Thomas,
 For better or worse, I truly hope you are correct about this.  I've heard
it said that usually the reactionaries have the louder voice during
by-elections and referendae.  So the Never Bothered to vote faction might be
a large contributor to the scene.  The Radio Nederland broadcast team has a
jolly time with the cynicism of the issue.

I never did explain that Blair-election-pound thought very well, but what I
guess I was trying to say was that it (the predicaments that Britain has,
alone) also contriubute to the general spiraling cynicism of the European
electorate.  It has to come about but the real person on the street has to
be given some feeling of ownership, I think..

cactus jammies
////////////////////////////////////////////////

More/ US debts.  I started this string months ago to counter a blantant
broadcast from Alias that the EU would overcome the USA.  I decided to take
him on, first by actually denying his assertions that the europeans would
overcome the americans because of the confident future of the EU.  There is
no confident future of the EU.  The panic has already started in the
capitals of the nations of Europe, deciding to get ahead of the populist
wave and either not sponsor the referendum in their country, as Blair is
considering, or wishing the issue away with temporary confusion as is coming
from the Chiraq forces, but who can blame them?

I have no partisan stake in this, other than I hate to see community suffer
for commerce.  They should balance somehow. to keep each other going.  This
part below is about how the President of the Bank of Canada is warning the
world to beware of the current patterns of US trade and balance debits and
deficits.

  cactus jammies

http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/05/30/dodge-warning050530.html

U.S. living beyond means, Dodge warns
Last Updated Mon, 30 May 2005 13:11:23 EDT

CBC News
OTTAWA - Bank of Canada governor David Dodge offered a bankerly rebuke to
the United States on Monday for its borrow-and-spendthrift ways, which he
suggested are a threat to world economic stability.

Less directly, he chided nations such as China for rigging their currencies
to boost exports while building up larger and larger foreign-exchange
reserves, creating a lopsided world in which Asian savings finance U.S.
spending.

David Dodge: 'A country's external indebtedness cannot keep growing
indefinitely' (CP file photo)
In the text of a speech to be given at a Montreal conference, the central
bank chief warned of "large, global economic imbalances that have become the
subject of increasing concern" to policy-makers.

"I am referring, of course, to the persistent and growing current account
deficit in the United States that is mirrored by large current account
surpluses elsewhere, especially in Asia."

His comments echo those of many economists who have watched the United
States evolve from the world's greatest creditor nation to the greatest
debtor as Americans saved less, consumed more and imported more. China,
meanwhile, took over much of the world's consumer-goods manufacturing and
used its export earnings to soak up vast amounts of U.S. debt.

Supporters of the Bush administration have tended to argue that the three
U.S. deficits - in international trade, current account and federal budget -
do not matter to a superpower that prints the world's most widely used
money.

Dodge said the imbalances won't go on forever.

"At some point, they will have to be resolved. Why? For one thing, a
country's external indebtedness cannot keep growing indefinitely as a share
of its GDP. Eventually, investors will begin to balk at increasing their
exposure to that country, even if it is a reserve-currency country, such as
the United States.

"For another thing, the buildup of foreign exchange reserves by Asian
countries will, eventually, feed into domestic monetary expansion and lead
to higher inflation. These imbalances will ultimately be resolved, either in
an orderly, or in an abrupt, disorderly way."

A basic problem is the mismatch in national rates of saving, Dodge said.

"Specifically, over the past decade or so, we have seen many countries
outside the United States increase their saving by a very large amount,
while at the same time, the United States has reduced its saving and has
become increasingly reliant on foreign borrowing."

He said Asian countries built up foreign-exchange reserves partly as a
cushion against a recurrence of the region's 1997-98 economic crisis.

By the way, have you read about the guy who started the whole freedom fries
business? He has had a change of heart and has now stated that he thinks
invading Iraq was a bad idea.

Lana