yeah I've seen the stats and they show china slowing, these things take a while to filter through.. they were humming along on eurozone exports although now the EU are toast, american consumer toast, japan toast..... I have never believed in decoupling in this very globalized world...sure when the world is growing at 5% they can do 11% easy when the rest of the world is in recession its game over and I think the days of the world growing at 5+% are over for a long time probably forever..
I guess I would define a dramatic slowdown around 7% growth rates. Under 9% I think you'll start to see the structural inefficiencies become more apparent in their economy, under 7% and the whole china growth story is over IMO, they are just too big now and the world has moved on... people thought japan was going to keep growing forever once as well and its very easy to just extrapolate the past into the future...
Personally I think the USA has too many advantages to be written off so easily they have the oil flows and the military to defend them they have all the coal they need they have the technology they have the reserve currency they basically control the world financial system / political system they have the best intelligence services the have cheap labour in mexico they have the global corporations with fingers in every pie, basically the US economy is the world economy with 50% of the S+P coming from non-US dollar sources? all they have to do is devalue their currency and their profits boom while the rest of the world stops home of the worst financial crisis since the great depression and they have yet to print a -ve GDP whilst the rest of the world sinks into recession...
My money will be on the USA, I think their plans for world domination are only just beginning.
