>I find this attitude deeply aggravating. Europe has simply chosen a different path to the US, and to pretend that the US is superior in every way is ridiculous.

I think you're misreading him. He's making fun of the reporting in the Economist which is alternately, "is Europe going to collapse?" "Is America going to become Europe and then collapse?" and "OMG scary Chinese." The Economist has a fairly particular world view, and he was skeptical that someone who reads it regularly can come out with a different one.