The Amercan financial establishment knocking us on the head once more?

Comment one - I have American friends and I am not getting at them.

Comment two - I am not anti-American (though not the equivalent of a jingoist for another country either).

Rather the problem. In recent weeks we have had rating agencies like Moodys, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's taking pot shots at the economies of various European countries. Spain yesterday for example.

Moodys, Fitch and Standard and Poor's are independent private organisations as far as I am aware. They are based in the USA (no question). The point though arises, why is a PRIVATE AMERICAN organisation deciding what is good and what is bad with the economy of a country outside the USA?

We have for better or worse a "Global Economy" - not an American International economy. We have, like it or not (and a lot of the time I do not like it! Which incidentally does not turn me into a Communist or an anarchist) international capitalism at work.

So if we are going to get decisions on the credit ratings and the like of various countries, should that really be decided by PRIVATE AMERICAN organisations? Surely there should be some official international body (independent of government (including that of the USA) interference) involved in making these decisions?

Of course if you make something like that international, then the American conservative fringe (well that also includes the Republican Party to an extent) will not play along and probably want to take its ball home with it and play on its own - see the less sophisticated views that you get from there sometimes on the UN and NATO (if a latter-day Napoleon Bonaparte came along, would the Americans be prepared to let their troops serve under him?).

Nonetheless, I do not see that Europe should be subject to what are primarily American concerns. The European model can work and can be made to work IMHO (although the Greeks are trying everything they know how to disprove that). It needs though what all organisations and governments and individuals require - a commitment to treat debt as an enemy and not a friend and to plan accordingly. Restore and emphasise policies on national savings programmes, as we used to have in the UK when I was a child growing up.

And international efforts to close down tax loop-holes would also be a major help in achieving this success. The Greeks would very much benefit from working to sort that out in particular as quickly as possible.