Sobering CIA World Factbook Data:

The economic data for 2009 has finally been released to the CIA World Factbook.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

If you thought America had it bad, wait until you see the rest of the world. It seems the popular wisdom is true -- if America sneezes, the world catches a cold. This is even more troubling because it means the fate of America is also the fate of the whole world. Everyone is relying on us to maintain and grow their own economies. This is where they invest their savings. This is where they sell their goods. This is their reserve currency. We even maintain world peace and give out massive foreign aid. They can't do anything without us. How else can we explain the whole world collapsing just because a few houses in a few states were overpriced? This is all the more reason why America must be saved from the crippling forces of demographic dysgenics -- If not for our sake, then for everyone else's sake, of whatever color, who still need us on the world stage.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2003rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us®ionCode=na&rank=151#us

As you can see, the USA's GDP shrank 2.4% last year. That sounds bad until you see there are still countries that lost even more than us. Which makes little sense, considering the depression originated in the United States and no other country should have had the same structural weaknesses as we did. But it makes a lot of sense, when you realize we are plugged in to a global economy and those who rely on trade and finance the most are going to suffer the most when something goes wrong.

Below us is Argentina, at -2.5%. What did Argentina ever do to deserve being so poor? It's a mystery. Singapore is at -2.6%. Hong Kong at -3.1%. Taiwan at -4.0%. The EU as a whole at -4.0%. Germany and Italy at -5.0%. Japan at -5.7%. Mexico, whose economy relies almost entirely on our own, got hit with a body blow of -7.1%. Russia, whose economy is based on natural resources, which you'd think would be safe, suffers even worse, due to the lack of demand for them during a time of lower industrial production. -8.5%! How many years of progress has this year wiped away? How many more years, decades must Russia spend trying to recover from the legacy of communism and reach living standards on par with their IQ? Can't Russia's hundred years of suffering ever end? Ukraine could say the same thing, since their economy was even worse at -14.1%. And poor Latvia gets the record at -17.8%. Can you imagine that? In one year you lose 1/5 of your economy, just poof. It's like the whole country's houses burned down all at once. That's the kind of economic impact that just hit the Baltics.

People who imagined the economic downturn would dissuade illegal Mexican immigrants had better look again. Considering the fact that the disparity in well-being between America and Mexico has only grown this last year, we can expect even more desperate Mexicans trying to cross the border to find work here they can't find there.

Those warning of hyperinflation are at least wrong so far. Low interest rates haven't hurt America in the least, we actually had .7% deflation this year.

And I have to admit I've been too harsh on our domestic energy policy. From my point of view we were simply sitting on vast reserves of oil and weren't allowed to drill any of it -- but lo and behold, we were the third largest oil producer in the World this year.


https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2173rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us®ionCode=na&rank=3#us

When you consider the vast resources of Russia, and the fact that this represents the lion's share of their whole GDP, the fact that they're only producing a million bbbl's of oil more than we are is startling. Is it that they don't want to up production, or are we simply outdoing ourselves and extracting through much better techniques what oil we have compared to their sloppy and antiquated processes? We're also only 2nd to Russia in production of natural gas. This, even though we have a far smaller pool of proven oil reserves than Russia (79 billion bbl's vs. 21.32 billion bbl's) and far less natural gas reserves than Russia (43.3 trillion cu m vs. 6.731 trillion cu m)

Given this data, it seems our fossil fuel exploitation is one of the highest efficiencies in the world. We're producing like mad what resources we have. Of course, one could argue that we aren't searching hard enough for new reserves of oil and gas, but then finding new reserves is more expensive than using the ones we've already found, so I don't see why there would be a rush.

It is extremely problematic to discuss what a nation can do to improve its economic well-being, when the fact is we are all helpless to global economic shocks that could sprout up anywhere. The only two areas of useful growth on Earth were China and India (Both only due to how poor they started off as, which allows for very easy improvements.) America, Europe, and the developed parts of East Asia all sank together. I have a bad feeling that all three rely on each other and if any one of them collapses the other two will follow. For instance, if America becomes Mexico north, East Asia can't just shrug it off. And if Europe becomes Eurabia, America won't be able to go it alone. Global politics matter, because global trade matters. Too much of our economic prosperity is reliant on world trade to just give up as acceptable losses the domestic policy mistakes of foreign regions. How we can square this truth with national sovereignty and world peace is a difficult question.