The United States and the World Economy
Forewarns of another world depression and Western political fragmentation, if the USA's twin deficits are not reduced, and reduced gently. But the USA's major trading partners and world creditors, Japan and the FRG, are unwilling to shoulder the burden of world banker. Internationally integrated monetary and fiscal policies must nevertheless overcome traditional national politics and interest-group pressures.
Leonard Silk is the economics columnist of The New York Times. Copyright © 1987 by Leonard Silk.
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Does the current financial crisis resemble Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s? It may be even worse, argues Robert Madsen. Not so, replies Richard Katz.
Only a few years ago pundits were sure that the United States was losing to Asia and Europe and had to emulate their more state- directed economies to remain competitive. Now the conventional wisdom is that America is number one and that the rest of the world should adopt its more laissez-faire approach. In fact, neither caricature is right. Asia was booming and now it is slumping, but it will be back. Europe's underlying ossification will persist. But most important, while the U.S. economy is in a period of robust growth, nothing fundamental has changed. Its long-run growth rate has not accelerated, productivity has not risen, and the structural unemployment rate has fallen by one percentage point at most. Come the next recession, all this triumphalism will seem silly.
America's economy is in its eighth year of sustained growth, transcending the German and Japanese "miracles." This is no fluke. America's unique brand of entrepreneurial capitalism is based on a series of advantages that explain the stunning success of the 1990s and provide the basis for extending this winning streak. These strengths include deft managers, technological innovation, and a culture that values rugged individualism -- all fueled by finance capital that can nimbly meet the needs of a globalized, rapidly changing economy. Furthermore, the era of the deficit is over. Pessimists who warn of inflation should be ignored; American business leaders understand that today's low level of inflation is self-perpetuating. America's prosperity is structural, not transient, and its lead over Europe and Asia will only widen with time. America had the twentieth century. It will also have the twenty-first.

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