Euro eating the dollar, how is Europe affected by USA recession?

It's not within my realm of knowledge to predict, but as of the last few months, the dollar has actually improved greatly against both the euro and the pound... but unfortunately, for the wrong reasons.

If you have been paying attention to the news you will know that this is a worldwide recession and that things in Europe are pretty much as bad as they are here.

Shane,
I am not exactly sure just what you are asking. Could you elaborate?
The state of the economic situation varies greatly from country to country. Island has fared terrible, Germany isn't quite sure if their economy is getting worse or already recovering, for example.
We all have seen mortgage banks, and even major banks take a beating, our economic growth across the board has slowed, there have been lay-offs and cut-backs.
But overall we, especially Austria, are hanging in there. We have to tighten our belts, but here people look at it not as a catastrophy, the end of an era, rather as a new beginning, the dawn of a new one, that we are given the chance to build a more meaningful society, one based less on consumerism and materialism. This mania had even swept Europe in the recent years, even though buying on credit is still a tiny fraction of what it is in the USA.

We are increasingly turning back towards our local economies and businesses, the cobblers and tailors, for example, are doing really well. People are having their STUFF fixed, rather than buying new stuff.
Of course it is much easier here than in the US, people aren't in debt as much, they have savings, a good social net and local businesses.
I would call it a change in attitudes more than a crisis. People here are used to sticking out tough times, and are prepared to do so again.

No idea if this answered your question or not . .

If you are interested in following the news in Europe, you can try reading some of the online news groups. These will give you a more rounded picture than if you just watch CNN, FOX, etc. Any of the British ones are good, like BBC. I like these two websites as they are in English, but are German. Speigel is a German magazine, and the other website is written for English speakers living in Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/

http://www.thelocal.de/

The stores are packed here and I haven't been able to tell any difference, so it seems like it is business as usual.

Good idea about the news site, Jo!
I am a fan of Spiegel myself, in print and online, German and Englisch. In matter of fact, I often send links of articles around the world to friends.

I also wanted to mention that the current economic crisis isn't going to affect the Europeand joie de vivre at all ;-))

We are blessed here in the Bay area...not only do we get BBC news, but we also get DW-TV News in English, Russian TV News in English, Italian TV News (in Italian), and of course TV news for many of our local residents in their native languages: Tagalog; Mandarin; Cantonese; Vietnamese; Taiwanese; Hindi; Farsi; Spanish (from the America's...not Castilian)...we don't have a Canadian news channel yet...what's up with that, eh!

It's OK Bill....we're boring. ;)

Most all digital cable companies around the country carry those international channels. The CBC used to operate an international channel called "News World". As far as I know it stopped operating a few years ago.

CBC lost its channel in the U.S. when Al Gore and his group took it over and called it "Currents." The entire channel are home made videos made by anyone who wants a voice on anything.

Corinna and Jo, my mom checks Spiegel and passes on articles to the rest of us. She told me this morning that the Ka De We had been robbed, and told me last week that someone kidnapped Berndt Das Brot!! ; ) We fell in love with him over Christmas.

Although I admit that I am biased (:-)... you can't beat the BBC, especially as due to it's funding it has huge amounts of money to do stuff with. The BBC News website is amazing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/).

If you want specifics of the Recession here in the UK (and the rest of the world) then the specific link is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7789844.stm

Cheers
Steve.

Thanks for the info. Is HSBC bank the best bank to save on exchange rates if I have an account?

It's off the topic, Norm, but nobody said we were boring in December when we had the three stooges trying to stage a coup d'etat!