corrente

No, the question is not some variation of a bad hair, awful comb-over joke. On the other hand, remember when Trump's empire started to crumble, in the eighties, I believe, and the big banks who floated his various deals couldn't let him sink, because he owed them too much to let that happen, so they loaned him more money?

Is it possible that the ice the Bush administration has steered this economy onto is thinner than we think, and the only thing that is keeping us from cracking through to the icey water beneath is that we're so damn big that those rising economies in Asia still think they can afford to let us submerge ourselves without pulling them down, too. And at what point, do they say to themselves, oh hell, this behemoth is more trouble than it's worth?

You'll find some answers at Daily Kos in this fascinating post by "Bonddad" which is all about how Asian banks are preparing for a currency crises, and how, increasingly, our brutish indifference not merely to our own national solvency, but to how it affects international markets is causing these newer economies to dance on the head of a pin. Apparently, cute budgeting tricks like excluding the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan in the current budget doesn't fly as well overseas as it does with a lot of Americans.