Anyone here old enough to remember the 1929 crash on Wall Street and the 1933 US exit from the Gold Standard under Franklin Roosevelt?  If so, you'll recall the pervading sense that America had already peaked, its capitalist model overtaken by history.  The Soviets were ascendant and soon would overtake us.

After defeat in Vietnam and the Carter Malaise, it was the Japanese who would triumph.  This time it is supposed to be China and the emerging powers - armed with $9 trillion of combined reserves - who will humble America, pulling the plug on the dollar and the US Treasury market, and ending the era of "exorbitant privilege."

As for China and the chorus of voices from BRICS-land venting indignation at the US over the debt, it is largely humbug. 

Taken in the stride of 20th century history, the latest bleatings about America's demise seem more than a little overdone.  Obama will be judged a hiccup of American history, for here is the great salient economic fact of our times.

If you lend money at 5 percent interest for 10 years and then suddenly the borrower announces that he is only going to repay you at 30 cents on the dollar, would you think you have been cheated?

The Argentine government defaulted on its debt a little more than a decade ago, and some of the creditors are still in court trying to get paid. Last Wednesday (11/21), Federal Judge Thomas Griesa of the New York District Court ruled against Argentina, which made world headlines.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner Fernandez publicly defied the court, saying her government will not pay "one dollar" to creditors she denounced as "vulture funds."

Ms. Kirchner thinks she is heaping abuse on her creditors by calling them vultures.  We should praise them instead -- for it is risk-takers such as them who force corrupt nations to pay their debts.

I had dinner with well-known global economist David Hale the other night, and investment guru James Dale Davidson. The conversation was literally all over the map, settling on Ukraine and Romania as two of the brightest prospects for locating brand-new investment opportunities. And Iraq.

David was particularly excited about a small company that has just made a large deal in Iraq - more precisely, the Autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan. “I know the company’s principals and have been watching it for some time” David explained. “It’s selling for $7. This thing is an easy quadruple.”

Here's some good news from America. A Big Oil company - Chevron - is taking legal action against a group of environmentalists for fraud and extortion: aka greenmail. The sums involved are eyewatering: $19 billion (billion with a B).  Phelim McAleer has the details.

It's fitting that Phelim McAleer should be reporting this story because, of course, he visited similar territory in his documentary FrackNation. Like Crude, Josh Fox's anti-fracking movie Gasland was feted at Sundance and lauded by the usual Hollywood suspects.

The polite explanation for what's going on here is "noble cause corruption." You'll lie, you'll fiddle with the data, you'll bully, you'll smear, you'll abandon the scientific method -- not because you're a bad person (or so you persuade yourself) but because you're a person so good that you're even prepared to sacrifice even your personal integrity for the higher cause of saving the world from The Greatest Threat It Has Ever Known.

Finally -- finally! -- business has begun fighting back.  And Chevron's case is really good.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the largest teachers union, the National Education Association, failed fifth-grade math last week. The question he failed is:

If X (government spending) is growing faster than A (government tax revenue) plus B (new revenue from higher tax rates on ‘the rich'), when will A + B = X?

President Obama met with leaders of left-leaning organizations, including Mr. Van Roekel, to discuss the ‘fiscal cliff' last Tuesday (11/13). After the meeting, Mr. Van Roekel appeared on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show to discuss the budget deficit. Mr. Van Roekel told Mr. Cavuto that he had recommended taxing the top 2 percent more to deal with the problem.

Mr. Cavuto then correctly explained that taxing the top 2 percent could not solve the problem because even with the increase, spending would still be growing far faster than revenues -- primarily because of entitlement programs.

After some back and forth, Mr. Van Roekel could not identify one item in the budget that he was in favor of cutting and kept insisting the problem could be solved only by taxing the top 2 percent, even though Mr. Cavuto again correctly and clearly explained that even taxing the top 2 percent at a 100 percent rate would not produce enough revenue because entitlements are growing faster than the economy.

Mr. Van Roekel appeared to be unable to grasp this rather simple concept.