As long as the U.S. economy continues to grow, jobs are plentiful, and the Dow defies gravity, the chickens of globalism will not come home to roost. But should stocks come crashing to earth, the day of political reckoning will be at hand. To sustain the Global Economy in 1998, we allowed imports to kill U.S. manufacturing jobs by the tens of thousands in a year that America was creating service jobs by the millions. Our consumers are today deeper in debt than ever. Americans are not only borrowing to consume but drawing down savings to spend more.
Personal bankruptcies are at record levels.
Lately, we have been told that none of this matters. Current account deficits do not matter, and trade deficits mean only that foreigners are producing good things to give us in return for pieces of paper called dollars. Thus, we ought to eliminate all quotas, all tariffs, all barriers to free trade. Let the good times roll. But all that paper is piling up abroad, and it is being returned here to prop up the U.S. stock market, to buy up American industries, to hold U.S. Treasury bonds and bills.