Is America in decline as the no.1 world power..& in denial?

[Rum]

As of May 6, 2011, the Total Public Debt Outstanding of the United States of America was $14.32 trillion. This state of affairs is not being dealt with because of political differences in US politics and the administration is paralysed as a result. The reality is that the USA cannot afford to be Number 1 internationally any longer.

China today offered to 'buy' Greek debt to bail them out.

The world is changing.

[Ian]

Overlooked key statistic: unlike many Euro countries up to their nostrils in debt (most of which is foreign-owned), less than 1/3 of US public debt is held in the hands of other countries. Americans own about 69% of their own public debt.

With public debt as a percentage of its GDP, the US was ranked 34th worst in 2010 - still doing better than the likes of Germany, France, the UK and Brazil. And doing worse than plenty of economic workhorses, including the the likes of Pakistan, Cuba, Nigeria and Yemen.

And the country at the very top of that list, with less public debt than anyone in 2010, doing better than everyone else on the planet last year:

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Libya.

My point? Debt is important. It is definitely not all-important.

[Santa_Claus]

It's not a problem for the USA - as long as they realise the position they are in / direction they are heading......and plan and act accordingly. But I suspect that they will be like every other No.1 Empire.

[Bella Fortuna]

My point? Debt is important. It is definitely not all-important.

Have you seen my credit card bill?

[Ian]

My point? Debt is important. It is definitely not all-important.

Have you seen my credit card bill?

I'm with ya there. What I didn't mention in my post above was private debt.

Personal example: in buying my house in June 2007, I had enough foresight to assume that the housing market was in decline and would keep declining a while. So I took the rather large profit I made from the sale of my previous house and put down a good-sized (15%) down-payment on the new one - this was money I wrote off as never-to-be-seen-again. With that, I'd be happy to sell my house for 85% of what I paid for it... except that right now I doubt I could even list it for more than 77% of what I paid. The market has dropped that much (and DC isn't as bad as some other areas). In other words, I can't move somewhere else without losing a small fortune in paying off my debt on this house. The good news is that my job is probably stable, and housing data that came out yesterday indicates that values look to be rising again after bottoming out. I hope.

[Cormac]

My point? Debt is important. It is definitely not all-important.

Have you seen my credit card bill?

I'm with ya there. What I didn't mention in my post above was private debt.

Personal example: in buying my house in June 2007, I had enough foresight to assume that the housing market was in decline and would keep declining a while. So I took the rather large profit I made from the sale of my previous house and put down a good-sized (15%) down-payment on the new one - this was money I wrote off as never-to-be-seen-again. With that, I'd be happy to sell my house for 85% of what I paid for it... except that right now I doubt I could even list it for more than 77% of what I paid. The market has dropped that much (and DC isn't as bad as some other areas). In other words, I can't move somewhere else without losing a small fortune in paying off my debt on this house. The good news is that my job is probably stable, and housing data that came out yesterday indicates that values look to be rising again after bottoming out. I hope.

The horrible world of negative equity.

[drl2]

Things may look bad now, but don't worry - President Bachmann will sort it all out in 2013!