The End is Near: We Just Enjoyed the Last Christmas in America

[Teeqoz]

mai said:

Teeqoz said:

How am I being defensive? Why would I be defensive? What do I have to defend? I suggest you read your own OP. It doesn't make it seem like the thread's purpose is to discuss the global economy when the OP only ever mentions the US, however I pointed out that the problems here are not unique to the US.

It should be quite obvious that common problem for any national economy within the global one is the same -- the US (and EU to a lesser extent), or their debt-driven economies to be more specific, which "grow" at the expense of the rest of the world. He's discussing the source of the problem, the debt, I quote:

"Borrowed money and phony financial legerdemain (mortgage-backed securities, derivatives based on the MBS, etc. etc.) from 2000-2007 created what I have termed a "bogus prosperity": no actual new productive wealth was created, only a brief and self-liquidating bubble of debt-based housing and stock valuations."

Add shale oil to that and many, many more.

That begs the question, why everyone else needs to subsidize the US et al?

Notice that tripling of profits from 2000-2013? Yeah, stock valuations and real-estate prices aren't the only thing on the rise. The money corporations are making is as well. Now, I think it's only reasonable to say that if a company makes more money, then their stocks will be worth more as well, don't you think? And that certainly qualifies as productive wealth (the profit US companies make).