Hello, I'm nineteen years old and I live in the Netherlands. Together with Germany, America is one of our most important trading partners. Our economy's health depends on the health of America's economy (like most countries in the world.) We already notice the negative effects of the economical crisis in the United States. Personally, I'm not very interested in economics, but the last few months you can not avoid the topic anymore. It's the head topic in every news broadcast in Holland. As I said, I don't know much about economics, but I do know that things get worse here every day. Our main index: the 'AEX' has dropped dramatically over the last few months. We also have the 'Iceland-problem': A few weeks ago, a number of large Dutch towns announced that they had put millions on an Icelandic bank called 'Icesave'. Because of the economical crisis, this bank went bankrupt; the money is gone… There were also a lot of private investors and citizens who had put money in that bank. Our government had to jump in and garanteed that everybody would get (a part) of his money back. At this moment the government is trying to get our money back from Iceland. One of the largest banks in the Netherlands, Fortis, had such big financial problems that the Dutch state had to 'buy' the bank to prevent it from going bankrupt. So one of the biggest banks here, is now in the hands of the government; not an ideal situation either… In my daily life I can't really say that the crisis affects me directly. Prices appear the same to me and my parents didn't stop buying expensive things or something like that. I do hear people around me say that it is not the best time to move houses now. They say that we should wait before spending a lot of money, to see how things develop. So let's wait for times: 'It's better not to move when you are being saved.' Regards, Amy
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