...because the rest of the world has been living off the US consumer. I don't know if you're American, but if you are, you should be ashamed of yourself. Some things are in the American interest, period, full stop.
Germany is upset because they think the Euro at 1.38 makes their exports uncompetitive. The fact is that they would be uncompetitive even at parity. Germany makes excellent cars. But they are ridiculously overpriced. They need more exports besides cars and chemicals.
you obviously know next to nothing about the strength of german industry and the range of products in which they are world leaders. Germany is running big trade surpluses and unemployment is falling to multi year lows. http://www.upi.com/Business_News/20...rplus-reaches-233-billion/UPI-82141289238144/ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95292e5a-a898-11df-86dd-00144feabdc0.html
German is the #1 largest group of Americans by ancestry, as a % of the total US population: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762137.html 2000 Rank Ancestry group Number Percent 1. German 42,841,569 15.2% 2. Irish 30,524,799 10.8 3. African American1 24,903,412 8.8 4. English 24,509,692 8.7 5. American1 20,188,305 7.2 6. Mexican 18,382,291 6.5 7. Italian 15,638,348 5.6 8. Polish 8,977,235 3.2 9. French 8,309,666 3.0 10. American Indian1 7,876,568 2.8
The USA hardly has clean hands - the country was after all pretty much stolen from the natives in a bloody few centuries of conflict and oppression. American historian R.J. Rummel estimates 8.7 million natives were killed by the actions of the US government after independence. We can also point to the millions of civilians killed by the US military over the centuries, the colonial invasions and annexations such as the Phillipines and Puerto Rico, the institutionalised slavery that existed and the racism and anti-semitism that still permeates society. If all the civilians who were slaughtered by America were lain head to head, the line of corpses would stretch further than the entire circumference of the earth. Know that as an American, you are basically living on stolen land, conquered by force from its ancestral inhabitants. If you do not consider yourself personally responsible for actions that you did not partake in, then fair enough - but if you take that position, then you cannot hold present-day Germans responsible for the past of Germany either.
China is a paper tiger like George Friedman tells in the next 100 years. Soon we will find out. They just need others to expand while cheap labor can just be found anywhere.
Note that you could say that about almost every piece of land on Earth. Every country in existence conquered the previous inhabitants at some point in history. Consider the Native Americans themselves probably conquered whoever was living here before them, or at the very least they conquered each other for control of the land. Ownership is defined by whoever can kick the other person's ass. Always has been. That's why tribes/countries/whatever form in the first place, for protection.
Correctamundo. The native tribes were likely NOT the first to inhabit North America. And they were "conquered by a superior force"... the story of mankind since we first evolved from the primordial ooze. The early European immigrants COULD have treated them better... then again, they could have killed them all, too.