Starkers

Buttonwood contends that the US ecomony is Starkers. She contends that the flucuations in the US Dollar over the past week with the release of various US Treasury shows that the foundations are not very secure.

The fact is that the markets are hyper-sensitive to these figures, and analysts pore over them like Kremlinologists. The fear that central banks are contemplating industrial action against the dollar—and the collective sigh of relief when it seems they are not—is part of a broader unease about the nature and solidity of America’s economic growth. Based, as it is, on mammoth consumption by both the private and public sectors—ie, on big trade and fiscal deficits—it needs foreigners willing to suspend disbelief and buy shiploads of securities denominated in a currency that has steadily lost value for about 40 years.

So far, the foreigners—mainly Asians plus a few outliers, including Russia and Brazil—have obliged, permitting America to scoop up 75% of the world's surplus savings. Together, Asian central banks have accumulated about $2.5 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, up almost a quarter in little more than a year, most of it in dollars; Japan and China alone have reserves of nearly $1.5 trillion between them.

Emphasis Mine

75% of the world's surplus savings is going to the USA to allow them to spend like there is no tomorrow. This is money that should be invested to develop the economies of the home countries. People are being starved so that the Americans can get fatter.

In many ways, the USA is behaving in similar to Athens on the eve of The Pelopennesian War in that:

• they are living off the tribute of their allies;
• they are fighting a war to install democracy in the Middle East;
• they are living off the glory of defeating a great empire from the east;
• their navy rules the waves;
• they are dependent on imports from overseas;
• they have pissed off everyone else.

Now the Athenians did not have thermonuclear weapons. The US has demonstrated that it has no compunction against using them on civilians.

May you live in interesting times or

It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time that be a man in a chaotic period.

I disagree: it is better to be a man than a dog no matter what the times.