Germany's economic recovery "resembles that in Dubya's USA: growth for the well-off, more (crap) jobs but less income for the rest," writes DoDo in the European Tribune and points to a just released study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) that says that real income fell by 3.5%.

Reuters:

In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain't what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.

This comes after the Latest Indication of US Economic Troubles: Hip-Hopper Flashes Euro Notes.

Thus, Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an adviser to Senator McCain, considers it necessary to remind everyone: Ignore the Obituaries, U.S. Reign Will Endure, which is also response to Parag Khanna's essay in the NYT, discussed on Atlantic Review.

I think it is good that NYC shops open up to Euros, but most customers pay with credit card anyway these days. The Boston Globe claimed in November 2007: "With dollar low, US is one big outlet: Europeans arriving in droves for bargains."

Do you see an expression of Schadenfreude on my face? Nope. I am just reflecting on history: Before we had the Euro and before credit cards were popular in Europe, we would travel to other European, Asian or African cities and use plenty of exchange bureaus or banks to convert our national into the local currencies. But this was not possible when traveling to the United States, where it was extremely difficult to find a bank that would exchange Deutschmark into Dollars without several days waiting period and huge fees. The dollar was the only currency Americans knew and accepted. Every tourist had to get dollars before arrival. So we were carrying plenty of cash and traveler checks in dollars. Now the United States is becoming more international by opening-up to the Euro. Cool, but then again, everybody is paying with credit card these days, so it is not such a significant change now.

Related post in the Atlantic Review: Thanksgiving: More Americans Travel to Europe Despite the Weak Dollar

A new round in transatlantic bashing: Denis, a French expat in the US, writes in SuperFrenchie:

They may call each others moonbats and wingnuts, but whether they're sporting long hair or military haircuts, Americans by and large all agree on this: America is the greatest country in the world, the American way of doing things is the only possible one, and everybody supports the troops. They learn that in schools from the earliest age, along with the fact that everything else (and everywhere else) is, by definition, flawed. And that's if they're taught anything about other places at all. History of the world in high school, for example, is a 2-semester optional course! Geography manuals do not exist. Innocent until proven guilty, to them, is a uniquely American concept.

So when I read in Foreign Policy magazine that "millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation," I felt some optimism. Finally, I thought, someone is going to tackle the problem of bias and lack of openness to the world in American schools. Oops! They were talking about France and Germany.

The Boston Globe writes about an Irish woman travelling to the US for "an extended weekend of binge shopping" and claims: "With dollar low, US is one big outlet: Europeans arriving in droves for bargains"

Meanwhile, Bloomberg's John M. Berry tries reassue his readers in the Seattle Times article "Dollar down, euro up, so what?" He argues that the "U.S. dollar is still at the center of the world's financial system, and its importance isn't fading in the face of exaggerated claims to the contrary." (Via EU Digest)

Lawrence Summers, however, says "Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis." Bill Clinton's last secretary of the treasury writes in The Financial Times.

Morever, The Telegraph reports: "China has surged ahead of Germany for the first time to become the world's top exporter, prompting ever louder demands from the United States and Europe to revalue the yuan."

International Herald Tribune:

Cars produced by German manufacturers like Daimler and Volkswagen are getting dirtier even as those from French and Italian manufacturers like Peugeot and Fiat are getting cleaner. Of the major car producing countries in Europe, emissions of carbon dioxide from new cars sold by German automakers increased 0.6 percent in 2006, even as French and Italian car makers cut their emissions by an average 1.6 percent, according to the study published by Transport & Environment, a campaign group for sustainable transport based in Brussels. German carmakers "seem to be intent on building ever heavier, larger and more gas-guzzling cars that simply don't belong in the 21st century," said Jos Dings, a director of T&E.

Pat Buchanan's op-ed "Sinking Currency, Sinking Country" is supposed to alarm Americans:

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45. The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century. Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800.

These numbers, however, are not graphic enough. What is really alarming is that "hip-hop maven Jay-Z in his latest video shows off his wealth by flashing stacks of 500-euro bills, " writes the Wall Street Journal's Economics Blogger and quotes a Minnesota newspaper that calls Jay-Z the "New Alan Greenspan" 

"It's sad that rap stars can no longer show their style with a good old $500 bills (featuring President McKinley) and now need to flash 500 euros (featuring some sort of suspension bridge). I don't need the chairman of the Federal Reserve to tell me about the state of our economy. I just need Jay-Z, the new Alan Greenspan.

Endnote: Did you know that the evil European Central Bank prints 500 Euro notes in order to appeal to drug smugglers? The Corner on National Review Online

Today N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard, writes in the New York Times about "true but misleading statements about health care that politicians and pundits love to use to frighten the public."

The 47 million also includes many who could buy insurance but haven't. The Census Bureau reports that 18 million of the uninsured have annual household income of more than $50,000, which puts them in the top half of the income distribution. About a quarter of the uninsured have been offered employer-provided insurance but declined coverage. Of course, millions of Americans have trouble getting health insurance. But they number far less than 47 million, and they make up only a few percent of the population of 300 million.

Given Mankiw's analysis, the pro-American German blog antibuerokratieteam asks (rhetorically): "How bad is it that 47 million Americans don't have health insurance?" I don't know. It seems that health care is much more expensive in the United States, but also in many categories worse than in five other industrialized countries. Perhaps some households with $50,000 cannot afford health care, if they want to save money for the college education of their two kids? But that would still be their free choice, right? 

There's very little evidence that Americans get better health care than the British, which is amazing given the fact that Britain spends only 41 percent as much on health care per person as we do.

Greg Anrig criticized Rudy Giuliani as well in the article "If it's from Europe, forget it," published in The Guardian three months ago: "Conservative dismissals of Democratic healthcare plans as 'socialist' explains a lot about the hole America is presently in."

Flight Global: "The Airbus A380 has attracted interest from the US Air Force (USAF) as a cargo freighter and as a large VIP transport in the Air Force One class, says an industry source."

"When McDonald's announced plans last May to open a franchise in Berlin's alternative neighborhood of Kreuzberg, some people thought the world was ending. But the streets were quiet for the restaurant's grand opening," despite all the talk about McResistance, writes Spiegel International.

Nobody would argue that Europe has become an American-style meritocracy, but the concept is no longer as alien as it once was. When I was in high school, 20 years ago, teachers went on strike for a salary increase. I mentioned a strange, American conceptpay raises linked to performanceand was accused of being a right-winger. Now this alien term appears in the manifestos of all would-be prime ministers for the next Italian elections.