Seeing U.S. from an external point of view (I am european), I see U.S. has lost much of the power use to have. This was kind of predictable, as other major economies are growing (such as china, or india) and in some way led U.S. (and here it comes my personal opinion) react badly to something that is quite natural, thus worsening a situation that was not rosy already.
Economy is made of cycles, this is one of the first rules my macroeconomics teacher spoke of in university.
Let me conclude with a little shortlist of what I like and what I don’t, of U.S. (and please don’t take it too personal):
Things that I do like:
1. You are pretty much the first country when it comes to founding and pushing research forward in any field, and that is tremendous.
2. U.S. is the country where it is possible (or at least is the country with the most possibilities) to start from scratch and earn your first million
Things that I do not like:
1. You are not the world’s freedom-defender, and you have to recognize it and stop messing around with foreign countries that do not obey to your very subjective idea of democracy.
2. You have the same possibilities to be attacked by terrorists as half of the civilized countries in the world, thus please stop being histeric about security! (Ok, I am still a bit annoyed about my last visit to JFK airport)