US production of real goods is a joke look at your CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT and most of the production is not good products anymore. The cars are highly unefficient and of poor quality. Even boeing should move to asia because US is lost anyway. Well the PIGS in Europe get slaughtered as well because they are just like the US. You can compare US to Greece it's just 200 times bigger. The Euro destroyed the industry in the PIGS that's why they are so finished. They imported goods from all over the world especially China and Germany. But this will end now for sure. Englands is just like US no difference either. It needs enormous efforts to bring US and England as well the rest of Europe back on track.

Soon this bozo William will be prince of zamunda of this third world country GB. I could not stop laughing when i have seen the dumb masses of british people cheering and the next day they will be marching against the cuts. But i fully know that the British government is total bankrupt and can do nothing. Only the printing press keeps them alive....

Well, in theory the USA are not yet out of options. You may have more than we have. It's just hard to see who would endeavour to propose and enforce these solutions. Of course, this would mean that the administration would have stop abusing the advantage resulting from the position of the USD as world's reserve currency and to present the public with a cornelian choice : assuming the level of tax that goes on par with the level of expenditure (meaning near scandinavian tax rates) or accepting the social situation resulting of the expenditure cut to match the desired tax level ( meaning what happened to Russia after the fall of the USSR ). On this side of the Ocean, we will probably have both and we'll be lucky if we don't end up in a theocracy...

Run for the hills! Sell everything now. Learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Kinglon, it doesn't matter, just forget English, it's all doomed!

I thought I might try and add a bit of cheer to this whole thing. A report from HSBC today actually forcast that by 2050, the UK would be the worlds 6th largest economy (I think that's where it is now). Yes, China and Germany would be running ahead, but they had a pretty shiny set of predictions for our bozo's country as well. This is significant because it wasn't a some thinktank with a conclusion remarkably in step with the group funding it, it was a global bank, and a statement of intent to invest and develop in the UK. They appear to have given up on threats of leaving the UK because there's a future there to make money from.

We all know banks can't get it wrong... don't we? ;)

I can only say it once more. As long as the total property is larger than the total debt, nobody is broken. Everybodies debt is somebodies else's wealth. Only is the distribution is too assymetric, it becomes a problem. The debt of the US is hold by china and US citizens. It's easy to increase taxes and to "cancel" the nationwide hold debt, but difficult to clear the debt hold by china. Therefore imports must become more expensive, exports more cheap - in other words, the dollar must devalue.

In the long run the deficit must be reduced. Health care costs will continue to rise (demographic problem) which will need clever cost management (aka death panels) and taxes need to rise too. The US compared to belgium or greece has a big advantage - their sheer size. They will not get blown over by a bit of strong wind. The US is far from being a lost case but there is a certain risk that nobody is left who knows how to run certain businesses when the time comes when all americans start working together. Well, greece is probably already half-dead.

Regarding the language - I decided after 6 month of learning chinese that all chinese will speak english before I speak chinese. I guess english will become solely world language, even if the US and UK economy go down the abyss. It's just one of the simplest languages - maybe could be simplified even further.

No one knows what economies are 2050 that's impossible. And no why do you mean we are all doomed it's just that we all need in US as well in Europe need heavy restructuring especially in US and UK because of the lack of industry but this is always possible to do it, it is just a matter of will and the price of course ^^.
For the english language it's true because it is a simple language not like german. Well the PIGS in Europe that was clear since they never had serious economies and have enormous bubbles in the housing market and have just imported on credit especially from China and Germany. There is a reason the Germans were never asked if they want the EU or the Euro. It's the new Versailler Treaty for the Germans it is a complete rip off at the cost of the Germans which i find very offensive. But more and more Germans see that the EU is a scam for the Germans...

There is only one option for the US to avoid a hyperinflation very soon. Elimination of at least 70% of the us military for example they can remove all military bases on the world. And they can end the enormous bureaucracy this could save the day but i doubt they will do it. Bernanke will print till the end....

Interesting perspective. I knew Germans were unhappy with the EU but didn't know it ran so deep and invoked memories of the Versailles treaty. It's a valid concern, though - the way to make government worse is to make it bigger and more powerful. We must not imagine that our world would be better if only we could have government manage it in the way that we think it should be. That is Hayek's fatal conceit, and it was why Frodo took the ring to Mount Doom. No one should possess the power to dominate others, no matter how noble are their intentions.

