The European Union is the culmination of a dream that is at least 100 years old. It was envisioned by pre-World War I socialists as the natural evolution of the nation state.In practice, however, it leaves much to be desired.A currency exchange that is totally messed up; bureaucrats running wild; a parliament that dreams up ever more inventive ways to confiscate the citizen's property; all this and more is the modern EU.But now, faced with its first genuine financial crisis, the EU is proving to be a paper tiger and worse, paralyzed by its inability to deal with the almost certain sovereign default of Greece and perhaps other member states.Ken Prewitt and JoAnne Norton of Bloomberg has the story:Greece will default on its bonds "at some point" as the euro region fails to deal with its first major economic crisis, said Paul Donovan, deputy head of global economics at UBS Investment Bank."I think it's in an impossible situation," said Donovan, who is based in...(Read Full Post)