>If the EU debt met all of the criteria identified in 3797, I >would see no reason to avoid using it. I don't know whether >there is such a thing as "the EU debt" There is no such thing as "the EU debt." Each EU member country has its own national debt. Some of that debt is denominated in Euros, some in national currencies such as UK pounds, Danish Krone, Romanian Lei, and so forth. The Danish Krone and Bulgarian Lev are tightly tied to the Euro, while the pound and other non-euro currencies float and the rates change continuously while markets are open. Not only is there no such thing as the EU debt, there is no consistent way to find the Euro value of the combined national debts, both because it depends on what exchange rates you use, and because the debts of some Eurozone countries (notably Greece) are held in part by the governments of other Eurozone countries (notably France and Germany) so they net out. The US debt happens to be unusually easy to use as a data source since it is a single country's debt in its own currency that no other country of any size* uses, and the US publishes very good economic data. Given its advantages, and the points you made about the importance of larger amounts of data rather than perfect randomness of individual sources, I'd want something more persuasive than loud unsupported assertions to switch to something else. R's, John * - yeah, I know about Panama, Ecuador, the Bahamas, and the BVI