Bowing is Customary and Necessary

There has been much furor over President Obama's visit to Asia, in particular his deep bow before the Japanese emperor. Sometimes you have to bow when you travel to Asia to thank them for continuing to buy much of our debt. What else is this diplomatic mission for anyway? We are borrowing like fiends to save the country and China and Japan own close to 50% of that debt.

Throughout this economic crisis, economists have continually compared America to Japan. Japan's lost decade and prolonged recession are held up as an example for why we needed more government stimulus; the claim is that Japan's government did not invest enough internally to prop up the country and avert a deep recession. So the logic has been that we must do the opposite and so we are plowing in trillions to save ourselves. But, we should be frightfully aware of the difference, they own nearly a quarter of our debt so they are still solvent.

China is considered the successor to our throne and not only are they weathering this global recession well, they own nearly a quarter of our debt also. We must keep in mind that neither of these countries is spending a third of their budget on their military and another third on entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Hello! Obama had better follow cultural custom and bow, in fact, he technically needs to get down on his knees.

Only in America do we think that we are all that and a bag of chips and rightly so for up until the last few years, we were the envy of the rest of the world. However, due t0 our most recent and disastrous foreign policy, we absolutely need to fix our mystique, something that Obama has nearly accomplished in less than a year. But, people over here have forgotten why that is important, they still think that America is the center of the Universe. I'm sure the people of Rome felt that way too before it fell.

I don't think the end of the world is around the corner, history unfolds much more slowly than it seems. All of the empires that previously fell like the Ottoman, Roman & British are still thriving. They are not number one but they are quite robust. America is not falling tomorrow, it may be in decline but it will still take a while. And while we may lose #1 status, we will remain close behind and may even reclaim it. America has iron balls and vast wealth and the combination thereof may, in fact, save it.