America finds itself entering the 21st century engulfed in extraordinary issues that will require extraordinary understanding to overcome. Many people in modern America, as well as around the world, have great concerns and reservations regarding the efficacy of the global economy as it is currently constituted. Increasing disparity of labors incomes, combined with growing national deficits in participating nations, is precipitating a growing fear of global economic imbalance. This fear is resulting in further concerns that the current global economy is not sustainable. No matter what country one examines today one can see declining middle class incomes, reversals in economic security programs and growing public debt. The global economy, as we currently know it, is built upon the European and Asian countries attempts to sustain their economies through massive exportation of goods and services. The United States has become a consumer driven society, encouraged by its Government, to purchase those goods without regard to personal or national debt accumulation. During 2003 and 2004 the United States Federal Reserve lowered the federal discount rate paid by banks to an unrealistic one percent in an effort to massively expand credit, thereby driving up the demand for foreign goods. Foreign central banks as well as individual foreign investors have been lending the massive amounts of dollars they receive in exchange for their goods and services to the United States through foreign direct investments. These investments include private market stocks and bonds as well as Treasury instruments that are created by our Federal Reserve System. This economic arrangement between the United States and the rest of the exporting world has resulted in absolutely massive and unsustainable current account trade deficits. This deficit is approaching six percent of the United States Gross Domestic Product. Due to the extremely low national savings rate within the United States, currently four tenths of one percent of income, this rapidly accumulating trade deficit must be financed through foreign direct investment (FDI) into the United States. This FDI comes principally from the countries exporting to the United States. Reports now indicate that the United States, through the mechanism described above, is currently consuming seventy to eighty percent of the exporting countrys savings. From the exporting countries perspectives, the money used for FDI cannot be used to improve and expand their economic and social infrastructure. From the U.S. perspective it means that future income streams generated within the U.S. economy must be sent to foreign lands in the form of interest payments on the treasury instruments previously purchased by foreign central banks and investors. As long as the United State's trade deficit continues to grow, payments to foreign banks and investors must be re-invested in the U.S. resulting in new rounds of foreign direct investments, rather than being invested in their countrys economic and social infrastructure. This arrangement is unhealthy and will eventually become lethal to the global economy. As common sense allows us to have at least some understanding of this phenomenon, we can readily see that this arrangement has and will continue to have, the effect of indenturing future generations of Americans. The trade deficit must eventually be paid for. The current generation of Americans is amassing a debt that will greatly reduce the economic prospects of the next generation.

The geneses of this arrangement sprang forth from what is known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. This agreement was created by the United States and forty-five other nations during 1944 in Bretton Woods New Hampshire. The desire of the participating countries was to find a way to avoid the economic mistakes made at the conclusion of the First World War. This agreement established a postwar international monetary system of convertible currencies, fixed exchange rates and free trade. To facilitate these objectives the agreement established two international institutions: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (The World Bank). The Bretton Woods participants also attempted to create the International Trade Organization, however, Congress would not endorse it in its envisioned form. The International Trade Organization was created later in the form of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade also known as (GATT). The United States and twenty-three other countries signed GATT in 1947.

The economic arrangements made between rival nations at the end of the First World War are largely believed to have led to the inevitability of World War Two. Our parents, having fought a long and terrible war, pledged to themselves that they would not simply rebuild the continents and cities devastated by the Second World War, but would build a world economy that would discourage all future wars. Their intent was to plant the seeds of a political economic system that would prevent a similar conflict from ever again releasing its horror upon this world. They envisioned a world of nations each dependent upon the other for its economic welfare. They believed this arrangement would preclude any nation from ever again attempting to destroy another nation. Thus, they invented a political agreement penned in a document named the Bretton Woods Agreement. This document established a world bank and an international trade treaty known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This agreement established principals upon which each nation could redress its trade and economic concerns with every other nation with which it traded. This Bretton Woods Agreement has grown into what we now know as globalism.