> Not so. The US is still the lynchpin of the international capitalist
> system.
Not anymore. Eurocapital is bigger, Asiacapital is growing faster. The European core economies (EU-25+accession+Switzerland+Norway) have a GDP of 11.7 trillion EUR, East Asia has a GDP of 8.1 trillion EUR, the US weighs in at 10.4 trillion EUR. BIS data says the EU banks own 69.4% of the world banking system assets. East Asian banks probably around 20% to 22%, while US banks own 4.8%. (This is from their latest quarterly data at www.bis.org).
-- DRR