>>>How could any economy be healthy (long term) with an ever increasing trade deficit ?? It stumps me.
>>
>>Then you should pay attention more.
>
>Please explain... I'm sure Mr. Robert Mugabe urgently wants to know.

He only wants to make money on you. He didn't say "pay more attention" or "read more carefully". He said "pay ... more". He wants you to buy into attending something more expensive... that's probably the kind of business on which the touted economic recovery is based.

If the dollar has gone from 1€=$0.99 to 1€=1.60€, where is it now? At 1.508? I should probably be vastly impressed, but I am not. First it loses 37%, then it regains 6.25%, with total net loss of 34%, great reason to celebrate.

>>Your opinions are not facts. (trade deficit, EU size vs. time)
>
>Sorry, but I don't see any facts. Please tell me how can an economy with an ever increasing (huge) national debt be healthy?

The borrowers dare not shoot it off because as long as it's alive, there's some chance of repayment.

How did that song go, "First we take Manhattan"? I'm beginning to imagine scenarios with chunks of the US being repossessed. The total worth is much larger than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt, so there's a lot of collateral to tap from. You can't expect every US citizen to pay their $30+K of the debt - something must have to come from the real estate. Maybe that 25% of it that's owed to foreigners.