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Eagle's-eye view

By Owen Paine on Tuesday April 21, 2009 04:48 PM

Over at my favorite dallying spot, chez Alex, there's a state of the globe report on earthworld USA. No suprises for the likes of us here -- just the usual armed overreach and prodigal dollar floods as a recipe for decline and fall.

But it reminded me of our solemn duty, as vanguard tribunes of the whole filthy lot of exploited humanity, to put aside our narrow national perspective, and take a bigger look at the whole earth as one closed market system -- the real macro take.

As my ex-teacher, the legendary bon vivant Bob Mundell, used to say, "this, ladies and gents, is the proper point of observation".

So what do we see up here? The corporate flight patterns look quite different thand they were just last year. Much like the real flows -- the cross border trade flows -- the cross border finance flows are contracting substantially.

No matter where one looks -- the north-south global flow, the west-east Euro flow -- it's the same story: contraction contraction contraction.

The planet's production system is going to sleep for a spell, and where's Uncle Hedge at in all this -- Uncle buyer-of-last-resort, Uncle border-opener, Uncle hi-fi Laputa, Uncle crusader?

Contracting -- err, except in the worst hellhole for empire on the planet, of course:

(You may have to right-click and "view image" to see this work of Cold War psychosis in its full glory.)

If Uncle wants to play Atlas, his deficit ain't nearly enough.

It's a global problem, in need of a global solution; but since Uncle fails to share the proceeds of empire fairly, he's unlikely to get his junior partners to adequately share its burdens either -- military or financial.

Comments (5)

hce:

This is a wonderful graphic, pin-pointing at once currently most unstable spots in the world, presence of US military, presence of vital energy resources, nexus of China/ Russia/Iran cooperation, possible fall-out patterns if things should get out of hand, ring of pretty safe spots for Western tourism (about 3,000 kilometers away from ground zero (Madagascar and possibly Greenland, for example), and cheat sheet for tv anchors (and Dennis Blair.)

op:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2009/RES042109C.htm

the devilish report behind the dirty headlines

op:

nut knocker in 'executive summary '

"Even if policy actions are taken expeditiously and implemented as intended, the deleveraging
process will be slow and painful, with the economic recovery likely to be protracted. The
accompanying deleveraging and economic contraction are estimated to cause credit growth in the
United States, United Kingdom, and euro area to contract and even turn negative in the near term
and only recover after a number of years"

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