Niall Ferguson: Decline of the USA and the Rise of Asian Economies
Ferguson: Chinese economic growth has been almost 10% but more importantly China's consumer growth has been even higher.
[Editor's Note - America's "recovery" if that is what you want to call it is not consumer friendly, it is not investor friendly, it is not production friendly which means it is just not business friendly unless of course that business is well-connected to government, but even that is not a guarantee when one looks at Solyndra and these other "green jobs" boondoggles that have proved to be a colossal waste of money with the only people who benefitted were those who were politically connected who paid themselves ridiculously.
China and even Canada's recovery has been more consumer and risk taker friendly. China has no capital gains tax and they are still bringing in revenue in a big way which is another indicator of the utter brokenness of our gargantuan tax code.
I disagree with Ferguson that we need to weaken our dollar even further, quite frankly enough is enough. We have weakened it plenty and we have not seen the desired/theoretical increase in manufacturing exports. Why? Confidence in America, its leadership, and as a place to do business cannot recover while we are trashing the dollar. Of course this interview was done in June 2010 so perhaps Ferguson has moderated his view on this by now. There are other reasons the consumer and the risk taker have lost confidence besides the deliberate trashing of the dollar, but it is a significant reason nonetheless.
Ferguson correctly states that what is bigger than our current economic problem is the lack of those in power to deal with our unsustainable fiscal path. The Paul Krugman/leftist idea of trillion dollar deficits for the next 70 years is ridiculous because those who by our bonds will just stop loaning us the money. The TEA Party zeal to tackle this problem combined with the genius of those like Paul Ryan/Mitch Daniels/Herman Cain etc may yet save America.]
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