Its all relative. Bernacke and Crew plan to run the Dollar into the ground. If (and when) major blocks refuse competitive devaluation, our reserve status will get tested, quite forcefully, by the market. You're familiar with prisoners dilemma? Why don't OPEC members honor their quotas? Same reason why trade partners will pass on debasement. Better for their Country. Save that, their voters will demand it.
I do agree that we're living in interesting times, but it's not a transfer of wealth that's happening. It's the destruction of wealth, specifically, the destruction of the assets of the wealthy and upper middle-class. It's happening because of the combined effects of credit deleveraging and deflation. Yes, size does matter. But, certain measures of a country's economy are much more important that others. This graphic, combined with your population figures shows exactly how exposed China really is when it comes to the stuff that really matters... http://faostat.fao.org/Portals/_Faostat/documents/pdf/map05.pdf
This is hard to debate because the hardcore patriots think that America is gods gift to the world. America does everything the best and there is no way it will lose its supremacy. I assume this characters never studied history... surely not the Roman Empire. Or even more recently, how powerful Great Britain was as it ruled 1/4 of the world, geographically, at one point.
We present a unique and valuable idea to a world that is controlled by the Ignrant and the Violent It took 500 years of pain to get where we are so indulge us if we appear smug from time to time but you wouldn't want to be in this fucking cesspool unless we were here to show you what life could be like
The wealth held in the US was grossly overblown due to leverage. Every time someone got a HELOC or used their credit card, someone else got rich. Same with banks with securitization of debts. I agree, that's not a transfer of wealth - it's a correction. The transfer I allude to is regarding a nation's current account balance/deficit. Currently the trend of money surplus flows is west to east. Regarding Agriculture - it can never be underestimated. I agree with your point. However, keep in mind that we eat oil and natural gas. Petrochemicals and Natural Gas turned to ammonia are the chief reasons for huge crop yields and why farming has become big business. Add to that Farm machinery that runs on oil, food tranport, cold storage, processing etc... and you realize that food needs oil. A solar panel or a wind turbine isn't going to kill weeds and insects anytime soon. Some have estimated that the equivalent of ten calories of hydrocarbons are needed to produce one calorie of food. Keep in mind that the US is a young country, and as such, much of urban planning was designed with the auto in mind. Food is trucked, people drive to work and shop. Suburbs with asphalt roads, asphalt shingles and vinyl siding... you get the point. Our consumption of 25% of the world's oil is extremely inefficient and wasteful - and makes us vulnerable. Yes we have coal, and NG. But if either would be used to make syncrude, the energy required for the processing would be rather high, making the net gain of energy rather low compared to what we have today. I believe in peak oil - more to the point, I think we are near peaking if we have not already. If that is the case, then everything I have written in my posts above is meaningless. The world is an extremely complex system. Trying to anticipate the feedback loops and various consequences caused by the convergence of an energy and credit crisis is mind boggling. Add to that the possibility that arable land may be impacted if the climate is indeed changing, and then my intellectual capacity to predict all consequences is exhausted. I can only sum it up as we're f*cked.
It's you who's ignorant of history... A lot of people have been comparing the ills in the U.S. to the fall of the Roman Empire, so I'll give you credit for adding the British variant to the mix. But, both of those comparisons fail for the same reason -- conquered land. Both the Romans and the British empires collapsed due to the logistical nightmare of supporting and maintaining control over the ever widening expanse of their empires. The U.S., OTOH, did not alter it's borders by once inch after WWI and WWII. Will the U.S. eventually fail? Probably, if history is any indication. But, it could just as likely morph and merge into a global and collectively run system. Either way, the outcome is likely to take much longer than the time you have left on this ball of mud.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are not costs of empire? Massive bases in Germany and South Korea? Sounds like the headaches of Rome and the UK to me.
>>>>>>>#142 - Ron Paul is right about China. Americans sit around throwing insults and laughing while the Red Chinese go about their business buying up commodities, precious metals,oil, mining cos., etc. Underestimate them at your own peril.<<<<<<< What Paul didn't mention is the fact that America spent $3 trillion on Iraq War. The sum is almost 400% of China's reserves. Between war and commerce, DC politicians elected war while China prefer commerce. Now let's engulfing ourselves with domestic propaganda.
That sort of measure is meaningless when looked at a resolution less than several decades. The U.S. was a successful agrarian society long before the rise of hydrocarbons. Bullshit. The automobile was responsible for suburban sprawl. But, interstate trucking didn't materialize until after Eisenhower established the Interstate road system back in the 50's. Rail was, and will quickly regain, the dominant method of long-distance haul if peak oil turns out to be fact. And, I'm still not entirely sold on that being the case yet.