nobody is ungrateful for what the Americans did throughout the world after the war, but I should remind him that most of it was good commercial investments and loans which have been repaid one way or the other.
Seen today :
The comparison with tornadoes, floods is ridiculous. Europe rose like one man and proposed help for Katrina. Either it was refused or diverted. Very little came through of what was offered, and the worse was that many lives that could have been rescued the first week weren't, because foreign teams were turned down for pure jingoistic reasons, while at the same time the most gigantic clusterfuck was "organized". The US attitude created a lot of resentment in Europe, it was as if we weren't "good enough" while at the same time the US media were full of discussions about the fact that the Mexican help in form of some army company would wear uniforms which of course could rememberr of the Alamo.
I never heard that the US "rebuilt" the French railways. Regarding the planes TODAY there are probably more people flying Airbuses today than Boeing, and that must be for a good damned reason.
the French crisis in 1956 curiously lefts out that it was the Suez Canal war and that the US attitude of not supporting the UK/France created resentment (even if the US took politically the right decision). Besides the crisis was caused by the US unwillingness to give money to the IMF)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/09/boughton.htmEven if there was a rise of antiamericanism 1973 in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, the article is still mostly BS in its countering.
read about the Marshall plan here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_planRepayment
The Organization for European Economic Cooperation had taken the leading role in allocating funds, and the ECA arranged for the transfer of the goods. The American supplier was paid in dollars, which were credited against the appropriate European Recovery Program funds. The European recipient, however, was not given the goods as a gift, but had to pay for them (though not necessarily at once, on credit etc.) in local currency, which was then deposited by the government in a counterpart fund. This money, in turn, could be used by the ERP countries for further investment projects.
Most of the participating ERP governments were aware from the beginning that they would never have to return the counterpart fund money to the U.S.; it was eventually absorbed into their national budgets and "disappeared." Originally the total American aid to Germany (in contrast to grants given to other countries in Europe) had to be repaid. But under the London debts agreement of 1953, the repayable amount was reduced to about $1 billion. Aid granted after 1 July 1951 amounted to around $270 million, of which Germany had to repay $16.9 million to the Washington Export-Import Bank. In reality, Germany did not know until 1953 exactly how much money it would have to pay back to the U.S., and insisted that money was given out only in the form of interest-bearing loans — a revolving system ensuring the funds would grow rather than shrink. A lending bank was charged with overseeing the program. European Recovery Program loans were mostly used to support small- and medium-sized businesses. Germany paid the U.S. back in installments (the last check was handed over in June 1971). However, the money was not paid from the ERP fund, but from the central government budget.
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