contrex wrote:A very interesting and thought provoking post, Solve. Thank you. How many will understand its message? So ironic that the USA is now collapsing just like the Soviet Union 20 years before. After all the boasting and vainglory, the "only remaining superpower" will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre. Hubris brings its own punishment.
The Soviet Union collapsed not simply because of its financial insolvency, but because it was the center of an empire of unwilling participants whose borders were co-terminal. The American "empire" is largely capitalist, with our military occupation commitments in nations far from our borders. When the Soviet Union collapsed, its consumer economy--such as it was--was on government life support, because the economy did not supply as many goods as the people wanted, nor did it supply the specific goods that the people wanted. When the authority of the central government evaporated due to the failed coup attempt, Yeltsin was able to step into the political vacuum and survive because people's economic expectations could not get much lower, and almost any progress was possible, even in the face of the shameless corruption which followed.
The American economy, however, still represents the largest consumer economy in the world, and the current economic downturn is in large measure a product of two circumstances. The first is the tax and spend policies of the current administration, abetted through six years by a Republican Congress. The second is the sub prime mortgage crisis. This is largely a crisis in banking circles, and is a direct result of investment greed. The reason that so much of the world catches an economic cold when the United States sneezes economically is because so much of the world follows the same greed trail as do American capitalists. Those who will suffer the most, alas, as is usually the case with capitalism, are the investors who had invested in banks which made these bad loans, or invested in other financial institutions making these bad loans, or in investment and money market funds which had made those unwise investments--all of them motivated by unchecked greed.
Ultimately, those most responsible are large block share holders who don't restrain their corporate boards from their folly because they, as is the case with the board members, are blinded by their greed. This is as true of banks in Mumbai or Bangkok who unwisely invested in holders of sub-prime mortgages as it is of the American bankers.
There will be hard times for Americans economically, and by extension for most of the rest of the world, because the investment folly is so wide-spread. However, to suggest that this signals the collapse of the United States is nothing less than idiotic--and is redolent of people predicting events which they wish to see happen, because of their antipathy to the United States rather than because a clear-headed, sober review of circumstances which point that way. How long this economic recession in the United States will last will depend on the policies of the next administration in conjunction with the next Congress.
S & C is one of the worst at this site for predicting a dire future for the United States. This is understandable given that he so fanatically hates the United States and Americans, as well as global capitalism and the multi-national corporations. For all that he often has a good point about the evils of capitalism and multi-national corporations, he completely lacks a sense of proportion, and is given to frothing at the mouth ranting.
Contrex should know better, but given his irrational "Americanophobia," i'm not surprised to see him post such drivel.
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