America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role, By SPIEGEL Staff (Thanks to Bookworm) The banking crisis is upending American dominance of the financial markets and world politics. The industrialized countries are sliding into recession, the era of turbo-cap…

http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/

Time and time again, EUrope’s economy proves the dictum that when America’s economy sneezes, EUrope catches a cold. The (as applied) accounting standards for European banks are far worse than they are for U.S. banks and EUrope governing structure lacks the flexibility to deal with crises either quickly or wisely.

I would not be surprised if the U.S. weathers this current crisis in fine form (having been rescued from making bad decisions by informed and angry voters) only to see the European banks collapse. Here’s a very good and incisive insight from across the pond: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/10/we-get-what-we-deserve.html

To me, one of the really pathetic aspects of French culture, when I visit, is that the still-”popular” artists (in literature and film) are for the most part people that made their names 30-40 years ago. Johnny Hallyday, Catherine Deneuve…really! I believe that, much as the National Endowment for the Arts does here, their socialized societies tend to produce large volumes of subsidized mediocrity that drown-out the good. The really good artists must go to foreign markets (read: U.S.A.) to succeed.

However, to Gringo’s point…if you really, really want to p*** off Europeans, simply ignore them.

And I really can’t take the Nobel Prizes in Peace or Literature seriously. Unfortunately, many people around me do.

They got no literature in my view.

I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about what the Euros say, at least no more than to post this opinion.

What European literature after 1960 do we read in the US? Post Camus? European music after 1960, apart from the Stones and Beatles- themselves greatly US-influenced? (Not just blues and rock and roll. Many in the Brit bands had played skiffle music in the 1950s, which was basically American Folk music set to a beat.)

>unmoored to common concepts of grammar, narratively challenging, and morally vacuous.

Reminds me of Mark Twain’s takedown of James Fenimore Cooper in an essay titled “Cooper’s Prose Style”. He deconstructs a couple of paragraphs from “The Last of the Mohicans”, claims that Cooper has committed 114 of 115 possible literary transgressions, and corrects the prose.

It’s brilliant and scathing!

I see the $$ is up dramatically against the Euro. Banks are failing in England. Our unemployment rate has risen to within perhaps 4 points of what Germany and France have been running for awhile. Russia has had a tremendous sum of foreign investment leave the county since their great Georgian adventure. Petro $$ in Russia are shrinking as the price of oil sinks. Still, the Germans among other Europeans are nearly totally dependent on the “Bear” for their energy. Wouldn’t that would give you a really warm and cozy feeling? France isn’t much in the news; I guess that means they aren’t burning cars at the every night.

I would just say to the Euros. If you will take care of your problems we will take care of ours.