GM has announced the death of the over-sized gas-guzzling Hummer.  I’d like to think America is en route to a new awareness that big isn’t beautiful, but there’s little sign of it. They’ve never liked big government or big finance, but as long as Wall St was an American symbol they accepted it. Now tea parties want to scupper Wall St as well as Washington, and if they get their chance they’ll get a nasty shock. Investment funds will dry up, federal subsidies disappear, and demand and imports with it will collapse.  What backwoods USA has to face up to is that it’s now part of the wider world for good or ill. Best to engage, stay in not drop out, tame the Federal tiger, avoid throwing their prosperity to the four winds. They won’t of course. They’ll still want big and best and live in their own Fox-fed cocoon. So it’s down to Washington and Wall St to find solutions. What both need is an unspectacular getting-on-with-the-business quiet period, nothing fancy, limited healthcare legislation, no more than that, let the temperature ease down, and tempers, and maybe there’ll be less polarisation, the Republicans won’t be pulled so hard in a backwoods direction, against their own better judgement, and we can all (not just the US) focus on the slow and steady, on getting balance into the US and other national economies, and balance into the world economy, not least righting the absurd trade imbalances between the West and China.  We’re all in this, not just America.