The Economist's Digest15

Unhappy America
Originally from The Economist, July 24th,2008

Summary:
Most Americans (about 80%) loose confidence in their government and the president. Some problems still haunt around today------ collapse of housing market, rising oil prices, credit shortage and inflation threatening the confidence of consumer. Even though the economic gains raised, the economic envy is still in American’s heart------ and this will threat globalization.
America has wasted many resources in the Iraq war. After it claimed to stop, the result is not as good as expected. On the other hand, the booming countries, especially China , also attract America ’s attention. However, for the experienced America , it’s not the first time to be in horror; in fact, it has revived from many serious international crises, because the country is good at fixing itself. Due to the special characters of America , its speed of revival and standing up again is faster than Europe . Nevertheless, if America can’t figure out which character is to be changed now, it will do harm to other countries and itself in the world.
Actually, the credit crisis (sub-mortgage crisis) is part of the capitalism-system circulation. America needs to learn from mistakes, and its educational system and medical system also need reform. It shouldn’t start wars abroad casually, too. Yet American politicians are still smart. Even Mr. Bush started to relieve the hostility of North Korea .
Another problem for America is the threat of rising Asian countries. Yet it’s wrong for America to worry about this. First, China ’s GDP will take 25 years to catch up with America ’s, and there are many inter problems which will influence its growing speed. On the other hand, most developing countries’ success is built on America ’s ideas. America should be proud of their growth which also helps America . Nevertheless, many Americans and US politicians regard them as thieves stealing their job opportunities and wealth. If America start to build barrier like before (referring to the 192X economic crisis), it may caused problems.
However, America is still a big strong country, not easily being torn down. It’s believed that it will come back stronger after this crisis, whether it’s earlier or later.

My opinion:
Actually, we’ve gone through credit crisis in Taiwan , yet with a different cause from the one of USA . It is the credit-card and cash-card problems that trigger the event and it just happened a few years before. In Asia and Europe , people’s opinion about loan (borrowing money) is a little more conservative than American. Even countries in those areas have suffered from credit crises, why America not?
Maybe------ America can look at other countries, especially developing Asian countries and developed European countries, regard their failures as its mirror since most of them are also capitalism enactors.