The most powerful nation in the world

I happened to dial past the guy who was substituting for Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and he was reading from a Bill Kristol column about President Bush's wimpy response to the North Korean missile test. It seems one day Bush said it was "unacceptable" for the test to be held, and then when it was held anyway, the situation became merely "regrettable."

So the neoconservative community is having a fit. How Clintonian of Bush to draw a line in the sand and then, when it's crossed, to attempt negotiations rather than simply nuke Korea into the Stone Age.

Rush's sub was suggesting that it's time we (meaning the U.S. Government) exert a little pressure on China to do something to rein in its buddies, the North Koreans. After all, he said, we have built an amazing trade relationship with China and we are still the most powerful nation in the world. Oh really?

I started talking back at the radio with some of the concepts I learned from the Bonner-Wiggin book Empire of Debt, which notes that Americans as a group spend 6 percent more than they earn every day, that $11.5 trillion worth of U.S. investment is now in foreign (largely Asian) hands, and "our net international investment position has gone negative at more than $3 trillion." China holds a great many U.S. Treasury bonds, and let's be clear: The people to whom you owe money own you.

The radio man sounded full of the elan that Bonner-Wiggin wrote about on pp. 241-242: "Who cares that they spend more than they can afford? Who worries that we have no savings and now depend on the kindness of strangers to maintain our standards of living? Who realizes that the Chinese or Japanese could bring the U.S. economy to its knees with a single word? ... So what if the Chinese and Japanese sell our bonds, we still have our houses!"

The television series Firefly and its companion film Serenity postulate a future in which America and China were the surviving cultures that influenced the world of 500 years from now, so everyone is bilingual. Actually, the Chinese used is mostly epithets - hilarious ones like "the explosive diarrhea of an elephant." We might want to consider learning a few phrases of Chinese more practical than that.

Because the people to whom you owe money own you, and our mighty U.S. government has taken out massive equity loans, backed by thin air, with the Chinese government. Our rulers have no leverage with the Chinese. They are owned by the Chinese. China became the most powerful government in the world while we were sleeping, with the acquiescence of our imperial rulers.