Across the whale in a month (14): sorry, encerramos a serie por faltade orcamento...

Bem, a viagem continua, mas a próxima etapa já está compronetida, como informa gentilmente o Department of Interior.

Assim, nossa planejada visita ao Grand Canyon fica reservada a uma outra ocasião, quando houver orçamento nos EUA, por exemplo...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Due to the lapse in appropriated funds, all public lands managed by the Interior Department (National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Bureau of Land Management facilities, etc.) will be closed. For more information, FAQs, and updates, please visit www.doi.gov/shutdown

The New York Times (EUA) – Europeans Express Concern Over Shutdown

Dan Bilefsky

Europeans reacted to the shutdown of the American federal government with a mix of astonishment and concern that the economic fallout could adversely affect their countries’ own sputtering recovery.

For millions of European tourists, the closure of all national parks, monuments and museums – including the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon — was viewed as the biggest disappointment. Le Monde warned its readers that 400 national parks and museums across the United States would be affected, and that could translate into millions of dollars of losses for the tourism sector.

Writing in Britain’s Independent newspaper, Simon Calder, a senior travel editor, noted that all 17 Smithsonian museums in Washington, as well as the National Zoo, would also be closed indefinitely. He lamented that British travelers would not be able to visit the Grand Canyon and other parks, and warned that British tourists could face extended lines at airports if the Transportation Security Administration was forced to reduce staffing.

European Union Web sites noted that American consular services could also be affected, causing difficulties for citizens of five European countries still subject to United States visa requirements. The citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania and Poland still require visas to enter the United States.

The Economist said, “The economic impact of all this depends entirely on how long the shutdown lasts, which, given that few people expected it to occur, is hard to gauge.”

The Financial Times sought to minimize the impact of the shutdown, saying that investors did not seem overly bothered. It predicted that the shutdown would be brief and the consequences minimal. It cited Goldman Sachs’s assessment that a one-week shutdown would knock just 0.3 percentage points off third-quarter growth.

The German press was far more pessimistic, warning of severe consequences and even of another global economic crisis. “A superpower has paralyzed itself,” said Spiegel Online. But it said that politicians in Washington were working to resolve the crisis and that there was still hope of a resolution.

Die Welt warned that the shutdown put the world economy in danger. “The fear is real that the tender U.S. recovery will be damaged,” it said. Many Germans appeared to empathize with President Obama, who they saw as being held hostage by what the Zeit called a “handful of radicals” unwilling to compromise.

Le Figaro, the right-leaning French newspaper, said that Americans were feeling increasingly alienated by the “political circus” around the budget impasse that was now threatening the country. It quoted an exasperated employee of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., who told the newspaper that he was both fed up and shocked. “It is very shocking, this never-ending affront by Congress,” the newspaper quoted the employee as saying. “Voting for the budget is Congress’s job. This paralysis is unacceptable.”