America's Economic Prospects for the Longer Term

No one wants to hear the bad news. Everyone puts their head in the sands and waits for the stampede to pass. This time it won't be like that. The process of adjustment for America will be slow and arduous as it has been for countries in the Far East. We once called these countries the economic tigers of Asia. Suddenly, they became devalued and we saw goods appearing on our shelves some 25 to 50 percent lower in cost than before. America went crazy with imports and the goods from Asia flowed in like a dam burst of the ice age. Now, its America's turn. Few would recall that the Asian crisis was a result of firms in Asia locking on to the dollar and borrowing until the cows came home.

What they did not expect then was a sudden uplift in the US dollar that would raise the cost of their borrowing repayment stream. Does anyone think that the low interest charges of the present approach to the credit crisis in America will not lead to further misery down the road. Oh please think again because you have not thought it through. Ask yourself what will happen when the interest rates go up and what will happen when the US dollar appreciates. Then act wisely and cautiously in this mad world of floating exchange rates. Act so that you will not be burned yet again by a failed strategy.

America's Failed Economic and Political Policies

Economic policies of the United States over the years of the Bush administration threaten to push the world economy into severe recession and damage prospects for solution to many of the world's energy problems. Why be optimistic about the prospects for solving the world environmental crises when the United States, which should be leading the world forward, has made such a wonderous mess of things? Most disasterous of all is the way the unfair distribution of incomes has hit intelligent and willing people who are in need of resources to participate more effectively in the modern economic age.

There was a time when the Euro was weaker than the US dollar. The fact that the exchange value of the Euro has reached 1.5 should set off alarm bells that America's economic policies come from the scrap heap of economic thought. The current policies threaten stability in the world economy with a return to the beggar thy neighbour approach to macro economics of the depression era. What we are really talking about is the prospect that American economic policies are pushing the world economy towards a major depression. This is not depression by default, but an engineered depression by design. If one examines the record of the Bush administration with its focus on oil economics and politics that have thrown many progressive countries of the Middle East into an economic wasteland, one has to wonder whether the President and his men read at all. Its no excuse that other economic forces overtook the administrations policies. Its more accurate to say that the policies were deeply flawed from the get go. Lets be honest. The economic record of the past half decade has not been anything like it could have been. Bush's people have failed on science, religion, energy policy, Middle-East politics, housing, disaster recovery, interest rates and genuine home ownership instead of speculative rental ownership, inflation, genetic engineering, the search for alternative energy sources. How can anyone support such a failure of application of policy?

What is American doing now other than implementing beggar thy neighbour economics at the expense of Europe? Have these people lost their senses? Or, have they lost their sense of direction? Is policy now just a mishmash of old ideas from failed individuals, but rich ones working for their own selfish interests. Where are the genuine American statesmen?