Over at MyDD there is an interesting, thorough, and well explained piece on America's impending financial doom. Here is an excerpt:
"Don't look now, but the biggest issue for 2008 will be economical, not social. The US fiscal situation, which has been perpetually bad year-after-year, has accumulated to the point that it is so massive, something is going to break.Posted by Paul Hina at November 28, 2004 11:09 PM"The point is that foreign (mostly asian) ownership of our debt has been growing year-after-year, and at a certain point they will decide that owning a certain percentage of US government debt is either too much and/or has reached a threshold where they can use their economic muscle aggressively in US policy. In either case, we're not in control, and the situation has the potential to snowball.
"I'm not talking about who'll eventually pay for the debt. We all know that we pay the interest now, and our kids owe the principal. But the issue is who lends us the money now, at what rates, and how much power do they exert over us?"