Better yet blame the people that voted for Bush and the whole government.

Your laughable as well. Clearly gods vengeance is coming to America in the form of natural disasters right? The entire world is being hit with rising oil costs, just America uses more of it. The US economy is not staggering, its still growing at 1-2%. China / India economies are booming but still are years away from being a match in terms of the size of the US economy. The EU has been stagnant for decades. Attribute that one to socialism.

What HappySquirrel said is important I think. The Fed is pursuiving the wrong goal at the moment. Successfull central banks (i.e. the european, the german when it still was responsible for the d-mark and the swiss for example) have always tried to prevent inflation by any means. Preventing recession is the job of politicians (by lowering taxes for example) but preventing inflation is the economist's job.

Lowering the interest rates would be plain wrong right now, I just hope the Fed won't do it (although the signs are indicating it...)

If you voted for Bush in good conscience then I'm glad you voted.

I blame Wii Fit. 

First of all, the EU exists for only 14 years, not a long enough time to judge its economical success. Secondly, the countries that are led by socialists may be stagnant, but at a rate other countries are only dreaming about. Of course there are countries in Europe that are facing economical problems like France or Italy, but they are sure not led by socialists. However, since the Euro exists, inflation seems to be very well controlled which is also very important. And a look at trade bilances doesn't show good signs for US-economy either.

All in all, I'd say that Europe's economy is healthier than the USA's at the moment.

The USD is the new Sony, the Euro is the new Nintendo!!

No I don't know if it makes sense either but I like putting my wildly illogical thoughts down.

14 years of Euro.... built on trade agreements that started in the 50s. The Euro is so stable that the EC keeps considering adding countries to the Euro zone. The US would not like to see oil move to the Euro for sure, but 'not stable enough' or 'stagnant' are not good reasons.

The US is the one that is stagnant: 1.9% is forecasted for 07 and 08, much less than most of Europe.

You can now say the Euro is the most popular currency. With the US war, US is going into more deficit and is owing more foreign debt than ever, thanks to the prez. As long as the debt is high, USD will not be something foreigners want to own. Suppy and demand comes into play. Mass printing of money makes supply high, and demand low = lower value.

What??? Yeah, 4.7% unemployment is terrible, Dow near 14,000 is the lowest it's ever been, wages across the board increasing faster than inflation across the country, what a terrible economy.

/sarcasm

I'm really sick of people calling this economy terrible or 'a mess' without knowing what the crap they are talking about, just because news media only likes to promote the negative.

Actually, employment rates below 5% is concidered to be virtually 100% employment. The stock market has done very well in spite of oil prices (not controlled by the president), the war, etc. And don't freakin tell me that "omg, omg, stock market only affects the rich, omg" because the vast majority of Americans are invested in the stock market through 401k, IRA, etc.

The only real negative right now is the housing market, which goes in up & down cycles anyway. We've been up for a long time (prices went too high in some areas), now a temporary downturn would be expected. This is a correction to the housing market that will bring prices back to where they should be.

The US economy is far to complex a machine to blame on only one person (the president). He can affect policies that will have some kind of ripple effect in the economy (ie, taxes), but he is never responsible for everything the economy does, the reason it's called 'Free Market' is because it can do what it wants without the government being to blame.

If you want to look at Bush's real record on the economy, it's not half bad. When he took office, the economy was in decent shape, but was concidered to be in the beginnings of a mild recession. Then we had 9/11, unemployment went WAY up, the Dow went down into the 7,000's, the airlines were headed towards disaster. Now look at the current economy, the Dow has doubled since then, unemployment is at record lows, companies are making money, and the airline industry, though it still has issues, is on much more solid footing.

Seriously, before parroting crap you've heard from biased sources, learn something about econimics and try looking at actual stats.