well, I did read his Empire of Debt only last week but there were only about 10 pages worth reading out of about 380 or so (thank God, I didn’t have to pay for it). I prefer reading his Daily Reckonings, though, as they are not as dry as a fart on a cracker, as his books obviously are, it seems.
And, by the way, I would not have a hard time imagining anything when it comes to financial relationships between two-legged animals. I have already seen lots and lots of horses puking (though they have four legs, I know), if you know what I mean, and I have seen them puking in front of lots and lots of pharmacies, even, too. If you know what I mean, too. Cheers.

The “…center of financial power” is also correct…that’s why we have two wars of choice to control the spigot (or attempt to) of the most precious commodity of the ages (present times of course), oil. Our dollar is vulnerable as the “currency of last resort” so we must protect our currency….many countries want to (some are already doing so) get off the, “….dollar oil commodity pricing.

To go forward from here and think we can reproduce what happened in the early 21st century in finance is to build another bubble and suffer its collapse which will be much worse than this one as all the past ones have been….an escalation of loss.
Something else must be visualized.

The external (real) financing of the american (real) economy is not made of dollars, bonds or other recycled bits of financial-monetary paper. The real financing is made of arabian oil, japanese cars or chinese clothing.

Because the bubbles do not create wealth but americans need to continue to consume real goods, while blowing bubbles, the real foreing financing must keep flowing, in exponentially increasing amounts (the bubble game is a exponential game), to the USA to avoid the bubbles collapse (dollars or bonds can not be eaten nor wear, food or clothing can not be printed)

This external real funding has colapsed. No matter whether japanese and chinese buy more or less treasurys or other paper debt, they only exchange some bits paper (dollars) by other bits of paper (bonds). The real financing occurs when oil or other real good, with actual real economic value, is exchanged for freshly printed papers with no real value.The volume of this exchange has colapsed.

The magnitude that measures the real foreing financing, the magnitude to watch, is the trade deficit. American trade déficit has sunk. To blow bubbles is no more possible.

“It´s unfair when banks collapsed are rescued with public money! ”

Hey bernardo, do you realize that banks being saved by the gov’t has nothing to do with real free-markets and real capitalism ? Actually, that’s called fascism.

My feeling is that China is a big bubble that will burst badly.

India looks more interesting to me.