Euroskepticism

"For years, almost nobody paid attention to Edward Hugh, who repeatedly predicted that the euro zone could not survive. 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 Spanish." - Landon Thomas, Jr. in the New York Times

As Thomas recounts, the "gregarious blogger" Edmund Hugh found an audience among academic economists and a "cult following" among financial analysts. He "was writing very clearly about the imbalances in Europe and the likelihood of a crisis long before it was on the radar screen of economists or analysts," according to London-based researcher Jonathan Tepper. Yet Hugh posts whatever interests him, "even the sociable behavior of bonobos," Thomas writes. "With the Internet," Hugh says, "I feel that I can do what I like. This makes me feel I can really do something."