1) It seems to be factually correct.

2) He's not advocating putting banks before people, but he is right to note that if Europe does this, we benefit.

3) As for progressivism: while I don't detect any advocacy in the piece, I would note that a European collapse that dragged us (back) down with them would be the surest route to the GOP controlling all 3 branches of government on 1/20/2013. So, arguably, U.S. progressives will benefit from Europe's banks-first policies. That's ironic, but that's about all it is.

or at the very least applauding European 'leaders' for doing so, as this allows us to avoid a credit crunch here. Sorry, but I can't see anything noble about throwing a bunch of European workers under the bus so that banks here will have enough money to lend (which they aren't and won't, anyway). That's what I meant by weird. I've always thought that Slate, and this country, too, for that matter, had a higher moral standard than this piece would suggest. Color me naive.

Here's a good recent take down from Doug Smith:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/doug-smith-useful-idiot-watch-%E2%80%93-matt-yglesias.html

Fair to say, it's not the function of writers in the corporate media to be intelligent or insightful. They are merely tools of the 1%, polishing up the latest neoliberal turd for mass consumption. If he understood economics well enough to have independent thoughts, he wouldn't be writing for Slate.

in the OP.

"Read Elk carefully and you’ll see that he’s beside himself over the travesty of an outlet such as Slate providing this useful idiot Yglesias a perch that Slate describes as ‘covering’ economics. "

Thanks for posting that link.

Nothing they do surprises me now that I found that out. Komen did more for liberals that they could ever imagine - they outed a bunch of conservative women to the public.