Niall Ferguson hates us

One billion dollars please, pronto.

Niall Ferguson, global economy journalist and author, creator of the occasionally brilliant PBS series on the history of money and the companion book that came out last year,  historian/economist with teaching positions at both Harvard and Oxford.  James Fallows, distinguished China watcher and specialist on Asia, journalist and editor for the Atlantic.

At the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, they locked horns — elegant, polished horns — about  “Chimerica” and next steps in the love/hate relationship between the economies of the United States and China.

Ferguson sees the end of “Chimerica” as it was described,  as   China increasingly producing its own products.  Fallows sees opportunity in the continued tos and fros of working with the burgeoning giant for mutual gain.

Both are academics, and both called each other overly academic.

Ferguson described China and America as two giant money printing presses, frantically printing away, with Ben Bernanke  as a sort of diabolical scientist left alone in the lab a bit too long.  He painted a fairly bleak picture of a breakdown and parting of the ways as old regimes in both countries face the new century.   Fallows painted a future of both problems and opportunities for America, in which it’s largely a matter of proactive management, only to be chided by Ferguson for thinking of America as sophisticated and elegant in its abilities when, in fact, we’re all just a bunch of crazy kids compared to, say, Europe.

Are we?

Here’s a 3.5 minute video in which Ferguson and Fallows share and glare, embedded in Fallows’ update re the genteel fracas in Aspen:

Fallows v Ferguson at Aspen updated – James Fallows.