The West's Trading Disaster.

A letter to a newspaper, by Tony North, Brixham, Devon.
16/11/11.

"When I studied economics in the sixties, trade was defined as the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services. So the pained look on the faces of Obama, Merkel and all the rest at the endless conferences, surely indicate that the penny has dropped.

The trade between the 'mature' Western economies with the low-wage Far Eastern countries for the past 50 years has been an unmitigated disaster....and must stop.

We now have all their cheaply produced TV's, cars, computers and the rest, and that's why they have all our money. That's why we're broke, Europe is broke, and the US is broke. And our children are facing a bleak future of unemployment and permanent recession.
What's the point of the Bank of England adopting, through quantitative easing, and pouring endless amounts of 'virtual money' into the economy just so we can buy even more Far Eastern manufactured goods and fall even further into debt:?
The old maxim of 'when you're in a hole, stop digging, surely applies.

It took courage in previous centuries for scientists to deny that the world was flat: the same level of courage must be found by economists to admit that the current world business/trade model just does not fit the realities of the 21st century for the West.
We need a new approach, and the most sensible way is to match our imports with our exports. It's either that or commit economic suicide..."