Angela Merkle has capitulated in her own manner. The International Monetary Fund, with its conditionality, political neutrality, and experience negotiating with debtor countries, will provide the bail-out money to Greece. The European Community will provide repayment guarantees, but will not be involved in the terms imposed on Athens. Stock and foreign exchange markets breathed a sigh of relief and both the Euro and the European bourses rose.
Does anyone know anything about Mr. Merkle, husband of the German leader?
I was yesterday at the British Museum exhibition of Mexican Revolutionary Poster artists. Easily the best artist was Diego Rivera, these days known mostly for being the husband of Frida Kalho. A bit like economist Leonard Woolf being known as the husband of Virginia, or Ted Hughes as the husband of Sylvia Plath. You don’t want to be the spouse of a feminist icon. Hughes is remembered more for his dreadful marriage than for becoming Poet Laureate. Nobody thinks about Woolf’s economic theories any more. And Rivera, one of the best artists and draftsmen in the classical mode produced during the 20th century, is remembered mainly because of his marriage to Kalho. For all his toying with surrealism and abstraction, Rivera was a supreme painter.
Rivera was very unpopular with his fellow poster artists, not only because he was fat, rich, and sexually promiscuous, but also because he supported the Trotskyist 4th International rather than Stalin’s Russia. He helped Trotsky find a temporary haven in Mexico City. Fellow-artist David Siquieros produced a vicious parody of Rivera in one poster made about the time that Siquieros tried to murder Trotsky, for which he was jailed.
Trotsky was assassinated a few months later. Kalho was Trotsky’s mistress for a while, and after the Russian exile was killed, the Mexican police briefly arrested Rivera, thinking he might have killed Trotsky out of jealousy.
Actually Kahlo’s role in the Trotsky saga is more ambiguous. Her Casa Azul home in Mexico City is full of Stalinist iconography, including an embarrassing set of Ex Votos dedicated to the Soviet leader rather than to the Catholic saints, painted after Trotsky’s assassination. As she moved toward her painful end, Kahlo used the rituals and iconography of her Catholic childhood to sanctify Stalin.
The London Poster Exhibit had only one link to Kahlo, who was too busy dealing with color and symbolism to produce political posters. She is drawn as a nude by Rivera. He does not show any of her deformities of body or eyebrows.
For the record I sold NICE stock mainly because I was embarrassed that it was tipped by Jim Cramer. Nice Systems now has been downrated to hold by Morgan Keegan, formerly enthusiastic about the Israeli customer service firm. Apparently its largest customer, Avaya, will be developing a system to compete with it.
More news affecting our stocks from Mexico, France, The Netherlands, and Israel follows.
