America has lost the future : Clyde Prestowitz

The current political and cultural polarization of USA was seen as probably worse today than at any time since the outbreak of the Civil War exactly 150 years ago. The geography of this polarization is also similar to that of the Civil War period and the issue of a powerful federal government versus states' rights remains pretty much the same.

The polarization today is being propagated by wealthy and powerful elements on Wall Street and elsewhere that fund bitter, attack dog politics and sharply polarized media commentary.

The power of big financial and corporate lobbies is such that they overwhelm reform efforts with huge lobbying campaigns. The effort to regulate the banks and establish accountability for them has failed to a large extent. The Dodd/Frank law that is supposed to re-regulate the banks fails badly because the reform of the banks to date has involved actually making them bigger and fewer. The biggest 50-odd institutions are being designated as too big too fail, but are not being subjected to any rigorous or vigorous oversight and regulation.



But it gets worse. Americans are far too indebted and are trying to repair their personal balance sheets and cutting consumption to pay down debt. But this is retarding recovery and forcing the government to spend more in order to keep some kind of growth going and unemployment falling. To avoid falling back into recession, the government spending will have to continue for quite some time. But this will exacerbate the U.S. trade and current account deficits and increase overseas dollar holdings.

The rest of the world is pretty strongly dedicated to export-led growth. The Germans are forcing the rest of Europe to deflate and the only way for Europe to get any growth is through exports. China says it wants to rebalance its trade and focus more on domestic consumption led growth. It's nice that China wants to do this, but it will be extremely difficult if not impossible in practice for China actually to reverse its export led policies.

The result is likely to be a continued shift of the production of tradable goods and the provision of tradable services outside of the United States to off-shore locations.

These trends will see a continued erosion of America's ability to provide a good, middle class standard of living at home and to extend security abroad.

The really smart people have already put their wealth in gold bars and moved to New Zealand.

Clyde Prestowitz in Foreign Policy. More Here

The fall of America

Consider that the last time the United States won a major war was 1945 - Korea was a stalemate, Vietnam a defeat; the first Gulf War failed to topple Saddam Hussein; Afghanistan and Iraq have become prolonged quagmires. Total victory has become alien to us.

A small example of how far we have fallen, how pampered and coddled we have become, was the decision by the NFL this week to postpone the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings in Philadelphia. Football players are supposed to be the closest thing Americans have to modern Roman gladiators. The game exemplifies the rugged individualism and grit at the heart of the American character. The reason for the delay: Philadelphia was expecting 11 inches of snow. By comparison with historical Northeast winters, this was a minor storm - something previous generations simply shoveled and plowed through as they got on with their daily lives.

If 11 inches of snow brings America’s gladiators to a halt, it is clear we have lost our resilience.
This is evident, too, in the kinds of leaders we elect. Conventional wisdom holds that Mr. Obama is the antithesis of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama is a liberal Democrat. Mr. Bush was a conservative Republican. Mr. Obama is a cosmopolitan internationalist, while Mr. Bush was a unilateralist cowboy. In fact, they have much more in common than either the left or the right would like to admit. Mr. Obama is simply continuing -and intensifying - many of the disastrous Bush policies.

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche claimed “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s point was that the loss of faith would constitute our civilization’s seminal cultural reality. The passing of the Christian West signifies the end not only of a worldview, but of a character type - one based on honor, family, self-help, blood-and-soil patriotism, personal responsibility and a God-centered moral order. Self-indulgence and self-expression have filled the vacuum. Life is no longer about sacrifice and duty; it’s about maximizing pleasure and self-fulfillment.

Most Americans can no longer endure pain. This is why unemployment benefits keep being extended. This is why nearly every industry is “too big to fail.” It is the inevitable consequence of statism: the transformation of freeborn and productive citizens into de facto serfs who look to Uncle Sam for handouts. Decades of liberalism have led to the servile state.

In the 2000s, as we became soft, self-indulgent and mired in foreign interventions, a new great power emerged: an ultranationalist China. During the past decade, Beijing became the world’s No. 1 manufacturer and automaker, premier exporting nation and No. 2 economy. China is engaged in a massive military buildup and menaces its neighbors. It owns much of our public debt. It is to America what we once were to Great Britain: the rising force in the world.

All civilizations rise and fall. Ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, medieval Europe, the great Italian city-states, the Ottoman Empire, the vast European empires - the past is littered with the corpses of once unparalleled and dominant powers that are now a distant memory. So too has America passed its zenith.

Jeffrey T Kuhner in The WashingtonTimes. More Here.