In a mere thirty years, the once-mighty US Empire has decayed into a feeble neocolony of the new metropoles (the EU and East Asia). In the palmy days of Empire (1945-1975), the US ran significant current account and trade surpluses with the rest of the world. In the 1980s, thanks to Reaganomics, social polarization, and bloated military budgets, the US economy became increasingly uncompetitive, and those surpluses turned into deficits. By the early 1990s, the US was dependent on foreign economies for its financing, and by the 2000s total US debt was reaching the cataclysmic proportions typical of newly-industrializing countries.

This table shows the net credit market position of the US vis-a-vis the rest of the world since 2003 (data is current through March 2008, full data is available online from the Federal Reserve). The biggest creditors of the global economy are the East Asian core economies and Europe. Now that the euro and the currencies of the East Asian core countries are displacing the dollar as world reserve currencies, the US will no longer be able to simply print greenbacks to satisfy its creditors, but will have to earn yen and euros on world markets, just like any other neocolony, in order to service its colossal debts.