Among the stereotypes of Americans out there this one may be true.  Who’s the last person you know that visited Tunisia, Paraguay or for that matter Japan (OK, my niece Taylor did this past summer but she was the exception).  Americans don’t travel overseas like the Germans, Japanese, Brits, Scandinavians or the Dutch.  When we…

They actually love us.  As Gary Arndt says, “If anything, people are fascinated by Americans and want to know more about the US.”  They may take exception to our government and policies but, they find Americans as individuals fascinating. Much of the crude anti-Americanism we hear of today takes the form of allegations about American…

A second postulate of Gary Arndt’s 3 years of travel around the world is something we have all suspected at one time or another: “The Media Lies“ If the nightly news were the only source of information about other countries one might be tempted to dig a whole, climb in and cover it to never…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday released its updated estimates of the Recovery Act’s impact on the economy. CBO estimates that the Recovery Act’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010: * They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, * Lowered…