America's future in Chinese hands

The fundamental shift is happening right now in the US economy: consumers started spending less and saving more. The US economy has to adjust to this new reality: less new cars, smaller and simpler houses. Currently, this drop in spending is compensated by the stimulus package. But what is going to happen when the US government withdraws its life support for the economy. If nothing changes the economy obviously will plunge into the new (or postponed) recession.
The only America's hope is export- currently the US economy is self-centric, just 10% of GDP is export-based (for Germany it is more than 40%). If the US economy will be able to substitute internal consumption by external one - it can be saved. The problem is the size of this increase: export should increase from 10% of GDP to 15% of GDP (50% increase!) and willingness of other countries to increase their internal consumption. Such as Europe is still in recession the only America's hope is China. That is why Obama's administration puts so much pressure on China to loose (appreciate) yuan, which automatically increase China's import. However are emergency markets big enough to digest extra $700 billions annually?

Government of Canada terminated ecoENERGY Retrofit Program

Effective March 31, 2010, the ecoENERGY Retrofit - homes program is no longer accepting bookings for pre-retrofit evaluations. This is the second important program terminated in 2 months- in February 2010 the Government terminated Home Renovation Tax Credit program.
While the Government is obviously trying to balance books, both of these steps are pretty shortsighted. In long run they decrease tax revenue by rerouting renovation and home improvement projects to cash. Not to say about environment.