Quote:
Originally Posted by alansmithee
That isolationism that you so easily dismiss is what gave the economic foundation for us to be able to enter into the cold war, and also have a dominant production base to turn the tide in WWII. There is no loss in economic power and growth. An isolationist government in no way stops private corporations from doing business abroad. In some ways, it would make investing in US companies more attractive, if many other markets were rendered less stable due to the lack of US protection. Alot of borderline cases become much less attractive for investing when people start realizing that the US won't bail them out. And isolationism does not mean we would not look out for our interests, it means that we would look out ONLY for our interests. Unless there was a direct threat to the US (and not some corporations's interests), we would not get involved. No humanitarian aid, no regime change, no ally defense, nothing. Of the countries you name, only China has any real shot at becoming a superpower in the near (50 years or so) future.
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alansmithee, your comments harken back to a time when the US was self sufficient in meeting it's energy consumption....with a surplus that was exported....and was self sufficient via it's industrial and manufacturing base.
There was no requirment to attract foreign funding of nearly $600 billion in annual US treasury debt accumulation, or to finance the current $800 billion trade deficit. There was no reliance on Japan to print truckloads of yen out of thin air, to purchase the US dollars taken in by Japanese exporters, for the purpose of Japanese government purchase of the US treasury debt, with the dollars traded in Japan, for yen printed out of thin air.
IMO, countries like Japan, the US, and China, must engage in a charade of propping up each other's worthless fiat paper currencies, to continue to purchase needed "real wealth".....i.e., the commodities and raw materials produced by Russia, Canada, Nigeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al.
The economic system that we live in is "propped up" by the threat of US military action, if the paper currency in exchange for petroleum and other raw materials, "scam", is threatened or interrupted, in any way.
The US has nothing to offer that the rest of the world wants....to the degree that would actually support a non-paper money scam that allows the US to continue to use 25 percent of the world's daily petroleum production, or to show, "on paper", a $13,000 billion, annual GDP.
The paper money "prop up" that we demand and now require....will collapse, and the US will be required by the petroleum and raw material rich countries, to procure those commodities with "hard money", or with 100 times the amount of nearly worthless paper money that is accepted in trade, now.
There will be misery here in the US, but is it fair to impose the current "system"....of the "have nots" printing money out of thin air, to purchase and deplete the irreplaceable "real wealth" of other nations, peopled by folks who will have nothing but nearly worthless fiat paper, when this system collapses, under it's own shear weight?