Quote Originally Posted by hermanv
I guess it wouldn't be so bad if it were just electronics. A country just like a family has to sell something to generate income. Some countries sell labor, some sell resources and others sell products.
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No one could touch us for our electronic expertise. So what do we do, use our own talent to train others, now I can't think of any major electronic device made by the USA. Our dollar keeps getting devalued, largely because we have nothing to sell. We keep buying foreign goods that we used to make here. Those foreign countries end up with stacks and stacks of American dollars, this pretty much forces them to buy up either American real estate or American corporations, what else are they going to do with all those dollars? After all no one else wants those dollars either.
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How that for staying "on topic"?
The other factor, one might add, are the foreign wars that US is fighting. They cost gigantic amounts of money, causing the US Fed to run huge deficits which require huge borrowing (a lot of it from ... China) which drives up interest rates up which precipitated the sub-prime fiasco. Life is so complicated.

The US economy would have been in trouble anyway, but that fool, GWB, hugely exacerbated and hastened the problem. Two big lies were (1) that Saddam's Iraq had something to do with Al-Queda, and (2) that he had WMD. Smart people doubted these things back in '02, (guess that leaves out HIlary), but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had to have their way despite all rationality.