Important article out right now with many and varied implications

From Yahoo! News today:

IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End

by Brett Arends, Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.



For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.


And it's a lot closer than you may think.


According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.



Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America's share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China's would reach 18%, and rising.



Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China's.

This has so many ramifications, it's difficult to take them all into account.  Here's a bit of it, from the article:

The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.

Here's an ominous little note from the article:

The last time the world's dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That's when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn't turn out well.

Finally, there's this note:

According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund's website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world's largest economy.

So get ready for our fall, ladies and gentleman.  It looks as though the party is nearly over.

I'm just glad we had George W. Bush in the White House for 8 years so he could do all he possibly could--and more--to hasten this decline as much and completely and totally as he could and did.

I just hope we can hadle being a second-rate power well.

That "cowboy swagger" will need to go bye-bye.

Link:  http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112616/imf-bombshell-age-america-end-marketwatch