We cannot keep preaching to the world about democracy and capitalism while our own house is so wildly out of order.

Zakaria's premise that we, as a nation, must begin to save more and consume less. We as a nation are in a world of hurt we are hemmorging money for everything from the war on terrorism to the bail out of the stock market to the expending of money for out daily needs. We need to start saving and stop consuming as much from other countries. The money we have that we call our own is loosing value in the world market, but if we start saving our funds we will eventually get out of this financial slump. "As economist Jeffrey Sachs points out, "We've wanted lots of government, but we haven't wanted to pay for it." So we've borrowed our way out of the problem. In 1990, the national debt stood at $3 trillion. (That sounds high, but keep reading.) By 2000, it had almost doubled, to $5.75 trillion. It is currently $10.2 trillion. The number moved into 11 digits last month, which meant that the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of space to display the figures. Its owners plan to get a new clock next year." so in other words we are throwing salt on an open wound that's hemmorging money. "In the medium and long term, we have to get back to basics. Households, for instance, should save more. Governments should put incentives in place that make such savings more likely. The U.S. government offers enormous incentives to consume (the deduction of mortgage interest being the best example), and it works. We have the biggest houses in the world, the thinnest flat-screen TVs and the most cars. If we were to tax consumption and encourage savings, that would also work. Regulations on credit-card debt should be revised to ensure that people understand the risks and costs of these instruments. Moving in this direction would be good for families and for the government as well." so we could start evolving from the spend happy Americans to the Americans with money to spend...so to speak. "Curry points out that "30 percent of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms, and U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned every year. As a result, most of our top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of bio-tech research and fuel technology. " so the people that could get the U.S. out of dept are in nonproductive fields instead of doing things that can get us out of dept such as fuel research.
"It's a fundamental American belief that competition is good—in business, athletics and life. Checks and balances are James Madison's crucial mechanisms, exposing and countering abuse and arrogance and forcing discipline on people. This discipline will be painful for a country that has gotten used to having it all. But it will make us much stronger in the long run. If we can learn the right lessons from this crisis, the United States will once more be playing by its own rules. And that cannot be bad for us."