[from Dyer Straits by Stephen LaRose in Planet S]

Does the world have an "American problem?"

That's the question noted journalist Gwynne Dyer is posing these days. He says no matter who wins the upcoming American presidential and congressional elections, the United States of America faces a long, slow slide into second-tier status.

"The United States has been the world's greatest economic and military power for the past 80 years," he said in a recent speech at the University of Regina. "We're in the earliest days of the time that they will lose it--but they will lose it."...

The United States has maintained its position of being the preeminent world power through its technological, military, and economic might. Combined with a relatively stable economic and political system, the U.S. dollar became the economic keystone of the world economy, much as the British pound was at the height of its empire, Dyer says.

But the dollar's worldwide economic cachet came from the American economy's stability-- something that looks to be a thing of the past, thanks in no small part to current economic policies in Washington.