dennisl09:

Sometimes you read/see a news story that just embodies and clarifies an entire subject. It can summarize an entire Political Science class in one article. For example,  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff  recently took her first state visit outside Latin America. But it wasn’t like the last 100 Brazilian Presidents, who all made the trek to Washington. No, she went to Beijing, where she signed 13 new trade and cooperation deals. The most significant was China’s purchase of 35 commercial airliners from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. I wonder how Boeing or Airbus felt about that? Trade between Brazil and China has increased 500% in the past 6 years, and this year Brazil’s leading trade partner will be China. 
 All of this points to further evidence that the USA’s reign as the undisputed champion of the world’s economy is coming to an end. Hard to say exactly when the decline started, although it did seem we were doing well in the 90’s.  The invasion of Iraq and pouring billions or trillions of dollars into Iraq accelerated the decline. Kind of like the result when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, just 6 years before the Soviet Union began to collapse. Oh wait. We also invaded Afghanistan…..