Bear Stearns today, Citigroup tomorrow, UBS to follow.
The house is burning but there's still a party going on inside...
Have a great party everybody!

What's interesting is that when you say the truth (The $ is cr*p), americans do feel attacked instead of warned.

It's like they define their identity through it???

I think perhaps it is the display of your outright "glee" that is offensive.

Well I don't have any emotions toward the $, except to warn people about it. Maybe some "glee" makes people start thinking. In that case, it helped :-)

It's not about $ or € or whatever, it's about keeping up the the standard of living. Once a widespread panic is here, it's too late.

Hi Logos, speaking about standard of living, would you stop sending all your fellow colleagues to live in Switzerland? We are getting a massive amount of Germans and suddenly we are having to brush up on our hoch Deutsch again.


Schwiizer Düütsch is so much easier than high German.

Switzerland sounds like a safe haven, I can't blame them :-). Did you notice they're all Prussians... and those people don't understand anything but Prussian.

Brush up on your Prussian or just use Schwiizer Düütsch, it doesn't matter if they understand it anyway :D. Maybe that'll make them leave..

I hope USD stays low long enough to let me renew my personal library.
Long life to amazon.com

All of this economic nationalism is fascinating, but irrelevant to the purpose of this board.

What is relevant is how the relative strength of the euro will affect travel plans. In dollar terms, without taking local-currency-based price inflation into account, purchases this May will "cost" us about twice what they did during our last time in Paris in July, 1999. We will spend less, but hope to enjoy the month's visit just as much.

>>>>>
What we probably are seeing is part of the long process by which Americans are going to be forced to understand theirs isn't a special country
>>>>>

flanner nicely sums up a lot of what is behind these kinds of threads and certainly what is his own motivation. many here have an agenda where they are constantly trying to teach americans that their countris is not or is no longer special and that it's position as world leader is eroding. that's all very nice and some might need that lesson at times but it gets in the way of reason and things get exaggerated to the point where it's just a lot of nonsense.

most of the people here, including the americans, are pretty well travelled and can view things objectively. they don't need simplistic lessons from europeans or expat americans who behave like born again evangelists for moving out of america (yawn).

is it really that interesting to be constantly teaching lessons at the expense of objectivity and reason? "forc(ing) (americans) to understand theirs isn't a special country", as flanner puts it, gets very old after a while. can't we move beyond this and discuss things like adults without having to be teaching lame, cliche lessons all the time?

>position as world leader is eroding.
The problem is that "they" actually believe, they EVER had the position of a world leader. (Which the country actually never had)

That's the sick (and funny) part. :D

Talking about "world leader"... When the $ passed 1.56, the euro zone became the world biggest economic area, ho*y s*hit. The US is only 2nd now.. :D :D :D

God help us from those EU beaurocrats.

Heck... I don't even know who the President (or whatever title he has) is!

I think, I do need to move to Switzerland :-). I won't get more money than over here BUT the taxes, the taxes! I HATE paying taxes, and I don't want to pay into the Swiss old age pension system. I won't get anything in return just like at home, right?

logos...

Believe me I'm not one of those red, white and blue my country is the greatest and I don't want to hear it types..however, coming from somebody from Germany, I must respectfully remind you that the US poured millions of dollars into Germany to help it recover after the war...ever hear of the Berlin Airlift...now of course, I understand there were other motives but you cannot deny it was American assistance that allowed Germany to get back on its feet and probably prevented the Western part of Germany from being absorbed into the evil Soviet Empire which of course has helped the entire country to get back on its feet and maintain its independence.

The same thing is true of France...criticize the current American administration to your heart's content (God only knows how much I despise the moron also)..in 318 days this dark cloud of our history will pass, hopefully for the best...but what gets me whenever I visit France and pass the American (and other Allied) war cemeteries is th enumber of American boys who gave their lives so France could be free. No, I don't want a medal for that but the depth of the anti Americanism among some of the people, at least to me, is uncalled for.

I also read the British newspapers and the Have your say columns quite a bit and again I just don't get the severity of the anti Americanism among some (although it is hardly universal and some wonder why Britain is throwing its lot with the eu instead of standing by its "special" relationship with the USA, whatever the hell that means)..again constructive criticism is fine, disagreements among friends is fine, but at the end of the day to simply take the attitude, "Go home Yankee" leaves one to wonder why...Iraq? of course it was a mistake but in reading some books, there is ample evidence that Tony Blair was just as much pushing Bush in that regard but that's again also neither here nor there....down the line this will pass too...I wonder if it is the fervrent hope of Europeans that the USA will completely turn its back on its European allies and allow Europeans to fight the enemies of the Western way of life alone...will Europeans be happy when Fundamentalist Islamics are at the gates of Paris? or Madrid? or London?

One always has to be careful of getting what one wishes for...and let me repeat I don't need a lecture on all the failings of the USA and its motives in the things that have occurred since the end of World War II...at the end of the day I would Europeans would understand we're all in this together in a world where many are trying to destroy our western way of life be it in New York, London, Paris, Rome or Berlin....

>other motives
Yes, not only other motives, but also a real motivation to help. Actually, you might not yet have understood, but I'm desperately PRO USA. You need to hammer common sense into some people (here). "They" won't understand that it's 5 min to midnight to come to their senses. "They"'ve had everything and may lose everything.

Now don't say I'm anti... ;-), I'm not.

Well said XYZ123!

I am always shocked at the anti-American sentiment not because I'm some arrogant American but because the United States is so generous to others in terms of humanitarian efforts! In addition to the money we invested into Germany and as XYX123 points out the Berlin Airlift (which on a side note I'd like to honor my deceased grandfather by mentioning he was a pilot in the airlift), our country spends millions of monies for AIDS relief in Africa. The USA pours more money into humanitarian efforts worldwide than all European countries combined. Still we are the ugly Americans. I don't get it! If you don't like us so much (or our money), urge your country's government not to take humanitarian aid from our government.

As for why Americans are concerned about the declining dollar...well good or bad, Americans like to spend money. While the rest of the world is saving, we are spending. We are spending in your countries economies buying your food, staying in your hotels, eating your restaurant and enjoying the sights and sounds of your country.

As for our current Administration...what most Americans "forget" or don't know...we have had unprecedented growth in our economy the last five years. This current direction towards a recession is highly unusual because generally in a recession ALL sectors of the economy are declining. However, that in not the case now...there are only two sectors declining, the housing market and financials (or basically those lending in the housing market). While Bush hasn't lived up to what everyone expected (that he'd be the next Reagan), he had done an over all good job with the growth of our economy during his presidency.

And the "western way of life" (liberty, freedoms and everything) is destroyed by other people and not the ones you think when writing this. You and I won't be killed by an extremist b*mb. There once was an age of enlightenment.

Totally off the subject -- but if the Americans are such freedom lovers, one might wonder why they become so upset when other countries freely decide to be different from them. (Just a cheap shot, because no country likes any other country that doesn't agree with it -- but there are more diplomatic ways of saying things, and the United States has not been very good at diplomacy in recent years.)

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Remember than when you vote in Nov.

Logos..

I'll be visiting Munich in June...any suggestions of good places to eat (moderately so of course)??

(If I didn't like you, we go back a long ways in conversing via this bulletin board, I wouldn't have bothered <g>...)

June is a long time ;-), I've got some NICE "Schrebergarten" colony I can recommend. Ask me in a different thread once you're in your final planning stages. :-)