Comparing economic performance in Europe and the US is always interesting and in some cases controversial, especially when politics enters the debate. European politicians blamed the US for causing the 2008-09 crisis and now it is the turn of the US politicians to blame the Europeans for their inability to handle the sovereign crisis.
Jeff Frankel has a nice blog entry comparing the performance of Europe and the US today under the title "Who is screwing up more: Europe or the US?". Not easy to make that call.
Some of the European economic problems come from the bad performance of politicians. Given that Italy is at the center of the crisis today, one wonders how a former G7 member and an economy of around 2 trillion dollars has been under the direction of Silvio Berlusconi for so many years...
But given that this post is about the competition between Europe and the US, we can check how some of the large US states (similar in size to Italy) compare in this respect: California (about 2 trillion dollars) has been led by Arnold Schwarzenegger for years; and the current governor of Texas (an economy of about 1.3 trillion dollars) is Rick Perry - the one who cannot remember the three government agencies that he plans to close if he becomes president. In case you have not seen the video, here it is:
But there is hope: Berlusconi is on his way out and it looks as if Rick Perry will not be the next US president.
Antonio Fatás