US Living On Borrowed Time - And Money

I stole that title from Asia Times Online. It really says it all and this article explains it all.

Can US wait for a new, intelligent president? If you've ever over-extended your credit cards and tried to catch up, you know how painful it can be. This is exactly where the US economy is sitting now and pay-back can be a bitch. This is just a train wreck waiting to happen.

In 1987, Yale historian Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which he argued that "military overstretch" - where conquering nations engaged in more foreign military adventures than their economic resources could support - led to the eventual decline and fall of empires.

So far, the US attempt at dominion that commenced in 2001 has not been threatened in this manner because, in essence, the nation has been able to borrow the costs simultaneously to maintain both its new empire and its avaricious middle-class consumerist lifestyle.

But the times, they are a-changing. Buried deep in the arcanum of some recently released economic statistics are indications that the world is tiring of its role as America's charge card.

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