Oh my god, I agree totally and this is something I have been campaigning for! It's so relieving to see another with similar ideals!

Vote Skynet for a human-free tomorrow!

Does no-one get sarcasm on here? You described the UK as a third world country, totally bankrupt, only the printing press keeps it alive. Then I sarcastically respond and you then suggest I'm being pessimistic! It was sarcasm! I was suggesting through the medium of insult, that you were overreacting with your post.

Of course we can't "know" what the economy will be like in 2050. That's why it's called a forecast. My point was that they aren't predicting gloom doom, and bozos. I don't think that restructuring is on the cards, or indeed viable. What would we build as the new structures? We're in high tech manufacturing, and we're not going to reclaim ground in low tech. They're pressing on with the best strategy, and as I said, some people are supporting this as a good idea.

Not the UK government will do the restructuring. Pound crash and hyperinflation will do it ^^

That'll only happen when Labour get back in...and it'll be the last time they do it in around 100 years, because 3 times in 3 governments will be just that too much for even the idiot voters here that keep putting them back in...

Saying that though, once they're in, they'll erase the past mistakes from the history books like they did in the 1990s education system about their financial misdeeds in the 1970s :\

That whole party should be tried for treason, and disbanded for good.

To be honest all politicians in Europe or UK and US as well should have been long hanged for treason and many other issues. Even worse the EU marxists and their rip offs. But the day is coming very soon when the Euro crashes just like the Pound and USD.

Sure. But when wealth is mostly composed of someone else's debts, it's very dependant on that someone else's ability to assume its debt. Our economies aren't creating wealth anymore, they create money. In theory money is a reserve of wealth, provided it's commonly accepted, available and recognized as a reserve of value.

But just consider what happened in the last 3 years. The amount of global wealth did not increase. The amount of money did. Of course, the velocity of money dismished and most of the created money did not find its way to the economy but soaked the financial sector in a kind of preservative wax protecting it from the consequences of its actions. To the point that the sum of all currencies on the markets actually amount to 40 times the size of all national economies. Just to give a comparison, in 1914 the amount of money in the soon to be at war European countries was 1,4 times the size of their economies. In 1919 , the ratio was somewhere between 8 and 12 times. Now just look at what happened as a result : Frencxh devaluation in a 5:1 ratio, even worse in Belgium, slow agony of the British Empire, not to mention what happened to the austrian Korona or to Weimar's Republic papiermarke... Up to 99% of the private saving deposits erased, 75% of all monetary wealth, surge of nationalism and a second round of military madness.

Our financial economies and global dematerialized assets mean our system can withstand higher leverage than the then gold standard. But then the fall might be far steeper too when the whole system deleverages.

Greece is not half dead in my opinion. If they are, we might all be walking deads. They will be the first domino but once the domino falls, they will have a clean situation. And they will probably mess it again. Like Argentina currently does.

Their creditors will foot the bill and take the burden. The ECB might loose up to 50% of its assets, this of course will weight heavily on the next weak points. As in the food chain, where the top predators ends up with more toxic polutants than the base rodent , the top creditors might ccumulate the loss of wealth. This is the nightmare scenario of course.

Regarding the language, I agree. the Latin survived the Western Roman Empire and became the lingua franca of the new powers. It slowly accumulated novel terms or contaminated the "germanic" languages until new languages appeared. Don't count on the disappearance of the Mandarin though. It was already around when Romulus and his band of etruscan and latin robbers settled on a hill amongst the tiberine swamps...

This is just stupid. You're chucking around these forecasts of crashes and hyper-inflation, based on what? You're no better than those guys in the squares with the signs saying "The end is nigh". Any facts, figures, recent stats you have? What these mean? how it will eventually degrade into economic chaos?

Of course this all brings about the big question. If we hyper-inflate, default, restructure, etc. The surplus of China becomes an even balance with us. Yeah, no credit in future, but they wouldn't be too chuffed about us just not paying them back what they've built up, so I don't think they'll let that happen.