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"Business week quoted one unnamed lawyer from Davos as sniffing words to the effect that “No-one is discussing the United States anymore”"

Unfortunately, he's exactly right. No one - from the layman on the streets of a European city to the businessman in Asia - is talking about the United States. Everyone is doing business here, or doing business with someone who's doing business with yadda yadda to the degree that they are dependent on the American market, but as we have seen for so long the "soft power" of impressions sells. It generates business. It generates investment. It generates long-term plans.

And this is a power we have lost. Flat-out. It may be sniffed about in Davos and smuggly written about by gold peddlers on Yahoo, but it is accepted, absolute fact throughout Asia, and that certainty has already gained a foothold virtually everywhere else and is growing by the day. I have read interviews with businessmen who should know better but don't. The promise and promises of China (and, more and more, India) are shifting planning, not just for today but for the future. China is already an economic superpower in the minds of many today simply because they believe it will be in the future, and it is increasingly treated as though that future status already exists. This has been a relatively quick change. Things were rather different just four or so years ago.

This is one area the U.S. has not adapted, and the current administration has failed absolutely miserably.

Thoughtful commentary, you've written. I'll bite.

One thing not factored into your equasion (among many) is that there exists no country in the US, like the US -- with its laws and flaws, it is still rooted in the finest example of what every country could become, but immediately will not and due to existing circumstances within their own countries.

Currently, Americans ARE waking up. More and more parents are demanding a better education for their children. More people are realizing that private savings is BETTER than "consuming". Although the Asian Tigers outrank the US in private savings -- those private savings are fueled, by government hand, into a centralized form of trade and commerce. We've already witnessed what happens (Russia). Dittos, India -- although India has more "leeway" in re private industry than does China.

These problems in those countries are not at all going to change overnight, or for a long time in the foreseeable future.

As crass and cold as it may appear, as more "seniors" begin hitting the wall, the "Soros-euthanazia" movement begins to grimly reap, IME. More people will choose a non-medicalized "life-sentence" to a life which involves living at the doctor's offices and being a human guinea pig.

In sum, there is an equilibrium point already built in between "left" and "right" in America, by my estimates.

As far as exports/imports -- China will take babysteps in opening their isolationist door to receiving imports from the US -- this will take time.

As the left continues to hammer, grovel, rhapsodize over "global warming" -- alongside many manufacturing plants being outsourced to countries with loose "environmental standards" -- more of the US workforce will be needed "abroad" to deal with many of the resulting effects of the leftist "agenda" built, erected, established, proselytized, activized in many other countries.

I watch the federal deficit; but not as a figure separate from all else going on. We are in a newer age. Given the cultural gaps which exist as a primary element in other countries, the US with its grace and support of "the invisible hand" will continue to lead.

I say, let the lefties continue to "bring it all down". In so doing, do they strengthen the economic US hand.

Yes, it's cold to say this.

However, for the millions of people in the US who do not comprehend "ECONOMICS" -- they will assuredly fall prey to a libbie huckster ranting about social justice, and therefore be as "useful idiots" and through THEIR own choice. Dittos, application to the civilians in other countries.

I am not as frightened nor as overly worried over the trade deficit, at moment, as some are. There are countries who really still do "owe" the US due "forgiven/blinked debt" -- are such debts ever really forgiven? No.

One problem I wonder about: Mid-east. Basically their only export IS oil. What happens when the cartel is no longer "ruling the roost"?

I believe we will see a fluorishing in the economies of most all countries. Countries which have only single or maybe even double-digit export items in trade will wish to do MORE trade with countries which have multiple exports.

Frankly, some countries will always be in deficit purely due resources, or lack thereof. I look at the countries, currently, to whom is being outsourced "technologic capital". In a sense, this is not a bad thing given that most of these countries do not have a solidified or able agricultural ability. There are days I look at Russia -- with large parts simply unhabitable by humans, and think what types of industry are best suited for those areas within that country as a trade item. Well... weapons, and weapons testing, for one, might be an answer. How about oil? And Oil drilling? The temps in those areas are fairly predictable.

Throughout history, yes, economic pinnacles of stress have occurred. I don't forget the great depression; my parents both grew up during the depression. And what they learned left its mark upon me.

I do not for one second believe that "money" will be minted -- in order to produce an "strong" inflation base.

As corruption and the axis of "evil" is weeded out of the "global" system, more *real* money is freed up, and therefore accountable, and therefore recognizable as an assessment tool; not just by companies but by countries.

My belief is -- the money IS real and existent already within the global market economy -- but hidden from view due too many year's corruption.

En sum, I am far more optimistic, possibly, than you. Is it a gamble? YES. I do most certainly concur with you.

What matters in the US, IMHO, is keeping the "adults" in charge. Democrats and liberals have clearly shown their inabilities or rather, disability, in behaving as adults.

The elections, here in the US, are what is critical. Whom we elect. And continue to elect. If the population elects liberal Democrats, then assuredly, the doomsday scenario will playout in the standard con-game name of "social justice".

However, leaders in business and in governments around the world KNOW their economies are tied to the US -- and should the US fall, they fall with her.

Although, yes, there is much which can be worried about, by my own eyes, do I see solid and decent adults rising to the potential crisis which can be on the "global scene" and making steps to remedy this runaway horse called "blather" (for lack of better coinage) being spouted by people and persons who aid and abet a world collapse.

While the United States has long been accustomed to being the 800-pound economic gorilla, it seems that the times really are changing. From the burgeoning federal budget deficit, to the trade deficits with the Middle East and China; from the apparent hollowing out of our manufacturing capacity, to the problems of oursourcing; from the aging of the US workforce to the high US tax rate. All of these trends promise to exert powerful influences on the US, for good or for ill.

The US remains the 800-lb gorilla -- not least because the metaphor hasn't changed to the metric system. :') Trade deficits with China and the Middle East? The entire non-petroleum exports of all the Middle East OPEC nations combined do not equal Finland's (per P.J. O'Rourke, writing a few years ago). The Chinese economy is dependent on petroleum imports, and expansion can't continue (nor can its labor cost advantage) without China's doing something about it. It even appears plausible that the common ground between China and the US will be a unified front against OPEC, a sort of cooperative foreign and economic policy toward that cartel, and also as if that had been the intention all along.

And if the Chinese act up, and try to make a military move the US doesn't like, the plug gets pulled, and suddenly the Dollar Tree doesn't have any inventory.