I have been travelling again, this time to visit my frail and elderly mother in South Africa. I was there for President Zuma’s first ‘State of the Union’ Address, and will write more about the country of my birth in the next post. In the meantime wanted to add this piece – on economic optimism in the US – written last week for the Huff Post, with apologies for the delay in adding it to the site.
9th June 2009.
“As a banker noted recently, there is no constituency for pessimism. Americans, he suggested, believe in optimism as a human right. This bright buoyancy is one of this nation’s greatest strengths, lapped up by jaded Europeans.
But it was optimism that also enabled Americans to max out on credit cards and other forms of borrowing — in the mistaken belief that debts are always payable — sometime in the future.