So this is pretty cool! Sort of. If you find random bits of information that you can start awkward conversations with cool. And you should. You really should. The folks at The Economist put together a map of the USA that matches each state with an economically comparable nation, using GDP to measure. And we match with Maryland!
There’s a restaurant in Pringle Bay, just an hour from Cape Town, called Hook, Line, and Sinker. When you walk in to this effortlessly cool establishment you are guided to a table hewn from American Poplar that is scrubbed daily with Sunlight liquid and once a week rubbed lovingly with Cobra wax.
The central bank of the United States of America, the Federal Reserve, in response to the recent Great Recession has acted swiftly, decisively and boldly. Its answer to a catastrophe that was caused by irresponsible lending by greedy banks to Ninjas (no income, no job or assets) has been to cut interest rates to the bone and flood the economy with cheap money in the hope it’ll be used to kick start the economy.
So in other words, as I see it, in order to fix a problem caused by cheap money they’ve made money even cheaper. I often do the same thing after a big night in (I don’t go out anymore) and the inevitable skull bursting hangover.
The finance minister Pravin Gordhan is not someone you’d want to take to the U2 concert. He might allow a brief period of foot tapping during one of their 80’s classics, but mostly he’d be working out how much the tour had swelled the country’s coffers and observe the discretionary spending habits of the assembled revellers.
That’s why he’s the head bean counter, and long may that last.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I sat in a mid-priced family car outside a pub. Having read the AA Guide to Southern England, and finished my bag of crisps and bottle of Coke, I waited patiently for my parents..