Anyone have an idea to whom it is that the US in debt? I know the debt is rising (economic low etc.) but not a clue to who it is. I'd say European countries but they're usually paying off to the US with the Marshall plan etc.

I'm no economist, but my guess is that it's countries that have a positive trade balance with the US.

yes, it's from trade inbalance. We're not borrowing money, per se, except that there's more money going out of the country than coming in. Europe and primarily Asia is the problem. Japan, China, Taiwan are the biggest whores in this regard, I believe. There's quite a bit of ire, too, since we give these countries very favorable trade rates (lack of tariffs/taxes or low ones or whatever) and they don't reciprocate, which just makes our trade deficit that much worse.

Plus we can't compete with alot of these countries due economic imbalances. Someone in the US makes $10/hour doing drudgework technical phone support. Someone in India makes $3/hour and that's considered really good money. Someone in Vietnam makes $1/hour and is banking. How can we compete with that? Economics dictates that in situations like this, economies will normalize and eventually we'll all be making the same and it won't be cheaper to offshore, but I think it'll be awhile before that happens. And in the meanwhile our economy is suffering.

A country should do what it is best at. It's true that you can't compete on things like call centres and other "low" work, but you can and must on innovation.
And you people are not that fucked at the moment, economy is still doing very well in the US, if compare that to Western Europe for example.

yea, the US actually has one of hte strongest economies in the world. Just the trade deficit is causing a national debt that's ungodly and may someday catch up to us and bite us on the ass.

Of course, by then I'll be supreme ruler of hte US, and anyone that tries to collect on their debts will find themselves assimilated into the Satisian collective.

I'm looking forward to loving guns once I joined the Collective. Wouldn't that also mean we'd all have the hots for Shiny? I think that would pose some serious Collective issues.


Erh..;anyhoo. The US has a major economy, but they are -to an extent- living on credit. The overwhelming use of the credit system within the US itself has created an imbalance, with people spending more money than they actually have/there actually is. Needless to say that can't go on forever.

Also, the funny thing is that it is in the interest of a lot of countries that the US doesn't get weaker economically speaking, for the already mentioned trade reasons. China (or japan, I forgot) is a major player in keeping the dollar at an artificial high, simple because a weaker dollar would mean a weakened trade with the US, something they can't afford. It goes the same for the W-European countries btw; but our economies obviously have different focus than a growing 3rd-world country.

It comes down to it that the US is economically speaking living on borrowed time, and that their budget deficit is growing while other 1st world countries are actually lessening it. The question is if the US' most important trade partners will let them hanging or not, and the answer is most likely: nope. Not very soon anyway. Because trade is always a two-way street and it would bite them almost as much in the ass as it would the other way around.


of course, regardless of all this the US has a massive economy...just saying that the rest of the "1st world" really isn't doing much worse, if at all.

Western Europe is doing horrible to be honest. The dollar is very low and we suffer from that. I'm even doubting about the Euro now, although it's a cool project, the Dutch economy seems to be too different from that of the rest of the Euro zone to benefit from a common monetary policy.

Like I said @ the dollar and how it affects other economies. Either we help keeping the dollar artificially high or we try to lessen our dependance on the US as major trade partner. Btw Arathorn, it's the same for Belgium...tertiary economy ruling all. The bad thing is we need to import a lot of stuff, the good thing is that our economy is less dependant of oil and natural resources.