The Sikh Geek

I’ve just got back from Florida from a 2 week break there with the family. I like the US for a number of reasons and one them is that it just one big melting pot of people and cultures. I know that the UK is fairly diverse but almost everyone you meet and talk to is from "somewhere" in the US.  I know people often say that America has no culture but to me it has a thousand different cultures and you can hear it in the different languages you hear spoken. It’s funny how a Nation built almost entirely on immigration can have any sense of coherence and any ideals that can bind people together. But it does and people are proud to be Americans in a way we as Britains wouldn’t show or be embarrassed by.

It is the ultimate consumer society but reading the USA Today Newspaper and it was full of the impending economic crisis. The most trusted Institutions seem to be unravelling overnight with the US’s 5th largest bank Bear Stearns being bought by JP Morgan in a rushed 11th hour deal. The analysis was that if Bear Stearns was allowed to go into Administration then it would have caused chaos in the entire Financial System with it being uncertain as to where it would end - a kind of chain reaction! Isn’t kind of funny that as Small Businesses people accuse us of ignoring our cashflow and debt and yet somehow this gets ignored for these huge institutions where there it is called Risk Management or a High Growth Strategy!

But after all that the US is a pretty complex place and so different from coast to coast. The other unique thing is that at the moment you have a woman and a black guy fighting it out for the Democratic nomination to become President. It’s very interesting to me because it shows that race doesn’t necessarily have to be a barrier in the US. Here in the UK, I couldn’t even imagine a black person becoming Prime Minister within my lifetime. So, which is the more Cohesive society?