I think it is changing a little, but we can't really tell yet, because of the "everything boom" aka intentional weakening of the dollar. From being on both sides of the Atlantic this year I feel that Americans had it a bit tougher on the inflation side than Euros lately, but there's quite some margin there, so it's not that bad really. But Europe isn't uniform at all and even at the country level there are huge differences.

If you were talking about Italy specifically though, prospects in terms of employment is rapidly improving according to the latest OECD report - from 11% unemployment to 6%, and they're doing fiscal reforms to reduce future risk, so economically, that's doing better.

But, I can't help but feel that in Belgium it's been going downhill for a longer time due to mismanagement (their debt-to-gdp is almost as bad as in the US, but they have 55% income tax!), and of my friends from there, many have already left, and many more want out. None of them that are currently there are happy to be there.