The end of the Pax Americana? Doomsdayers Speak Out

Date:	Tue, Sep 29, 2009

The financial meltdown was the beginning of the end for USA #1. As reported Chemical & Engineering News, at the Detroit Economics Club, GE CEO Jeff Immelt lamented the the country's reliance on the service sector. " Many bought into the idea that the country could go from a technology based, export driven powerhouse to a services led, consumption based economy and still prosper. "That idea is just flat wrong", he said. "There's something wrong when a mortgage broker banker is making $5 million a year and a PhD chemist earning $100,000. "

In the same issue of Chemical & Engineering News there were articles about Vanishing Chemical Plants in the U.S. as Dow and DuPont pull up stakes here and move to China and ads for a seminar to discuss Outsourcing to Asia and Outsourcing of drug discovery including lead discovery by Big Pharma. We've become a marketing and distribution, Walmart economy. How will we have create real jobs for all Americans and a USA economy that benefits all Americans and not just the top oligarchs.

Prof Peter Morici, University of Maryland, Economics Professor talked about this on his appearance on CSpan. See Peter Morici, University of Maryland, Economics Professor, discusses the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA, and the status of the U.S. economy.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/09/27/WJE/A/23655/Peter+Morici+University+of+Maryland+Economics+Professor.aspx

This economist was very negative about the short and long term prospects of the U.S. economy... that this will be a jobless recovery with 6 job seekers for every job available and that the U.S. economy has permanently contracted. Free trade doesn't work with China. We need to replace jobs lost due to imports with jobs due to exports but China does not buy anything from us. This has been going on for a long time under misguided policies under Clinton, Bush and now Obama.
US companies are seeing better opportunities abroad than in USA. We are not likely to see export job growth under Obama. Very pessimistic.
Obama has the chance to end our Cold War hangover, and start an era where the U.S. is not the sole global policeman. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/29/obama_pax_americana/index.html
Interestingly, this article ties together our disastrous unilateral free trade policies, which have gifted entire industries to our trading partners, to our world policeman role which impoverishes us while our "allies" get their security on the cheap.

Will America wake up in time to realize how broke she is and realize you can't spend as much on defense, as everyone else combined, when you are hugely in debt to the people you are defending? (just ask Britian how that worked out for them after WW2)..(as well we the over 200 body bags coming home from Afghanistan this year alone).