G-8 losing its clout due to the ticking debt bomb

From Bloomberg's James G. Neuger:

Bank bailouts and recession-fighting measures will explode the debt of the advanced economies to at least 114 percent of gross domestic product in 2014, more than triple the 35 percent of the main emerging economies including China, the International Monetary Fund forecasts.

The run-up in debt has hastened a power shift that is sapping the industrial world’s authority to impose its economic doctrine, currency arrangements or greenhouse-gas reduction strategies. Even some G-8 officials acknowledge that the group has lost its grip amid the global recession they spawned.

America's standard of living is on the decline, while the standard of living of developing nations is on the rise. I'm happy for those people. But if America's monetary policy team (i.e. Bernanke, Geithner, Summers & Dodd) got its act together, we wouldn't necessarily experience such a big drop in our standard of living.

Tim White