If you travelled to Europe recently (and soon if you travel to Canada) you got a hot iron put up your butt for being an American.
As the person who created the modern global currency, the multi-bank multi-purpose credit card, I am especially offended. For the past 40 years we have been able to use an American credit card to buy virtually anything on the planet as well as get cash in most places.
No longer. If you want to know why the United States is so important and why the European countries are the caboose on the engine of American commerce here is the prime case study.
We have a perfect invention that promotes international commerce, the credit card. Because of that, the Europeans have decided to screw us. They have put a chip in their credit cards that requires a password and they are slowly making this card a requirement of all travel related and standalone machines that take credit cards. Your standard American card will be immediately rejected for buying a railway or subway ticket.
They are screwing us with their arcane hostility to commerce for no reason. Only the issuing bank of a credit card is liable for any fraud or misuse of a card. Banks and card issuers have become very competent in reducing fraud. There is no upward spiral of fraud today. There is no significant increase in problems with credit card usage. There is no reason for the European vicious anti-commerce behavior.
Nevertheless the anti-commerce ideologues of Europe have decided to screw us. Of course this anti-commerce ideology is at the very heart of the American Democratic Party that wants to imitate Europe in every way. We have the roots of our own destruction in our own country.