[lbo-talk] Niall Ferguson bewails US imperial decline

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Wed Sep 13 15:04:13 PDT 2006


On Sep 13, 2006, at 4:49 PM, Charles Brown wrote:


> I think Hudson's thesis is that Japan, China etc. are financing
> both the
> balance of payment deficit and the budget deficit.

That's not Hudson's thesis, that's just a fact. But the budget deficit is not that large by historical standards. The current account deficit is very large.

Doug

^^^^ CB; So Japan and China, etc. _are_ financing the budget deficit ( but it's not that large historically) ?

Could the U.S. creditor nations collect their debt without causing a big crisis which would impact the creditor nations adversely ?

Hudson quotes Keynes that if a bank is owed $10,000 and the debtor can't pay , that's problem for the debtor. If a bank is owed $1 million, and the debtor can't pay , that's a problem for the bank.

Basically, Hudson says the current U.S. imperialism is largely based on the U.S.'s (government) debtor status ( as opposed to prior imperialism with the imperialist nations having creditor status). This includes the fact you mention ( elsewhere) of "more" investment in the U.S. than U.S. investment overseas in the current period.



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