You're holding the wrong end of the rifle at the moment - women in tight clothing and other stuff meant to draw attention are not 'the best way to sell your product', they're just advertising. Only when one has become interested in something can you sell him a product thanks to technical merits.
Depends from the school and the textbook. My math textbooks didn't even mention the Fibonacci sequence and it wasn't until Project Euler that I found out about it.
Corriere della Sera (an Italian newspaper) claimed that Finland wanted the Acropolis of Athens as collateral for their part of the loan, so yeah, you can actually ask for way too much.
Causes of the current problems are bad fiscal policy and believing that economic growth is forever sustainable. If there are too many holidays in those countries, then how is the U.S. economy in the place it is now (with the least vacation days in the world)?