>
> Does today's deficit ... matter?
>
Austerity is toxic insanity. But the geopolitics underlying the US decline is not unimportant, because we urgently need a postneoliberal vision of the future.
I think Yanis Varoufakis is on to something when he argues the US current account and budget deficits need to be understood as integral aspects of what he calls the Global Minotaur, a.k.a. the US-centric shadow banking system of neoliberalism, which preserved certain aspects of US hegemony way past its formal expiration date of 1985 (when the US became a net debtor nation). Makes a lot of sense, and also explains why euroliberalism emerged as it did (short version: it was part and parcel of the Minotaur), why Japan's post-Bubble nihon-liberalism never got off the ground (Japan is Germany without a Euro-periphery, so it stagnated) and why euroliberalism and neoliberalism are in a horrifying race to see which system can commit suicide first.
So it's not enough to just critique US austerity as the mean-spirited vampirism it indeed is. We need to think and act transnationally: a united front of developmental states, social movements, and digital commoners.
-- DRR