Steven, if there is one thing I've learned in traveling about the place, it is respect for the US ability to get things done. When you decide you want it to happen, it happens. At the moment people are a bit confused with endless wars and condemnation from within and without and debt and crisis, but when you guys decide you're sick of it, Things Will Change. The only concern is the popularity of easy answers (Spend more! Spend less! Regulate more! Regulate less!) and the difficulty that sensible solutions have if they challenge the status quo and need more than a soundbite of explanation, but that's the nature of democracy in 2011.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
