The speech yesterday of Barack Obama, the president-elect of the United States, on his economic program expressed his country's characteristic hopefulness and its willingness to experiment. His optimism was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, but his grave tone added to the plausibility of his message in a time of international anxiety.
The U.S. is both well and badly positioned to lead the world back toward recovery - well, thanks to its quality of hope and to the national propensity to consume; badly, because the U.S. is the epicentre of the financial crisis. China, with its propensity to save, is in a stronger financial position, but its economic culture is averse to stimulating consumption.
Mr. Obama's plan will greatly add to the U.S. government deficit, which had already surged under the Bush administration, leading up to the final crescendo of rescue packages. Thursday's speech at George Mason University did not unveil Mr. Obama's complete economic program, but the range of his proposed stimuli is broad: tax cuts, more unemployment insurance, infrastructure programs, foreclosure relief and encouragement of the flow of credit, but also more future-oriented plans for computerization of all medical records in the U.S. and expanding broadband lines across the country, not to mention numerous environmental measures.
China, in contrast, has built its economy by promoting its exports (especially to the U.S.), discouraging imports, keeping its currency low and buying U.S. Treasury bills. The Chinese people themselves, lacking a social safety net, have saved for their old age and they have little access to consumer credit.
For decades, a similar relationship between the U.S. and Japan created great imbalances; the curious China-U.S. symbiosis that the economic historian Niall Ferguson calls Chimerica has compounded these.
Sooner or later, imbalances cause things to topple over, as the financial crisis has amply shown.
Mr. Obama and the United States remain likely to lead the global economic recovery, because the Chinese government and people are not likely to alter their habits of saving any time soon. There is some shifting, however. Chinese policy analysts understand these problems, and the Chinese demand for U.S.-dollar-denominated securities is likely to decline.
Beijing is trying to finance its own public-works stimulus package from within the country. Chinese regulators are leaning on banks to lend more to small and middle-sized firms
But, like Rome, a welfare state and pension systems cannot be built in a day, so Chinese workers and consumers have good reason to keep saving a large part of their incomes.
The world may gradually become more homogeneous in its economic habits. In the meantime, we must still look to the sunny spirits of the United States.