That was very thoroughly explained and in language a layman can understand ,something of interest is how our government works to stabilize and support puppet governments so that our corporations can set up shop there..pay wages that are ridiculously low ,just short of slave labor....and take jobs away from theU.S..Sounds like the government and the corporation are working together on this...I'm not a conspiracy theorist..Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Bill:
There are a couple of things that you're not addresing and I think are fundamental for this discussion. One is the global inflated real estate prices and the other is the credit crunch facing major banks (as a result of buying secutirized instruments). Again, it's incomprehensible how these issues were overlooked in the U.S. by financial wizards and especially Ben Bernanke, the same scenario now applies worlwide. Bottom line, even if the GDP accounting for exports to the US is minimal, countries face the same underlying structural problems the US has. It's not going to be a soft landing, any bets on my assumption?

The first intelligent analysis of the decoupling issue. Mr Emmott left out of his analysis that the % of exports to the USA by China are decreasing as exports to other areas are increasing. Nor had Mr. Emmott indicated that OPEC LAND primarily imports form Europe and the Far East, rather then the USA, thus the ones with $$$ [OPEC, Russia, China, Japan, Taiwan, etc] can keep internatioal trade growing for the simple fact that they have needs, desires and money [where $$$ is what Uncle Sam lacks].

Cristina, you write: "I think that the American economy still matters to other countries because many foreign economies depend on foreign investment, direct investment is eagerly desired."

If you will allow me, Cristina... you may want to have a look at the CRS Report for Congress, "China's Trade with the United States and the World", updated January 4, 2007. (1) -- I have not found and do not know of any more recent document on the subject.

In it, Table 18 (page 54) gives "China's Utilized Foreign Direct Investment Inflows, Top Foreign Investors, 2001-2005".

Personally, I found the American contribution to have been much less significant than I would have assumed it to have been, during those 5 years.

See, I must have been influenced more than I thought by the headlines that continue to appear in the US media. Unless it had more to do with how the questions are put to us by PostGlobal...

(1)

http://china.usc.edu/App_Images//crs-china-trade-07.pdf

To Joao Marcos:

Joao Marcos: yours and Bill's analyses established a balanced view on the current situation. It is very nice when we have the opportunity to get informed like this. It is rare and unique. You both were serious and treated the other readers with due respect by giving them a great reading through your comments.

US is still the world's largest consumer and the keeper of the worlds currency standard.

Any problem in it is sure to be spread, because of the multiplication factor (i.e. US buys from China, India, Russia and Brazil, which in turn buy amongst themselves and from other countries, and so on and so forth).

Also.. apart from the hard economics, the fact that the global financial markets are all intertwined, means a bigger flow of cash back and forth.

The fact that Citibank, Merril Lynch and others burst their sub-prime bubble, means they will sell assets to cover their short positions. These assets are mainly in developing countries, which mean a loss of dolar and devaluation of their own stock markets.

Any sniffle in the US still mean a big problem worldwide.