OK, not the right place for that discussion. The reason languages like python are inherently slower is that they are not strongly typed. It seems only LISP is getting it right, I think there you can voluntarily use strong typing, allowing for dramatic speed improvements - why don't any other languages copy that? (I think it must be the typing that is responsible for the speed difference - this time I don't have an official article backing that up).
If you look at the PyPy project you'll see that it's possible with Python to spot that foo is always an integer within a certain scope, thereby allowing short-cuts when dealing with it. They're also using the excellent LLVM framework to JIT the Python byte-code. It's not replacing the CPython interpreter anytime soon, but it is doing interesting stuff.
