Niall Ferguson's 4 Reasons Why US Dominance Is Over

The factors he cited:

The “mother of all Keynsian fiscal binges” in which the government spent nearly $1 trillion on stimulus from which there will be a “hangover” with only the timing at question. “Fiscal gaps this large are really hard to close by means of austerity,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, ask the Greeks, the Irish and the Portugese.”

A “massive monetary binge” in which the Federal Reserve ultimately will print money to the tune of nearly $3 trillion.

An ensuing spike in commodity prices, a process that has gone on virtually unabated since the beginning of Fed intervention and for which there has been a recent pullback. “It’s not just that people in the West get cheesed off and stop believing when the Fed says inflation is low,” he said. “It’s because high prices create geopolitical instability.”

China “is not the Soviet Union,” meaning the nation doesn’t have the same destabilizing economic conditions that brought down the former Communist republic.

In all, the obstacles posed against the US maintaining its global dominance will be too much to overcome, he said.

“The fiscal crisis of the United States is not going away. It is coming here soon,” Ferguson concluded. “The key decisions not just for the next four years but for the next 20 years will take place in Asia, not in the US. Welcome to the future.”