Is the USA now a submerging country?

"Are America's Best Days Behind Us?" by Fareed Zakaria in Time of March 3, 2011

Risk taking is the soul and essence of a country emerging, growing and moving forward. Risk-aversion is the natural reflection of a country that has had enough.

When the USA, which proudly refers to itself as “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, decided that their banks, their frontline of risk-takers, were going to be allowed to have immensely less capital when dealing with what was perceived as “not risky”, like what’s dressed up in triple-A ratings or lending to the government, than when lending to their small businesses and entrepreneurs, then the USA called it quits, and placed itself on the slippery slope of going down and down… fast or slow… but submerging.

The first thing the banks did was then to obediently go and massively enter the triple-A rated waters, where the sharks of the real economy where waiting for them… If that is not submerging what is?