The usual suspects

Any magazine has a longer-than-desired lead time, and writers often find themselves praying that nothing changes between the time the copy is turned in and the magazine hits the newsstands. There's a sort of dead zone over which no one has any control. PM Mirek Topolánek no doubt wishes he could retract a statement he made in today's issue of Ekonom. He revealed to the magazine earlier this week that Slovak PM Robert Fico had bragged to him about the favorable euro/crown parity rate before the rate was made public. Oops. A huge scandal has erupted in Slovakia over just this issue. Only a handful of people were supposed to know about the revaluation, and that makes them all suspects in the alleged passing of inside information to speculators. And it just so happens that Topolánek was vacationing in Sardinia with a pack of friends and lobbyists at the time of the revaluation.