Europe Not Quite Ready to Blow Up Yet

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I happen to think that all the chatter about the markets responding to the S&P downgrade is mostly misplaced. Obviously there’s some reaction, but markets have been nervous for the past two weeks, and most of it seems to be related to problems in the eurozone. And I don’t blame them: I’m pretty nervous about the eurozone too. Still, here’s a contrarian take from Stuart Staniford. Back in the panic days of 2008, one of the financial indicators we all paid a lot of attention to was the TED spread, which measures how much banks charge to lend each other money. When it’s high, it means there’s a lot of stress in the system, but right now it’s chugging along extremely placidly and indicating no problems at all. There’s apparently no exact parallel measure for Europe, but as a rough proxy he looked at Euribor, the interbank lending rate in Europe. It’s up a bit, but only a bit:

Stuart: “This is also showing no sign of undue stress. In short there is no evidence of any kind of generalized credit crisis in markets at the moment. However, it’s worth noting from the TED data at top that such things can change extremely rapidly.” This is your good news of the day, such as it is.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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