Hi J! Your big picture as Elmat sees it:
(a) The US will still, due to its debt powered locomotive role, remain the consumption capital of the world, and forced to remain there until its balance sheet is totally ruined and its boomer retirement completely cancelled by the fact that all the world will competitively devalue against the USD and cycle back the trade dollars with gusto, buying assets and liabilities, collecting returns off the backs of retirees wannabies working 60 hour weeks;
ELMAT:
With resources and technology but no money, the US will be forced to push for markets for their goods and seek rent for their big companies. Armed Forces officers, like executives of big corporation nearing retirement, will try a last go to the money bag to make a decent retirement, acting like Enron, WorldCom, Xerox and other disasters, only, in the later case, extorting tax payer money by working out the masses of J6P, case in point the USD75 billion extorted right now in the "peace export" to Iraq.
(b) The US will export soldiers to keep the peace until overwhelming exhaustion;
ELMAT:
Peace -exported by the US- is just being delivered into Iraq. A backlash against the "peace loving" Americans builds up, as many people in the world, more so the developing world, will suspect Americans. Danger: politicians seeking office in those countries will try to extricate themselves from the US, playing on anti-American feelings of the masses.
(c) Japan will continue to bleed productive capital and passive wealth, supported by old folks’ bank accounts and domestic companies looking for a globalization edge, via outward bound foreign direct investment, depreciation, devaluation, and portfolio flight;
ELMAT:
And no word about the banks that needs to be sanitized, presently they are trying not to be nationalized? Japan will slowly go back to the irrelevancy where it came from.
(d) China will continue to aggregate capital, invest in infrastructure, do structural reform, and build factories, until all productively employed at better than current domestic pay rate but lower than international compensation scale;
ELMAT:
China will continue to manufacture anything, and furiously build infrastructure, to keep the millions fired by state owned enterprises and leaving rural areas employed. The success of this strategy will avoid unrest with a resulting balkanization of the country with a few regional side effects
(e) Arabia will continue to export oil, until conflagration, technological obsolescence, or exhaustion;
ELMAT: Saudi Arabia will continue to export oil and being the milk cow for the US which acts as their hired gun. That until the three brothers of the house of Saudi die and a fight for replacement ensues.
(f) Russia will continue to act as a counter-balancing stick in a uni-polar world, either recover fully or break up completely;
ELMAT:
Will acquire some civilized way of doing business to attract capital to dig out natural resources, a la Canada and Australia, mainly oil, as the UDS67 billion of BP poured in there. North Sea oil sources now depleted, plus, "peace" exported from the US to the Middle East, will force oil sources' diversification. A pipeline to China, in particular, and to Asia in general is in the cards already/
(g) Europe will continue to enjoy its 35 hour work week, olive groves, ski chalets, out door cafes, and immigrant cheap labour, supported by a world printing plenty of cash, thus allowing socialism to thrive;
ELMAT:
De-industrialization and hollow up of European companies will continue at a fast pace as China employs cheap labour rendering industry irrelevant in Europe. The German banks' crisis, will further erode Germany economic which. In summary, Europe will be 'Swedishized'. I.e., Swedish recipe of socialism to protect the poor, but slid down from the third income per capita to 10th today. Europe's enlargement will cushion Europe slide down into irrelevancy.
(h) Latin America will continue to live from financial crisis to political emergencies, supported by occasional capital injection by global banks;
ELMAT:
It reads like SE Asia in the last 10 years. Lat time I checked Brazil was the third destination of Foreign Direct Investment after China, US. And, alone, it is the 10th economy in the world.
(i) Africa? Simply not clear; and
ELMAT:
Very clear for me. Europe, enlargement complete in a couple of years, will seek a genteelly disguised re-colonization to achieve: market for industry beaten up by Chinese, seek support under the new US policy of "peace export" and avoid "peace imported" from the US.
(j) Australia/Canada will continue to dig and live off the bounty that nature provided.
ELMAT:
Canada? Australia? Let me know the combined GNP of both countries. Population is only 45 million. Oh, let me know in which street is those two countries are, Jay? Translation totally irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. |
