Who can get the world economy moving again.. and who can't.

First of all lets consider who can't get the economy moving again... and the answer to this is most western nations! The reason is that broadly speaking western nations are in the following state:

• They already have plenty of good quality stuff (roads, cars, trains, fridges, washing machines, Hoovers, TV's etc.)
• They owe other countries a stack of money.
• They are worried that if they spend unnecessarily then they will get in to even more debt and may struggle to pay it back (especially because of interest payments).

Now if you approach people in that state and say "pleeease go and buy some more stuff" (which is exactly what western governments are all doing) then you will obviously get an extremely negative response. There is fundamentally going to be a lot of resistance to the idea - and for good reason.

Now lets consider who can get the economy moving again... and the answer to this is China! The reason is that broadly speaking China is in the following state:

• They don't already have plenty of good quality stuff (roads, cars, trains, fridges, washing machines, Hoovers, TV's etc.)
• They don't owe other countries a stack of money - quite the opposite - they are sitting on a mountain of I.O.U.'s (of various kinds) from other countries.
• They are not worried that if they spend unnecessarily then they will get in to even more debt and may struggle to pay it back.

Now if you approach people in that state and say "please go and buy some more stuff" then its not so clear they should resist. Sure they may prefer to have a nice big pile of I.O.U.'s from the rest of the world... but they're not going to come to that much harm at all if they use some of it up... even a big chunk of it. If I were Barak Obama or Gordon Brown, I'd be straight on the phone to Wen Jiabao begging him, saying "pleeease buy some of our western goods!!". This is a great opportunity for the huge masses of poor Chinese people to raise their standard of living while simultaniously helping the world economy.

Why don't I see this idea being discussed in the media? have I got something wrong?