Europe should be ashamed of giving the world 4 evils of the 20th Century: WWI, WWII, Communism and Holocast. US was more busy 'selflessly' cutting out the fires of EVILNESS ignited in Europe. So got to keep Europe in check for the sake of the humanity.
I am sorry toc but even the tooth fairy cannot get you out of this mess. any administration is now reduced to the same bag of tools ... military tourism ... taxes ... interest rates (soon to be too low to be useful) ... money supply ... pain and sacrifice ( there is a new one for you) The one saviour is the one that the military/industrial/banking complex will never instruct the Pres to adopt and that is a complete reinvention of the US way of doing business. In essence the US needs to reinvent itself to regain the lead in this brave new world. However the real power in US chose globalisation instead ... bigger markets with the risks spread further and further but the profits still contained and unshared.
Solution #2: Pay the countries CEO / President the equivalent of any Fortune 500 President, 25 million. Then and only then will you attract great minds. That's what Capitalism is all about but the irony is that the government is run with a socialist structure.
The people running the US are drawing down enormous earnings already, they simply want more, more and yet more. The faces you see on TV are not the faces of the people driving the country, they are merely the faces fronting for the masters. If any of this is disturbing to you then merely ignore it.
That's exactly my point. IF the money was there at the political level (not the private) then the great minds would be in that arena not behind the scenes where there is no accountability.
You have altruistic thoughts ... a noble concept. You wish to remove the power from 1% of the population controlling 90% of the wealth and 100% of the military and give it back to the people. History is littered with such noble deeds and thoughts