Michael Pettis quotes a Brazilian economist on the dilemna facing the US:
….As the US becomes a declining share of the globalized world, the costs of imposing stability (and I have no illusions that this is done for charity) rise, and its share of the benefits decline. It is only a matter of arithmetic that at some point the costs will exceed the benefits.
Pettis describes how other countries have gamed the system – notably Germany and France in the 1960s, Japan in the 1980s, and China in the 2000s – and argues that the costs to the US already outweigh the benefits.
….Many economists may disagree with me that the costs of the current role the US plays in the global trade regime exceeds the benefits, but the point of this essay is to show that even if I am wrong, as long as the world grows faster than the US, more of the world is incorporated into the global trading system, and more countries design growth models that suppress domestic consumption in order to subsidize domestic growth, there must of necessity be a point at which it makes sense for the US to opt out of its role as shock absorber, and – by raising tariffs, intervening actively in the currency, restricting foreign purchases of US assets and especially US government bonds, or otherwise reducing capital inflows – become simply one more member of a system with no automatic adjustment process.
The current system, in other words, is inherently unstable and will sooner or later force the US economy into a position of choosing either to take on excessive risk or to abdicate its role as shock absorber….
Sustained current and capital account imbalances are unhealthy except for the few rare instances where capital-rich economies invest or loan money to a capital-poor recipient. In most cases capital is used to purchase secure Treasury investments in the US in order to offset a domestic current account surplus. This has a destabilizing effect not only on the US economy, which has shed millions of manufacturing jobs and created a housing bubble of epic proportions, but on the global economy as a whole, destroying any benefit to the perpetrator.
Read more at How much longer can the global trading system last? | Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS.
Pettis… [correctly in my opinion] argues that the costs to the US already outweigh the benefits.
This just means (in part) that the US companies that transferred their jobs overseas gambled the US’s economy and lost; but they didn’t gamble their own money. They argued that job transfer would (presumably by divine intervention) make the US wealthier, all the while knowing it would simply make themselves wealthier by enjoying near-slave labour costs and not having to pay tax in the US (or anywhere really). The notion that wealthy companies make a wealthy economy only holds true if the wealth flows down through employment or taxation. Just living in a town of billionaires doesn’t make you rich.
In other words the US isn’t the world’s shock absorber anymore because it can’t afford to be.
Love the comment frankaquin0.