Excellent questions given the western media onslaught of the message that the world goes into a tailspin if the US slows consumption.
When the western world industrialized they didn't really have a massive 3rd world consumption engine to fuel their economies. They thrived on internal consumption and inter trade between rich nations.
Who's to say the developing world, which has many multiples of that population base to draw from, can't do the same thing.
They are flush with cash reserves, and have seen how western nations just print money to keep expanding when necessary. In fact many of their leaders, in every area, have been educated in the west and are more than familiar with these strategies.
I'm not saying there can't be a prolonged correction in the commodity sector, but I often wonder about the accuracy of the western media's preoccupation with the message that the US is the only global financial growth engine.
The industrialization, modernization, technology usage, massive cash hoards and western financial tools available to the "3rd world" may surprise those of us who simply eat up the poorly thought out financial theories of the western financial propagandists.
The third world now has the leverage of cheap information technology. They aren't starting where we were 20+ years ago paying $15,000 for an 8088 processor pc with a 10Mb hard drive and 640K of RAM. Not only that they are the ones producing it.
At some point the US is going to have to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars tearing down other nations, and get focused on bringing their near 3rd world highways, electrical grid, sewer systems, bridges, airports, railways, public transportation, schools and other infrastructure up to modern day standards.
Look around the world from outside the goldfish bowl that western media has built for us. We, the average western citizen that is, know far less about the rest of the world than they know about us.
Why would China, India, Brazil, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Middle East, Eastern Europe(with their new influx of Euros from their membership acceptance) etc just roll over and die if the US fails?
Would they not increase trade between themselves using their own currencies instead of the $US? Would they not use their cash surpluses, populations, technology and western financial strategies to keep growing, develop their infrastructures and try to surpass the western nations who have in past centuries been less than kind to them?
I don't know the answers, but I see almost no discussion of these issues in our media. We are still focused inwardly in our media coverage, while the rest of the world is peering into our goldfish bowl. They speak our language and we don't speak theirs. Isn't that a huge advantage to them in itself?
The inward American media coverage is focused on warning us of external threats and the need to militarize even more. Most of their on air hours are spent trying to divide the population into republicans and democrats apparently impervious to the failings of both groups. How is this good for America?
The media is pretty much another arm of government these days, and that government (pick a party over the last 15 or so years) has teamed up with large corporations to focus the wealth into the hands of a very small group, ship jobs and manufacturing capacity overseas. That government has failed to regulate business at the behest of the corporate lobby. It's allowed rampant mortgage, real estate assement and mortgage application fraud, failed to regulate the derivatives market which has put the banks in the hole they now face. In short, it seems that the government failed to govern, but instead enabled the looting of the American dream.
Sure both parties are selling "change" in this election cycle, but you have to be a Kool Aid drinker to fall for that.
The media has America rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan while infrastructure at home is crumbling. So should we really believe them when they say that a slowdown in America is going to destroy the global economy?
On this anniversary of the tradegy in New York, I am reminded of the President's forthcoming message "Go out and shop".
I believe that it is time to search the world for international views, views from the "3rd world". I'm done with listening to the talking media/corporate/government heads from the US and the UK. Well not fully, a smattering of them is pretty good contrary info imo.
Especially formerly economic numbers that have since become politial numbers... CPI, GDP, employment numbers, energy inventories etc. Ever wonder why dems never question these numbers when the repubs are in power and vice versa? Think about that one. |
