What will change as a result of the economic meltdown?

I just finished reading an article in this month's Atlantic Monthly discussing the economic recession and the likely results we'll see in America and the world.

It seems we may not be the big players in the international financial markets in the future due to the crash of Wall Street and the lack of credit which has resulted from that event. We have allowed the cost of two wars that were started with no exit plan in place. It was almost like we were suffering from A.D.D. We started in Afghanastan with a stated purpose of taking down the Taliban, but as soon as we scattered them from the cities and towns we directed our attention on Iraq and forgot about Afghanastan.

The people responsible for 9/11 may have been trained in Afghanastan by the Taliban, but they were all from Saudia Arabia. We failed in capturing the leaders of the Taliban; we failed in Iraq by not planning beyond the fall of Hussian.

We have additionally spent billions on Homeland Security and hundreds of billions on the military, not including the longterm costs of the wounded and battle scared soldiers.

These decisions have caused us to borrow far beyond our means and allowed this country to recede into a financial hole that could reasonably cause our country to crumble.

So how does the future look? Without drastic spending cuts and the ending of our occupation of Iraq and Afghanastan we're likely to find our financial markets crashing even further Maybe the stimulus package will work, but I don't have much confidence in it doing anything but driving the value of the dollar lower.

Look for more bankruptcies, more layoffs, more pain. I hope I'm wrong.