US 'will lose financial superpower status'

[bigbadwolf]

US ‘will lose financial superpower status’

In the FT:

The US is poised to lose its role as a global financial "superpower" in the wake of the financial crisis, Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, said on Thursday as he called for a regulatory crackdown on financial markets.


"The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system. This world will become multipolar" with the emergence of stronger, better capitalised centres in Asia and Europe, Mr Steinbrück told the German parliament.

"The world will never be the same again."

...

The US belief in "laisser-faire capitalism; the notion that markets should be as free as possible from regulation; these arguments were wrong and dangerous," he said. "This largely under-regulated system is collapsing today."

Yes, well, the loss of this status has been on the cards for a while. Post-WW2 dollar hegemony is at an end. Bye-bye also to the neoliberalism of the last thirty years, the "Washington Consensus," and the daft ideas of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand.

 

[charlesdwright]

yawn.

rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

people never fail to understimated liberty. liberty never ceases to amaze with its resilience, creativity, vital energy.

 

[Dmytro]

it's so funny, for the last seven years i've been hearing from my ukr/rus friends that "the american economy is bound to collapse, and nobody will be buying dollars", etc, etc.
and now many of them gloat in the "i told you so" mode ;D

i don't think it's against the US or anything, but it's much easier to be a doomsayer.

on a separate topic, i personally don't really care whether we're number one or two or three, as long as that means that we're in good shape and that things with the economy, family and personal freedoms are fine.

 

[charlesdwright]

it's so funny, for the last seven years i've been hearing from my ukr/rus friends that "the american economy is bound to collapse, and nobody will be buying dollars", etc, etc.
and now many of them gloat in the "i told you so" mode ;D

i don't think it's against the US or anything, but it's much easier to be a doomsayer.

on a separate topic, i personally don't really care whether we're number one or two or three, as long as that means that we're in good shape and that things with the economy, family and personal freedoms are fine.

Dollar shorts have ceased gloating of late.

 

[bigbadwolf]

it's so funny, for the last seven years i've been hearing from my ukr/rus friends that "the american economy is bound to collapse, and nobody will be buying dollars", etc, etc. and now many of them gloat in the "i told you so" mode ;D

Saying "collapse" is silly. The US will remain a great power -- only now it will be more primus inter pares. And the next few years will be difficult ones.

on a separate topic, i personally don't really care whether we're number one or two or three, as long as that means that we're in good shape and that things with the economy, family and personal freedoms are fine.

The US economy hasn't been on a sound footing and the use of finance to paper over the contradictions of the US system -- with capital taking an ever-bigger chunk of the cake at labor's expense -- could only go so far before it all started to unravel.

Incidentally, here is an interesting piece by Glen Ford at dissidentvoice, which quotes Helmut Schmidt, Jacques Delors, and others on the sheer extent of "fictitious capital."

The party's over, friends. Mobs of hungry, desperate, and infuriated people, looking for scapegoats, will be raging through the streets looking for quants to string up from the nearest trees and lampposts.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Would this be such a bad thing after all? Ever since we saved the world for the 2nd time after ww2, we've tried to be the good guy around the world. We really have. We've fought communism, we're fighting terrorism, and we're providing all sorts of foreign aid to so many different places.

And what's the response for that? International envy and/or enmity from almost every nation aside from seemingly Israel and Japan.

So isn't it time we took back our capital and used it for our own self-interests?

We're not gods. We're human beings just like everyone else.

In the meantime, I can't wait to make a lot of money because I already have a charity I'm locked in on participating in.

Math for America. It'd be such a huge honor to continue the legacy of King Quant.

 

[alain]

Mobs of hungry, desperate, and infuriated people, looking for scapegoats, will be raging through the streets looking for quants to string up from the nearest trees and lampposts.

I survived 21 years in a hostile environment so it really doesn't scare me

 

[doug reich]

Incidentally, here is an interesting piece by Glen Ford at dissidentvoice, which quotes Helmut Schmidt, Jacques Delors, and others on the sheer extent of "fictitious capital."

That article seems to a string of breathless metaphors. Its style is well-suited to a marginal publication.

Seriously, though, the only concrete point, aside from doom and gloom about the crime perpetrated by financiers is:

In the process, the business parties will kill off what's left of the productive part of the US economy.

which goes unsupported, and isn't a clear outcome.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Oh please...everyone needs capital, especially the aspect of our economy which produces real goods. That said, it is imperative that we popularize science and engineering and mathematics here in America.