Its a small world... economically speaking.

While sweating on the elliptical trainer, I had the opportunity to listen Thomas Mayer, chief European economist talk about the Macro Economic situation in Europe. Well it appears that Despite the strong Euro, the Europeans are having problems of their own. Dr Mayer laments the fact that the grand European experiment is hitting some rough spots. It appears that Europe's schizophrenic approach to separating fiscal and monetary policy has caused inflation in many parts of Europe and recession fears in other areas. In other words without control of the fiscal policies of the member countries, the ECB can't take any action right now without hurting some of it's members.

Even though the ECB has maintained interests rates at a higher level than the U.S. Central bank, the European's recent growth, like the U.S., has been fueled by highly leveraging credit. The result is that the Europeans are looking at the same credit crunch as the U.S. but without having benefited from a period of sustained low interest rates.

Most folks reading this are well aware of the situation the U.S. finds itself in... with a slowing economy and a bursting credit bubble, we've got a long way to go before we are back to boom times.

And China is no better off, being the owner of much of the Debt generated in the U.S. and Europe over the last decade, they can't even spend the money they have in reserve for fear it will cause either the U.S. economy of the European economy to take a dive. And what good is money if you can't spend it?

A new strategy for McCain?

While the recent events in the presidential race have been slow lately I think McCain has stumbled on a winning strategy.

Just shut up!

It seams that when McCain is quiet and Obama does all of the talking, McCain narrows the gap. If you look at Real clear politics polls you can pick out the periods when McCain is out in front stumping his brains out and the periods where the media is ignoring him because he does better when the media is completely focused on Obama (like his trip to the Middle East)

Check it out



If you look at the far right edge of the above snapshot, you'll notice how successful the Britney and Paris adds were