America in terminal decline.

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   Here is an excellent article that has appeared in the papers here today. Before anyone gets upset by it, it's not anti- America, more it's commenting on the fact that America is debasing it's own currency and how that will affect the rest of world.
Here's the article.
America is in terminal decline, and that's dangerous for New Zealand
OPINION: It is difficult to reconcile the images coming out of the United States with that country’s status as the only global superpower, holder of the reserve currency, and the world’s largest economy. 
 Is America in terminal decline and is China poised to assume her mantle? 
 Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the US was in economic trouble. Since the GFC their central bank had been deploying a loose and distorting monetary policy while the federal government was running unsustainable deficits. Their last budget surplus was under President Clinton in 2001 and their debt-to-GDP ratio has soared past 100 percent in the last year.
 In response to the pandemic the deficit was pencilled to hit $4 trillion, 20 per cent of their annual GDP, and this does not include all the trillions of printed cash the Federal Reserve has been pouring into the financial system.
There is no political will to make the adjustments required to balance the federal deficit and the exponentially rising debt makes any return to a rational monetary policy with positive interest rates impossible. Washington is unable to pay a commercial return on the $25 trillion that is now owing. 
 An economy fuelled by deficits and devaluing the monetary base will eventually collapse. There is no American exceptionalism that makes their economy any different from Argentina’s. If they follow the same fiscal and monetary policies, they will end up with the same result.
 Compounding the economic and public health crisis, America is now in the grip of the worst bout of rioting since 1968. Many state governments lost control of their central business districts last week and 40 cities imposed curfews; most of them proving unenforceable.
 The brazenness of the rioters is breath-taking. Those engaged in looting are acting, rationally or not, as if the state has abdicated its responsibility to protect the lives and properties of its subjects and appear confident that will face no legal consequences for their actions.
 It is also remarkable how divergent the internal views are that Americans have about their own country; with some holding the country to be irredeemably racist while others find this characterisation a gross misrepresentation. 
 This polarisation is either caused by or has created a fragmented media. It is difficult to watch Fox News and CNN and believe that they are covering the same events. 
 America’s political leadership is equally dismal. Donald Trump can, at the most generous, be considered unconventional. In a time when his country needed him to show leadership, both in reaction to the pandemic and now the riots, he has shown himself either unwilling or unable to rise to the occasion.
 Barring a stroke of good fortune, his Democratic challenger will be the unimpressive, and increasingly incoherent, Joe Biden. Both parties are unable to elevate competent moderates to the top of their respective tickets.
 This is possibly the inevitable end-point of a democracy with such a large and heterogeneous population scattered over a vast continent with complex and unresolved historical issues. I certainly hope not but it is painful to watch such a beautiful country born of high aspirations and ugly compromises failing to live up to its potential. 
 Many New Zealanders presumably are willing to believe the worst of America. I am not among them. I do not believe that one incident, or even a series, of malfeasance by police officers is evidence of a country permanently tainted by the original sin of slavery. For the purpose of this column, however, it does not matter who is right in the raging American cultural war that has now spilled from social media into the streets of American cities.
 What matters is that we are seeing an empire in decline. A nation that cannot control its own streets will soon be unable to control those of other lands. A central bank that is debasing its currency will be unable to maintain its role as the guardian of the global reserve currency. When dwindling tax revenues are needed at home the power to export soft power abroad will be lost.
 Ultimately an empire is built on its domestic economic base. While America isn’t an empire in the Soviet or British sense, lacking direct colonial possessions, it has acted and has been treated as the world’s reigning imperial power for 75 years.
 These days are coming to an end. For a small, vulnerable nation like New Zealand that has prospered under the wing of first the British and subsequently the American hegemony, these are dangerous times. 
 For all of America’s many faults, a new world order dominated by Beijing, Moscow and Tehran is going to be considerably less agreeable than the one we have become used to; as the citizens of Hong Kong found out last month.
 China faces its own challenges and I believe the ruling party’s domestic authority is far more brittle than we assume but this may only increase Beijing’s desire for overseas adventures. China lacks the cultural pull of America but more than makes up for this in raw economic and increasingly military muscle. 
 Perhaps Wellington senses this. The decision not to confront Beijing over the dismantling of the nominal independence of Hong Kong can be seen as a tacit recognition of our Finlandization. 
 We are entering a new global era. It is unlikely to be a pleasant ride.
 * Damien Grant is a regular columnist for Stuff, and an insolvency practitioner and business owner based in Auckland. He writes from a libertarian perspective and is a member of the Taxpayers Union' but not of any political party.