The anti-American German media are having a great time predicting our doom. Again. David’s Medienkritik writes:

Euro-Nationalism as Substitute for Forbidden German Nationalism

At the same time, Der Spiegel has repeatedly avoided heaping the same sort of scorn or using the same extreme tone in highlighting the various troubles of the European economy, power grid and infrastructure despite relatively similar conditions (a weak Euro not too long ago) and incidents (power outages, train crashes, faulty infrastructure).

Instead - when publishing covers on Europe - they’ve repeatedly engaged in overt cheerleading - (just compare these covers to these covers). Let’s not forget SPIEGEL ONLINE’s primative excitement when a Eurofighter apparently defeated two F-15s in a mock battle. This thinly veiled Euro-Nationalism is desirable and useful - in part - as an acceptable alternate outlet (along with large sporting events) for forbidden German feelings of national pride. Unfortunately, the Euro-Nationalism of publications such as Der Spiegel almost always counts anti-Americanism as one of its key ingredients.

Perhaps Der Spiegel could - just once - run a story on America’s remarkably low unemployment rate (and the jobs it has created for millions of legal and illegal immigrants) despite record high oil prices. But let’s not forget - that would call into question the carefully crafted ideological caricature of the United States as hopeless social wasteland and home to predatory global capitalism.

Gerard Baker  of the London Times refutes the nay-sayers.

The pundits have finally run out of bad news to report from Iraq, where, unmolested by the morbid fascination of misery-seeking reporters, the locals actually seem to be belatedly enjoying the first fruits of their liberation. So attention has turned again, as it has tended to do from time to time these past 50 years, to the inevitable collapse of the American economy.

The declining dollar is for many an ominous indication that the long period of US economic supremacy is at an end. In the past month especially, a nation that usually remains in blissful ignorance of the daily fluctuations of the foreign exchange markets has been repeatedly reminded that the dollar now buys a fraction of what it used to — down 35 per cent against the pound in the past six years and 40 per cent against that fledgeling monetary superpower, the euro.

Let me take a moment in this season of cheer to raise a few objections. The first and most obvious point is that there are many reasons why currencies move against each other, often in quite dramatic fashion. Seismic, epochal, geopolitical shifts are not usually the best explanation…

For the historically short-sighted, let’s remember we have been here before. Between 1985 and 1995, the dollar declined by 43 per cent against the world’s big currencies — somewhat more than it has in the past six years. That period was also marked by dire proclamations of the end of US economic power. But it turned out that in those years the foundations were laid for the strongest period of US economic growth in the past 35 years.

If you’re still sceptical, ask yourself this: is it probable that the shift in the relative value of the dollar and the euro represents a bet by the world’s investors that Europe — strike-torn, productivity-challenged, demographically doomed Europe — is the world’s economic future, rather than the US, or, let’s say, China?