleLarge.jpgEdward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist, at the XXVI Barcelona Society of Economy Meeting in Barcelona, in May.
BARCELONA — For years, almost nobody paid attention to the sky-is-falling alarms of Edward Hugh, a gregarious British blogger and self-taught economist who repeatedly predicted that the euro zone could not survive.
Living a largely hand-to-mouth existence here on his part-time teacher’s salary, he sent one post after another into the Internet wilderness. It was the height of policy folly, he warned, to think that aging, penny-pinching Germans could successfully coexist under one currency umbrella with the more youthful, credit-card-wielding Irish, Greeks and Spaniards who share the euro with them.
But now that the European sovereign debt crisis is rattling world markets, driving the euro lower almost every day and raising doubts about the future of the monetary union, his voluminous musings have become a must-read for an influential and growing global audience, including policy makers in the White House.
He has even been courted by the International Monetary Fund, which recently asked him to fly to Madrid to assist in its analysis of the Spanish economy.
“It’s quite nice, actually,” Mr. Hugh, 61, said with amusement as he leaned back in a plush town car that was taking him to his latest speaking engagement organized by the Círculo de Economía, an influential business lobbying group in Barcelona. “I am meeting all sorts of interesting people and they are paying me to have lunch with them.”
But in other ways, his life has changed very little. Last week, in fact, he even had to borrow money from friends to buy clothes presentable enough to allow him to address the conference of Spanish politicians and business executives. He still mostly supports himself by teaching English to locals here, where he has lived for two decades.
“I guess I am countercyclical,” he said with a laugh. “For all the years during the boom when everyone was doing well here, I wasn’t doing anything. Now I am a household name in Catalonia.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/global/09blogger.html?hp