I just stopped in to see Steve...

...my auto repair guy, to ask him about my van (I flunked the emissions test on Monday). I thought it would be ready by Tuesday, but when I came over yesterday afternoon the place was closed. Steve is a good guy and I was actually worried that he was okay. (He also has a son in the military and looks a lot like some of the people you see at these town halls.)

"Oh yeah. I take Wednesday afternoons off in the summer. I took my granddaughter to Great America."

"That's great," I replied. "I think Americans work too much anyway. The French take the whole month of August off."

With that he shot me a look as if I'd said something about his mother. What is it with some Americans and the French?

Just today I noticed in The Wall Street Journal (you have to dig a little) that the French and German economies expanded in the second quarter by 0.3%. The euro-region as a whole contracted by 0.1% while the U. S. contracted by 1.0%. So there's talk in the markets that the Europeans may have emerged from the recession before the U. S.

It reminds me a little of when I worked at First Boston back in the 1980s. There was a "local" trader in the pit who had a habit of bidding or offering on large orders to manipulate the market in his favor. It was perfectly legal and a common practice at the time. Our "in-house" traders at First Boston couldn't fathom how a guy in Chicago could possibly know more about the markets than them and instructed us to trade with that local whenever he bid or offered on a large order. More often than not, the local was right and our house trader was wrong. One day, out of exasperation, my boss grabbed the phone from me and barked at our trader, "Instead of always going against this guy, why don't you try going with him." Needless to say, this advice fell on deaf ears. The morale of the story? The local trader went on to make millions and the house trader was gone by the end of the year.

Now one quarter does not a trend make. And I'd still bet that the U. S. will outperform Europe in the long run. But to read The Wall Street Journal on a regular basis, you would think that Europe is some vast Existentialist wasteland overrun by chain-smoking, beret-wearing government bureaucrats and where nothing good ever happens. I've been there and I think it's nice. In fact, in many ways they live better than we do, and I think Americans could learn a thing or two from them. So instead of always bashing Europe, like The Journal, why don't we just admit that they do some things well and we do some things well. That's not unpatriotic; it's realistic.