>All the financial press I'm looking at says that the conflict between
>America and Europe is between New Economy (US and Britain) and Old
>(Germany). The distinction supposedly that the new economy is about
>services and dot com etc, while those Germans insist on investing in
>industry, and shoring up the French who will keep a bloated public
>sector yada yada yada.
A lot of the New Economy rhetoric is just a cover for a "flexible" labor market - i.e., a big low-wage sector. Eileen Appelbaum of EPI once said that the major difference between the U.S. and German national accounts, as far as she could tell, was a much higher level of purchased household services in the U.S. - fast food, laundry services, out-of-pocket health care, etc. In other words, the use of low wage labor by middle- and upper-income HHs.
Doug