Professor Lewis is correct when he says that the status quo of massive trade imbalances favoring BRIC nations cannot persist indefinitely, and the current political posturing by the Chinese and the Russians might just accelerate the unraveling of these imbalances.

However, the course of events to come is unlikely to follow the story line put forth in the Financial Times article. In particular, China will soon be forced to abandon their beggar-thy-neighbor policy of manipulating their currency at will in order to engineer massive trade surpluses to the detriment of the US and the rest of the industrialized world. The more intelligent Chinese leaders know this, and they're trying to gain as much leverage as they can before the boom is lowered.

Ending the Chinese currency-manipulation gig will, of course, have a secondary effect: It will cut the Chinese down to size, economically and politically. And when this happens, the commodity bubble driven by unsustainable Chinese growth -- which Russia and Brazil have been benefiting from -- will deflate.

By shrinking or eliminating the trade imbalance with the Chinese, the US’s current account deficit will cease to be an important issue, and US dollar dominance, for good or ill, will tend to consolidate.

What many people don't realize is that, with the exception of China, the US trade position is quite competitive vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Furthermore, the soundness of the US’s financial system is enviable within the OECD and the world as a whole.

The logic of global capital flows speaks very clearly. The Chinese predatory mercantilist policy that's at the very heart of global economic imbalances is unsustainable, and its days are numbered. As a result, contrary to popular belief, Chinese political and economic influence in the world is set to decline in the medium term, not rise.

The same is true of the kleptocratic Russian regime that's presiding over a basket-case economy based on a precipitously shrinking natural-resource base, a dysfunctional economic and political culture, and a suicidal demography.

Some people think the posturing of the BRICs (particularly the Chinese and the Russians) has something to do with the relative soundness of the US dollar. In my opinion, they could not be more wrong.