U.SA! U.S.A.! U.S.A!

So Pat Buchanan has written his last political will with his new book that says the United States will not last as a superpower after 2025, which coveniently is at the end of Pat's life expectancy. We've all read how China is going to have a larger economy within a decade and will fill in the power vaccuum left by the declining United States. I wrote last year how global warming was going to make Canada a leading superpower.

But hold the phone. Conservative British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pitchard, the international business editor of the London Telegraph, writes today that the American phoenix is slowly rising again and will be well on its way to energy self-suffiency in fuel and energy within five years and its manufacturing will have closed the labor gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus. Evans-Pitchard has always been a fan of the United States but his article today is worth mentioning.

Yesterday, President Obama handed out the Presidential Medals for Science, Technology and Innovation to over a dozen American scientists who have revolutionized their fields from energy to pharmaceuticals to genetics. He indicated that his administration has been accelerating scientific breakthroughs so that the United States might continue to lead the world. A pretty anodyne presentation but it continues a theme of our Geek-in-Chief. Sprinkled over the American landscape are these new innovations--wind energy farms around Ohio and Pennsylvania, breakthroughs in the cost of solar energy, and revolutions in medical science to cure diseases.

So with unemployment at 9% and the mood of America sour, it's worth pointing out that the declinists might well be wrong.

Evans-Pitchard notes that the shale gas revolution has already turned America into the world's number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia. he is also a big fan of hydrualic fracking--breaking rocks with jets of water--which will bring a quantum leap in shale oil suply from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Incredibly, the United States meets 72 percent of its own oil needs, which is up from 50% a decade ago.

As I've written, during the Obama administration there are more operating oil and gas wells that at any time since Baker-Hughes started keeping records. The Dakota fields alone are compared to a new North Sea. The result is that the United States was the single largest contributor to the global oil supply growth last year with a net of 395,000barrels per day.

Evans-Pitchard claims that US shale output is set to expand dramatically possibly reaching 5.5 million barrels per day by mid-decade. This would be a tenfold increase since 2009.

The implications of this are very large for geopolitics, energy security and historical military alliances. As the United States's reliance on the Middle East continues to drop, it will be Europe which becomes more heavily dependent on the area.

Meanwhile, the great China-US seesaw is about to swing back our way. Offshoring , which has been such a political issue here is the states, is becoming "re-inshoring". "Made in America, Again", a report by a Boston Consulting group, contends that Chinese wage inflation running about 16% per year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the 'default location" for cheap plants supplying the United States.

Financial analysts claim the "tipping point" is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals and even furniture.

As the gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" narrows, add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy and the advantage shifts back to the United States. The list of "repatriates" is growing all the time. Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the United States by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2 million in total.

Evans Pitchard indicates that the over-valued Euro led to an increase of foreign investment into the United States by 5%. Volkswagen, Korea's Samsung have already invested over $25 billion in the States. More importantly,Intel, GM, Caterpillar and other American firms are staying put. Ironically, China by trying to reduce its dollar supplies rotated a chunk of its $10 trillion stash into EU bonds so that the Euro remains too strong for half the Euro Community.

Evans-Pritchard claims that the American recovery will grind on and it will be by no means healthy as fiscal policy is tightened and it slowly purges itself of debt. But he says that the United States retains a pack of trump cards, not the least of which are 16 out of the world's top twenty universities. Strangely the United States is the only global economic power with a fertility rate above 2.0, which means it has the ability to outgrow debt in shapr contrast to the demographic decay waiting Japan, China, korea, Germany, Italy and Russia. And, of course, contrary to Ron Paul and many Republicans we have a real central bank able to back-stop the system.

Evans-Pitchard suggests that the 21st Century may be American after all, notwithstanding Pat Buchanan's laments.

In reading this article, one would hope that the U.S. Congress would see fit to pass the funding for infrastructure, which is desparately needed. In addition to education, this is one of the missing pieces to make the American Phoenix a reality.

One wonders why no Americans are writing articles like this. It seems to me a big deal that we are close to energy self-sufficiency now with all that implies.