Bestest

There's a video which I suspect is much beloved by liberals like me, showing a actor in a town-hall talk show saying something like America's the greatest?  The only thing we lead the world in is the number of our citizens in jail or executed.  In healthcare, freedom, education -- we're in the middle of the pack or less. 

To which can be added: credit cards which use a chip rather than, or in conjunction with, a magnetic stripe.  They're known as EMV cards, for Europay/Mastercard/Visa, and the advantage is that they're more fraud-resistant. A few US banks offer them, but with serious restrictions as to who can receive one - usually, it's related to your net worth, though if you're a member of an 'affiliate organization' (some of which I've heard of, some of which not, and many of which sound....fishy), you're in.  Any yahoo can walk into a bank in France, Australia, New Zealand and get an EMV card, but here? Don't hold your breath. It'll cost the US Credit Industry a lot to install, and it'll cost the people who take credit cards a lot, too.  No eagerness there.  But when you look at a map of EMV adoption, and note the one big area where it's not present....

Last trip, I bought EMV cards from an organization called Travelex, and they work fine;  now Travelex says they're phasing those out.  I even considered trying to open a bank account in France, just to get the card,  but that's way difficult to do (I think).  Plus there's the line on income tax forms about do you have any funds overseas?  My taxes are complicated enough, thanks.

But hey, we're number one!