China and Our Growing Deficit

I read this article on multiple websites today, however it has been replaced on ABCnews by Jennifer Aniston's relationship status update. I think this article is a huge wake up and it should be a huge boost for fiscal conservatism. However, thinking that America will come together to embrace one belief is naive and...well very un-American.

I think what the article does illustrate is a fatal flaw that our nation, its elected officials, and the media has embraced. We believe that there will always be a market for our nation's debt, with complete disregard for the financial state of our nation and its ability to repay that debt. To me this is no different than the mentalities that have led us down the numerous financial crises that mark our nations history. This is the same mentality that recklessly handed out mortgages to all that applied because home prices would always rise. The same mentality that caused price to earnings ratios of pets.com to soar above that of Coca Cola or Toyota. The same mentality that had the Dutch mortgaging their future away to buy tulip bulbs. You know when the Chinese and our interests are suddenly aligned (making sure that we can handle our debt) that things are getting interesting to say the least. My college coach used to say, "Don't try and make chicken salad out of chicken shit" when players tried to do too much. I am worried that if we overextend ourselves as a nation we will be in the same scenario; a handful of bad debt that we can't make good on.