Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management and the author of several books about American power in the era of globalization, said on Sunday that the challenge for the United States will not end with this crisis.

"Even if the deal passes muster with the credit rating agencies, there is still a huge problem," he said.

"The problem is that we need both a fiscal strategy and a growth strategy," he said. "And what you hear around the world is that no one is convinced we do - that we have a pathway to making the debt sustainable and to dealing with everything from our infrastructure to our education system. It seems obvious to everyone that we haven't done anything, but veer around to avoid catastrophe."

Warnings about American decline are nothing new of course - they have permeated American politics since Vietnam, save for a brief period in the mid-1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, when America briefly enjoyed its status as the world's only superpower.

The fears may be premature today as well. With Europe consumed by its own economic crises, from the long-running drama in Greece to new fears about Italy, and with Japan inwardly focused on recovering from the earthquake and tsunami, investors found that there were few other places for the world to go. That helped explain why there has been no real run on the dollar, or on American debt - there is no place to flee.

"The lucky thing for us is that we are in a race with Europe and Japan for 'most financially irresponsible superpower,' " Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College and author of many works on the waxing and waning of American power, said on Sunday. "And right now, the Europeans and Japanese have substantial advantages in that race."

That leaves China, which emerged the fastest and healthiest from the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, as the only credible alternative on the world scene.

David Fuller's view Fullermoney has learned over decades to be sceptical of very pessimistic views and there is little to encourage readers in this article. Nevertheless, the trend which it describes for the USA has been apparent for many years and has occupied its share of column inches in this Comment.

One hopes, but with out conviction, that the political convulsions are a creative process. Even if so, it is hard to escape the conclusion that events may have to get worse before they can improve for a sustained period.

There remains one important reason for investor optimism; the US economy is not the same as US leading multinational companies, leveraged to Asian-led growth, which Fullermoney continues to like. Some are so wealthy and independent that they are like separate countries, albeit without territorial boundaries other than the small properties which they own or lease to conduct their business. They remain a good place to invest, particularly when we can buy them following setbacks.