[Note by JW:  Ambrose has written something which should provide lively debate on the TTP Forum.  Feel free to counter him with opposing facts and data.]

Americans are purging their excesses one by one. Spending by the US Federal government has seen the steepest drop as share of national income since demobilization after the Second World War.

Claims that President Barack Obama is bankrupting America with a lurch towards hard-left statism are for tabloid consumption only. Outlays have fallen from 24.4% to 20.6% of GDP in five years. Spending is roughly in line with its 40-year average. This fiscal squeeze has been achieved without driving the economy into recession or a Lost Decade, a remarkable feat.

The US Congressional Budget Office expects the budget deficit to drop to 2.8% of GDP this year, and 2.6% next year. This is about the same as the Eurozone but with a huge difference. The US economy is expanding fast enough to outgrow its debts.

The US energy revolution is of course at least half the story. It has stoked booms across the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Texas.

Francisco Blanch, from Bank of America, estimates that shale gas and oil have given the US economy an extra tailwind worth 1.9% of GDP - what he calls the "energy carry" - with effects rippling through the chemical and plastics industries. New investments in ammonia plants are rising at an exponential rate, thanks to natural gas prices that are $4.40 (per BTU) in the US and $15 on Asia's spot market.

While Obama can in no way claim credit for this, the other half of the story is monetary stimulus a l'outrance (to the bitter end) - quantitative easing - to offset fiscal tightening and prevent a "pro-cyclical" downward spiral, which is what occurred when the European Central Bank jumped the gun and raised rates twice in 2011 before recovery was entrenched, setting off the cataclysmic crisis that nearly destroyed EMU in mid-2012.

Want to turn your kids on to some great rock and roll?  To right rock and roll, pro-American rock and roll, not the left-wing anti-American trashy sleaze they've overloaded their iPod with because they never heard anything else?

Then turn them on to The Right Brothers.  They're a young, hip conservative trio out of Nashville whose hit song Bush Was Right is driving the left crazy.  The music is hard driving rock, the beat is foot stomping, and the lyrics... well, just imagine your kids singing along to them:

Bush Was Right by The Right Brothers
Lyrics by Frank Highland

Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama's staying underground, Al Qaeda now is finding out
America won't turn and run once the fighting has begun
Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too
Syria is forced to leave, don't you know that all this means

Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!

San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands.  It is odd to be on a small volcanic island on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles west of Ecuador, for a meeting of economists and a few other academics and think-tank types.

One of the lesser purposes of the meeting is to discuss what we can learn from natural selection and animal behavior that might have relevance for the world economy and modern societies. And no, this is not a government boondoggle. We are a bunch of limited-government, free-market types, here on our own tab and not burdening any taxpayer with our eccentricities. 

When Charles Darwin first landed here back in 1835, he was struck by the many indigenous animal and plant species, and specialization of the animals in order to best prosper. The variations in rainfall, from island to island and within an island, determine what plants grow where, which, in turn, determine which animals use them for food and shelter. Even the tortoises vary from one island to another, depending on the food source.

The animals have had hundreds, if not thousands, of generations to evolve and exploit the food and terrain available. Humans, more specifically Americans, have had only three generations to adapt to the Internal Revenue Service.  We need to adapt evolutionary defenses against it.