If you watch Meet the Press on Sunday Morning you have probably heard of one of their panel regulars Fareed Zakaria. He is also host of CNN’s international affairs program, Editor at Large for TIME, and also writes for the Washington Post and the NY Times. He is on very very bright fellow and knows foreign policy as well as anyone I can think of.
I recently downloaded his book The Post-American World on my Kindle and I am blown away by it and his analysis. I highly recommend it! I’m only 28% through it (neat little facts you have when you have a Kindle.)
One of the things he is helping me understand is our debt problems. He points out that household debt has mushroomed from $680 billion in 1974 to $14 trillion in 2008 (this is a second and updated printing of this book.) He tells us the average household has 13 credit cards and owes $120,000 on their mortgage. All of small potatoes in comparison with the government which had a $3 trillion dollar debt in 1990 grew of over 10 trillion by then of 2008 and stands at just under $14 trillion at the end of 2010.
But that is all just background to his point that we are heading, fairly quickly to a Post-American world, meaning that in the future we will be just one of many countries of similar and greater size and economies compared to our own. And we need to know that and be prepared to live in such a world.
As I said, I’ve just over a quarter of the way through his book and he has hand this information out there for some time.
Again, let me recommend this book as must reading to better understand the world in which we live and the world in which we will live in the future.
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