SEEN FROM HERE

It is interesting to view America from another perspective, as I can do in England.

The honeymoon for President Obama, as in the U.S.A., is over here, and he is getting his share of questioning and criticism from the journalist pundits here. His handling of the B.P. mess was particularly exacerbated, as I said in a previous blog, by his constant reference to B.P. as British Petroleum, which was a bit too personal as far as the average Brit was concerned who took it as an anti-British stance.

Several commentators have also criticized his handling of Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly feeling that he is rushing out too precipitously to bolster his ratings in the polls and the upcoming mid-term elections. Anti-war sentiment is strong here, as well, but the concern is that we should not set dates to leave and stay as a presence to assure, in the case of Iraq, that a stable government is in place and, as for Afghanistan, to render some kind of order out of chaos so that the many factions can at least talk to each other. They don’t see any kind of real victory there---and I have to agree with them on that.

Disagreement also rears its head in the handling of the economy. The Brits, under the new Conservative administration, are really going in for retrenching and tightening the belt, slashing programs, reducing budgets, cutting personnel and the like to reduce the deficit and get expenses under control. They are against priming the pump through governmental expenditures, as the emphasis has been in the U.S.A. But they also contradict themselves by talking about “QE”---not Queen Elizabeth---but Quantitative Easing so that money can be pumped into the economy. One paper referred to the recent moves of the Federal Reserve’s plan to buy long-term Treasuries to keep the economy moving as “QE-lite”. I think they are as confused as we are on how to stimulate the economy. No wonder Thomas Carlyle once referred to Economics as “the dismal science”.

Prices are high here, although they seem better to Americans here because of the strength of the dollar. Only a couple of years ago the British pound was $2.00. Now it’s $1.55 to the pound. Most food items are higher, with the exception of bread, milk and eggs. Clothing costs are high, which is why most Brits head for the mall outlets when they come to America to stock up on clothes. Their beef doesn’t compare to ours, except for the most expensive Angus beef . Their hamburgers are minced and horrible. But their bacon and sausage (called bangers) are fabulous. And I love their beer, particularly the brown ale called “bitters”. John Cleese of Monty Python fame used to refer to American beer as “half-frozen bat piss”, but he probably hadn’t seen some of the great beers coming out of some of our micro-breweries.

I love it here. By September, though, I’m ready to come home.