The Romans where having serious problems to maintain a very expensive war against the German barbarians. They decide to step down and withdraw until the donau and rhin rivers. That save their budget for a while but led to the fall of the empire as German tribes growth bolder. Nowadays the US is running a huge budget deficit and having a very expensive foreign policy.Are the terrorist the new barbarians? It is there an analogy with the current US situation? How to avoid the fall?

All Empires fall, and the cycle seems to shorten. While it was a millenium for the Egyptians, it was several centuries for the Romans and merely two centuries for the Empires of the middle ages. In the industrial revultion the time span seems to have come below the 100 year line, so I suspect we are somwhere in the several decades area now. There is only one way to go from the top: down.I think it's reasonable to assume that the US is on a descend and most people would agree (at least that's my experience). The question is: what is going to be the new dominating power? China? Alot of people seem to think so. India? Nah...

QuoteOriginally posted by: menceyThe Romans where having serious problems to maintain a very expensive war against the German barbarians. They decide to step down and withdraw until the donau and rhin rivers. That save their budget for a while but led to the fall of the empire as German tribes growth bolder. Nowadays the US is running a huge budget deficit and having a very expensive foreign policy.Are the terrorist the new barbarians? It is there an analogy with the current US situation? How to avoid the fall?hackneyed comparisons.....yeah yeah yeah...the U.S. is like the Roman Empire....the terrorists are like the Muslims....Here is a challenge....write an essay or post comparing the U.S. to a can of beer, and comparing the terrorists to a cup of bubbly mint tea....

Nonius, if you can't post something smart on this subject go back to your equations,...... FDAX's response was by far more interesting than yours

I think it's a little late to claim that the US is running a large budget deficit and it will be it's downfall: it has had a large budget deficit for almost three decades and people have been predicting it's demise for even longer. And let's not forget that lots of countries want the US to run a large deficit because it means the US will buy it's goods (something akin to vendor financing). Since most of the developing countries, and some developed countries, don't have much in the way of internal demand, they should thank their blessings that the US runs a large deficit. Not that I endorse it: I don't. And I think it's going to be a problem, but not just for the US. As far as the analogy, there are lots of differences. The US is the first hedgemony that I can recollect that had no territorial ambitions, which makes it enormously different from other empires. Although the US uses it's economic and military power to project policy throughout the world, it has never laid claim to foriegn territory. And the reason this is germaine, is that the indigenous people of conquered lands have normally been the "barbarians". This time it's about ideals and the globalization of culture. And usually the demise of an empire has been followed by a explosion of conflict as the former territories re-assert their freedom via sometimes vicious infighting and territorial boundary "re-definition". It will be interesting to see what happens this time round. And I agree that empires go in cycles just like everything else, although it can probably be argued that the US's decline started with Vietnam (the same time it started it's deficit). Since then it's foriegn policy has been suspect at best. But I would rather see the US withdraw to it's isolationist roots, and let someone else be the proverbial "super-cop".T

QuoteOriginally posted by: FDAXHunterAll Empires fall, and the cycle seems to shorten. While it was a millenium for the Egyptians, it was several centuries for the Romans and merely two centuries for the Empires of the middle ages. In the industrial revultion the time span seems to have come below the 100 year line, so I suspect we are somwhere in the several decades area now. There is only one way to go from the top: down.You are making the assumption that the U.S. was ever at the top. We are a country that is far from perfect. Although we do extend our ideology far beyond our boundaries, we do so because we think we are doing something morally right. The cases in which we were wrong - and there were several - were largely due to either ignorance on our part with respect to cultural awareness, or manipulation by less than honorable people. ie. the desire for resources lead some people to campain for a particular cause and mislead other people.... etc. I am not president and can't say how America will act in the future. I can only hope for a day when objective realism replaces "emotion-politics". Some leaders in this country play off the hopes and fears of ordinary Americans in order to get their agendas pushed through. Yeah this is nothing new, but maybe one day people will be a little more akin to this bullshit. QuoteI think it's reasonable to assume that the US is on a descend(t) and most people would agree (at least that's my experience). The question is: what is going to be the new dominating power? China? Alot of people seem to think so. India? Nah...China and India will not dominate for at least hundreds of years. China: Population overflow, scarcity of resources, underdevelopment of institutions that promote diversity and change. And let's not forget Communism. India: Again - Too many people. not enough land or resources. Caste system restricts movement and acheivment by lower classesThe U.S.'s greatest strength has always been its economic and cultural systems. Anyone in this country is free to not only express his or her opinions, but better their own lives through a multitude of options. If someone is motivated to work HARD, and has a moderate level of intelligence, they will succeed in this country. This is true of very few other places in the world, and certainly not of other large countries.

Trevor-There is no one else that could possibly be the "super-cop" you speak of.The UN? They don't really care about anything but looking after their own interests. The U.S. really does care about other nations and their citizens and it's sad that most of the world fails to see that.

