| Skybird |
05-28-07 11:00 AM |
Nobody forced you to sell your dollars offworld. Nobody forced you to waste oil like crazy, and still refuse until today to tackle that problem of excessive wasting ressources, and not to adapt your economy. Nobody forced you to ignore the economical developement in Asia for decades. Nobody forced you to raise a state deficit that high that only astronomers have an image of what the numbers mean. Nobody forced you to run your economy in a way that today the inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities not only become more and more appearant, but also more and more threatening. Nobody forced you to trust stock markets, and to launch this madness called "globalization" (about which your own pliticians for the most have become remarkably silent since two years or so). Nobody forced you to let major parts of your heavy industry rot, and not modernize your steelworks since decades. Nobody forced you to follow an economic course where you depend more and more on market protection and subsidies to keep your home factories alive. Nobody forced you to sell out parts of your country to Asian investors. Nobody forced you to accept a trade deficit that in the short run funded your luxury (past), in the long run only cripples your economical backbone (present and future).
You did all that voluntarily. Nobody forced you, no one else told you you should do it, nobody else is responsible for your situation than you yourself. You sold yourself, by your own decision. Nobody forced you.
You may take some comfort from the historical fact that most empires, including the Romans, weakened themselves from within when eroding their inner economy by becoming more and more dependent on a constant input of economic goods to consume, that was maintained from the outside. Rome, like America, saw itself as the navel of the world, and considered it to be quite naturally for that reason to become a great consumer, but not as great a producer. Many empires literally consumed themselves to death, mislearned how to support themselves anymore by their own economical effort, and were bancrupted by exessive military spending that their own internal economy could not afford -it was heavily depending on constant financial inputs from foreign powers. exactly the same is true of the Us today - if investors would stop to think in dollars and turn to Euros, if investors would rlaize that they are only helping to increase bubbles that sooner or later mist burst - America would face a very brutal landing on the surface of hard reality. European nations in the past 500 years repeatedly reached that point - namely Spain, France and Portugal. The British only were able to sustain the fight against Napoleon by adressing these issues just in time, by reforming their fiscal and tax system.
I once have said two or three years ago that american economy is far weaker and vulnerable than americans are able to admit. Back then I was laughed at only, and saw waving hands. At least some have stopped laughing now. The rest of it will be learned sooner or later, too.
Else it is "Game Over, player US looses".
P.S. Some "experts" fear that Chinese economy is heading for a bubble-bursting soon. If that happens and it is the main bubble bursting, internal investement markets in the US as well as the already troubled property market will have a chance to get a first taste of spicey things to come. I don't know why America seem to have assumed that it would be spared from it's creature called globalization. and compared to several european countries with partially far more modern industry branches (especially steel and machinery), America is not really as well prepared for that. If other nations will suffer econo0mically, the military spendings and investements into computer equipement are the first to be cut. And what Western economy depends on selling of arms and computers more than anyone else?
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