>"Try not to be dense."---gee Tom, I will try.

>"The long-term financial problems in Europe are a direct result of the fact that they not only believe in The Free Lunch, but they have actually made it the foundation of their governmental policies."---One surely would have to be dense to accept this simplistic explanation of the long-term financial problems in Europe. I will be happy to start a discussion on this topic in a later post.

>" Why isn't their currency attractive? Where is the debt coming from?"--

You really need to get out more Tom. Your comment would better be directed at the US situation. The Euro is up over 13 per cent compared to the dollar and will probably rise even more. And it is our massive debt, greatly exacerbated under the Bush watch, that should be your focus of concern.

The productivity of the American worker has been noted on these boards but not examined. This high rate of productivity is best explained by the combination of the introduction of robotics and the simple fact that the American worker works longer hours than the workers of any other industrialized nation do. The survival of the American industrial worker is tied to the over-time he has to put in.

This is a large part of the reason the Japanese and Germans are building their cars here. They realize America has an educated, trainable and cheap (i.e., exploitable) labor pool in comparison to their national counterparts. In a two edged advantage this gives total open access to American markets as well as the use of lax or non-existent right-to-work state labor laws.

Trying not be so dense, Publius