American Political Meltdown, The Road to Poverty

UPDATE V: "What if WikiLeaks got hold of a cable from China’s embassy in Washington? Here’s some of the “good news” that may have been sent home to Beijing." Read The New York Times, From WikiChina.


UPDATE IV: For another prediction -- "[t]here is very little likelihood the political class as currently constituted will address the looming fiscal disaster soon" -- and an explanation why, read The New York Times, Sin and Taxes.

Time to batten down the hatches?


UPDATE III: Be careful what you wish for . . . Read the Washington Post, Can business afford Jim DeMint?


UPDATE II: Does "the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis"? Read The New York Times, Blaming China Won’t Help the Economy.

The article concludes that America's political polarization and "nostalgic rerun of the experiment in market fundamentalism" may cause it "to ignore the global reinvention of capitalism. . . This would not prevent the rest of the world from changing course.

Rather, it would make it likely that the newly dominant economic model will not be a product of democratic capitalism, based on Western values and American leadership. Instead, it will be an authoritarian state-led capitalism inspired by Asian values. If America opts, for the first time in history, for nostalgia and ideology instead of pragmatism and progress, then the new model of capitalism will probably be made in China, like so much else in the world these days. "


UPDATE: Don't take may word for it, get "a good look at how the Chinese view us Americans" from someone who recently visited China. Read The New York Times, Too Many Hamburgers?

Some say the China model, also known as the Beijing Consensus or authoritarian economics, is the future, not "our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class [that is] more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country."

Have we lost that "'can-do,' 'get-it-done,' 'everyone-pull-together,' 'whatever-it-takes' attitude that built our highways, dams and put a man on the moon."

Political polarization and paralysis -- "the way wealthy nations become poor." Read the Washington Post, So goes the center, so goes the economy.

And China laughs all the way to the bank.