S, i didn’t call any names, scroll up & see. When you link such an article, you should expect someone to point out that an awful lot of ”American decline” ink is coming from one side of the political spectrum. That’s really about all i did. On the other hand, this of yours is much closer to name-calling: “Currently we are financed and owned by the Chinese and OPEC Sovereigns. These are facts. Not political, just facts.”
Oh? We are ”owned” by Chinese and OPEC purchasers of our treasury bonds at our open auctions? This isn’t a political opinion?
How about “Indirect purchasers in our treasury auctions are investing in the USA, and doing so in return for very low rates of return, because they think it is a good investment.” How about that –political?
Anyhoo, check the numbers –and please, use percentages, to get the reality of the ratio into it (decontexted numbers make good political statements, but mean nothing without the other ends of the ratio) –the big players holds lots of each other’s debt –yes USA has a good chunk foreign outstanding, but Britain and Japan hold about the same as China, and the sovereigns –recycled petrodollars –are quite welcome investments, and are far too small to influence –else you’d have Barney Frank holding hearings on it, instead of whispering the occasional aside in his political moments. We sell a bond, pay 4 or 5% on it, and create economic growth off the spread.
“Finance” is what keeps you from having to live with ma & pa until you’re 50 and have saved several hundred grand to buy a house.
Not to be contentious, but ”we’re doomed” politics flows from political exploitation of a decline at the margins of USA financial health. We can fix these things –they result from crappy policy out of DC, not some sort of terminal national disease.
The meta theme is a world catching up with us, via use of the free-market capitalist system we’ve been trying to sell since 1776. This is what we wanted, remember –a world without famine, a world of free people engaging in mutually beneficial trade, under the rule of law. We’ve been astoundingly successful, look at the number of democracies now and say 1945.
In 1945 we had what, half the world’s GDP and now we have a quarter of it, despite having grown by orders of magnitude ourselves, and this is supposed to be, as Roubini says, ”the end of the American Empire”? Forgive me, but phhhttt –who cares how doomsayers define ”empire”? Want some economists who feel otherwise? Just say the word, I’ll send you some names. Or, watch the Kudlow show –or jim Cramer –on CNBC this afternoon. You’ll feel better –i promise.
