The bad news from last week's "shutdown show" is that nothing got fixed The good news is that people overseas are noticing it, as we read in The Economist:   "For a long time American politicians have poured scorn on their European peers for failing to deal with the euro crisis. This week Washington equalled Brussels on one measure of dysfunctionality and surpassed it by another. The way in which the Democrats and Republicans, having failed to reach any agreement, decided to "kick the can down the road", was deeply European. The deal allows the government to stay open till January 15th and the debt ceiling to be raised until February 7th. Just as America's economy seems to be recovering, with the promise of GDP growing by 2.7% in 2014, it could face another shutdown of the kind that has just sent consumer confidence to a nine-month low and knocked back growth in the fourth quarter by an estimated 0.6 percentage points." I agree. We "punted" to next year and...(Read Full Post)