well I certainly don't share your optimism that somehow with a shrinking high-income tax base (due to irresponsible tax cuts on corporate profits and the super rich, which is where all the growth is), an again population, exploding military spending (if you think Iraq is the end of that road you're definitely an optimist) and a general malaise on the rest of the economy that somehow America is going to 'grow' its way out of the deficit. Serious economists have blown this argument off for a long time.

And I don't think anyone per se is dumb here, either the Americans living far beyond their means or the Asians who are financing it. But to assume that somehow they are doing this for good, far sighted reasons is incredibly naive I think. A far more plausible explanation is that they are doing it for the reason most of us do the things we do--it seems like the easiest thing to do at the moment to accomplish their goals.  

It is a fact that the japanese and chinese have been buying up billions of dollars in order to artificially keep their currencies lower in relation to the dollar so that their exports are not priced out of the market in the US. That can only go on for so long.

The proper, natural outcome for this situation--and there is wide agreement on this--is that the world is going to have to equalize somewhat. The US standard of living is unsustainable; this doesn't mean it will collapse, but it cannot go on the way it is, with perpetual, structural consumer and government debt. And it only makes sense that sooner or later the investor countries will skip the middle man (America) and start buying their OWN products.