Goodbye Detroit

The surest sign of how economic power is shifting away from the US is the fact that the US is no longer the world’s top consumer of automobiles. Thanks partly to the year-long recession in the US, more cars were sold in China in December 2008 compared to the US. A total of 735,000 automobiles were sold in China versus 657,000 in the US. Even if Chinese demand slows, in keeping with the collapse in economic growth, it’s still likely to remain higher than that in the US where, if anything, demand will fall further. Perhaps the best solution for the problems the big US auto firms are going through is to sell them to Chinese investors.