Beyond Our Means: How America's Long Years of Debt, Deficits, and Reckless Borrowing Now Threaten to Overwhelm Us

The American economy is heading toward collapse, warns Wall Street Journal economist Malabre ( America's Dilemma, Understanding the Economy et al.). Although each is $35,000 in debt, Americans in the aggregate nevertheless consume yearly a million pounds of caviar, pay industrial workers far more than their competitors earn abroad and reward executives with ""outrageous'' salaries. Worse, shows the author, with the ``hokum'' of supply-side Reaganomics, consumer debt, government budget deficits, Third-World risk to U.S. lender banks and ``junk bond'' erosion of corporate equity continue to increase, while the rate of personal saving needed to finance no-longer competitive American industry lags at one or two percent (as compared to 20% in Japan). Corporate borrowing is sometimes equal to the entire market value of a company's shares. Economic disaster worldwide is an imminent possibility, cautions Malabre, but he sees a 50/50 chance of strong government remedial regulation and debt reduction by fiat to put us where we thought we were while living beyond our means. (March 23)