http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-23/will-2013-mark-the-beginning-of-american-decline-.html

A modest man,² Winston Churchill supposedly quipped about Clement Attlee, his successor as prime minister, ³but then he has so much to be modest about.² We should say the same about economists, particularly their ability to forecast anything in a useful and timely manner.

Those predicting an imminent American economic decline have usually been no exception. This time, though, they may be on to something.

Prevailing arguments about when the era of U.S. dominance would end, and which country would supplant it, have been wildly and consistently wrong for half a century. In the 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was taken seriously when he told Western ambassadors ³We will bury you.²  Today, his country no longer exists. In the 1980s, Japan was supposedly going to be No. 1; now the question is whether the precipitous decline in its working-age population will generate a fiscal crisis.