Our recent FNQLD trip cost us several times what a Balinese, Thai or Vietnamese trip would cost us.

I don’t think we can blame Aussies for getting more bang-for-their-buck. Nor do I think many would see their Asian trip as unpatriotic. There are many other behaviours, such as attempting to undermine confidence in Australia’s economy (a la DRA) which might qualify as unpatriotic, if _any_ of its editors were, in fact Aussies, rather than failed Brit gits… or Americans posted OS for economic warfare.

The falling US buck, relative to the Canadian loonie, means that Americans no longer clog their highways seasonally. Falling catches of salmon haven’t helped, but our visitors say US petrol prices (still cheap by Canadian standards!), the GFC, and the blown US buck have reduced tourism to almost zero. Yanks, used to getting up to a quarter more for their greenbacks, are staying home in droves.

Our guests actually couldn’t stop grinning about that… .

So the industry has been in decline for a decade and finally the people managing the tourism sector think they need to do something…talk about a slow response! I guess they have given up blaming the strong dollar, GFC etc.

Russia is in a pretty good spot actually..sitting between Europe and Asia. I see a lot of news for example about Russia ramping up commodities exports to China and Japan so it should be an interesting few years.

As for the Ashes, let’s hope the Aussies can keep batting the way they did last night! Go Australia!

I agree the US economy is a total flop -- I can’t see any future in it for the next few years unless there is a war or some other seismic shift in world events. Europe has more intrinsic value because it still has a manufacturing sector and an educated population, plus it has markets it can reach by air, sea and rail, which is better than the US can do.

Personally I am watching the data from Japan very closely to see if demand in China and Asia is going help drag the Japanese economy up a little. I have written off the U.S and Europe for this year and don’t expect much good news from those parts of the world until later this year early 2010.

Putin even hopped on the bandwagon (before the GFC blew up?) by stating he’d like to sell Russian oil in rubles. Although I didn’t get the feeling that many players really warmed to the idea.

I wonder if the U.S. is angry because Iran may have assisted some of the insurgents in Iraq? Perhaps this is the real reason U.S. -- Iraq tensions are so strained these days?

Comment by Greg Atkinson on 8 July 2009:

To be honest I cannot recall what the West are annoyed at the Iranians for in the first place. Is it because they never filled out their application form correctly to have a nuclear reactor? If that is the case I do not recall India or Pakistan filling out an application form to have nuclear weapons either.

The democratically elected president of Iran, sometime in the 50′s or thereabout, was going to nationalize the Iran oil industry. The CIA deposed him and installed the Shaw. The Shaw ran a very repressive regime from which Sadam took notes. In the 70′s Iatolah Kolmeni led the Iranian revolution. Students invaded the U.S. embassy and took some 40 hostages. The bottom line is that the U.S. brought on the animosity themselves.

you may e-mail me if you want more info, but you can probably get it from Wikipedia more accurately.

George