Originally Posted by JollyRoger

Trucks can be run on natural gas, and if that runs out, diesel fuel can easily be extracted from coal, so, you''ve got like 500 years or so of suburbs. China is like any bond holder, it doesn't get to "call in it's markers", it gets to cash them in on the maturity date or sell them on the secondary market like anyone else. Guess I am going to have to "dismiss you as a lunatic".

The US, for all it's faults, has the most stable government on the planet, millions of people go about their day to day lives in it, while a small group of paranoids has been predicting it's demise since John first grew a Birch.

Interesting time when I went to find a simple pie chart of the US budget's defense outlays - there seems to be all sorts of them saying all sorts of things. Most of the ".gov" sites list it as 21% of the budget, but it seems the War in Iraq has been "off budget", and when that is taken into account, it rises to 58% of total outlays. The bottom line is that spending for the "war on terror" are way out of line given the actual threat, and the cash being allocated to it has created a massive new sinkhole for all our tax dollars to disappear into rivaling Medicare and SSI.