OBAMA: THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTIONS CANDIDATE!
NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY HAS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BEEN GIVEN SUCH A FREE PASS BY THE PRESS AND JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE!
I AM WAITING FOR A BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO MAKE IT ON HIS OWN MERIT.
COLIN POWELL COMES TO MIND!
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True enough. It's also true that other financial-market centers, like London, Hong Kong and Singapore, are looking to grab as much new business for themselves as they can while the former titans that ruled Wall Street—like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—are focused inward in cleaning up their balance sheets and remaking themselves into more conservative commercial banks.
But let's be blunt: there is no other country or market that is even within sight of replacing the United States and the money masters of Manhattan island. The rising power of China or Russia or the European Union has always been more alleged than real. The EU actually has bigger banking and financial problems than we do—one reason the euro hit its lowest point against the dollar in 13 months on Thursday—and Europe remains a hopelessly fractious cacophony of voices.
As for China, the never-relenting hype about its imminent rise to superpowerdom would make P. T. Barnum blush. The Beijing Olympics in August were an impressive shout to the world: we're ready! But as Washington Post editor John Pomfret, one of the journalism world's most astute observers of China, wrote last July, the Chinese really aren't ready. "For four big reasons—dire demographics, an overrated economy, an environment under siege and an ideology that doesn't travel well—China is more likely to remain the muscle-bound adolescent of the international system than to become the master of the world."
To the north, Russia is riding high now thanks to soaring energy prices. But with Vladimir Putin's KGB pals in charge of increasingly powerful state companies, Russia is scarcely even an open-market economy any longer. Fascism, anyone? As for Singapore—yes, it's a very impressive little place. But it's a city-state that owes its calm prosperity to the U.S. defense umbrella in Asia, as does Japan.
Let's reiterate that latter point, because it's an important one. When times really get tough, when there are belligerent rising powers or threats, the dollar is still the world's safe haven because America is still the only reliable great power out there. Set aside for the moment the deeply unpopular invasion of Iraq. Every foreign government knows that America is still the main stabilizer of the international system—American power overlays every region of the planet and supplies the control rods that restrain rogues, hostile states and arms races from East Asia to Latin America, enabling globalization to proceed apace. This status quo is unlikely to change over our lifetimes.
Sure, we've suffered a lot of self-inflicted damage over the last eight years. Conan O'Brien didn't have to explain himself when he joked the other day, after the Dow's record one-day 778-point drop, that "as a result, President Bush was able to cross off the 10th and final item on his administration's bucket list." So devoid of credibility and influence is Bush today that the bailout package seemed to move forward in spite of, rather because of, his support. So, yes, as a country we've slowed to a crawl in the great global race. But we're still lapping everyone else. We've got time. And there's no reason we can't start to get it right come Jan. 20.
© 2008
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