It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world’s population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.
President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn’t. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.
Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States. As 3 billion Asians become prosperous, interest fades in the prospective contribution of 300 million Americans – especially when those Americans decline to take risks on new technologies. America’s great economic strength, namely its capacity to innovate, exists mainly in memory four years after the 2008 economic crisis.
A minor issue in the election campaign, the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative was the object of enormous hype on the policy circuit. Salon.com enthused on October 23,
This agreement is a core part of the “Asia pivot” that has occupied the activities of think tanks and policymakers in Washington but remained hidden by the tinsel and confetti of the election. But more than any other policy, the trends the TPP represents could restructure American foreign relations, and potentially the economy itself.
As it happened, this grand, game-changing vision mattered only to the sad, strange people who concoct policy in the bowels of the Obama administration. America’s relative importance is fading…
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NK27Dj02.html
The U.S. “leadership” is moving with an arrogance that is unsupported by the realities, witness the humiliation of the UN vote on Palestine and the TPP embarassment chronicled above. Rev. Deke’s “pivot” in Asia missed the mark; Asia pivoted. The above development does not bode well for the dollar. Real leadership would address the reality that the USA has been bankrupted by the blood-sucking Federal Reserve, imperial wars and bankster bailouts. Until that reality is maturely addressed, there will be continued decline in the USA. “Jobs?” Jobs are only talked about during elections. Did you REALLY expect that something would be done to make America competitive again?
Related:
Back in September, China made the first of many new moves to provide the global economy an alternative to the petro-dollar when they began to sell and purchase oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. This move, allowing nations to bypass the SWIFT central banking and currency system, was the first real blow to dollar hegemony, and a first move towards establishing a new global reserve currency….
On Nov. 27, China, along with other BRIC nations, injected their next move against the reserve currency when they formed a new development bank comprised of $240 billion in newly pooled funds. This bank, which will allow for loans to be made in foreign reserves, and for purposes such as sovereign bailouts, is a direct threat to the decades old IMF, and another step in changing global domination by the West of the international banking system…
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