Unleashing the second American century : four forces for economic dominance

"The foundation of Joel Kurtzman's thesis - that we are heading into the second American century and the wind is at our back - is based on his years of analyzing and reporting on the economy, the markets, and business, and an unbiased understanding of our strengths and weaknesses. What's clear to him after painstakingly assessing our prospects, is that all the talk about the imminent collapse of the United States is not only baseless, it's dead wrong. We've all heard the arguments before. In fact, we've heard them for at least 100 years and they have always been wrongheaded and false. (Remember how Japan was going to overtake us?) Anyone who objectively looks across the world's economic horizon, knows the United States is strong. In many ways it is even insulated from all those economic troubles abroad - Europe's debt crisis and Asia's looming slowdown. He will be arguing that even with so much of the world ailing, America will grow stronger still - and significantly so. While America's problems are real, they are manageable and receding. This is not just one man's opinion but analysis based on numbers and trends. America is a wealthy, accomplished, dynamic country, and it is better positioned to shape the future than any other nation on earth. Part of the reason for this is due to the luck of geography and geology, but not all of it. Our strengths are immense. In our downwardly spiraling discussions about our fate, we have done the economic equivalent of mistaking weather for climate. There may be economic clouds in the sky today, and perhaps a few tomorrow, but the clouds are fleeting and the long-term outlook is bright. In fact, the farther out in time we look, the better it looks"--