The head of Canada's central bank, David Dodge, says the world risks an "outright recession." And, Claude Trichet, who is the president of the European Central bank, believes the world economy will have to "pay a price."

Both men point their fingers at the same problem - the U.S. trade deficit. And, both men are scheduled to exercise their fingers again soon, this time at Ben Bernanke - when he shows up at the G-10 meeting this week.

The U.S. trade deficit is running at an annual rate of about $800 billion. In rough terms, it means that Americans spend that much more each year, on the world market, than they earn. You could talk to a plumber or a haberdasher and get a sensible opinion on the subject: "I guess the U.S. should stop spending so much," he would likely say. The matter is really pretty simple. When you spend money you haven't got on things you don't need, you're bound to run into trouble. Even the aforementioned central bankers can see that.

But, if you asked a top U.S. economist - say, Ben Bernanke himself - what you're likely to get is a confused and preposterous answer.

The deficit is really pretty simple. It takes years of expensive formal education to not understand it. Ben Bernanke, along with most of the economists who work for Wall Street or the federal government, believes the trade deficit poses no problem. To the contrary, it represents a very felicitous and even flattering situation: They make; we take. They sweat; we think. They save; we spend. The 'they' includes many millions of people overseas, but the most prominent among them are the Chinese. While we Americans operate an economy that is 71% consumer spending, the Chinese only spend 50% of their GDP. The rest is saved - an amount equal to $1.1 trillion dollars.

Taken as a whole - including business, government and private households - Americans also save, but only 13% of GDP, or about $1.6 trillion. And at the household level, the difference becomes even more pronounced between 'they' and 'we.' They save 30% of what they earn. We save less than nothing...with a household savings rate of minus 0.4% last year. The last time we saw such a low rate was during the darkest years of the Great Depression, when families had no choice but to draw down their savings in order to pay their bills.

Ben Bernanke sees nothing to not to like in these numbers. The Chinese are lucky we spend so much, he is likely to remark. What else would they do with their savings, if they could not lend them to us? He might add: what else would they do with all that junk they're producing if we weren't prepared to go into debt to buy it?

"They're both mad," said a colleague yesterday. One spends money it hasn't got. The other sells to people who cannot pay. Maybe China and the U.S. represent equal and opposite delusions: One over-spends. The other over-saves. But while the delusions are opposite, they are not equal. There is a great Exodus of power and money from West to East. There is a big difference between being on the prospering end of that passage as opposed to the losing end. China's working class is getting richer; America's is not. China's treasury piles up credits; America's piles up debits. China's consumers have savings that they could spend, if they wanted to. America's consumers have only credit...made available to them at present rates only so long as it accords with the whim of the market and the will of lenders. The Chinese are owners...Americans are becoming renters. The Chinese are free from debt; Americans are chained to it.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.