Their governments supported the liberal services directive, which favoured their mobile, comparatively cheap workforces, but have expressed doubts about opening protected home markets to competition.

ECONOMIST: Europe's postal services

Others note that Mr Bush's speech also repeated his support for un-green measures such as his Clear Skies Initiative, a bill to regulate emissions from power plants that excludes carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming), and his energy bill, which strongly boosts coal and nuclear power and proposes opening up protected areas of Alaska to oil-drilling.

ECONOMIST: Clean energy

These could range from an overhaul of the tax code to deregulation of farming and the opening up of protected areas of the economy, such as transport and energy, to foreign competition.

ECONOMIST: Japan's debt problem

Now that official restraints have been loosened, Americans nonetheless retreat into what Holder calls "race-protected cocoons" and rely upon cliches, stereotypes and familiar habits of ethnic and racial congregation instead of opening ourselves to the undeniably uncomfortable, but ultimately rewarding, prospect of facing each other across the chasm of learned behaviors and inherited reflexes.

CNN: Commentary: Holder wants to tear down wall of race