Grace:
OK, have it your way and don't worry about it. Perhaps the U.S. CAN continue to fool most of the people, most of the time and successfully pile up ever more offshore debt. Meantime, at this end, I will continue to pay attention to the trends that suggest that a day of reckoning is at hand.
Most Americans think it is their birthright that the rest of the world will continue to send them finished goods in exchange for ever more printed debt paper added to an already unimaginable mountain of same, sloshing around the globe. Unfortunately for Americans, it isn't. It results from the historical fact that the U.S. buck was deservedly (at the time) accepted as the global reserve currency. Unfortunately, that status has been raped and pillaged too many times and the cannier players recognize that the above-noted day of reckoning is approaching. Wisely, they are quietly ducking out the back door. Personally, I'm with them. U.S. global debt has attained levels that can never be "repaid" (except via ruthlessly inflated future "printings") and that debt continues to mushroom at an ever growing rate. To conceptualize this state of affairs as sustainable defies logic at this end.
Maybe I'm "early" once again, but given the probable ugly repercussions of a collapsing buck, I would rather be "early" than financially flattened.
By the way, any comparisons that relate to reported US GDP represent a useless exercise, given the shameful manipulation of that number. Only the U.S. plays silly games with "hedonic" pricing and if one strips that blatant "shell game" out, U.S. GDP has been falling for many moons.
Best, Earlie |
