A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life including sexual life could be carried on on many levels.

Today hundreds of millions dwell in freedom from the Baltic to the Adriatic from the Western Approaches to the Aegean. And while we must never take this for granted the first purpose of the European Union - to secure peace - has been achieved and we should pay tribute to all those in the EU alongside Nato who made that happen.

These subsidies from four European governments which include aircraft launch assistance capital injections debt forgiveness have enabled Airbus to develop and range market airliners well below cost.

Asian food is very easy to like because it hits your mouth very differently than European food does. In European food there may be two things to hit - maybe sweet and salty maybe salty-savory but Asian kind of works around plus you have that distinct flavor that's usually working in Asian food.

Europe is difficult to coordinate and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution.

In the long term Germany didn't need a finance minister who was absent during important negotiations in the European Council. But the chancellor strongly encouraged me to stay. And everything did work out for the best in the end.

There was a real fear that a euro-zone bank might fail that we'd have a sovereign debt problem in one of the larger European economies. That's dissipated thanks largely to the action of the European Central Bank.

Greece's European neighbors were able step in and bolster the weak foundation on which Greece's free-spending budget was based. It would be difficult for any country or intergovernmental organization to rescue an economy the size of the U.S. if investors were ever to lose faith in our bonds because of our enormous debt.

Those who have always had faith in its final success can do no less than rejoice as if it was our own triumph after five years of daily struggle to impose Cuban music on the European continent.

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize without prejudice with the peoples of East Asia.