Let's reconduct this thread,let's forget about the good, the bad and the ugly and let's play a little bit geopoliticsHow the US is gonna deal to be the world leader, keep low interest rates to spur growth in the private sector and finance the global war on terror.What kind of foreign and economic policy has to be settle to maintain US leadership and to protect itself from terrorism,.... a retreat from Mideast, a scale up of the operations there?, a slow down in domestic consuming, a devaluation of the dollar or simply letting the IR go through the roofThe other day on cnbc, Soros was comparing the situation in US with UK when was running huge deficits, and he says we will have a stop and go recovery.

yeah, I wish I could get a trillion worth of vendor financing To say that we don't have territorial ambitions is really taking the argument at face value... X usually took over Y because such an arrangement led to better management of the offshore commodity extraction process. Now, the oil majors pay off Nigerian villagers to pack up and move, and the rest of us pay the oil majors for product. So it's an SPV-like arrangement in terms of moral responsibility. In any event, there is greater economic efficiency in doing things this way - look at all the extra costs doing things Iraq-style! Either way, the extraction and marketing profits have been taken from the people who are living on top of the asset.Anyhow, the way I see the Chinese ccy revaluation is that they are writing down some of those vendor trade claims. But we don't consider such a thing a default of the creditor trade debt - i.e. a default on US tsy obligations. Basically our bar tab is so long that we own the bar now, and the beer's not as cheap as we say it is.

QuoteOriginally posted by: menceyLet's reconduct this thread,let's forget about the good, the bad and the ugly and let's play a little bit geopoliticsHow the US is gonna deal to be the world leader, keep low interest rates to spur growth in the private sector and finance the global war on terror.I realize this was the subject of many previous threads, but the war in Iraq was NOT part of the war on terror. It was a foolish side game Bush and co. wanted to play. Compared to the Cold War, the War on Terror is relatively inexpensive. It consists of special ops and intel and counter intel; not ICBM's and Star Wars, and a huge military buildup. Ideally, that is. If Bush has his way, we will have everything at once at the expense of an enormous deficit.QuoteWhat kind of foreign and economic policy has to be settle to maintain US leadership and to protect itself from terrorism,.... a retreat from Mideast, a scale up of the operations there?, a slow down in domestic consuming, a devaluation of the dollar or simply letting the IR go through the roofHow about a retreat from overstepping our bounds when we clearly aren't wanted or needed, and helping those Middle Eastern countries who clearly need our help and ask for it? And for shit's sake, let's do things right the FIRST time so we don't have to repeat ourselves years later.QuoteThe other day on cnbc, Soros was comparing the situation in US with UK when was running huge deficits, and he says we will have a stop and go recovery.Soros is absolutely correct, assuming the U.S. will continue along its path of self destruction. If the voters have the balls to elect a more responsible and intelligent leader next time around, he will be incorect.

QuoteOriginally posted by: menceyNonius, if you can't post something smart on this subject go back to your equations,...... FDAX's response was by far more interesting than yoursfair enough...firstly, budget deficits should be compared relative to GDP. Under this comparison, the deficit was worse in 1992. Thus one could argue that the ballooning deficit is not as alarming as people think. The question is whether the U.S. can fund the deficit without rates going through the roof. The jury is still out on this, but in the short term, it is probably true that it can. Of course, much of this deficit is related to increases in defense spending and the rebuilding of Iraq. But Reagan did the same thing (running high deficits coupled with high defense spending) in the 80s. His policies, while I did not agree with them, did not lead to the fall of the U.S. empire. To wonder whether that was the beginning of the decline of the U.S. empire in my view is to engage in pure speculation.Secondly, terrorists could be viewed as barbarians, true...but this is sort of an obvious comparison. Terrorists are enemies of the U.S. Barbarians were enemies of Rome. Countries, empires, and kingdoms always face threats from enemies. This does not mean that they collapse in the face of threats of attack, nor does it mean that the reason why countries, empires, and kingdoms collapse is due to "barbararian invasions". Rome didn't fall simply because of the barbarians. It died a slow death because of the confluence of several events and archetypical patterns of the lifespans of empires, ranging from economics, to politics, to warfare, to disease, to civil strife etc etc etc....anyway....

ok, but are we talking current GDPs or forward GDPs? the way I see it, the biggest problem with the 'operating economy' of the US, and most of W Europe as well, is the impact of the aging of society. It is fairly easy to service the debt when we are coming off of an economic bubble which hasn't completely resolved itself... GDP is still looking very good and the debt burden hasn't grown too seriously. But look ahead 10 years and ask yourself the same question - what is the net growth of debt vs. net growth of GDP, when retirement issues start to hit the numbers in a serious way and we are spending all our money unproductively by keeping the dead alive. Also, you can't really avoid talking about the tax cut thing here, because that's the debt service coverage. Taxes have been sliced, and paying headcount is going down. Meanwhile, I recently heard that government spending has been growing at something like 24% over the last 5 years. I wish I knew how to do these numbers the right way.... but mostly it looks like it doesn't add up.

Beavis: You are making the assumption that the U.S. was ever at the top.Not at all Beavis. I'm simply going by the nations (empires) who are the biggest bullies in their respective times. Regards.

QuoteOriginally posted by: FDAXHunterBeavis: You are making the assumption that the U.S. was ever at the top.Not at all Beavis. I'm simply going by the nations (empires) who are the biggest bullies in their respective times. Regards.Well who's to say the U.S. can't be an even bigger bully in the future? Anyway I get too worked up about this only because I love this country and I believe it was founded on the best principles mankind has to offer. Entropy is real, but containable. At least that's my opinion.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Nonius But Reagan did the same thing (running high deficits coupled with high defense spending) in the 80s. His policies, while I did not agree with them, did not lead to the fall of the U.S. empire. I guess at a cost of a devaluation of the dollar and two digits interest rates. At that time there was not globalization yet, neither competition with China and its pegged currency, so I guess the cost in terms of unemployment was not so high if we compare it with what would be nowadays if this conditions repeat. Now the US has a huge budget deficit and a huge trade deficit as well.I agree it may not be the fall, the problem is how to finance an expansionary miltary policy (probably forced by the terrorist tread) that can be sustainable economically. And that's why I made the comparison with Rome and its retreatment from Germania.