Why The U.S. Should Be Worried
Americans might be enjoying a warm glowing vision of themselves while gazing endlessly in the mirror nationalistic self-reflection, but the rest of the world is increasingly seeing a different image of us. This essay from another foreign press source touches on some disturbing realities we have been trying to bring to the awareness of our fellow citizenry.
We ignore this reality at our own peril.
The financial position of the United States has declined dramatically in the last 15 years. The US federal budget is in the deep red, adding to America’s dependency on debt.
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is wiping out loads of dollars from US treasury. A government functioning so irresponsible with no sense of the prosperity of its own country and people is not really a superpower in any sense.
Almost no one is saving any money in the United States today. Saving rates are very low or negative. The US debt grows by about $1.5 billion every weekday and has now reached about $6.5 trillion dollars. Private household debt has reached $11 trillion and 50 per cent of these debts have been incurred since 1998. The Americans are enjoying the present spending spree at the cost of their own future and future generations. The fact is that the expanding consumer debt drives the US economy.
In the near future, many US citizens may have to face harsh reality like a poverty-stricken, third world family, living from hand to mouth situation without any kind of financial reserves whatsoever. The imminent economic crisis is waiting to happen in the US and will be the most thoroughly predicted one in recent human history. People spending so irresponsible with no sense of the prosperity of the country is not a superpower.
Half the world is very impressed by the low levels of unemployment in the United States. Only the other half clearly knows very well that these statistics may be the result of a voluntary telephone survey. Is working just ten hours per week enough for one to be classified as “employed”? The US statistics is usually intended to create more positive image and opinion than about its actual condition. The net reality is that the US job growth rate is falling behind its own population growth.
A country that cannot create jobs for its own population is not a superpower.
Today, the United State’s biggest bankers are China and Japan, both of whom could cause the United States very serious financial problems, if they wish to do so at any time. Roughly 27 per cent of the government bonds issued by the US treasury are held by China and Japan. That’s why US doesn’t complain much about China and Japan.
A country whose financial affairs are in the hands of foreigners is not a superpower.
Read The Full Article Here
on January 7th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Worry away, America, but how much will other nations choose to prop us up and perpetuate the status quo, rather than smash us into third-world oblivion? We are the market for their goods, especially the exports of our main creditors, China and Japan. American consumption is the engine driving the world economy, and American recession triggers global recession, or so the economists say.
Here is an interesting statement from another foreign-press article posted on this site (The War That Ended America’s Century): “The global economy depends still on the greenback and, more importantly, on the capacity of the US to swallow everyone’s debts.”
I do not have a Nobel Prize in economics (and neither do you), but my suspicion is that what is frighteningly unsustainable is the total global growth-based economic system, of which American debt is just one peculiar aspect. When the system fails, by oil shortage or ecological collapse (both symptoms of overpopulation), everyone gets poor, not just the USA.
P.S. The US is still a superpower in terms of food production, the original measure of wealth, for what that is worth.
on January 13th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
As more and more factories are exported to China, and then the products imported back into the US for consumption, unemployment rates are on the rise. While I’m also not an economist, importing more than you can produce is unsustainable, and it doesn’t matter how much we are relied on as a market for imports if no one has any money to purchase the goods. There are only so many times you can refinance your mortgage before it comes back to bite you in the ass. As the value of the dollar continues to decline, many countries (i.e. Japan and China) “have begun to shift the balance of their new foreign currency reserve purchases away from the dollar and into the euro” (http://www.chinaworker.info/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=printtopic&id=215&curcatname=Economy&img=economy.).
This could quite possibly produce catastrophic effects for our overconsumptive way of life, including higher interest rates and an end to the cheap credit we currently thrive on.
For the average person, borrowing imaginary money for higher and higher interest rates for bigger houses and gargantuan vehicles should not be a way of life in a supposed “superpower” nation.
P.S.- David Teem, associate director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station projected in 1992 that American food production was facing a growing crisis, as rising production costs were not meeting stagnated profits from farm goods. For anyone living in rural and suburban areas of Ohio, this is very clearly evidenced in the massive amount of farm land for sale and the slow creep of urban sprawl. Couple that with the aforementioned raising interest rates. and there won’t be anyone to purchase the mass of new houses popping up.