PROBLEMS WITH US ECONOMY

From the July 27, 2009 Business Week:

1. P. 9. To me the following is an alarming statement and raises serious questions about the future of the U.S. and how the Obama administration is rebuilding the nation's economic infrastructure. The article first dealt with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.--which means we are not making anything to sell and create wealth. If an economy doesn't create anything of value, the future is dire. Then the article went on to say: More alarming, the U.S. is losing its ability to create big-impact products as research and development is increasingly tranferred to foreign lands that have become manufacturing leaders in, say, computers or telecom gear. Except for Apple's products, for instance, every U.S. brand of notebooks is now designed in Asia. If nothing is produced in the U.S., how can national wealth be created? I don't see how the U.S. can continue to exist on a service economy. Also research and development is critical for future jobs and wealth creation, yet it appears that U.S. companies are not doing this with American human and physical resources. In addition, the focus of the Obama administration's economic policy is not on creating future wealth. So neither the private sector or Washington are dealing with the long-range impact of the current economic crisis.
2. P. 42. Wenran Jiang, Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta: Why would we want to keep subsidizing irresponsible U.S. behavior that will inflate the dollar and hurts us? So what is China doing? China is purchasing real wealth in natural resources and companies and avoiding holding the U.S. dollar or treasuries whose value is dropping because of inflation. Obama wants to spend money and accumulate U.S. debt while the Chinese are building an economy on real wealth and not debt. Washington and the American people don't seem to realize the problems we are facing--we want to use credit-card solutions instead of rewarding innovation and wealth-creation.