While I agree with some of the points in the article, I want to stress that this is only one possible scenario. (Sorry for this long post. It's my first.) A co

While I agree with some of the points in the article, I want to stress that this is only one possible scenario. (Sorry for this long post. It's my first.) A couple of times, the article mentions a country's wealth and power. In the long run, national competitiveness determines a nation's wealth. Currency changes are a mechanism that can influence competitiveness in the short term. (As mentioned by others, devaluation can increase competitiveness and wealth.) National competitiveness has been studied exhaustively. While there are still a lot of questions, we seem to agree that a nation needs to produce goods/services that the rest of the human race values and are willing to pay for at an efficient cost. The nation also needs to attact the most able and willing workers, call them the "talent". The nation needs a mechanism to identify and provide opportunities to the talent. Thus far, U.S. is recognized as the nation still most able to provide these conditions. Less universally agreed upon is the need for a rule of law including rights to personal property, the opportunity for the talent to accumulate much more property than the average person, and efficient access to capital. As those on this website know, access to capital and entrepreneurial support is pretty good here :) There are two additional trends that I think have influenced the Asian Currency Crisis. One is the broad aging of the population in the wealthy contries. There is a net savings effect that is still going on. Younger people have more need of loans and older people have more need to invest. Right now, the need to invest outweights the need for loans. Money has been cheap for several decades. No one know what effect this will have when an equilibrium is reached, sometime in 2030. Another effect is land. The U.S. is said to have about the same livable land as China. You can see what this might mean. China has about 1.5 billion people to U.S.'s 300 million. A lot of Chinese will want to immigrate to US to get away from extreme over-crowding and the destroyed environment. (If you get the chance, watch the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes.") This will cause land values in US to rise, in proportion to the rise in China's per capita income. National economies have changed drastically over a relative short time period -- a few decades. One of the scenarios discussed by experts is similar to the doomsday scenarios caused by a US dollar devalution versus the Chinese yuan. In most estimates, if this particular scenario does occur, it takes about 30-50 years. Interestingly, if you listen to most Chinese government and financial representatives, they present a doomsday scenario where China is the one going bust. They are very familiar with their own potential dangers, while we are much more aware of our own problems. For example, China has a very serious pension issue. Due to the one child policy, their workers-to-retired ratio is far smaller than in the U.S. They have not begun to create a Social Security program. (Think of Logan's Run. Actually, there are scary stories that I've heard from some of my Chinese friends.) I'm just giving another angle to this whole national competitiveness issue.