Usama bin Ladin and USA's Credit Bubble

At Tomgram: Auerback, a tour of economic disaster, 2005-style, there is a worrying analysis that the US economy is very vulnerable to the bursting the credit bubble.

The scale of the problem is given is the following quote:

According to the economist Andre Gunder Frank, "All Uncle Sam's debt, including private household consumer credit-card, mortgage etc. debt of about $10 trillion, plus corporate and financial, with options, derivatives and the like, and state and local government debt comes to an unvisualizable, indeed unimaginable, $37 trillion, which is nearly four times Uncle Sam's GDP [gross domestic product]."

This indebtedness is sustained as follows:

China, Japan, and other major foreign creditors are believed willing to sustain the status quo because their own industrial output and employment levels are thought to be worth more to them than risking the implosion of their most important consumer market, but that, of course, assumes levels of rationality not necessarily found in any global system in a moment of crisis.

What is missing from this analysis is the threat by Usama bin Ladin to the US financial system as described in "Imperial Hubris" by Anonymous (Brassey's, Inc. USA:2004) on p.100-102. Anonymous believes that the focus of the Al Qaeda strategy is the US economy and that a slow bleeding of the US ecomony is needed to win the war against the USA.

It would appear that the liberal edge of the Australian ruling may be preparing itself for the eventual implosion of the US ecomony (either through its own weight or through the machinations of Al Qaeda) by moving the centre of gravity of the Australian economy away from the USA towards Asia especially Japan and China. This is my understanding of the theme behind Paul Sheehan's article in the All aboard the big red juggernaut (Free subscription required).

The US ruling class will not take kindly to the loss of economic power while it has control of the premier military power. The inreasing gap between ecomonic power and military power means that the US must expend that military power to maintain its ecomonic position.