How many people know that we basically export our defense budget via currency exports?

Apparently none in this administration.

China is already shorting the dollar.

That is the REAL significance of using today’s dollars to buy hard assets on a forward basis.

China is trading away her hoard as fast as possible for the physical: oil, ores… anything that holds value well.

We should be doing that too.

The office and the man that currently happens to hold it are different. Very different. Washington, Lincoln and Obama. Hmmm…

Would that George III hadn’t suffered from a genetic disorder. From this side of the pond, I realise that the USA is the finest creation of Britain. You have been handed the torch – guard it well.

Excellent analysis. Enjoyed reading it.

My own experience is at a much, much lower level of management , but I was thinking about that topic over the weekend.

Starting my first job as a young engineering manager, I was feeling overwhelmed. I tracked the number of interactions – scheduled meetings, ad hoc hallway conversations, walking-around visits to the lab, etc. and was a bit shocked at how many more there were as a manager (seems like about 40 a day, which meant one roughly every 15 minutes). Many of these “touches” involved making a decison. No wonder it was hard to put together a hour to think about anything.

I adjusted, and got up to speed. Over the years, and in more senior jobs, my experience was that it took about 6 months to get past the “drinking out of a firehose” stage. But you are always “on”, and it does suck energy (at least for the non-hyper extroverts).

I would guess one major advantage Bush had was the previous exposure the the White House – he wasn’t surprised at the process, althogh the actual responsibility weighs more heavily when its really yours. I would guess Obama, on the other hand, is trying to do things that demand about 2 orders of magnitude higher throughput than he’s used to. Disater waiting to happen indeed.

BTW, a world-wide crisis/disaster is not all that detrimental to US as a nation state.

Yes, it would mean a lot of suffering and a lot of bloodshed for non-US entities but let’s not forget that two great oceans (along with the greatest navy that the world has ever seen, and will ever see) separate us from serious bloodshed.

I believe we’re entering a different phase of US policy where we as a nation are not willing to spill our own blood for the sake of others. No more Pax Americana.

Who knows how things will pan out. At least two things we know:
1) in danger, money flows to safety
2) world was a far more dangerous without Pax Americana.