Poor Texas
PITIFUL must be the sights awaiting Europe's summiteers, when they land in Houston. Ten-gallon hats will be held out in front of them: 'Wife and six oil rigs to support', 'Please put a penny in my bank', 'The building fund needs your help', or 'Buddy, can you spare an ecu?' President Bush is using the summit meeting rather as British ministers use garden festivals — to bring a depressed area a touch of colour and money and to hope that the effect will stick. Texas was depressed (to the point of ruining its banks) by the collapse of its staple product's price — once over $40 a barrel in world markets, now down by two-thirds, and going nowhere. The fatal mistake, as Texans readily agree, was to let the United States join Texas and impose a common currency. Instead, the Texan dollar should have been allowed to soar when the oil price soared, and, when it cracked, should have been devalued. The common currency sentences Texas to con- tinuing depression, mitigated by arbitrary actions from the centre — like staging a summit meeting.