Friday 7 September 2012

EUROPE: ECONOMICALLY CHALLENGED

Introduction

This post is in reaction to the fact that I read a lot of economic stuff (technical term, that) - blogs, on-line magazine, e-letters etc. - and, since most of them are written by Americans, they tend to focus, naturally enough, on America's problems.

But, from the outside, the economic issues facing the USA are fairly simple. They've spent thirty years destroying every support pillar on which the middle class was built and giving more and more money and power to a really tiny elite. It was supposed to unleash limitless growth as energy and entrepreneurship were freed. It hasn't worked, to say the least.


Yes, there is a problem with the future path of Medicare which will bankrupt the US government if it is not fixed but, on the other hand, they have the least cost-efficient health care system in the whole wide world so, since just switching to any system of any of the other developed (and even emerging!) nations would sort most of it, it just cannot be a huge deal, conceptually.
But it is - Politically.

WHY AWAY SO LONG - AN APOLOGY

To anyone actually reading this blog (there are a few of you, according to my page view count - and I thank you deeply for taking the time), I would like to apologise for the long hiatus.

The quick explanation is: personal issues.

The slightly longer one is that I lost my father-in-law unexpectedly and, apart from all the heart-aches involved for my wife, my kids and my mother-in-law, I decided to relocate to be with them. It's been a hard summer but, hopefully, things will improve from there on. Fate definitely owe me a few lucky breaks!

Back to the economic stuff with my next post...