IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end
Market Watch
The International Monetary Fund predicted the end of American economic dominance in 5 years. The IMF reported that China will overtake the US economy in 2016.
The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s…
The comparison that really matters
…The IMF in its analysis looks beyond exchange rates to the true, real terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and is rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
U.S. spending spree won’t work
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
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Wild Thing’s comment……..
Please be sure to thank a Democrat for this! Yes Republicans are guilty as well, BUT not even close as to how much blame needs to be put on democrats. It was the democrats that spent the social security money for what was it some 40 years.
The biggest push for spending started with Clinton, Bush only made it worse and Obama OMG he has sent us into a nightmare of spending and debrt and taxing us to death. Obamacare has already started as far as many insurance companies beginning to charge now for treatments that USED to be covered and the other costs of insurance.
This is the result of 50 years of piss poor and crooked politicians. They, the self serving people that voted for them and the crooked, inept political parties that pushed them are all to blame for this. We are screwed.
TomR is absolutely correct. This has been in the process for the past 50 years and along with the politicians, the unions share in our demise. Just about everything we purchase in stores comes from China. Visit any auto parts store and ask to see their “hard parts”…starters, alternators, brakes, etc. You’ll find their manufacture or manufacturer country of origin as either China or Mexico. American companies I deal with are closing up shop in America and moving overseas because they can no longer endure government regulations or union demands.
People say that the Chinese are receiving “slave wages” in their factories. The standard of living for the Chinese is growing by leaps and bounds. Visit any American university and you’ll see a majority of foreign students are Chinese. It won’t be long before the components of our major weapons systems have “Made In China” stamped on them.
Well I am not jumping on this bandwagon. If you think its bad now it has been worse much worse. And we came back from that disaster. We will come back from this.
And the people are letting it happen.
Mark, for most of America’s history we have gained, gotten better, improved, advanced. This time we are talking about going backwards. Bob’s statement about American jobs going overseas is exactly right. During the Depression the whole world was in the same boat. This time we have given our wealth and our manufacturing base to China and others because we have the highest corporate tax in the world and because our govt. has grossly overspent and borrowed.
Thank you everyone!!!
If we can get the right people elected like we did last Nov. and do it again and then also get a good president I believe we can save our country. What scares me is if obama gets elected again.