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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (302626)	4/25/2009 8:34:54 AM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793965

To what you are saying, add this - "Spengler" on our economic competition with China: China's thrift, industry and diligence are qualities born of long experience with hard times. The terrible suffering of the 19th and 20th centuries left every Chinese parent with the conviction that the world shows no mercy to mediocrity. They have less tolerance for fantasy than their Western counterparts. Reality has intruded on their lives for generations to the point that they are ready to meet it head on. Enough of them devote their lives to making their children excel as to produce an army of hothouse wonders so large as to swamp whatever competition the West might send against them. If Westerners think the present recession is unpleasant, they cannot begin to imagine how the recovery will look, for it may occur entirely remote to them, on the other side of the world. Message 25585429 Many things in life are cyclical - and I'm afraid we may be completing a great cycle of prosperity and success. Americans worked very hard, for many generations, and the nation succeeded - more than any other in history. As the result of our great standing in the world, our currency became the "new gold" - it was accepted as the reserve currency by banks of other nations. At some point we started running deficits. We accepted goods from other nations, and in return they received more and more of our interest bearing IOU's. Over time, we became increasingly (and probably irrationally) overconfident -- the standard rationalization was that ultimately our economy will grow so big that our debt will be made irrelevant. That did not happen, and probably never will - because our competitors kept learning, developing and growing - financed in large part by us. I seem to perceive a certain panicky quality in this latest wave of socialistic fantasies which we are witnessing - as if, "Let's do it right now, ASAP! - before things begin unraveling for real".