Larry Summers: The Past Month May Go Down as a Turning Point for U.S. Economic Power

[JDPriestly]

1. We buy more than half our smaller consumer goods from China and exported a lot of our

factories to that country. We have promoted Chinese economic interests to the detriment of our own over and over and now we are surprised that China is surpassing us as an economic center in the world.

Summers is wrong. We need to stop the bank fraud, punish those who perpetrated it and earn anew our reputation as a country that is strong and relatively self-sufficient economically. We have to produce useful things like socks and shoes and fabric and tableware, etc.. the things we use day to day. Our own pharmaceuticals would be a good place to start. We need to stop importing so much stuff. If anything would make countries turn to China rather than us, it would probably be our huge balance of payments deficit which suggests that there is some problem with the valuation of our currency.

Summers -- just plain wrong. And it isn't the first time.

We would be stupid to sacrifice our Constitution and our sovereignty for the sake of some shaky, unreliable "position" in the world. We need to get our financial and economic house in order and our "position" in the world will take care of itself.