US hegemony no longer respected.

The BBC has a very different view of the financial situation in the US. Every American should pay more attention to what the rest of the world thinks.

The financial crisis is likely to diminish the status of the United States as the world's only superpower.

On the practical level, the US is already stretched militarily, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now stretched financially.

On the philosophical level, it will be harder for it to argue in favour of its free market ideas, if its own markets have collapsed.

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Let me repeat that lead from BBC.

The financial crisis is likely to diminish the status of the United States as the world's only superpower.

On the practical level, the US is already stretched militarily, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now stretched financially.

On the philosophical level, it will be harder for it to argue in favour of its free market ideas, if its own markets have collapsed.

In the middle of an election, that is not what anyone want to say to the American Public.

I am reading a lot of very angry notes, all aimed at stopping the bailout. Some of them talk of how the media sold their soul to Wall Street. But, most of these have gotten the story wrong.

Watching the debate tonight, I was struck by one thing that Joe Biden said. Referring to an conversation with the late Mike Mansfield, Biden remarked that he never questioned the motives of those he worked with, even his most vocal opponents. Far too may of the notes that I have seen attribute motives for actions based on the mistaken assumption that all results must have been intended. That is the material for Oliver Stone movie.

I think that most Congressmen are scared to death. They are scared that they won't get re-elected. They are scared that doing nothing will lead to the next great depression. They are scared that someone might pull aside the curtain and reveal that there is nothing behind it.

On the other hand, there are many things that they also passionately believe in. One of these is Free Markets. Now, BBC says that even this is being challenged, as by John Gray.

"The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over... The American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated."

With the purchase of large stakes in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac you may be seeing the beginning of something totally new for this country. The movement that Gray mentions might be toward Socialism or toward Fascism. It is hard to know.

Gray found it ironic that the week in which Treasury Secretary Paulson is on his knees to Congress, the Chinese astronauts completed their first space walk. Personally, I think that China is adopting the worst features of unregulated capitalism with it's ongoing problems with product safety. Not hardly a model to be emulated.

More than ever, we need to work with a Green Economy, one based on sustainability, not growth. Until that happens, we will have continued crisis and bailout. We will have Greed and we all know that Greed is Good on Wall St.