A rose by any other name...

After several days of agonised soul-searching, Pam and I have reluctantly decided to give our dog Bud a new name.

As I mentioned before, we originally called him Bud because we already had a cat named Miller.

For the benefit of British readers, Bud and Miller are two of America's leading brands of beer, both limply bland potations that stimulate the neurotransmitters but not the taste buds.

I once got chatting to a regional sales manager for one of the big US breweries at a bar in Midland, Texas. "I've just come back from a two-week beer-tasting tour of Belgium and Germany," he slurred. "It just made me realise what crappy products I've been selling for the past fifteen years."

Anyway, the worker from the animal refuge found Miller the cat sitting alone in the desolate parking lot of a strip mall boarded up since Hurricane Katrina. Beside him, an empty can of Miller Lite blew listlessly back and forth in the wind. That's how he got his name, and Bud seemed the obvious choice when we acquired a canine companion for him.

Bud is only a year old, his puppyish enthusiasm still undimmed by any trace of world-weary cynicism. He's at a formative stage in his life, and things that happen to him now could crucially affect his fortunes later on. We believe that the decision to rename him is an investment in his long-term future.

It came after I stumbled on a year-old article in the Christian Science Monitor by someone called Jacqui Goddard. It's about the increasing popularity of consultants who, for a modest fee, will advise you on whether the name you choose for your progeny is likely to inspire respect and career success, or have people guffawing behind your back at your incredible lack of taste.

Of course, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor is itself a living example of how an unfortunate name doesn't have to be a handicap.

It's a lively and authoritative international newspaper whose sole concession to matters spiritual is a daily article on religion - though Jacqui sometimes tells interviewees she's writing for the 'Boston Monitor' to avoid the impression that it's one of those deranged six-page religious rags, the kind that nameless people leave on the chairs in dentists' waiting rooms, hoping you'll undergo a Damascene conversion while having all your teeth pulled out.

Anyway, back to Bud. The article cites Professor Albert Meharabian of UCLA, who has researched people's perceptions of first names.

[Prof. Mehrabian] asked people to ponder lists of names and award each a score in five set categories: ethical/caring, popular/fun, successful, masculine/feminine, and overall attractiveness. The results helped him to produce a comprehensive profile of the kind of positive or negative impression each name conveys.

For example, Chad scored consistently high in all categories, while Bud ranked low – including a zero in the "successful" category. Chads are more likely to have a secure self-image, be regarded more positively by others, and be treated well at school and work than Buds.

In deference to public opinion, therefore, we've decided to call our canine friend Chad.

It wasn't our first choice. After all, Chad is the one of the world's poorest countries, a vast expanse of dusty nothingness sometimes referred to as the Dead Heart of Africa, still basking in the afterglow of being named the world's most corrupt country in 2005. It's also the name given to the little paper butterflies on Florida ballot papers that gave us eight years of George W. Bush.

But there you go: it was Shakespeare who said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but he also said that needs must where the devil drives.

UK shadow chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne yesterday warned: 'We are in danger, if the government is not careful, of having a proper sterling collapse, a run on the pound.'

I have news for Mr Osborne, who clearly doesn't know very much about international finance: the government is not careful, and the pound has collapsed.

For the past two years since I came to the States, the pound has been riding high, at around 2.00 to the dollar, and the cost of living here has been laughably cheap if you're earning pounds and spending dollars.

New York department stores have been swamped by legions of pasty-faced Brits scooping up bucketfuls of designer knickknacks, and Florida real-estate agents by people from Southend lugging wheeled suitcases bulging with cash.

In the past couple of months, the pound has slumped by a third: for once, the UK is even more of a basket case than the US. The smile has been wiped off our faces, and sometimes, when I have nothing better to do with my time, I've been known to sit there mournfully monitoring the currency's helter-skelter descent in real time by repeatedly clicking Refresh on xe.com.

Until I came here, exchange rates were an abstraction that I only noticed when I left the UK for brief periods; now, they've caused me more than a few sleepless nights. I've been guilty of complacency, and the chickens have come home to roost; Pam told me months ago to transfer my savings over here while the going was still good, and I ignored her eminently sensible advice.

Anyway, that's enough of my woes: the credit crunch has been a salutary reminder that economics isn't just dusty abstractions, it's about real people and real lives.

A few days ago, when I finally got round to transferring some money over here, I was on the phone to a woman in my local bank. 'So what currency is it in the UK, anyway?' she asked. 'Is it Ukrainian dollars?'

I'm delighted that Barack Obama is to be the new leader of the free world, but I fear he could prove a disappointment: after eight years of the worst president in history, people's expectations may be unrealistically high.

In Britain, Tony Blair was given a radical mandate for change in 1997, and largely squandered it during the ensuing decade, chipping away at the edges of all that was wrong in British society and failing to tackle many of the really big issues.

But there's no doubting that America is a better place to be this morning than last night, and it will be heartening to watch it regain its respected status on the world stage. Obama could get off to a flying start on his first day by shutting down Guantanamo, banning torture and calling a halt to so-called extraordinary rendition.

We watched the CNN coverage with next-door neighbours and fellow political junkies Kevin and Matt, and it was exceptionally good.

There were giant touch screens detailing past and projected results for every state and county, and ultra-detailed demographic breakdowns. We learned, for example, that the three most reliable predictors of Democratic leanings were being male, having a college degree and never going to church, which is me in a nutshell.

In a milestone in TV history, we were treated to interviews with holograms: not real ones, just superimposed on the screen, though grizzled anchor Wolf Blitzer made a convincing job of pretending his subjects were chatting away right in front of him. They wobbled slightly round the edges, as though trapped in limbo by a temporary transporter malfunction on the USS Enterprise.

I'm in a bit of a no-man's-land myself at the moment. I love elections, and I've never failed to vote in the UK, but in an exception to the principle of no taxation without representation it will be many years before I'm allowed to do so here, and I'll have to become a citizen first.

Voting is one of the two big advantages of adopting US citizenship; the other is never having to deal with the immigration authorities again.

I'm now in the long, slow process of adjusting my status, which means I've started the ball rolling towards getting a green card and becoming a legal permanent resident.

I've just sent off another sixteen pages of forms and another cheque, this time for $1,010. If these are approved, I'll actually get my 'advance parole', which sounds like an alternative to a jail sentence but is effectively permission to leave the country, which I can't at present.

But as I've said before, even when I'm feeling positively overwhelmed by red tape, I try never to lose sight of the fact that living here is a privilege not to be taken for granted.

Like I said, translation is not normally a barrel of laughs. But this story is an exception.