thank you GWB

8-27-08--By Bernd Debusmann--REUTERS - At the Beijing Olympics, China trounced the United States in the contest for gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia inflicted a humiliating military defeat on Georgia, America's closest ally in the region. At home, the U.S. economy is in deep trouble. The misery index, a combination of the rates of inflation and unemployment, stands at its highest in 16 years (11.3 percent in July) and there are forecasts of worse to come. The Olympics marked China's status as a world power and the first time since 1996 that Americans did not win most gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia showed that it can do as it sees fit in its own backyard, no matter how loudly Washington protests. That includes recognizing as independent states the two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that Georgia claims as its own. In the Great Power game in the region, the score so far is Russia 1, U.S. nil. ... Given the perils of crystal-gazing into the future shape of the world, it is not easy to find an expert willing to hazard a guess on how long American supremacy will last. But there is at least one, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University who two years ago correctly forecast the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the dismal chain of events that followed. At the time, many of his fellow economists snickered. ...One of America's most serious problems, Roubini writes on his website, is the fact that the U.S. is the world's biggest net borrower and net debtor. The countries financing the American deficits are its rivals, China and Russia, and Middle Eastern oil exporters. ...History, he says, provides lessons on the importance of financial prudence. "Empires ... tend to be net lenders, i.e. run current account surpluses. The decline of the British Empire started in World War II when the British fiscal deficits in the war and the current account deficits turned the empire into a net borrower and a net debtor." The British twin deficits were being financed by a rising power that was a net lender and a net creditor - the United States. Whether it will ever return to that state depends, in part, on the competence, or lack of it, of the next U.S. administration. President George W. Bush's team did not set a good example.