Aiming for a self-fulfilling prophecy there???

From a very gloomy Mark Felsenthal writing at Reuters:

Economists foretell of U.S. decline, China's ascension
To hear a number of prominent economists tell it, it doesn't look good for the U.S. economy, not this year, not in 10 years.

Leading thinkers in the dismal science speaking at an annual convention offered varying visions of U.S. economic decline, in the short, medium and long term. This year, the recovery may bog down as government stimulus measures dry up.

In the long run, the United States must face up to inevitably being overtaken by China as the world's largest economy. And it may have missed a chance to rein in its largest financial institutions, many of whom remain too big to fail and are getting bigger.

On the one hand, Harvard's Martin Feldstein said he believes the outlook for U.S. economic growth in 2011 is less sanguine than many believe.

First, the boost to growth from government spending will be drying up this year, he said. Renewal of expiring tax cuts is no more than a decision not to raise taxes, and the impact of one-year payroll tax cut is likely modest, he said.

"There's really not much help coming from fiscal policy in the year ahead," he said. Woes from the dire situations of state and local governments may actually be a drag on growth, he said.

If this is representative of what the morons running this country are thinking, they need to be replaced. This hand-wringing anguish about how taxes aren't high enough and how the reduced government spending represents a drag on the economy is all that one needs to hear to identify these people as socialists who loathe the freedoms of the United States of America and want everyone to be sucking at the big government teat. What is odd is that other countries that started down this path earlier are now rearing back from the abyss and embracing smaller government and promotion of small businesses via lower taxes. We need to get some Austrian perspective in our economic theories...