Feanor

I don't know. Once I would have said moving to the traditional "opportunity" places for europeans that are US, Australia and if you are the adventurer type, south America. Today I don't know, given the fact that the "crisis" actually originates from the american-british area of the world because of their tradition of deregulated finance (that leads to stuff like the toxic founds and chapter 11) and habit of nonsense consuming (that leads to people making debts). I am reading there are about 1.5 million houses in US that are under foreclosure, that means the banks are taking the houses from people who can't pay the mortgage.

I don't know, I have discussed with people in the construction business but, no matter what, they can't convince me that the right price of a small house of 3 rooms is 400.000 euros. Unless the right income for a job is much higher than the average here. There is something broken when your income remains more or less the same of 10 years ago but everything costs 2 or 3 times more. I mean, 1kg of basic bread costs 3 euros here. About 15 years ago it was the expense for 3 or 4 days of food (3 meals a day) for me. Only computers are cheaper.

Besides the cost of living that is becoming really impossible, there is also a whole environment. I mean, here you can't do almost anything if you don't know somebody and often your inherit your job from your father or granfather. This leads to your life depending on family and friends (in the broader sense). It works in both directions. The good part is this network of relations works as chute in case of problems, the bad part is the same net limits your movements, so it is common for italians to live in the same place where they were born and to have the same friends they met in elementary school. You see for example in the business, in Italy companies are often owned by a single family. Sometimes the new generations can't keep the company going or they aren't interested so they sell to foreign investors. Infact today many firms of italian food are owned by multi-national companies like Nestle or Danone. But the "capitalism" in the american way is almost unknown here. Again, the good part is there are less ups and downs in the economy, the bad part is you can't earn money unless you violate some law.

Well, it is a generalization. I guess if you look at single people, they are basically the same everywhere.

I guess there are some basic differences between US and Italy.

Some are physical, being US a wide empty territory full of resources while Italy is a small crowded place where people, who came from all over by land and sea, have fought wars for thousands years over the same little piece of soil.
Today we have:
Italy: 301.338 km²
Population: 59.762.887 - 198,4/km²
Versus:
US: 9,826,630 km2
Population: 306,931,000 - 31/km2
You see we have got a "density" of population for squared kilometer that is 6.5 times higher than US. Here where I live it is even much higher than the average. That means there aren't many places where you can find better opportunities in Italy.

Some differences are cultural, for example Italy is mostly a catholic country while US was originally lead by a majority of protestants. This leads to a very different approach to some things of life, for example wealth and business. To make it simple, for the catholic wealth and success is a sin, while for the protestant success is a sign of the grace of God. Traditionally business in the protestant countries is much more aggressive and merciless. For the catholics you can earn merits through your actions in life, while for the protestant you can't achieve salvation that comes only from God's grace. So catholics try to mediate while protestants have the famous bible in one hand the the gun in the other.

There is also a different idea of the "community". Like I said already elsewhere, in US the community is a group of individuals who decide to band together. In Italy it is the opposite, the individual exists only as part of a community (like the clan, the village etc). This explains why Italians must be forced to leave their hometown or their relatives. In ancient times exile was worse than death because away from your community you lost your identity and from human being you became a beast. In contemporary age this means americans deal with issues as individuals, while Italians rely on the community/state. So you have the deregulated free market on one side and a state-assisted economy on the other side, as well as the public health care and so on.

Maybe. There must be another "bubble" waiting to collapse, taking the saving of a whole life with it.

Different opinions about what?

I don't get your point. I don't understand the expression "our life". Whose life? Besides, given the fact that US nowadays are more or less a global empire, it is not about "your" life, it is about the life of almost everybody. Other then the obvious examples like exporting of democracy on the tip of bombs, you can easily see how the Lehman & Brothers failure (that could be avoided by your government) caused a financial tzunami that did not affect "your life" only but even my own little investments on the other side of the ocean. I don't need to visit the whole US (which is another strange idea, given I have only one life) to understand that the current financial crisis happened because the control of the government was non-existent over Wall Street and in the economy the only action was to artificially inflate the consumes (that caused the debts). At least here we have an huge public debt to pay for salaries and stuff like health care. And so on, I could go on for ever. I mean, you know the automotive industry, I was laughing when president Obama said FIAT (the italian firm of small cars) was going to acquire GM in exchange of technologies to build "smarter" cars.
Nevermind...

I guess the fact that the "crisis" affected your life is the bare minimum you could expect. Maybe it is not that obvious that the crisis in US finance can sink the economy of rest of the world. My point is that is not about the movies and after sinking economy worldwide you should expect people to form "opinions" from that. Or from stuff like the Bush "mission accomplished" speech. etc etc. Was it Independence Day?

There are obvious cultural differences when on one side you have the president who lands with a jet on a carrier and speaks to sailors wearing a flight jacket as opposed to a prime minister like ours who is a tycoon and said to organize wild parties with "escort girls" in his villas. See the Clinton - Lewinsky scandal.

There is a saying that more or less is "you can't defraud an honest man". The roots of the financial crisis are in the fact that most "common" people think/thought it was right to earn big money from finance (and those lost their money) and/or to keep buying stuff (and those can't pay the mortgages). Yes, managers, accountants, banks, insurances, big corporations, etc, many people have been living on scams. But this is only half of the machine, the other half is the "clients/customers", who basically didn't see the fraud because they aren't "honest" and play with the same rules as the above.

Same goes for Bush, or any other president. Politicians are salesmen and they do and say what the "market" wants. Yes, they can somehow direct the market with "marketing", like providing false information to the public but again, for the same above principle, people go where they want to go. You tell me about "opinions" on US. Like speaking of Italy I cannot ignore our Prime Minister and his orgies (and mostly Italians approve or don't mind), I cannot ignore that Bush was elected twice (8 years) and apparently he had the support of most Americans, including some friends of mine. There wasn't any revolt against him, despite he opened two never ending wars (with obvious and pathetic lies like the "hidden weapons of masse destruction") and the financial apocalypse. Or smaller events like placing missiles in Poland and arming Georgia, while pushing to include ex soviet republics in the NATO, with the obvious consequence of pushing Europe against Russia, not only politically but mainly as business partner.

You say Kennedy, besides the whole Kennedy saga (US are the only "democratic" nation where presidents and senators get mysteriously killed), I cannot help to think of the Cuba crisis and the Vietnam war. About Vietnam, there is a curious similarity with Bush's WMD fabricated evidences, the gulf of Tonkin Incident:
"In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors". Does this repetition say anything to you? Of course, besides the fact that US are always at war and spend in the military like the rest of the world together...