IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

[dkf]

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.



http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?link=MW_home_latest_news

[rurallib]

1. among others, we have America's corporations for this

to a great degree. Thank you especially, Walmart!

[dkf]

6. The scary thing is looking forward...

What will a world economically dominated by China look like...

From the piece above:

Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. “The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”

[jwirr]

24. And yet yesterday there was a post talking about a economic alliance

between Japan, China and South Korea. This bothers me some but again I think this is a forecast that does not consider oil depletion or global warming. China is setting themselves up for a big fall by modernizing their economy to fit the global market place if these two events continue to impact the world. We set ourselves up years ago.

[malaise]

2. Don't forget to thank Nixon

the quintessential ReTHUG in name and nature.



sp., add link

[Arctic Dave]

3. Thank you "free trade".

Suicide by greed.

[Lorien]

14. And endless wars. nt

[dtotire]

4. Terrible thing to contemplate

But it is inevitable, if we fail to invest in education, infrastructure, etc., and have a more equitable distribution of income, with higher taxes on the wealthy.

[dkf]

8. I don't see how that will fix things.

Its too late. They are way more agile that we are.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

19. Always been a numbers game, IMO. The ultra-wealthy are just stealing the goods on their way out.

Seriously, I always figured that within my lifetime (I was born in the '60s) that the U.S.'s days were numbered as the dominate world power, if we ever actually were. All empires fade, some over time, some in flames. But they all have faded.

Add to that the fact that other countries - such as China and India - have been growing in population at a much faster rate than the U.S. From my reading, another indicator of a country hitting the wall is a leveling or decrease in the number of children per family/couple in successive generations.

But it seems to me that the ultra-wealthy saw this coming (or manipulated it, in part) about 30 years ago and started to manipulate the income toward them (Reaganomics). Then in the first decade of the 2000s, it was Reaganomics on steroids, where it became time to forget doing it in secret, it became time to grab the good china and silver on the way out the door, leaving the house in rubble. That's were I think we are now.

But they aren't leaving the country. And I thought some would. But we as a country a still too distracted to really assess what has happened the past 30 years. If - and a really big if - we ever wake up, it will be pitchforks and torches for the ultra-wealthy who don't flee, I believe. But I don't think we'll ever wake up.

[devils chaplain]

5. "Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s."

Pretty incredible. But it's all inevitable. We don't have the population numbers (thankfully) that they do.

[Mulhane]

25. But what's to prevent....

....China and others to simply buy up vast tracts of our land and export their excess population over here? Then we'll really be dropped to Third World status. Don't want to work for slave wages like your
more industrious new consumers? Go and die in the littered, diseased streets.

[BOG PERSON]

7. is this bad news to anybody except US nationalists?

[dkf]

9. I don't know how we will support all this extra deficit spending if the dollar isn't the dominant

currency.

Will the rest of the world want our treasuries?

[BOG PERSON]

11. i guess we could export enough stuff to make up the difference

i hear that's what countries with industrial capacity do in such situations

[Atypical Liberal]

26. Possibly.

Do you want terms dictated to you by wealthy US interests or wealthy Chinese interests?

[buddysmellgood]

10. When China ramps up military spending, we will be in serious trouble.

[Thunderstruck]

12. So, when is the IMF a credible source around here? I was laughed

at for sourcing an IMF document the other day that explained http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=936903&mesg_id=937472">why oil and gas prices are so high.

So, which is it? Is IMF a credible source or isn't it? And if it isn't, should any of us be allowed to use IMF as a source of information?

[Xenotime]

13. It's about damn time. It's selfish for anyone to think the US could continue to lead.

[cherokeeprogressive]

15. Yay!!!!

er, I think...

Hey I'm just trying to be one of the crowd. The DU crowd that is.

[Electric Monk]

16. You seem to be the only one cheering this. Which crowd are you trying to be part of, again?

The one in your head?

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Which means...

..precisely nothing.

[Octafish]

18. Thank Bush!

Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who’s Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

[Turbineguy]

20. It would be somehow fitting

if Trump were President in that case.

[OHdem10]

21. Thank Conservative Economic Fundamentalism(FREE MARKET)

put in place by Reagan to Bush, with not much push
back from the Democratic Party. Thank the Republicans
on the Hill who marched lock step with their Presidents
and Democrats on the Hill who often voted with them.

The scary thing is no one is ready to admit the mistakes
so we fall deeper and deeper.

[SoCalDem]

22. Perhaps if Americans fell out of love with cheap plastic chinese crap

and restarted manufacturing here before the inevitable, it might not BE inevitable..

and who needs to be number one anyway..can't number two or three enjoy a comfortable existence?

[Saboburns]

23. Good for China

Not bad for America.