Smart Reads July 18, 2013

♦ Ben Bernanke and the markets appear to be friends again, which might make tapering easier.
♦ George Bizos, Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, recalls the good times they shared.
♦ Chris Giles argues that, “After almost a century of gradual social progress and narrowing of wealth and opportunity gaps, Britain is slowly recreating a rentier society, where a family’s property ownership matters more than anything else.”
♦ Wolfgang Schäuble wants to leave a legacy in Europe, but his boss, Angela Merkel, is proving to be one of the obstacles between him and EU reform.
♦ Nasser al-Awlaki, a former minister of agriculture and fisheries in Yemen, is petitioning the US government to explain why they killed his grandson, a US citizen.
♦ Amy Davidson ponders what Trayvon Martin could have done to avoid getting into an altercation with George Zimmerman: “There is an echo, in what people say Martin should and shouldn’t have done, of what people say to women when bad things happen to them in dark places.”
♦ Mohamed Morsi hasn’t been seen since he was taken into custody – when do international circles start considering him a political prisoner?
♦ Bassem Youssef takes on the recent coup in Egypt: “Humanity has now become an isolated island among wild waves of discrimination and extremism.”